He
saw the end. No matter how fierce this battle, McClellan was only
fighting to save his army from annihilation. Lee was destroying him.
The order came at last. The Colonel walked along in front of his men
with bared head.
"Now, boys,--that battery on the first crest--we've half their
men--charge and take those guns!"
The regiment leaped to their feet and started up the hill. They had lost
two hundred men in their first sweep. There were six hundred left.
"Hold your fire until I give the word!" the Colonel shouted.
The smoke was hanging low, and they had made two hundred yards before
the blue line saw them through the haze. The hill blazed and hissed in
their faces. The massed infantry behind the guns found their marks. Men
dropped right and left, sank in grey heaps or fell forward on their
faces--some were knocked backwards down the slope. Yet without a pause
they climbed.
Three hundred yards more and they would be on the guns. And then a sheet
of blinding flame from every black-mouthed gun in line double shotted
with grape and canister! The regiment was literally knocked to its
knees. The men paused as if dazed by the shock. The sharp words of cheer
and command from their officers and they rallied. From both flanks
poured a murderous hail of bullets--guns to the right, left and front,
all screaming, roaring, hissing their call of blood.
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