"...offerings"

Passing the time reading. I picked an old Walt Whitman volume from my shelf. This some of our hero's prose.

The Civil War Journals.

His recounts of tending the lost, and wounded on the battle field, and military hospitals.

He spoke kindly to these, and gave little offerings. Fruit biscuits writing paper pencils even hard candies.

In particular he wrote letters home for those too badly wounded. Mostly he did what was most needed. He just sat quietly keeping company with those healing or soon to pass.

Walt noted how so many soldiers North, and South were so young. So painfully young. Drummer boys still children frontline troops 15 to their early 20's. These were farming boys both sides. They in a maelstrom he said "beyond their tender imaginings."

Walt Whitman was witness to the actual battles. "The thunder, and bedlam" of it all. In his latter journals of the war he wrote, "The truth of this war will never be written in books."

True.

So true for that war, and any other.