Penhallow could have known of the battle only what he had seen, but a few
words from an officer told him that nowhere except at this part of the
line of the Second Corps had the attack been at all fortunate.
On the wide field of attack our ambulance corps was rescuing the hundreds
of wounded Confederates, many of them buried, helpless, beneath the
bodies of the motionless dead. Two soldiers stood near him derisively
flaunting flags.
"Quit that," cried the Colonel, "drop them!" The men obeyed.
"Death captured them--not we," said Penhallow, and saw that he was
speaking to a boyish Confederate lieutenant, who had just dragged himself
limping out of the ghastly heap of dead.
Touching his forehead in salute, he said, "Thank you, sir. Where shall I
go?"
"Up there," replied the colonel. "You will be cared for."
The man limped away followed by Penhallow, who glanced at the torn
Confederate banners lying blood-stained about the wall and beyond it. He
read their labels--Manassas, Chancellorsville, Sharpsburg. One marked
Fredericksburg lay gripped in the hand of a dead sergeant. He crossed the
wall to look for the body of the captain of the battery; men were lifting
it. "My God!--Poor boy!" murmured the colonel, as he looked on the white
face of death.
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