‘Form here!" Longstreet roared. "God damn it get into line here!" General Robertson, leading Hood's old division, saluted and galloped off along the edge of the woodlot. A battery of guns, Rowan's North Carolina, were already into the woods, barrels of their pieces projecting out over the low split-rail fence, infantry swarming in to either side of the guns.
Behind him he could hear hundreds of men running through the woods, pouring off the main road coming up from Baltimore, shaking out from column to line, the men panting with exhaustion, officers shouting for men to load, to get ready, to keep inside the woods.
Already the first of Pickett's division were coming in, staggering out of the cornfield to their front, their passage marked by the swaying of the head-high corn. Raising his field glasses, he could see to the far side of the cornfield a quarter mile away, where the relentless advance of the Army of the Potomac was pushing forward, driving the stragglers of Pickett before them.
Pickett's boys had been routed by this last charge, but he could not blame them. They had faced off against a corps and a half for three hours under a killing sun, inflicted thousands of casualties, and had baited the trap, which was beginning to unfold. But it would only be a trap if their panic did not envelop the exhausted reinforcements now coming up.
Robertson's division was filing into position. Behind them, a mile away, Hood's entire corps was advancing and deploying out as well. It was possible, just possible, that after more than forty miles of marching with thousands- perhaps ten thousand or more stragglers dropping out on the road, the rumors sweeping back of defeat-even these hardened men might break and run. On such things, on such moments, battles often turned.
He rode along the edge of the woods, eyes blazing, watching intently as division broke into brigades, brigades into regiments, regiments into companies, falling in along the fence at the edge of the woods, men hunkering down, loading, sliding rifles over the top of fence rails, staring blindly now into a cornfield where the enemy would not be visible until he was only thirty feet away.
Robertson's division waited for the impact of the charge.