still numb. I never saw anything like it before and hope to God never to see anything similar again. Fully one-half of the company was lost by the late afternoon of the Seventeenth, including many of my friends. I'm still not certain why I am alive. I have never felt the air so thick with lead; trees were blown away by its wind. Both sides charged and countercharged through this wind. We held the ground in front of Sharpsburg for a day after the battle subsided, but then moved back to Virginia. Over the past ten days, I have learned that the Army of Northern Virginia lost a large portion of its men at Sharpsburg; my regiment was not the only one which suffered so badly.
More than ever, we need the British to help us. All summer, rumors have been circulating in the newspapers that the Confederacy was
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