I was reading over some of the threads on the CWR forums and there was a discussion happening in one of the threads about how the battlefield should look after the battle has ended..

The comment was made that the "soldiers fell side by side as if they were still in the ranks."

And it made me think about what the field would look like once the fighting had subsided for the day and the armies pulled back to their respective positions to hold until the next fight.  

I imagine there would be bodies of dead and wounded laying around the field, gear scattered where men dropped it to see where they were hit or if running scared, to lighten their load.  Rifles, and ramrods scattered where they became fouled or dropped.  Wounded men trying to crawl to a "safe" spot to avoid the battle that might erupt.  That even amongst the "stillness" after the battle it would still be chaos.

Would there be men laying side by side where they stood in the ranks, possibly.  Was it the norm, I am not sure.

We have photos of the battlefields a couple days after the battles, but some of these men may have been moved for burial or to be looted from.

I guess some of this would be affected by where the soldier was hit and with what.  A minie ball might spin a man depending on where he was struck, others they may drop where they stood.  Canister and grape might have different effects.

Just curious what others might have thought the moments after the battle resembled..

Greg,

Often wondered if it was like the opening scene in Glory after the Battle of Antietam. Burial details, the army holding the area would have men picking up weapons etc...I guess we will not really know unless we were there. Of course we still have the actual photos after D-Day showing the carnage etc..perhaps not too different in the 1860s or even after Roman Army battle. Another thought is the scene in Patton after the night battle when it became hand to hand. It appears in my mind all the wars are the same.

I remember reading one account, where the author said the battlefield looked "alive" at night, after the fighting was over. All the wounded soldiers were writhing around in their pain. Far more soldiers were wounded than killed outright. A Civil War battlefield must have been a truly awful place.

I guess we'll find out in late October.

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Charles Heath wrote : I guess we'll find out in late October.

That reminds me, I need to start checking the ads for a used uniform. I've taken advantage of the kindness of loaner boxes long enough.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

One thing is very difficult to depict today, the clothing and equipment left on the battlefield, although mot impossible.

A few years ago, at a very Mainstream event, they did a post battle scenario, with grave diggers, medics, and QM people. The dead were dragged to the grave sites, while the wounded were taken to aid stations. The weapons and other gear was policed up by QM personnel. If you participated as one of the dead or wounded, you marked your weapon prior to the start of the scenario. Blankets were used to transport both the dead and wounded. As far as I know, everybody got their stuff back.

From Ambrose Bierce's "What I Saw of Shiloh":
"In a few moments we had passed out of the singular oasis that had so marvelously escaped the desolation of battle, and now the evidences of the previous day's struggle were present in profusion. The ground was tolerably level here, the forest less dense, mostly clear of undergrowth, and occasionally opening out into small natural meadows. Here and there were small pools--mere discs of rainwater with a tinge of blood. Riven and torn with cannon-shot, the trunks of the trees protruded bunches of splinters like hands, the fingers above the wound interlacing with those below. Large branches had been lopped, and hung their green heads to the ground, or swung critically in their netting of vines, as in a hammock. Many had been cut clean off and their masses of foliage seriously impeded the progress of the troops. The bark of these trees, from the root upward to a height of ten or twenty feet, was so thickly pierced with bullets and grape that one could not have laid a hand on it without covering several punctures. None had escaped. How the human body survives a storm like this must be explained by the fact that it is exposed to it but a few moments at a time, whereas these grand old trees had had no one to take their places, from the rising to the going down of the sun. Angular bits of iron, concavo-convex, sticking in the sides of muddy depressions, showed where shells had exploded in their furrows. Knapsacks, canteens, haversacks distended with soaken and swollen biscuits, gaping to disgorge, blankets beaten into the soil by the rain, rifles with bent barrels or splintered stocks, waist-belts, hats and the omnipresent sardine-box--all the wretched debris of the battle still littered the spongy earth as far as one could see, in every direction. Dead horses were everywhere; a few disabled caissons, or limbers, reclining on one elbow, as it were; ammunition wagons standing disconsolate behind four or six sprawling mules. Men? There were men enough; all dead apparently, except one, who lay near where I had halted my platoon to await the slower movement of the line--a Federal sergeant, variously hurt, who had been a fine giant in his time. He lay face upward, taking in his breath in convulsive, rattling snorts, and blowing it out in sputters of froth which crawled creamily down his cheeks, piling itself alongside his neck and ears. A bullet had clipped a groove in his skull, above the temple; from this the brain protruded in bosses, dropping off in flakes and strings. I had not previously known one could get on, even in this unsatisfactory fashion, with so little brain. One of my men whom I knew for a womanish fellow, asked if he should put his bayonet through him. Inexpressibly shocked by the cold-blooded proposal, I told him I thought not; it was unusual, and too many were looking."

