The Confederate artillery opened at precisely 1:00 PM on July 3rd, 1863. The first shot was a signal. Within seconds, the entire western horizon erupted in smoke and flame.
I was with General Gibbon’s staff, positioned behind the Union center at Gettysburg. We had been finishing a late meal, a rare moment of peace in three days of chaos. That peace vanished in an instant.
The bombardment was unlike anything I had ever witnessed. Approximately 125 Confederate guns, arrayed along a front nearly two miles wide, concentrated their fire on the Second Corps.
The air screamed with metal. Shells exploded overhead and tore through the ground. Horses were ripped apart where they stood. Ammunition chests detonated with thunderous blasts.
One of our mess wagon horses was hit and shattered into fragments. The driver was hurled to the ground. Two mules loaded with cartridges were torn to shreds. The violence was absolute.
General Gibbon’s stable hand mounted the general’s horse to deliver it. A shell ripped through him, tearing open his torso. He fell at once)Skip.
The foot soldiers lay pressed low, clinging to furrows and stones. They were quiet, resolute, unbroken.
Our own guns replied in kind. Captain Hazard moved between the batteries with grim purpose. The ridge trembled under the weight of the exchange.
I sat with Captain Wessles near Cushing’s battery. The spectacle defied description. Two hundred and fifty cannon bellowed without ceasing.
The sound was stratified. One peal of thunder atop another. Beneath the great bellow of the guns, a million smaller sounds screamed. Missiles sizzled, shrieked, and rumbled.
Men serving the guns had no shelter. Some dragged themselves off with arms or legs hanging limp. Others dropped and did not stir. Their blood mingled with the powder-smeared ground.
One soldier lay behind a crumbling stone, no bigger than a pail. He was hunched over, facing the dirt. I told him not to lie there like a frog. He looked up at me, horrified, and put his face back in the soil.
Instantly, a shot hit the stone, demolishing it. By some chance, he was unharmed.
An hour elapsed. The guns still thundered.
Near 2:00, General Gibbon proposed we circulate among the troops. The men endured few losses and stayed collected. Some made jokes. Some said they were starting to appreciate it.
We advanced 200 yards ahead of the line beneath a cluster of elm trees. From that vantage, we could observe the entire battlefield alerted. No infantry stirred. Only the artillery exchange persisted.
A shell hit our earthworks close by. Two soldiers came down from the line to find cover. General Gibbon called to them with steady conviction.
“Do not abandon your post to seek protection here,” he said. “All these outcomes are in God’s hands.”
The men turned back without a word.
Gibbon faced me. He spoke of his religious sentiment, of trusting that he was in God’s care. That is why he went where duty demanded, regardless of peril.
By 2:30, weariness appeared. One battery went quiet, its captain injured, half its gunners down. Others were in similar condition.
The odor of blood and powder was overpowering. Horses lay in heaps. Men whispered weakly for water.
And then it stopped.
Two hours. Two hundred and fifty guns. The field went silent. No one shouted. No one stirred.
General Gibbon believed the enemy had started withdrawing. He thought the cannonade was a diversion to conceal a retreat.
I did not concur. I said we should allow 15 minutes to discover his true intent.
We had almost reached our horses when Captain Wessles appeared. He was winded, on foot.
“General,” he said, “they report the enemy’s infantry is advancing.”
In a flash, we were mounted and racing to the crest.
You did not require instruction. You only needed to look.
From the treeline across the open ground, an ocean of gray spilled out in flawless order. Pickett’s division occupied the Confederate right, Pettigrew’s on the left.
Wave after wave came on. Banners fluttered above them. Formations extended across a half-mile front. Deep, layered, row upon row. Man beside man. Line reinforcing line.
Red battle flags shimmered. Rifle barrels gleamed in the sun like an inclined forest of steel.
They moved forward without a sound. With a single purpose.
Back on our ridge, there was no alarm. Only silence. The soldiers were already at their posts.
They adjusted their caps. They opened their cartridge boxes. They checked their percussion caps. The snapping of hammers was the only noise.
General Gibbon rode along the line with his customary calm. He instructed them not to fire too rapidly. To let the enemy approach closely. To aim low.
Five minutes elapsed. The enemy had covered more than half the distance.
Our guns opened fire. Shrapnel and canister ripped into the Confederate ranks. Shells exploded among them as they marched.
They came without faltering. No rebel yell. Only grim, relentless determination.
On their far right, their lines swept near the standards of Vermont. Hidden troops opened fire, raking their flank. The Confederates did not stop. They adjusted slightly)Skip and pressed onward.
Now only 100 yards separated our left from their right.
Then Harrow’s line fired. Then Hall’s. Then Webb’s. The wall burst into flame.
The enemy halted, lifted their rifles, and fired in reply. A thousand yards of line blazed with fire and smoke.
The lightning of musket flashes danced across the ridge and back.
Our batteries began to go quiet. Their barrels were fouled. Their ammunition chests were empty. Rodman was gone. Woodruff was dying.
Cushing, after firing his final canister, had been shot in the head and collapsed next to his cannon.
The struggle now belonged solely to the infantry.
I could not locate General Gibbon. He had moved ahead, probably on foot. I abandoned the search.
I rode toward the right of the second division to watch and intervene if necessary.
The line was holding. But barely.
Then arrived the instant that almost shattered us. Near the clump of trees in the wall, I detected motion.
Webb’s brigade. Our center was retreating.
No commands. No clear cause. The soldiers simply broke.
