HELL

"Each volley tells that thousands cease to breathe;

Death rides upon the sulphury Siroc,

Red Battle stamps his foot, and nations feel the shock."

--BYRON.

The morning came--the morning of Friday, the 3d of July. Just as the sun

was rising in our faces the Federal skirmishers advanced. Down the hill

they came at the run. Lieutenant Sharpe ordered a countercharge, and the

battalion rushed to meet the enemy. We were almost intermixed with them

before they ran. And now our lieutenant of Company A showed his mettle.

He sprang before his company, sword in his left hand and revolver in the

other, and led the fight, rushing right up the hill, and, when near

enough, firing every barrel of his pistol. We took a few prisoners. Both

lines settled back to their first positions.

We had lost some men. A detail of infirmary people came from the rear to

carry off the wounded. Hutto had been shot badly. As four men lifted the

stretcher, one of them was killed, and Hutto rolled heavily to the

ground. Another of the litter bearers was shot, leaving but two; they

raised their stretcher in the air and moved it about violently. The

Yankees ceased firing.

The day had begun well, but we knew there was long and deadly work

ahead. We began to make protection. Low piles of rails, covered with

wheat-straw and earth dug up by bare hands, soon appeared along the

line. The protection was slight, yet by lying flat our bodies could not

be seen. On their side the Yankee skirmishers also had worked, and were

now behind low heaps of rails and earth. Practice-shooting began, and

was kept up without intermission for hour after hour.

We lay in the broiling sun. Orders came down the line for the men to be

sparing with water.

From my pit I could look back and see the cupola of the Seminary--could

see through the cupola from one window to the other. The Seminary was

General Lee's headquarters.

To our right and front was a large brick barn--the Bliss barn. Captain

Haskell had been killed by a bullet fired from this barn. It was five

hundred yards from the pits of Company A.

The Bliss barn was held by the Yankees. The skirmishers beyond the right

of the battalion charged and took it. A regiment advanced from the

Federal side, drove our men off, and occupied the barn. They began to

enfilade the pits of Company A. All the while, we were engaged in front.

A shot from the barn killed Sergeant Rhodes. Orders came down the line

for me to take his place at the right of the company.

Since the day before, I had thought that I had one friend in Company

A--Rhodes. Now Rhodes was dead.

We fired at the men who showed themselves at the barn--right oblique

five hundred yards.

We fired at the skirmishers behind the rail piles in front--two hundred

yards.

A man in a pit opposite mine hit my cartridge-box. I could see him

loading. His hand was in the air. I saw him as low as his shoulder. I

took good aim. A question arose in my mind--and again I thought of the

Captain: Am I angry with that man? Do I feel any hatred of him? And the

answer came: No; I am fighting for life and liberty; I hate nobody. I

fired, and saw the man no more.

Our men far to the right retook the barn. Again the enemy recovered it.

Cartridges were running low. Some brave men ran back to the line of

battle for more cartridges. The skirmishing was incessant. Our losses

were serious. We had fought constantly from sunrise until past midday,

and there was no sign of an ending.

At one o'clock a shell from our rear flew far above us, and then the

devil broke loose. More than a hundred guns joined in, and the air was

full of sounds. The Bliss barn was in flames. The Federal batteries

answering doubled the din and made the valley and its slopes a hell of

hideous noises. All of the enemy's missiles went far over our heads; we

were much nearer to the Federal artillery than to our own. Some of our

shells, perhaps from defective powder, fell amongst us; some would burst

in mid air, and the fragments would hurtle down. The skirmishing

ceased--in an ocean one drop more is naught.

I walked down the line of Company A. Peacock was lying dead with his hat

over his face. The wounded--those disabled--were unrelieved. The men

were prostrate in their pits, powder-stained, haggard, battle-worn, and

stern. Still shrieked the shells overhead, and yet roared the guns to

front and rear--a pandemonium of sight and sound reserved from the

foundation of the world for the valley of Gettysburg. The bleeding sun

went out in smoke. The smell of burning powder filled the land. Before

us and behind us bursting caissons added to the hellish magnificence of

this awful picture,--in its background a school of theology, and in its

foreground the peaceful city of the dead.

For more than an hour the hundreds of hostile guns shook earth and sky;

then there was silence and stillness. But the stillness was but brief.

Out from our rear and right now marched the Confederate infantry on to

destruction.

We of the skirmishers felt that our line was doomed. I saw men stand,

regardless of exposure, and curse the day. For more than eighteen hours

we had been near the Federal lines. We had no hope. We knew that our

line, marching out for attack, could not even reach the enemy. Before

it could come within charging distance it would be beaten to pieces by

artillery. The men looked at the advancing line and said one to another,

"Lee has made a mistake."

The line came on. It was descending the slope of Seminary Ridge.

The Federal batteries began to work upon the line. Into the valley and

up the hill it came, with all the cannon in our front and right,--and

far to the right,--pumping death into its ranks.

I gave it up. I thought of Captain Haskell, and of his words concerning

General Lee's inclination to attack. I was no military man; I knew

nothing of scientific war, but I was sure that time had knelled the doom

of our poor line--condemned to attack behind stone fences the flower of

the Army of the Potomac protected by two hundred guns. It was simply

insane. It was not war, neither was it magnificent; it was too absurd

to be grand.

Great gaps were made in the line. It came on and passed over the

skirmishers. The left of the line passed over us just beyond the spot

where Rhodes lay dead. I could see down our line. It was already in

tatters. Writers of the South and of the North have all described

Pickett's charge as gallant, and have said that his line came on like

troops on dress-parade. It was gallant enough--too gallant; but there

was no dress-parade. Our officers and men on Seminary Ridge were looking

at Pickett's division from its rear; the blue men were looking upon it

from its front; from neither position could the alignment be seen; to

them it looked straight and fine; but that line passed by me so that I

looked along it, and I know that it was swayed and bent long before it

fired a shot. As it passed over us, it was scattered--many men thirty,

forty, even fifty yards in front of other men. No shame to Pickett's men

for this. The charge should not be distinguished for mere gallantry, but

for something far superior--endurance. From right and front and left, a

semicircle of fire converged upon their ranks and strewed the ground

with their dead. For half a mile they advanced under an iron tempest

such as Confederate troops never saw elsewhere than at Gettysburg--- a

tempest in which no army on earth could live.

I was hoping that the line would break and run before it came under the

fire of infantry; but it did not break. It was ragged, because the gaps

could not be filled as fast as they were made; but the fragments kept on

up the hill, uniting as they went.

And the line disappears in smoke, which tells us, as well as the sound,

that the Federal infantry and ours have at last joined their battle.

Here and there we see a real battle-flag violently shaking; the thunder

of the cannon no more is heard; the smoke recedes, and our men--those

that are left, but not the line--still go forward.

Pickett has reached the hostile infantry. On his left and right swarm

out against his flanks the army of the enemy, while in his front still

stand the stone bulwarks over which but few of his men live to pass.

Yet the fight still rages. The Federal skirmishers everywhere have long

ago withdrawn, so that we can stand and move and watch the struggle for

the graves. In a narrow circle on the hill, where a few trees stand,

smoke builds up and eddies. Up there death and fate are working as they

never worked. Lines of infantry from either flank move toward the

whirlpool. They close upon the smoke.

Now we see a few men dropping back out of the smoke and running

half-bent down the hill. Their numbers increase. All who have the

hardihood to run try to escape, but many remain and become prisoners.

A brigade or two of the enemy advance from their works on their right

and endeavour to intercept the fugitives. A brigade of Confederates

advances on our left, but stops in the wheat. The battle of

Gettysburg is over.