At first she busied herself in the hospitals at Washington, but she longed to go to the front and help on the battle fields. She told her father of her strong desire, and he said to her, "Go, if you feel it your duty to go! I know what soldiers are, and I know that every true soldier will respect you and your errand." At last our government gave her permission, and she went to the front as fearless as any officer in the army. Amid the rain of shot and shell she went about on errands of mercy. Then there was no organized relief for the soldiers, no Red Cross, no Y. M. C. A., no help of any kind except what kind persons here and there over the country tried to give. This was very little, when compared to the vast amount of suffering, but Clara Barton managed to gather supplies and money so that she was able to give assistance to both the boys in blue and the boys in gray. She saved many lives, she wrote countless letters home for wounded soldiers, and she stood alone by the death-bed of many a brave fellow, speaking words of comfort and cheer. Whenever anyone suggested that she was working beyond her strength, she would say, "It is my duty," and go on regardless of her personal welfare. One of her best friends, Miss Lucy Larcom, wrote of her as follows: "We may catch a glimpse of her at Chantilly in the darkness of the rainy midnight, bending over a dying boy who took her supporting arm and soothing voice for his sister's--or falling into a brief sleep on the wet ground in her tent, almost under the feet of flying cavalry; or riding in one of her trains of army-wagons towards another field, subduing by the way a band of mutinous teamsters into her firm friends and allies; or at the terrible battle at Antietam, where the regular army supplies did not arrive till three days afterward, furnishing from her wagons cordials and bandages for the wounded, making gruel for the fainting men from the meal in which her medicines had been packed, extracting with her own hand a bullet from the cheek of a wounded soldier, tending the fallen all day, with her throat parched and her face blackened by sulphurous smoke, and at night, when the surgeons were dismayed at finding themselves left with only one half-burnt candle, amid thousands of bleeding, dying men, illuming the field with candles and lanterns her forethought had supplied. No wonder they called her 'The Angel of the Battle Field'." After the war, President Lincoln asked her to search for the thousands of men who were missing. She at once visited the prisons, helped the prisoners to regain their health, and get in touch with their families. Besides this, she searched the National Cemeteries and had grave stones put over many of the graves telling who were buried there. This work took four years, and at the end of it she was so broken in health that she went abroad for a long rest.