Day 3 - July 3, 1863

North Carolina's Brave

"THE heat drained the bodies and spirits of the men as they lay waiting in the trees.   Alabamians, Mississippians, Virginians, North Carolinians; all strangers on this rolling farmland.  They marked time in nervous conversation or fearful silence while their artillery boomed ahead of them.  Then, it suddenly ceased.  The shouts of solid fellows relayed orders the anxious men did not want to hear.  “Move out!”  Hearts and stomachs sank.  “Form up and prepare to attack.” 

Exquisite ranks of petrified boys emerge from the woods.  First a jumble, they are aligned neatly and stepping forward, revealed only from the waist up in the tall grass.  Aware of their fate, the men hesitate. They are shoved forward by the barks of sergeants growling at their heels.  Left oblique!  Now, guide to the center!  Forward!  Their pace is steady, not quite a charge, more of a brisk walk.  For too short a time, precious swales all but hide the men, protecting them from what was to come.  

The thump of the big guns begins again but this time from the other side.  Get out of the kill zone!  Yankee artillery, to the right and left, on the high ground, black and staring.  The cannon crews serve their pieces like ants swarming a dropped morsel of food.  Foreboding iron tubes with gaping dark maws are laid hub-to-hub in front of Farmer Ziegler’s woody grove, on the rock bound Round Tops and amidst the broken grave markers on Cemetery Hill. 

Expanding puffs of white obscure the gun line.  The smoke is caught up in what little breeze exists and then, drifting away, reveals the spoked wheels, detached limbers, caissons and maddened, frothing horse teams barely controlled. 

The thunderclaps of the guns, delayed only an instant, reverberate in the ears of the butternut shapes as the shells crash near, fuzes detonating, metal shards blasting cavernous fractures in collapsing formations, taking out ten men at a time.  Yankee cannoneers revel in their power.  As the enemy’s grim faces reveal themselves, they switch to shotgun-like canister.  Uniform tops stripped in the torrid tropical air, they fiendishly swab sizzling barrels and ram home fresh loads run up from the fast depleting ammunition lockers.  An officer’s sword is raised, glinting bright.  Lanyards tense, the sword falls in a command to fire.  The rows of deadly black mouths erupt in smoke as one, pulverizing shot casings, releasing tiny lead bees that rip the brown ranks, effortlessly punching bloody holes. 

Heaps of torn and wasted bodies lie in the brittle grass.  The dead mix with the writhing injured whose agonized sobs are masked by the din.  The untouched persist, filling in holes in the broken rows, reacting now purely through animal instinct.  Nearer they come, far fewer than the full strength divisions that leapt to the charge a half mile away in the shade and security of the woods."  - Route 15 to Gettysburg -   

The Killing Field - Where do We Get Such Men?