Gettysburg: From Battlefield to Civil War Shrine for National
Geographic News |July 14, 2003| The stench alone was
overpowering. Even five miles (eight kilometers) away it was
sickening. Great clouds of flies were equally loathsome. They
hovered over the trampled crops, rocky woods, and blasted
fields. They drifted over the litter of hats, coats, blankets,
haversacks, diaries, love letters, Bibles, daguerreotypes,
rifles, swords, and empty cartridge boxes to settle on the
putrefying carcasses of perhaps 5,000 horses and over 7,000
young men rotting in the summer sun. The great battle had ended.
One surviving soldier could only write: "This place called
Gettysburg shall surely live in Hell for all of eternity." But
earlier this month, on the 140th anniversary of the great
battle, that place called Gettysburg could not have looked more
different. Hayfields waved in the breeze. Wildflowers and
butterflies graced meadows full of clover. The air smelled like
mown grass. There was remarkably little litter. On July