No Turning Back

When the armies departed the Wilderness, they left behind a disfigured landscape. Trenches twisted like earthen snakes through the woods, and blackened leaves marked the paths of fires. Along the Brock Road, trees were scarred by bullets from their roots to their tops, and in great spaces the whole tops were mown down by bullets as with a scythe. Corpses littered the landscape as well. Thousands of men were dead and wounded, and the vast wilderness became one great cemetery and hospital for both armies. The Army of the Potomac suffered more than 17,600 casualties in the two-day fight, and Confederate losses exceeded 11,000. Although some of the dead received hasty burials, many bodies remained untouched until the following year, and a few remained for years.

Lake Wilderness, Virginia · United States