And then their
disgust became more pronounced.
"What in 'ell's the matter?" Ned groaned.
"Don't worry, Sonny," an old corporal called, "you'll get there in time
to see more than you want."
The regiment reached the battle lines at one o'clock. The morning hours
had been spent in driving in the skirmishers and feeling the enemy's
positions. Lee had given orders for a general charge on a signal yell
from Armistead's brigade. He was now waiting the arrival of all his
available forces before attacking.
Late in the afternoon General D. H. Hill heard a shout followed by a
roar of musketry and immediately ordered his division to charge. No
other General seemed to have heard it and the charge was made without
support. It was magnificent, but it was not war, it was sheer butchery.
No army could have stood before the galling fire of those massed
batteries.
Ned's regiment had deployed in a wood on the edge of a wide field at the
foot of the hill. Their movement caught the eye of a battery on the
heights which opened with six guns squarely on their heads.
The struggling, shattered remnants of a regiment which had been all but
annihilated fell back through these woods, stumbling against the waiting
men.
Ned saw a soldier with a Minie ball sticking in the centre of his
forehead, the blood oozing from the round, clean-cut hole beside the
lead.
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