This is Jockel Podcast number 393 with Carrie Helton and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, Carrie. Good evening.

On the 4th of July, we took part in a reconnaissance over the wrecked strewn field amidst the scene of unsupportable horror.

Pushing as far out as Willoughby's run, finding no enemy, we returned to our ground.

We were now told to rest and be ready to move from the field the next day.

But there was neither removal nor rest for us till we had gone up the round-top slopes to bid farewell to our dead.

We found them there on sheltered lawn where we had laid them on the velvet moss fringed by low cedars that veiled the place with peace and beauty.

I rode up near and flinging the rain upon my horse's neck dismounted to bend over them for a soldier's farewell.

There they lay, side by side, with touch of elbow still, brave bronze faces where the last thought was written,

manly resolution, heroic self-giving, divine reconciliation, or where on some young face the sweet mother-look had come out under death's soft whisper.

We buried them there in a grave a last too wide on the sunny side of a great rock, eternal witnesses of their worth, the rock and the sun.

Rued headboards made of ammunition boxes rudely carved under tear-dimmed eyes marked and named each grave and told each home.

I went, it is not long ago to stand again upon that crest whose one day's crown of fire has passed into the blazing corner of fame to look again upon the rocks where on we laid,

as on the altar of lives of Vincent and O'Rourke, of Weed and Hazlitt, all the chief commanders.

And farther on were my own young heroes mounted to fall no more.

Billings, the valor of whose onward-looking eyes not death itself could quench.

Kendall, almost maiden-sweet and fair, yet heeding not the bolts that dashed his life blood on the rocks,

Estes and steel, and noyas and buck lifted high above self pure and heart as they that shall see God.

And far up the rugged sides of great round top swept in darkness and silenced like its own where the impetuous Lin Scott had halted at last before the morning star.

I thought of those other noble men of every type, commanders all who bore their wounds so bravely, many to meet their end on later fields.

And those on whose true hearts further high trusts were to be laid.

Nor did I forget those others, whether their names are written on the scrolls of honor and fame,

or their dust left on some far-field and nameless.

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