Captain D. N. Walker
Death deeply impacted the army in the Civil War. Captain D. N. Walker of the 13th regiment in Virginia records his observations of the fallen in the war. "There was a gradual accumulation of dead and wounded until from our position, it looked like an inclined plane of dead men, stretching from the top of the works for perhaps 100 ft., and the balance of the field was thickly covered with the dead and wounded," Walker witnessed death all around him, including his friends and enemies being killed, along with the people he admired most being slaughtered. When a man volunteered to join the army, he volunteered for either death to himself or death to his fellow soldiers. The "inclined plane of dead men" that the soldiers were forced to see from their "position" impacted the fighting ability of the soldiers drastically becuase seeing so many dead bodies caused some of the soldiers to not want to fight. There were so many casualties that from Walker's perspective, the ground was not visible, only dead bodies covering the land. During the course of the Civil War, a major impact on to the army was the death that they observed around them.
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http://www.beyondthecrater.com/news-and-notes/research/units-research/battle-accounts/excerpt-d-n-walkers-notes-crater-july-30-1864/