The heat bore down that day in early June, as oppressive and inescapable as the conflict that lay before the men crouching in the forests of Virginia.
Throughout the wooded area the groups converged, some in blue, some in grey, and many in plainclothes, distinguishable only by the colors they flew and fought under.
Smoke and dust filled the air, mingling with battle cries and bullets, volley's of the latter flying free, missing some and hitting others. Men were brought down swiftly from their positions; loading guns, shouting orders, holding the colors high, it didn't matter what job one was engaged in or what rank one held, fate, and with it death, came as surely for one as it did another.
Many, that day, as they felt their life draining onto the ground, thought of tasks left undone and promises broken, others thought of home and family; most thought of both. Some, who were lucky enough, passed on messages: "The key is under a floorboard," "Keep faith," "Tell them I loved them".
But some spoke, in final moments, of a man walking through the woods. They had thought 'some poor fool's wandered out here,' because he wore no uniform, had no weapons or gear, and walked straight into the line of fire. But then the man had turned to look at them with blue eyes so deep they thought they would be sucked in, never to return. "Perhaps we didn't," one had said.
Most took the story for the ramblings of the dying, hallucinations whispered on tremoring, bloody lips. Others had heard it before and knew it for an omen, telling their comrades around a fire later that night, "Pray you don't see him. He's surely death himself," that strange blond haired man walking amongst them in battles, unseen by all but the damned, whose ghostly body shots passed neatly through, there and yet all the while never there at all.