June 8, 2021
Captain Westley Walden is buried in Nixburg United Methodist Church Cemetery in Coosa County, Alabama. I visited the cemetery on February 22, 2021 and photographed his military tombstone.
Captain Walden was wounded on September 20 on Snodgrass Hill at Chickamauga battlefield. Yesterday I followed the movements of Hilliard’s Legion across the woods and field of the national battlefield park. Late the in afternoon, about the time of day Captain Walden and his men arrived at the foot of this high ground photographed the terrain he and his men faced.
Sitting here looking up slope I read several accounts of battle. A witness to the engagement wrote of the red muddy slope.
Union view of the ground (red cicrle is where I took the picture of Captain Walden’s view)
It is said that Walden carried the attack forward when it faltered and that he penetrated the Union trenches or works. Here is was wounded in the “breast, arm, and shoulder”. The seriousness of the wound is not given, but he died a few weeks later in Academy Hospital in Marietta, Georgia.
Notes From The Field 