Imagine walking in a Civil War graveyard, full of unmarked graves. The battle is nearly one and a half hundred years over, but something, the spirit, the soul, the ghost, whatever you want to call it, of a fallen soldier still lingers. These are the words he utters to someone visiting his place of rest.

Here I am. I stay here, looking over the place where they threw my body into the ground. Who am I? I don't know either. I can tell you who I was.

I was soldier. A boy of seventeen, I joined the Confederate army. I remember all the fuss when I left town, how excited I was to go off and fight the Yankees... What a fool I was. Whoever wrote about the glory or honor of war has obviously never been.

My best friend joined the army with me. During my first battle, among all the smoke and gunfire and Yankee cannons, a bullet flew into his leg. After the battle he was taken back to camp, where I saw as a doctor hacked off his leg with a saw, "to prevent infection" he said. I watched him over the next month get sick and die anyway. The company dug a hole at the side of the trail and buried him there.

I'm sorry for telling you all this. I'm not trying to horrify you with my bloody war stories. I should tell you why I'm here.

I was in the company of General Bragg, on the front line against the Yankees. I yelled with all my might to keep the fear from my mind and charged forward. I fired into the enemy line. Then, a Minie ball from a rifle shot into my chest. My body fell backward.

It was then that I died. After the battle ended in victory for the other side, a man was considerate enough to bury the Rebel dead. My body, and the bodies of thirty other men, were thrown into unmarked graves. I remained. Whatever I am now, I lingered after the battle.

I've been like this a long time now. It leaves me a lot of time to just think. I'm not ignorant of what happened after my death; I know the South lost.

More and more, I wonder what it was all for. All of us that died, all the pain we felt, all the hell we went through, what was it for? I would have felt useful, or fulfilled, or avenged, or something if my death helped the South win. But it didn't. Was it all for nothing?

I had a lot to live for. My wife, Sarah, we were married not a year before I went off to war. I could have had children with her, raised a family, lived the life I should have if I didn't go marching off to the battlefield. I wonder how she felt when I never came home? I never could bring myself to go see her after I passed away, so I'll never know.

I don't blame the Yankees for killing me anymore. I clung to my hate for several years, but I finally realized they were the same as me: fighting for their country. If there's any wisdom I gained over the time I've been like this, it's that all the hate people feel when they're alive, toward the Yankees invading their home or the Rebels trying to tear their country apart, in the end isn't good for anything.

Even if the South lost, I could have taken solace I died fighting for the right side. I believed in the Rebel cause with all I had. Yet I watched the South after its defeat recover and prosper without independence from the North. It seems, in the long run, the Yankees winning worked out for the best. Do you know how hard it is knowing that not only did my sacrifice accomplish nothing, but I died fighting for the wrong side? That not even God was on my side?

I keep asking why. Not just why me or why did I have to die, but why did the whole war have to happen? Hundreds of thousands of young men like me killed on battlefields, why? Why were we all so willing to fight, kill, and die?

In my time, they said soldiers who die in battle have honor. Well, I fought bravely, I died in defense of my country, so I guess I have honor. What good is honor now? What good does honor and pride do a man who knows he died fighting for a lost cause?

I keep asking questions, but I know they aren't any answers.

Thank you for listening to this old soldier. As much as I talk about dying, death isn't so bad. It's peaceful, really. This resting place is nice, with the quiet and the wild flowers. I just wish we weren't laid to rest here so early.