This is a dirty, dank, unwholesome spot and the daily rains make it daily more intolerable. But they are keeping us here in reserve till some division—they say our old townies of the 77th—has time to come up. The forest has been occupied by the Germans and its sanitary conditions are no credit to their boasted efficiency. Sixty per cent of our men are sick with diarrhœa and everybody is crawling with cooties. The men are sleeping in shelter tents or in holes in the ground in the woods and they are a sorry looking lot. A number of them have been busy with me in the heart-breaking task of burying the dead, which is hard for everybody, but particularly I think, for myself, because I knew these men so well and loved them as if they were my younger brothers. It has been the saddest day in my life. Well, it is the last act of love I can do for them and for the folks at home. God comfort them in their sorrow. I must not think of the tragedy of it too much; the main thing is to keep up the spirits of the living, for battles must still be fought and the awful price paid if the war is to be won. Many of us who have come through this will be dead after the next battle; and if the war lasts another year or so there will be few, very few left of the infantry in our First Hundred Thousand. It is a soldier’s fate and we must be ready for it. In this one battle nearly half our strength is gone. We have lost fifty-nine officers and thirteen hundred men and of these thirteen officers and about two hundred men have been killed outright. Many of our wounded have been badly hurt and we shall have other details to grieve over.[5] But in spite of losses and sorrow and sickness I find the men surprisingly cheerful and willing to carry on. They have what soldiers most wish for, Victory. And they know now that the men who opposed their path and had to give way to their persistence were the famous Prussian Guards, of the very flower of the German Military Machine. The old 69th had again lived up to its reputation of the past; there were no German troops, no troops in the world that could withstand its stubborn bravery.