The following morning our burial parties were at work, when a man from a Michigan regiment came and asked me if I would help him look for some of his comrades in a wheat field; the wheat being about three feet high it was not easy to notice a body in it unless one stumbled right on it. In a few minutes he called out that he had found one and then he said he had another. As the burial party was digging a trench on the ridge just beyond, I suggested that he stay where he was to mark the location and I would ride over and get some of the citizens, whom we noticed plundering the battle-field of horse equipments, to help carry the bodies over so they might be buried. I rode up to two or three men who had harness, saddles, and horse equipments in their possession and told them to drop them and come over to help me carry the bodies that we might bury them, as we had to move on shortly. They were a type of Pennsylvania Dutchmen that lived in that county, who seemed utterly indifferent to the war and anything pertaining to it, beyond securing such spoils as they got on the battle-field. They at once demurred and said they had no time, whereupon I flew into a rage at their heartless conduct, drew my sabre, and threatened to sabre them if they did not come at once. They then sulkily complied. When we got back to where the bodies were I told them to take some fence rails and carry them as though they were a stretcher. We put the bodies across the rails, the men holding the ends of them. When we had two bodies on this improvised stretcher I discovered a Confederate soldier, a sergeant, with a bushy head of red hair and a red beard. A sabre had split open the top of his head so you could put your hand in the gash. I suggested that he be cared for too, and when we attempted to put him on the stretcher they complained that they could not carry the load. Then I rode after some more citizens whom I also compelled to come over and help us. With their assistance we succeeded in getting a number of bodies up to where the burial party was at work. When I told my Michigan comrade of my experience with these men he became so angry that I thought he would shoot them then and there.

The General then moved into the town of Gettysburg, where, in contrast to the heartless conduct of these men, we found patriotic women at work in every house pulling lint and doing what they could to alleviate the suffering that was all around them. One lady, who, I was told, was the wife of a physician killed on the Peninsula, came out on the front porch and asked every soldier she saw to come in and have hot coffee and biscuit. The men gave her coffee, which she made in a wash-boiler, but the biscuits were made from flour she possessed, which by this time was about exhausted. As it was likely to be several days before normal conditions could be restored in the town, I suggested that she had better cease baking biscuits and save the little flour she had for her family, when she replied that she would take the chance, that as long as she had any she was going to give it to the soldiers.

About this time Nick, the General's bugler, came to me and reported that he had found a citizen who had fought with our troops and been wounded, an old man, and Nick wanted a doctor to go and see him as he was in his own house nearby. This citizen proved to be the famous John Burns, an old man of seventy, who fought, I think with a Wisconsin regiment. Whether anybody else had discovered Burns before Nick did I am not sure, but my recollection is that Nick's discovery first called the attention of our people to the fact.

General Gregg's command then moved out on the Chambersburg pike, where for miles we saw the distressing evidences of the battle in the shape of the Confederate wounded, who were in every barn and building and lying beside the road. It had rained heavily the night before and the fields in which these men lay were flooded with water. Those able to do so had secured rails, upon which their helpless comrades were placed to keep them out of the water. I think the division that day captured, including the wounded, about four thousand. General Gregg sent back a report of the condition of these poor Confederate wounded whom Lee had been obliged to leave behind, and asked that ambulances be sent out to take them in where they could have the attention of our surgeons, then overworked and exhausted caring for the thousands of wounded among our own men.

From Chambersburg we marched back to Gettysburg and thence to Boonesborough, arriving there about the ninth. In the neighborhood of Boonesborough we met the Seventh New York militia, whose fine band of about sixty pieces, led by Graffula, that night serenaded General Meade. The square in front of his headquarters was thronged with men listening to the fine music, the like of which we never heard in the army. One man, I think from Indiana, remarked to me: "I tell ye the bullet hain't run that will kill a fellow when that band's a-playin'."