this is wilkenson. "who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened on a central figure of absorbing interest? the dead body of an eldest born. crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not stay. who, indeed?" wilkenson wrote the story, and the most poignant part was he was in general mead's headquarters building and this is what he wrote. "in a shadow cast by the tiny farmhouse, in which the headquarters was made, there was not wanting to the peacefulness of the scene the singing of a bird, which had a nest in a peach tree within the tiny yard of the whitewashed cottage. in the midst of this, a shell screamed over the house followed by another and another, and in a moment, the air was filled with the most complete artillery prelude to an infantry battle ever exited. every side, form, and shell sleeked, whirled, moaned and flittered over the ground, as many as six in a second, two in a s