May 8, 1864

My Dear Johnathan,

I miss you so much! I am writing to you from Spotsylvania County, it’s near Locust Grove and 20 miles West of Fredericksburg. I’m sorry I have not written to you in a while but I’ve been working nonstop since the battle. I haven’t gotten any sleep in two days but I must keep on going for the soldiers. Every time I finish with one patient, one is there to take his place. For most of them, all I can do is give them laudanum to ease their pain but we’re running out of supplies and the sheer amount of injured soldiers flooding into our makeshift hospital is overwhelming all of us. There are so many people missing too. In a few days we’ll have to assume they’re dead. It’s horrible how much death there is here and we didn’t even win the battle. At least the Yankees didn’t win it either, they lost more men than we did. They lost 17,500 soldiers and we lost 7,000 less than that, but we still lost a lot of men. The battle went from May 5 – May 7. Even the men we do manage to save could die from the smoke from the forest fires. Some men have already died from it or from their burns. It’s so dry here and the battle was in a wooded area so the forest caught fire as soon as the shooting started.

The other nurses and I watched as our men and the Yanks were slaughtered by the hundreds. In the chaos of the battle I saw your friend, Jackson, shoot his comrade, it was friendly fire. Then, a Yank shot him in the back. It was horrible. The battle lasted three days. I grieve for Jackson and I have already written a letter to his wife to tell her, so that she hears it from me. There were three days of pointless bloodshed and killing, not to mention that the forest was decimated by the forest fires. It’s the first step in Grant’s Overland Campaign but everyone’s started calling it the Battle of the Wilderness. I’ve gotten used to all the blood and the smell, but it was so hard this time seeing all the dying and the bodies of the dead. I can’t process all these lives lost. I hate this war and all of the people it’s leaving dead in its wake. It’s horrible, it makes me question whether this war is worth it. At this point, I’m starting to believe that the costs of war outweigh the benefits of winning it.

Your loving wife,

Beatrice