My Name is Jacob Hershberger and this is my record of my stay with the 142nd Pennsylvania.

July 2, 1863

It’s dark and cold, wind howling, owls hooting. It’s quiet, but I still can’t sleep. I remain awake, because I know that tomorrow we’ll be fighting again, dying again, and losing ourselves once more.

I lay silently and think about my family. My brothers, my father, and my dearest mother whom I love so much. The one who gave me the very journal I am writing in, the journal I have only chosen to use now. She told me to use it when I need someone to talk to, when I need to put my thoughts down. I need it now, I feel like I’m dying, losing myself. I'm slowly losing sight of who I was and who I wanted to be. I feel like my heart is being squeezed until it turns to dust, floating away in the wind along with my will to live.

I hear the wounded groan and scream in pain, their voices blending with the whistling of the wind. They moan and call for loved ones that will never come. The life draining from their bodies with every passing minute. Their parched and dry throats slowly quiet them, but until then, I’ve learned to tune them out. It portrays me to be inhumane, but I am no longer human. For a human would not yearn to claim another’s soul.

I'm disappointed in myself. I killed a man today, not that he was the only one, but because I did it in the worst way possible. I shot him straight through the trunk. That should have been enough, but I kept going. I took my bayonet and sliced his head straight off his shoulders before running him through to the ground.

I was no longer myself at that moment. I was a snarling, angry animal thirsting for blood. I smiled an evil smile as I saw his body fall, his blood flowing freely from his many wounds. I didn’t look twice at the man I had just killed. I simply picked up my bayonet and gun and continued to strike down every rebel I saw. I’m disgusted with myself, for I am a monster.

I wonder how I got this way, but I prefer to not know the answer. Had I known I would turn out this way, I never would have left. I would have forgot about my calls to manhood, and continued to play cloth ball with the other neighborhood kids. I would have smiled at the pretty girls as they walked by and harass Mrs. Willow's cat, without a worry in the world. I wish to go back and tell myself that war is not all hunkey dorey, it’s filled with pain, blood, and tears.

The first signs of morning peek through my tent, I sigh, for I know what will soon come. I cannot claim that I am afraid, for I've been through this before. I've stepped over my fellow Union soldiers as I march to claim lives and surely lose my own in the process. I've seen soldiers fall with surprised and pained faces beside me. It hurts, because I know they will probably die alone, staring up at the sky with faces wrenched in pain and blood pooling beneath them.

Honestly, I’m afraid. Not of the war, but of going home. I’m afraid they won’t accept me. I am no longer the boy I used to be. No longer the child they once knew. I’ve seen things I shouldn’t have seen, done things no child should do. I miss my family terribly and I don’t know if I will ever see them again. That thought alone breaks my heart and shakes me to the core.

I wish those rotten rebs would just leave this Pennsylvania town and go back to their dirty, filthy lives on their ungodly plantations. If they had never rebelled, I wouldn’t be sitting here in the dark, contemplating my life and losing my sanity. All they have to do is give up their slaves and go do their own dirty work, then this needless war would be over!

I will need to shine and clean my gun soon. The third day of battle will begin at daybreak. I prepare myself for the carnage, the tears, and explosions. Sadness drapes over me like a cloak, I feel my shoulders sag and I wonder how long I will last. I don’t know if I can continue. I wonder as I stare out into the darkness, Can I save myself, before it’s too late?