"Lee! Lee! Lee!"
From line to line, division to division, the word leaped until the wounded and the dying joined its chorus.
The picket lines were so close that night in the woods they could talk to one another. The Southerners were chaffing the Yanks over their many defeats, when a Yankee voice called through the night his defense of the war to date:
"Ah, Johnnie, shut up—you make me tired. You're not such fighters as ye think ye are. Swap generals with us and we'll come over and lick hell out of you!"
There was silence for a while and then a Confederate chuckled to his mate:
"I'm damned if they mightn't, too!"
The morning dawned at last after the battle and they began to bury the dead and care for the wounded. Their agonies had been horrible. Some had fallen on Friday, thousands on Saturday. It was now Monday. Through miles of dark, tangled woods in the pouring rain they still lay groaning and dying.
And over all the wings of buzzards hovered.
The keen eyes of the vultures had watched them fall, poised high as the battle raged. The woods had been swept again and again by fire. Many of the bodies were black and charred. Some of the wounded had been burned to death. Their twisted bodies and distorted features told the story. The sickening odor of roasted human flesh yet filled the air.
It was late at night on the day after, before the wounded had all been moved. The surgeons with sleeves rolled high, their arms red, their shirts soaked, bent over their task through every hour of the black night until legs and arms were piled in heaps ten feet high beside each operating table.