I had a few days before stood on the dead strewn field of the “Bloody angle,” and been deeply affected by the sight there presented, but nothing struck such a chill to my bones as did those two heaps of mangled arms and legs. In returning to the front, I reached the works a little to the left of brigade headquarters, and in walking along just behind the entrenchments, on a little rise where a battery was located, a Rebel sharpshooter in a tree made me a target and his bullet barely missed my head, and struck the enbankment between two men who were digging a pit for ammunition. They turned and looked at me a little wildly, and I passed on out of range. Cold Harbor was the only battlefield on which I heard the shriek of a wounded man. To the right and front of brigade headquarters a man had fallen near the Confederate works, and when night came his frequent cry of anguish pierced the air with a weird, heart chilling effect. Gradually it died away, growing fainter and fainter until it was a relief to think that the poor fellow was dead and out of pain. In our army this was a strange thing. Usually our men endured the greatest pain with stoicism, muttering perhaps, and groaning, and grinding their teeth. If an outcry was made it was usually in the voice of a foreigner.