Ambrose Bierce was one of the more graphic Civil War era writers.  In a short story titled “On A Mountain” he tells of casualties being left beside a road.  The unit goes on and the next day returns to the place where those casualties had been.

“Repassing the spot the next day, a beaten, dispirited and exhausted force, feeble from fatigue and savage from defeat, some of us had life enough left, such as it was, to observe that these bodies had altered their positions.  They appeared also to have thrown off some of their clothing, which lay near by, in disorder.  Their expression, too, had an added blankness--they had no faces.

As soon as the head of our straggling column had reached the spot a desultory firing had begun.  One might have thought the living paid honors to the dead.  No; the firing was a military execution; the condemned, a herd of galloping swine.  They had eaten our fallen, but--touching magnanimity!--we did not eat theirs.”  

--Last edited by Curtis Makamson on 2007-06-01 10:59:48 --

While not as graphic and written after the war in his recollections, David Emmons Johnston recalls:

RETURNING to the battle line, we found ourselves groping around in the dark. Knowing the enemy to be close by, we quietly went to work throwing up temporary breastworks of logs. The cries of the Federal wounded, and the groans of the dying, the occasional volleys of musketry fired by some of our troops at imaginary foes, with the hooting of owls, made the night hideous and weird, deeply impressing the nature of a lot of young Virginia boys reared in Christian homes. The regiment behaved, however, with great coolness during the entire night, encouraged by the example, presence and good conduct of our brave Lieutenant-Colonel Williams, then in command, Colonel Kemper being absent on public service.

       With the coming of daylight, the Confederate scouts crossed the Run, brought in the Federal wounded, and quite a number of muskets, knapsacks, blankets, canteens, cartridge boxes, and hats, thrown away or dropped by the enemy in his flight. By an examination of the dead in front of our regiment, it was ascertained that we had fought the 1st Massachusetts regiment.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/johnstond/johnston.html

Ambrose Bierce is an fascinating character himself.  He came out of the war as an officer of engineers.  After the Civil War he worked as a writer in this country as well as Great Britain.  He returned and took up residence in California.  He continued to write.  Some of the most chilling ghost stories ever written came from this guy.  Some people said he never got over the war.  His war stories have to be read to literally the last sentence.  There will usually be some strange twist of fate toward the very end of each short story.  He was one cynical dude. No one really knows what happened to him.  There is speculation about his involvement with Mexican revolutionaries but that has yet to be substantiated beyond any doubt.  The only thing known for certain is he disappeared off into Mexico.  

Folks would do well to read up on A.B. to better prepare for Pickett's Mill in 2008. It's a recurring theme, but one worth mentioning.

Is that where we all jump up and race to the funnel cake stand, the root beer guy, the cooler filled with brewskis or the wet plate photographer?

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GrumpyDave wrote : Is that where we all jump up and race to the funnel cake stand, the root beer guy, the cooler filled with brewskis or the wet plate photographer?

Grumpy we can do a better job depicting the battlefield at events with funnel cake stands, coolers, AND/OR wet plate photograhers.

I attended an event this weekend as a Confederate. There were a group of young guys doing an aid Station and strecher bearer impression. When I say young, I don't mean children. They did an outstanding job, carrying or helping wounded off the field and back to the aid station. I was walking wounded, so had my arm bandaged and was sent off to the rear under my own power. Others were kept at the aid station.

Good job guys!  

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Charles Heath wrote : I guess we'll find out in late October.

Now we will find out in November..

Greg,

Yep, and with the closing of ATB comes the end of an era, and the hobby will be far poorer for it.  Some of the experimental aspects of that event simply boggles the mind, too.

Here's the link: http://www.stonewallbrigade.com/afterthebattle07.htm

I'll have more after the GMH event wraps up.

Anyway, there are some decent "ATB" photos in the L.O.C. and on other sites. all you have to do is look around. The book, "A Strange and Blighted Land," gives a pretty good account of what things were like in and around the town of Gettysburg after the battle and, it's so descrïptive and filled with first personaccounts, I still have to put it down when trying to read parts of the book.

Here's two photos that come immediatly to mind:





Go to the L.O.C. and type "dead" or "battlefield" in the search function. You'll see what I mean.

Me, got a company at F-burg, ATB join me. Please!

I did a similiar search for burial on the LOC and got some of those photos.  

I will be at ATB on the confederate side.  I am looking forward to the event.