a soldiers worse duty

a soldiers worse duty

fiction
Edward w Pritchard

I was with the 115 mustered out of Massillon Ohio in the Civil war. It's been 45 years since the battle of Gettysburg but I can still smell the stink of the dead after the battle.

I was traveling to rejoin my unit the 115 who were near Cincinnati, Ohio from the town of Gettysburg on a mission for our company commander Col Thomas Boone. Both Col Boone and myself haled from Salem Ohio before the war, me as a humble farmer, he as a leader of our town. I was in Gettysburg for my colonel on private business that even now I cannot divulge.

In the course of the mayhem on July 3rd 1863 being unattached from any unit I was sent to General Meade's headquarters. The next day after the battle I was temporarily assigned to gather the dead.

Of all the duties a soldier could get this was the worse. It was hot and rainy and close to 10,000 dead
lay on the field rotting with another 3,000 horses nearby. For six days I was assigned to gather the dead.

The smell cannot be described. I remember the maggots scurrying as we picked up the body and a strange type of black bug, about half an inch long with a strange looking stinger at each end. When we rolled over a body to move it the bugs would rush in all directions to escape.

Even now, in 1908 as I write this memoir I can still smell death in the air after the battle of Gettysburg and shutter when I remember how long it took me to be able to look at food after that ordeal.