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Date Posted: Fri, October 06 2023, 11:36:26
Author: kgp
Subject: QOTD for Friday, October 6, 2023

The following quotation is from An Echo In The Bone by Diana Gabaldon. Copyright 2009. All Rights Reserved. Chapter 63 Separated Forever From My Friends And Kin


Lieutenant Lord Ellesmere had finally killed a rebel. Several, he thought, though he could not be sure of those he’d shot at; some of them fell but might be only wounded. He was sure of the man who had attacked one of the British cannon, with a party of other rebels. He’d hacked that man half through the body with a cavalry saber, and he felt a strange numbness in his sword arm for several days after, this making him flex his left hand every few minutes to be sure he could still use it.

The numbness was not limited to his arm.

The days after the battle in the British camp were spent partially in the orderly retrieval of the wounded, the burial of the dead, and in regathering their forces. What forced remained to be gathered. Desertion was rife; there was a constant small stream of furtive departures - one day a whole company of Brunswickers defected.

He oversaw more than one burial detail, watching with set face as men - and boys - he knew were consigned to the earth. On the first couple of days, they hadn’t buried the bodies deep enough, and were obliged to listen all night to the howling and snarling of wolves fighting over the carcasses they had dragged from shallow graves. They reburied what was left the next day, deeper.

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Replies:

[> Oh man, all the books strike a deep chord over and over. But when I take them in small bites during QOTD, some really, really tear at my heart. What a paragraph about the senselessness of war. -- Kathy in PA, Sat, October 07 2023, 2:32:25


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[> [> To bury men and boys you knew, only to have to re-bury what was left by the wolves the next day is particularly horrifying to me. -- DianaH, Tue, October 10 2023, 14:10:25


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