'They're breaking!"
Warren pushed his mount to a canter, coming up behind the line of the Vermont regiments. They were across an open, marshy stretch of pasture, leaving behind the exhausted men of the Third Corps and his own first division. The sight had been horrific. Here had been a fight like Groveton, the Cornfield, a stand-up, knock-down volley fight at two hundred yards that had endured for hours, neither side willing to give back, neither side able to advance under the withering fire delivered by their opponents. In places, the dead and wounded of the Third Corps were heaped two and three deep, the survivors hunkered down behind the Mien.
The marsh was actually stained pink with blood, as hundreds of wounded from both sides had crawled down to the water, desperate for anything to drink. The formation of the
Vermonters broke repeatedly and re-formed as they swung around clusters of the fallen. They pushed up the slope, and a volley hit. In the seconds before it slashed in, he saw what they were facing, a thin line, looking to be nothing more than skirmishers, which disappeared behind the smoke. But their fire was still deadly, dozens of boys from Barrington, Bennington, and Stowe dropping.
Without orders from him, the cry went up for advance on the double, drummers increasing the cadence, men now leaning forward, picking up the pace of their advance. Behind him he could hear the third brigade shouting, surging forward, crying Reynolds's name.
A second volley hit, not as effective as the first but dropping more nevertheless, and then there was a shadow across the crest, and for a second he hesitated. It looked as if a solid line was down on the ground, waiting now to stand up and deliver a scathing volley at point-blank range.
But these were men who would never stand again. The dead were piled thick, the ground behind them carpeted with wounded crawling back. The attack slowed for a second, as soldiers stepped gingerly over the enemy fallen, then pressed forward yet again, only to encounter a second line of fallen a hundred yards farther back, atop the low crest of a hill.
"Forward, keep moving! Forward!"
As they crested the hill, they began to emerge out of the valley of smoke and death.
He could see them now, a broken, pitiful-looking remnant, not a line really, just clusters of men clumped under blue flags of Virginia and the red St. Andrew's crosses of the Army of Northern Virginia, falling back on the double, men struggling to reload, groups of them turning to fire, then falling back yet again.
The Vermont regiments halted, again without his orders. He would have just pushed. But the men were too exercised now that their foe was finally in sight.
'Take aim!"
A thousand muskets were leveled.
"Fire!"
The volley swept the front; in the split second before smoke obscured everything, he saw rebels dropping by the dozens.
"Reload!"
Ramrods were drawn, charges pushed home in gun barrels that were still clean, the metallic rattle of ramrods in barrels echoing along the line.
"Hold boys, now hold!"
Rifles came up, were shouldered.
"Charge bayonets!"
With a wild shout, a thousand rifles were brought down from shoulder arms, poised now level at the waist, bayonet points gleaming in the late-afternoon sun.
"On the double, quick! Charge!"
A wild, hysterical shout rose up. The line surged forward, men screaming incoherently, the lust of battle upon them, the lust of revenge, of pent-up rage, of all that they had suffered and endured; a chance to restore the honor of the Army of the Potomac was here at last.