Lay Your Weary Head to Rest

The weary men trudged back from the battleground with tired grins on their faces. They had just won a small battle against the Confederates. Most of them had at least one wound to later brag about. For the moment, however, the foremost thought was to get to camp and rest.

            A few sported slightly worse-than-average injuries, and these men were either given a wide berth or coddled by their fellow companions. Every now and then, one of these soldiers fell, and was either moved to the side of the road by his friends, or left alone to be trampled by the other men until somebody had the decency to drag him away or kick him to the side.

            It wasn’t a pretty picture. Furthermore, with the great number of men packed onto that tiny road, the smell wasn’t all that great, either. The chief smells were sweat, blood, gunpowder, and death. The tired soldiers had almost gone deaf during the battle, what with the incessant booming of guns and cannons, so they very nearly shouted at each other in order to be heard. Men were constantly bumping into one another, and if they fell down, they rose quickly in panic, for fear of being stomped on to death. Nevertheless, they treaded on, with the thought of food and sleep spurring them on. It would take hours before the road was finally empty.

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            The road was devoid of life. A few carts had been upturned and abandoned. Forgotten muskets lay scattered on the ground. There was even a lone boot standing to the side of the way. But the worst part—the worst part was the bodies. Dead men had been dragged off the road and left there to rot.

They lay in all kinds of different positions. Some were flat on their backs, or flat on their fronts, and looked as if they might have been sleeping. Those bodies weren’t so bad to look at.

Others, however, had simply been shoved out of the way of the walking soldiers, and were haphazardly strewn alongside the road. Necks and backs had taken impossible angles, sallow skin took on the color of the grey sky, and blank eyes stared into dimensions we could only imagine.

The general took the whole scene in and sighed. He could already envision the pile of paperwork that would take up his whole afternoon; all the letters signed and sent would certainly dampen his mood, regardless of the victory earlier in the day.

The general gazed sorrowfully at his dead soldiers. These poor young men had sacrificed their lives for a cause that they probably didn’t even care about. He reflected on the sobering thought that these boys had lived all they would ever live, and their last moments had been in the midst of war.

“All right, men,” he turned to the soldiers who had accompanied him, “pick up the muskets and load the bodies onto the cart. Leave no man behind.”

Author's Note:

Hello!! So this is the first story I've ever uploaded onto wattpad. I really hope whoever reads this likes it. It's pretty short, but whatever. I wrote this for my English class. My teacher asked us to write something pertaining to the American Civil War, and so I wrote a short story. I got a perfect score on it, so I thought I'd share it. Thanks to whoever read this and, again, I hope you liked it!!!