'Fire and withdraw!' Pete shouted. 'Try and keep formation; don't let your men break!'
The two galloped off before Lo could respond in outrage to the order. He would be damned if his men would ever break.
The Yankee line was closer, a hundred and fifty yards out. 'Volley fire, then withdraw fifty paces on my command!' Lo shouted.
'Virginians, take aim!'
Where once more than twenty-five hundred rifles would have been lowered in response, now barely a thousand remained.
'Take aim!'
Again the reassuring and yet frightful sound of hammers being pulled back. 'Fire!'
A wall of fire erupted. Not coordinated, starting at the center, then rippling down the line to either flank. 'Virginians. Back fifty paces!'
His men seemed to hesitate. Heartbreakingly, he saw one of his men directly to his front lean over, an elderly man, beard gray, kissing a fallen boy on the forehead, laying a Bible on his breast.
The battle line started to fall back, the few surviving officers shouting for the men to hold steady. The elderly man was by Lo's side and Lo reached out, touching his shoulder.
'I'm sorry,' Lo whispered.
'My only boy,' the man replied and then lowered his head.
'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.
Any hope of controlling his brigade was gone, and for the first time in his life on a battlefield, Lo Armistead ran for his life. He did not know where he could gain one more ounce of reserve to move one step farther. He weaved like a drunken man.
The old man who had lost his son was down, shot in the back of his head, his brains staining Lo's jacket, the impact of that round nearly pushing Lo into panic.
He wanted to shout for his men to hold, to rally, but he could no longer find voice for it.
Out of the smoke of the battle line he could see the survivors of Pickett's division streaming back, running across meadows, pushing through cornfields, climbing over fences, men collapsing from exhaustion and wounds. A knot of men were gathered around a barn, leaning against the building, which was beginning to burn. They fired away, then turned to run.
He caught a glimpse of Pickett, staff trailing, riding across the front of the retreat, waving his sword, crying for the men to hold fast. But after more than three hours they had been pushed beyond all endurance. Longstreet was nowhere to be seen. Beyond all caring, Armistead staggered up to an abandoned farmhouse. Wounded were sprawled on the porch. From a shattered ground-floor window, he saw several men peering out, one of them raising his rifle to fire. A man came bursting out the front door and then just collapsed, shot in the back.
Lo looked back. The Yankees were charging less than a hundred yards away, bayonets flashing, a terrifying wall, coming on remorselessly, overrunning a battery position, the gunners breaking away from their pieces and fleeing before them.
'Come on, General, let's get the hell out of here!' An arm came under his shoulder, a burly corporal, a giant of a man at over six feet by his side, lifting him up. 'Come on, sir, time we got the hell out of here.' 'I’m all right, leave me.' The corporal laughed.
'Can't say I left my brigadier behind. Just promote me to captain when this is over. Now let's get the hell out of here!'
Behind him he could hear hundreds of men running through the woods, pouring off the main road coming up
