"Two or three of us took a little ramble out on the field... We took a look at the ghastly sights.... I saw five dead Confederates all killed by one six pound solid shot -- no doubt from one of our cannon. They had been behind a log and all in a row. The ball had raked them as they crouched behind the log (no doubt firing at our men). One of them had his head taken off. One had been struck at the right shoulder and his chest lay open. One had been cut in two at the bowels and nothing held the carcass together but the spine. One had been hit at the thighs and the legs were torn from the body. The fifth and last one was piled up into a mass of skull, arms, some toes and the remains of a butternut suit....
"Ambulances and men are hurrying over the field and gathering up the wounded. The surgeons are cutting off the arms and legs. Burying parties and details are out burying the dead this evening... The terrible rain of last night has filled the ground with water... The trees are just bursting into leaf and the little flowers are covering the ground -- but their fragrance is lost in the pall of death which has settled down on this bloody field."
"This is the valley and the shadow of death."
- Excerpt from Throne, Mildred, ed. The Civil War Diary of Cyrus F. Boyd.
Fifteenth Iowa Infantry, 1861-1863. The State Historical Society of Iowa, 1976.
Reprint, Millwood, NY: Kraus Reprint Co.
