Private Albert Frost of the Third Main Infantry was last seen west of the Peach Orchard battlefield, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 2, 1863.

His friends knew he was dead, and they finding his corpse, likely disfigured by battle and decomposition, might be an impossible task, but nonetheless, a squad set out to find private frost.

Frost was not remarkable.

He was not especially decorated among soldiers.

A photo of him shows a young man, practically a boy with curly hair, a square jaw, mouth

set in a line and eyes that are steely. Upon his death at Gettysburg, Frost should have sunk into the masses of dead, just like the thousands of others who lost their lives on the battlefield.

But he was the best and most loved man in the company his comrades attested.

Private Frost deserved better.

After a few days of searching, they found him,

his face partially eaten by maggots, but still recognizable as frost.

Burying him was not easy. All the men could find to dig the grave was a farmer's

hoe. After digging the shallow, they lined the

the bottom of it with empty knapsacks, then laid in our beloved brother

and covered him with another knapsack, and overall put as much earth as we could find.

Protecting Frost's body from the earth was what was proper at the time,

part of a good death, well a better death, the human

thing to do. Buried at the base of a tree, Frost's friends carved his name into a

wooden box cover and nailed it to the tree as a makeshift

headstone.

If Frost had died before the American Civil War, his burial would have been considered horrific and human.

No coffin, no family, no ritual.

But in that ruthless summer of 1863,

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