No Turning Back
The Battle of the Wilderness
When the armies departed the Wilderness, they left behind a disfigured landscape. Trenches twisted like earthen snakes through the woods, and blackened leaves marked the paths of fires. Along the Brock Road, noted one soldier, trees "were scarred by bullets from their roots to their tops, and in great spaces the whole tops were mown down by bullets as with a scythe."
Corpses, too, littered the landscape. "Thousands of men were dead and wounded," wrote one officer, "and that vast wilderness was one great cemetery and hospital for both armies." The Army of the Potomac suffered more than 17,600 casualties in the two-day fight; Confederate losses exceeded 11,000. Although some of the dead received hasty burials, many bodies remained untouched until the following year. A few would remain for years.
Marker is at the intersection of Brock Road (County Route 613) and Orange Plank Road (County Route 621), on the right when traveling south on Brock Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
