It's a beautiful day in the graveyard. Blue skies. Cool, but not cold. The ideal temperature to be an overdressed military man. Do ghosts amble among the stones on days like these? I imagine most of these men died on quite different kinds of days: Rainy, cold, muddy days. Muggy, buggy, malarial days. The kind of day that just won't end, but to fold into a sleepless night. How many died, not from spall or Minié balls, but because they just didn't have the will to drag themselves through another day? from exhaustion? from demoralization? How many died under beautiful blue skies on an idyllic autumn day? I don't know whether there're good days to die, and even less whether there're good days to be dead.
Fields of the Dead [Free Verse]
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