Madam In compliance with your request to write I send you these lines

Field of Battle
Gaines Mills
June 4th 1864
Madam

            In compliance with your request to write, I send you these lines.  Any attempt to process the body of your gallant son at present would be futile.  The Army is at present some 30 miles from the place of his death.  Since his fall (the 12th day of May) the operation of the Union Army has been a series of battles, hundreds, I might say thousands of soldiers are still unburied.  Darwin had a soldiers burial.  Myself and another man brought him of the field under a hot fire of the enemy into a pine grove.  There the bayonets of his comrades under the supervision of his captain carved out a grave.  It was all we could do under the circumstances.  He was hardly covered up when we had to come into line to resist an attack the enemy.  There are not many in the company for whom the Captain would have asked so much.  I am neither husband nor father, but I can understand the feelings of a mother under such trying circumstances.  And I pledge myself on the honor of an Englishman and Soldier to return to his grave as soon as possible and ascertain what can be done.  Since Darwin’s death more than half the remainder of the company were killed or wounded in one action.  Remember that in terrible times like the present it is the brave that are sacrificed to their country’s honor.  And the time must come when the coward and [pattroon] will have to die to.  Darwin was respected and beloved by us all.   Loyal Washburn his comrade will write to you as soon as a chance opens.  I will write you again s soon as I get a chance for it is hardly possible to write at present being under the fire of the enemy guns.

Yours most respectfully

Charles Lemple, Company C,
106th Regiment, N.Y.S.V.