battle. We all knew that. And knew, too, that a battle lost in the heart of that dark wilderness meant the destruction of every living soul among us.

About two o’clock, having eaten nothing except what green and uncooked stuff we had picked up in field and garden, our marching signal sounded and we moved off; driving our captured stock, every soldier laden with green food and other plunder, and taking with us our dead and wounded.

Chemung had been, but was no longer. And if, like Thendara, it was ever again to be I do not know, only that such a horrid and pitiful desolation I had never witnessed in all my life before. For it was not the enemy, but the innocent earth we had mutilated, stamping an armed heel into its smiling and upturned face. And what we had done sickened me.