Dear Margret,                                                    July 10, 1863

                                                                          Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

My hopes are not high that the war is going to end soon, so I am writing to you because this may be the last time that you ever will hear from me. It has been a little bit of time since the biggest battle of my life I fought in. It was blood and gore everywhere. Mutilated bodies were just pilled up on the battlefront. The worst part wasn’t my arm, it was how I saw my friends get killed which I had known ever since I was dragged into this. My arm flew off due to an explosion. Someone had placed mines all along the field. I couldn’t see anything because of the smoke; usually you can tell where the mines are. I am not able to fight up front anymore because of my arm. I was pretty good at that; I could aim and was always the one to spot Confederates. I had to become a maintenance person, like a mechanic. Even though I had no more than a stub of arm left on one arm, they still gave me the role. I had no prior study of it; learned from my dad when I saw him fixing machines that were putting caps on bottles. The arm injury made my hopes vanish; I wasn’t expecting something that bad to happen. I never thought it would go that bad for me specifically. All confidence was lost that I had. I am just a kid and I want to go back home. Deep down, even when it comes to the roughest moments, I know I still am and always will be the sweet boy my mother knows. When I joined, I thought it would be like in the stories; adventurous missions and adrenaline racing battles, but never actually getting injured.

The Confederates are spying on us from secret people pretending to be in our troop Every few days we get news about how our  checkpoints have been discovered by the Confederates, and they can easily uncover where we are planning to get our next supply drop. It has happened a few times, Confederates stealing our resources, but what they don’t know is that this time we will make a fake checkpoint with decoy crates. Once we have eyes on them, it will be a sneak attack. If this goes wrong, it means that many men will be lost. Either they figure out the decoy first, or they find our supply drop. If they do find it, we will most likely die to some mine; they would take the supplies first, then plant mines there so we wouldn’t know what happened. The unfair thing about all of this is, no one wants to kill or be on any side; it’s just how they do what they are told and know that the other side is trying to kill. Humans shouldn’t ever have to be put in this type of position. They shouldn’t have to go through this. I don’t believe in war; it isn’t a good way to stop problems. Against human violence. Recall; drafted against will. I don’t believe in the way that war tears families apart, separates people from where they should be.

From, 

Gabe Willis