In the final scene, when the camera pulls back from the gravesite to reveal the present-day cemetery, notice how all of the gravestones are so unusually close together. The reason the markers are only inches apart is because early on, as the backlog of corpses steadily accumulated, Andersonville officials decided to abandon the practice of traditional burials but instead have work details dig long ditches. In those trenches they lay the emaciated bodies, side by side, "shoulder to shoulder" before covering them over. Their identities marked only with numbers whittled onto planks of wood. Fortunately, after the war, they were able to match those sticks up with the names of the fallen soldiers, so they could finally be given a proper headstone and the thanks of a grateful nation.
