Shivering white-faced women, wives, sweethearts, mothers, sisters were
there looking for their own, praying and hoping. All day they had
shivered in their rooms at the deep boom of cannon, whose thunder
rattled the glass in the windows through which they gazed on the
deserted streets. It was the first lesson in real war, this hand to hand
grip of the two giants whose struggle must decide the fate of Richmond.
The wagons left their loads and rattled back over the rough cobble
stones and out on the muddy roads to the front again. The night would be
all too short for their work.
In their field hospital, the surgeons, with bare, bloody arms, were busy
with knife and saw. Boys who had faced death in battle without a tremor,
now pale and trembling, watched the growing pile of legs and arms. Alone
in the darkness beyond the voice or touch of a loved hand they must face
this awful thing and hobble through life maimed wrecks. They looked
over their shoulders into the murky darkness and envied the silent forms
that lay there beyond the reach of pain and despair. All night the grim
tragedy of the knife and saw, and the low moans that still came from the
darkness of the woods!
Sunday morning, the second day of June, dawned over the battle-scarred
earth--an ominous day for the armies of the Republic--for the sun rose
on a new figure in command of the men in grey.
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