Gordon's
men charged and drove the Federal hosts back until at last they stood
against the entrenchments they had captured. Reinforcements now poured
in from both sides and the fighting became indescribable in its mad
desperation. Thousands of men in blue and men in grey fought face to
face and hand to hand. Muskets blazed in one another's eyes and blew
heads off. The dead were piled in rows four and five deep, blue and grey
locked in each other's arms. The trenches were filled with the dead and
cleared of bodies again and again to make room for the living until they
in turn were thrown out.
Ned Vaughan saw a grey color-bearer's arm shot away at the shoulder, the
quivering flesh smeared with mud, stained with powder and filled with
the shreds of his grey sleeve--and yet, without blenching, he grasped
his colors with the other hand and swept on into the jaws of this
flaming hell at the head of his men. The rain of musketry fire against
the trees came to Ned's ears in low undertone like the rattle of myriads
of hail stones on the roof of a house.
A grey soldier was fighting a duel to the death with a magnificently
dressed officer in blue, bare bayonet against bare sword. The soldier,
with a sudden plunge, ran his opponent through. With a shudder, Ned
looked to see if it were John.
A company of men in blue were caught and cut off by a grey wave and
were trying to surrender.
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