The acrid smell of gunpowder, blood, and death hung in the air. Dust swirled everywhere, kicked up by the hooves of charging cavalry. The screams of the dying sliced through the din of battle, like the bullets that had caused their pain. The living looked on at the dead with envy as the fight raged on further down the field. Surgeons hopped back and forth, body to body, trying to do what they could to ease the pain of the doomed. Gatling guns could be heard rattling away on the field, round after round spent, man after man shredded before their lightning fast volleys.
A private sat alone amidst this chaos. He was a young man, beardless and boyish of face. He couldn’t have been any older than sixteen. But beyond his chocolate brown eyes, eyes that should’ve held innocence and the joys of youth, lurked the expression of a very old man. He surveyed the battlefield, hardly noticing the gash cut in his side from a close encounter with a Bowie knife. A surgeon approached him from behind, and placed a hand on his thin shoulder.
“Here, let me take a look at that wound.” The doctor said, turning the private around. He didn’t respond, even when the doctor prodded his filthy fingers into the open cut.
“This is going to need some stitches.” He diagnosed, looking up into the private’s face. “Come on back to the surgery tent whenever you’re ready. You’re in no immediate danger.” The private nodded numbly, and turned around to gawk once more at the carnage ahead of him. A single tear traced its way down his dirty face, splashing into a small pool of blood on the ground. Many good men lay here. None of them would ever return home. Their blue and gray uniforms mingled in the places they fell. What did it matter anymore if a northerner sat with a southerner? In their deaths they were free from this wretched field, this wretched war, a war of brother against brother, friend against friend. The private fell to his knees, shouting in anguish at an unforgiving sky, grayed by the smoke of black powder rifles and cannon. He sat there, sobbing. By the time he finally lifted his tearstained face, the sun was setting low over the forested horizon, and the battle was ending, as the “enemy” retreated to the woods.
He rose slowly, tasting the salty tears pouring down his face. He tried to brush the dirt off his pants, to no avail. It didn’t matter any more. He turned and walked back to the camp, leaving the tragedy to his back. The last resounding rumbles of artillery could be heard far off into the distance, coupled with the fading screams of men left for dead. Fallen sabres and bayonets glinted in the red sun of the final twilight hours, leaving a last epitaph to their fallen bearers.