When Private Walter G. Dunn of the Eleventh New Jersey Infantry went off to war, he began a correspondence with young Emma Randolph, a woman not yet twenty. When he was carried from the smoke and carnage of Chancellorsville to a crowded, filthy hospital ward in Baltimore, their real story began. There, barely recovered, bloodied and dazed with ether, he aided overworked surgeons when the Gettysburg wounded poured into the city and regularly took up his pen to relay everyday events that bec...