April 29th, 1863

I write to you in haste from a wretched lair in Virginia, on the eve of Chancellorsville.

I wish to inform you that my health has withered greatly, and I do not know for how much longer I will be able to hold these forays. Around me I see men sombre and demoralized, which is understandable as some of them have been witness, and perpetrators, of the ghastliest deeds. Men have killed without the faintest contrition those closest to them, and those whom not long ago joined them at their very dinner tables, remarked the grace of their wife and children, and shared a common stance with regards to our fellow brethren.

Alas those days are now gone, and it is in the darkest areas of our encampment we men share tales of horrors encountered on the battlefield; tales even the most depraved eaters of opium cannot divine. And it is in these dark places where men — including myself — disguise our destruction, under the anesthetizing bonds of morphine, of the youngest lives encountered during this violent campaign.

In youth I have been afflicted by dread for hallucinations the Lord has condemned me to; but never so as now, when I am reduced to a pinprick, and am left cowering for the words of the darkest despair of psalter, and the comfort of the beatific, at the recollection of the horrors of days bygone. It is now however, on the eve of this battle I fear I will not come out of, that I tread the most unlit caverns of my soul.



Alastair Wheatley
(Pierluigi Mancinelli)