As Kemper’s men approached the battlefield, they came upon a demoralizing sight: “Long streams of wounded made their appearance on their way back to the rear, in every species of mutilation,” wrote Private Hunter of the 17th Virginia. “Some were borne on stretchers, others swung in blankets from whose folds blood and gore dropped in horrible exudations, staining the ground and crimsoning the budding grass.” Farther along, the troops of the 17th Virginia passed a wrecked Confederate battery whose gunners and horses all lay dead and wounded except for a little boy, the “powder monkey”, who had somehow escaped injury. Private Hunter remembered the boy: “He cowered behind a wheel of one of the guns, with eyes protruding, hands clasped, teeth clenched and a face wearing a look of horrified fright - face so white, so startling in its terror, that it haunted me for days after.”
“As the smoke cleared away, and there was a lull in the firing, the picture that presented itself to this writer was awe inspiring. This field and its carnage were more vividly impressed on his mind than any other he saw during his service. ...He had seen pictures on canvas and paper that were intended to present battle fields as they appeared. No picture previously seen by him came near showing what he gazed on here and now. Spread out before him were the bodies of nearly four thousand men, dead, no picture men, but men of real flesh and blood. Several thousand wounded Confederates were being taken from the field. As many as were hobbling away on one foot, the other leg or foot dangling by their side, a gun or stick being used as an improvised crutch. Others were carrying broken arms, tenderly held with the sound hand. And still others, though whole of limb, were making their way to a place of safety and comfort, their pallid faces indicating that they received severe wounds in some part of their body. The harrowing picture completed a scene that no language can describe.” Another witness gives us the following: “It was a night of drizzling rain and inky darkness. All were wet to the hips, many had lost their shoes in the mud and the bodies of the dead and wounded were lying on every side. You could not move without falling over them - the air was filled with shrieks and groans.” Everywhere one looked there were also dead horses in various states of mutilation, many with their legs or head completely blown off.
Some of the Yankee tents had hundreds of ball holes in them. The Yankee wounded had not been removed. Wagons and ambulances are busily engaged in taking them away. Some of the wounded are still lying there, to badly hurt to be moved. Wherever the eyes are turned the ghastly corpse of some dead warrior meets the gaze. Friend and foe lie side by side. As many as three or four may be seen in a bunch behind some log or stump. Some of them wounded in three or four places. Noticed one with half of his head shot off, the brain had fallen out. Saw one yesterday wounded in the face by grape shot -- The shot had cut a deep furrow through the face. He was not dead. Was still gasping in agonies of death. Our company marched over him, had no time to do him any good.
The rain had washed away the earth over many of the makeshift graves, “and here and there a leg or hand or head could be seen protruding in all its ghastliness...”. Worst of all were the maggots. It took several days to bury the dead and those that were left unburied became a feast for the chalky white parasite. “Myriads of maggots were feasting upon the putrid forms,” wrote Captain Blake of the 11th Massachusetts, “and swarmed upon the earth, so that it was difficult to walk without crushing them beneath the feet.”