Andersonville, Georgia, was a Civil War prison camp remembered as the cruelest prison camp in American history. During the winter of 1864 and the following three months of 1865, 13,000 Union soldiers died there. The prison covered only a few acres yet held 41,000 men, who had no shelter, only a handful of meal mush a day, a polluted stream for water, and no sanitary facilities whatever. They wore clothing salvaged from dead comrades, endured winter temperatures that fell to almost zero and summer heat that reached 110 degrees, and died from exposure, starvation, murder, and shootings by guards when they wandered too close to the fence. An average of 3,000 died each month, or 100 a day. Of 30 Norwich men held prisoner there, 15 died. After the war, the City of Norwich sent George W. Smith to Andersonville to bring back the bodies of Norwich's men and boys for reinterment. Only 10 bodies could be identified, and nine of them were reinterred in this circle, while George W. Ward was buried in the family lot at the City Cemetery.