Being on the receiving end of a short fused 12 pound artillery shell fragment tends to make the memory a bit hazy. I don’t remember leaving the field at Gettysburg. I don’t recall the particulars of being recruited into a mixed unit of Union and Confederate cavalry. I do remember the guns on Cemetery Hill falling silent. The silence, in combination with the forces that made it silent, gave the hill’s name an ominous meaning.

I remember the disbelief on arriving at the East Cavalry Field. There were so many, feasting on corpses and fallen mounts. I knew George Custer by his reputation and recognized him even as he consumed the innards of a crippled horse. The bugler sounded the charge and our horses reluctantly galloped into the scattered masses of shambling dead. I don’t recall the fight.

I remember arriving at Cemetery Hill and discovering the positions overrun. A rocket’s red glare in the night sky lit the smokey battlefield beneath the Hill.

Tens of thousands of corpses walked on blood stained grass.