Wounded Hearts Between the Lines

July 2, 1863, near The Wheatfield, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

As night came on the firing gradually ceased, and the active fighting was over for the day, though the picket firing was kept up an hour or so longer.

Soon even that also subsided, and there came an involuntary truce when the pickets of both the enemy's and Confederate lines allowed their 'litter corps' to go in anywhere between the two lines to bring off the wounded. Neither side would fire on those of the other engaged in that humane duty. There were many men of our regiment lying wounded between the two lines. We expected the battle to be renewed, of course, the next morning, and we did not sleep until after one o'clock at night, when we had succeeded, according to all of the information I could get, in bringing off every one of the wounded of the regiment.

It was a moonlight night, and it was whilst this humane work was going on and during the existence of the truce I have mentioned, that one of our soldiers out between the lines, I think it was one of General McLaws's men, began to sing. He was probably a boy raised in some religious home in the South, where the good old hymns were the standard music. I have heard much that the world applauds in the way of high grade music, but considering the occasion and the audience, I have never heard music like that. Many wounded from a battle can walk away, and some are carried away by the litter-bearers. But in the still air and moonlight of that night there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of desperately wounded men lying on the ground within easy hearing of the singer, whose fine voice rang out like a flute, and echoed up and down the valley and the little mountain in our front. Not only the wounded, but also five or ten thousand and maybe more of the men of both armies could hear and distinguish the words. There was a marked silence that could come only from attention. And I think the Federal line could hear him as well as ourselves. One of the hymns he sang was this familiar one:

’Come, ye disconsolate, wherever ye languish;
Come to the mercy seat fervently kneel,
Hither bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish,
Earth hath no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.’

The last song he sang was then familiar, but now is an almost forgotten old ditty, 'When This Cruel War is Over.' At its close, I heard a clapping of hands and a cheer from the Yankee lines.

— Capt. George Hillyer, "My Gettysburg Battle Experiences," in Two Confederate Officers Remember Gettysburg