Excerpt from Chapter 1 At the height of the battle more than five thousand injured Union soldiers lay in heaps among the dead, where they were left to suffer from their wounds and from the December cold. On Saturday evening, the Union soldiers crouching behind their lines listened in distress to the terrible sounds of suffering coming from the battlefield. A few ventured out under of cover of darkness to offer comfort. For example, Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Chamberlain of the Twentieth Maine recalled that he and a comrade had to spend most of the night lying between two dead soldiers to try to stay warm. When the cries of suffering overwhelmed them, he and his friend left the relative safety of their position to offer aid: "We did what we could, but how little it was on a field so boundless for feeble human reach! Our best was to search the canteens of the dead for a draft of water for the dying; or to ease the posture of a broken limb; or to compress a severed artery of fast-ebbing life that might perhaps so be saved, with what little skill we had been taught by our surgeons early in learning the tactics of saving as well as of destroying men." As Sunday morning dawned cold and foggy, the agonized cries of the wounded were even more desperate than before. Watching from behind the rock wall, Confederate Sergeant Richard Kirkland of the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers listened to these cries for help with increasing anxiety. Finally, he could stand it no longer.

Here is the firsthand account that General J.B. Kershaw of the Confederate Army wrote about it later, in the Charleston News & Courier . He speaks of himself in the third-person voice as "the General": "All day those wounded men rent the air with their groans and agonizing cries of "Water! Water!" In the afternoon the General sat in the north room, upstairs, of Mrs. Stevens house, in front of the road, surveying the field, when Kirkland came up. With an expression of indignant remonstrance pervading his person, his manner and the tone of his voice, he said: "General! I can''t stand this." "What is the matter, Sergeant?" asked the General. He replied, "All night and all day I have heard those poor people crying for water, and I can stand it no longer.

I come to ask permission to go and give them water." The General regarded him for a moment with feelings of profound admiration, and said: "Kirkland, don''t you know that you would get a bullet through your head the moment you stepped over the wall?" "Yes, sir," he said, "I know that; but if you will let me, I am willing to try it." After a pause, the General said, "Kirkland, I ought not to allow you to run a risk, but the sentiment which actuates you is so noble that I will not refuse your request, trusting that God may protect you. You may go." The Sergeant''s eye lighted up with pleasure. He said, "Thank you, sir," and ran rapidly down stairs. With profound anxiety he [the General] watched as he stepped over the wall on his errand of mercy-Christ-like mercy. Unharmed he reached the nearest sufferer.

He knelt beside him, tenderly raised the drooping head, rested it gently upon his own noble breast, and poured the precious life-giving fluid down the fever scorched throat. This done, he laid him tenderly down, placed his knapsack under his head, straightened out his broken limb, spread his overcoat over him, replaced his empty canteen with a full one, and turned to another sufferer. By this time his purpose was well understood on both sides, and all danger was over. From all parts of the field arose fresh cries of "Water, water; for God''s sake, water!" More piteous still the mute appeal of some who could only feebly lift a hand to say, here, too, is life and suffering. For an hour and a half did this ministering angel pursue his labor of mercy, nor ceased to go and return until he relieved all the wounded on that part of the field. He returned to his post wholly unhurt. Who shall say how sweet his rest that winter''s night beneath the cold stars!" There were many accounts given of Private Kirkland''s bravery that day, both Union and Confederate. They indicate that when this young man, in his early twenties, first climbed up onto the outer wall with as many canteens of water slung over his shoulder as he could carry, the Union soldiers were so startled that they paused in their firing.

When they realized what he was doing the entire battlefield fell silent. Then a spontaneous shout of encouragement erupted on both sides of the line as both Rebel and Union soldiers cheered him on. Kirkland seemed not to notice. He was focused entirely on his mission of mercy. When Kirkland''s first group of canteens was empty, he disappeared back over the stone wall and firing resumed on both sides. But when he stuck his head up a second time, the battlefield again went quiet while he came out to another group of wounded. This pattern continued for more than an hour and a half until virtually all the wounded were cared for. For one small moment, the suffering of the injured had been relieved.