They abandoned the wall. They fled.
And behind them, I observed the enemy’s flags rising. One already fluttered above the silent guns of the fallen Cushing.
Gettysburg balanced on a knife’s edge. One red banner over our artillery could undo everything.
I had no instructions. I had no rank. But I possessed a sword, drawn for the first time, not as decoration, but for purpose.
I rode into the breach.
“Halt!” I yelled. “Turn around! Fire!”
Some listened. Some gaped, bewildered. Some ran quicker.
On the backs of those who disregarded me, I let the flat of my blade fall. Not gently.
They halted. They turned. They comprehended. They went back to the line.
General Webb arrived on foot, entering the fray. Together we reformed the men.
The Confederates who had scaled the wall were cut down or trapped. Smoke enveloped us. The enemy behind the stones returned fire at point blank range.
The flags of the enemy multiplied along the wall. Ten. Twelve more. And still no reinforcements.
Webb had just three regiments left. They could not endure indefinitely.
I raced across the ridge and found Colonel Hall.
“Can you support General Webb?” I asked.
“Yes, you cannot be too fast. I will advance my brigade immediately,” he said. And he did.
As Hall’s colors swung forward, I turned toward Harrow’s brigade. I found the regiments. The 15th Massachusetts. The 19th Maine. The 1st Minnesota.
They were standing firm.
I spoke rapidly, desperately. “The enemy is breaking through. There is no time for formal orders. Advance to the wall.”
The officers comprehended immediately. Orders were barked. The troops advanced.
Bayonets locked into place. Flag bearers leading the way.
As we neared the center, I gestured toward the stone wall. The men saw the enemy. They bellowed. They increased their speed.
Arriving at the wall, I pressed them over the top. But the officers paused.
One major stated: “Sir, by the book, my position is behind the men.”
I told him: “Then you are suited for the book, not for this fight.”
He remained.
I turned to another officer. “Captain, lead your company over that ridge.”
He protested, worrying our own guns might fire from behind us.
I said: “Forget the rear. If we don’t handle the front, there will be no rear.”
Then I shouted to a sergeant of the 72nd Pennsylvania. “Advance with your flag. Let the rebels see it up close before they fall.”
He gripped the shattered flag pole in both hands and charged ahead alone. Midway there, he went down.
But the wall erupted. The men could not see him fall without joining.
The entire line rushed forward like a wave bursting free from a levee. Cries filled the atmosphere. Union soldiers yelling with fury, with valor, with the frenzy of survival.
We met them at the wall.
It was not a battle line. It was a melee. A tempest. A knot of banners, smoke, men, and death.
Bayonets clashed. Muskets fired point blank. Rifle stocks smashed bone. Men dropped in piles.
The Confederates had possessed the wall. Now we ripped it from their grasp.
They fired from behind the stones. From amidst the casualties. They thrust, swore, and perished where they stood. Still we pressed.
I watched the flags go down one after another. The color guards of the south were courageous men. They kept their banners aloft until the round struck them down. Then others grabbed the colors, only to be hit themselves moments later.
We battled in a haze so dense you could not see five paces ahead. Regiments were intermingled. States lost all meaning.
And then came the turning point.
The fresh lines from Hall’s and Harrow’s brigades hit the Confederate flank. They bent it backward.
The fire from the wall grew sparse. The flags behind the ridge faltered.
Then they shattered.
Not all at once. First a handful. Then a score. Then the entire mass.
They turned. They fled. Some attempted to crawl to safety. Some stood and dropped their weapons. Some lay motionless and did not stir again.
The center had held. We had reclaimed the wall.
I stood on the crest near the cluster of trees. The ground was slippery with gore. The air was heavy with haze and stillness.
The most brutal hour of combat I had ever seen was over.
The rebellion had surged to its climax and fractured.
Before us, the field was piled with the ruin of a magnificent and awful endeavor. Pickett’s charge had foundered.
1,600 Confederate dead lay before our position. Over 7,000 more were wounded. 4,000 gave themselves up.
33 Confederate battle flags had been taken. Flags that had once flown at Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville now drooped in Union hands.
The entire second division, what remained of it, had reassembled.
And then I spotted him. General Meade.
He approached on horseback with only his son beside him. No guard. No ceremony.
He reached the crest and gazed out across the terrain littered with debris and fallen flags.
He asked me calmly: “How are things proceeding here?”
I replied: “I believe, General, the enemy’s assault has been repelled.”
He said nothing at first. He looked again, long and hard.
Then he said quietly: “Thank God.”
The sun sank low in the west. Its crimson glow fell across the terrain that stretched from the Union ridge to the Confederate treeline.
Now silent. Now motionless.
Of Pickett’s division, almost two-thirds were slain, injured, or taken. Entire brigades had been obliterated.
Our own casualties were grave. Over 2,000 of the Second Corps had fallen.
In the angle at the wall, the soil was saturated. A man could walk from one end of the position to the other without setting foot on clear ground.
But we had prevailed.
Later, I observed the captured flags arranged in rows. Thirty-three of them, their fabric ripped and soiled. Men walked past them with hushed reverence.
These were not merely spoils. They were emblems of defiance, now subdued.
As darkness descended, the air grew cool. The ridge stayed silent.
The men of the Second Corps, those who could still remain upright, sat among the artillery or rested beside their deceased comrades.
The ridge held. The Union held.
A charge was broken. A rebellion’s high tide receded.
The guns fell silent at Gettysburg. But the echoes of that day remain.