These men were unlike any I have ever nursed. Their shattered forms
sufficiently attested courage and devotion to duty, but the enthusiasm
and pride which had hitherto seemed to me so grand and noble when
lighting up the tortured faces of wounded soldiers, appearing like a
reflection of great glory, I now missed. It seemed as if they were yet
revengeful and unsatisfied; their countenances not yet relaxed from
the tension of the fierce struggle, their eyes yet gleaming with the
fires of battle. The tales they told made me shudder: Of men, maddened
by the horrible butchery going on around them, mounting the horrible
barricade (trampling out in many instances the little sparks of life
which might have been rekindled), only to add their own bodies to the
horrid pile, and to be trampled in their turn by comrades who sought
to avenge them; of soldiers on both sides, grappling hand to hand,
tearing open each other's wound, drenched with each other's blood,
_dying_ locked in a fierce embrace. It turns me sick even now when I
remember the terrible things I then heard, the awful wounds I then
saw. During the whole period of my service, I never had a harder task
than when striving to pour oil upon these troubled waters, to soothe
and reconcile these men who talked incessantly of "sacrifice" and
useless butchery.
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