At noon there was an ominous lull in the battle. At one o'clock a puff
of smoke from Seminary Ridge was followed by a dull roar. The signal gun
had pealed its call of death to thousands. For two miles along the crest
of this Ridge the Confederates had planted one hundred and fifty guns.
Two miles of smoke-wreathed flame suddenly leaped from those hills in a
single fiery breath.
The longer line of big Federal guns on Seminary Ridge were silent for a
few minutes and then answered gun for gun until the heavens were
transformed into a roaring hell of bursting, screaming, flaming shells.
For two hours the earth trembled beneath the shock of these volcanoes,
and then the two storms died slowly away and the smoke began to lift.
An ominous sign. The grey infantry were deploying in line under Pickett
to charge the heights of Cemetery Ridge. Fifteen thousand gallant men
against an impregnable hill held by seventy thousand intrenched
soldiers, backed by the deadliest and most powerful artillery.
They swept now into the field before the Heights, their bands playing as
if on parade--their grey ranks dressed on their colors. Down the slope
across the plain and up the hill the waves rolled, their thinning ranks
closing the wide gaps torn each moment by the fiery sleet of iron and
lead.
A handful of them lived to reach the Union lines on those heights.
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