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.
‘Hold them back!' Warren shouted.
The Vermonters were already into the cornfield. The men were panting from the heat, the pursuit of the last mile that had carried them across pastures, fields
of winter wheat, corn, orchards, and farm lanes. They had swept up hundreds of prisoners, all Confederate resistance collapsing. But in the cornfield ahead, there was something that was triggering in him a sense of foreboding. 'Holdback!'
His cry went unanswered. He turned, riding across the front of the reserve brigade, the boys from the First Corps, shouting for them to halt, but only those directly to his front followed orders. The battle front was nearly a half mile wide, and one lone voice at such a moment could not be heard.
The charge plunged into the cornfield, trampling the crop under as it advanced.
He caught a glimpse of Sickles coming up, army commander banner held high, staff trailing behind him. Warren raced back.
Sickles was exulting, swept up in the moment of glory, of victory.
'Call it off!' Warren cried. Sickles slowed, looked at him.
'For God's sake, we've driven them. It's enough for now.'
'I know. God damn them, we're driving them. Your boys are magnificent!' Sickles cried.
'No, sir. Halt now!'
Sickles looked at him, incredulous.
Warren gasped. 'We don't know what's waiting ahead. Stop this charge!'
Sickles, eyes blazing, said nothing, and then rode past, following the charge; Warren, knowing not where to go at this moment, falling in behind him.
‘Hold your fire, boys, hold it!'
Longstreet rode back along the line concealed in the woods. Hundreds of Pickett's men were still passing through. He caught a glimpse of Pickett, face ashen, riding past, then Lo Armistead, limping, helped along by a huge enlisted man who pushed him up over the fence, the two collapsing on the other side. 'Steady!'
From the slight rise within the woods he could see them coming, a relentless wall, corn being knocked down by their advance, bayonet points sticking up, flags rising above the corn. To his left a volley erupted where one of Robertson's brigades, on the far side of the woods, was engaging. In the woods all was strangely quiet for a moment, officers hissing commands, a gunner screwing up the rear screw of a field piece, dropping the muzzle lower, loaders already standing ready with double canister alongside the muzzles of the guns, a few officers looking north, a man up in a tree shouting that the Yankees were only fifty yards off, then jumping down. Rifles were leveled over the fence, hammers back, here and there a man firing, foul oaths shouted at the nervous to hold fire, hold fire, hold fire!
Blue legs appeared in the cornfield, bayonets above the corn, a last few stragglers running, heaving themselves over the fence, some still in the com seeing what was directly ahead, knowing they would not reach safety in time, flinging themselves to the ground.
The surging wall of blue appeared, shouldering the corn aside, shouts echoing, huzzahs, officers waving swords, someone on horseback shouting.
'Fire!'
He did not give the order, he did not need to. Regimental commanders did it on their own, judging the moment. In those last few seconds the advancing Yankees, so exuberant, had slowed, seeing something, seeing the fence, the dark forms hunkered behind it, the muzzles of Napoleons and ten-pounders, rifles poised as if each was aimed straight at them.
There was a moment, a second or two, of shouted and confused orders, to halt, to take aim, to charge, to keep moving.
'Fire!'
The volley burst from the wood line, a thousand or more rifles at point-blank range, bursts of double canister from six guns. Five hundred or more dropped; it was impossible to miss, so dense was the Union line. The frightful canister, nearly a thousand iron balls, tore into the corn, shredding stalks high into the air in the split second it took from when the burst of canister left the barrel and traversed the twenty to thirty yards into the advancing line, mowing the corn down as if someone had worked with maniacal speed to cut every stalk off inches above the ground.
A groan cut through the cacophony of noise, the screams of hundreds of men, wounded, men who would die in a few seconds as hearts beat out a last pulse. Shattered rifles, body parts, blood literally rose into the air and tumbled back in a blizzard of destruction.
'Reload!'
The rebel infantry stood up, ramrods already drawn and stuck into the ground, cartridges laid out along fence rails; gunners leapt to their pieces, swabbing out bores, then ramming in yet another charge of double canister.
The men of Vermont, staggered by the blow, could barely respond. Here and there a desperate few leveled their rifles, men who but seconds before were pursuing a defeated foe now were out in the open being slaughtered. But some would still die game, would fire back.
'Take aim!'
Again the mechanical-like motion, a thousand rifles raised then lowered, the men behind them now standing. 'Fire!'
Another volley swept into the cornfield, hundreds more fell, and seconds later a second blast of canister tore in from the battery, some of the rounds crashing into the reserve brigade, struggling to get forward over their own dead and wounded Vermont neighbors.
Again reload, even as the reserve brigade, among them survivors of the old Iron Brigade, pushed into the confusion, men screaming, cursing, some from Vermont already falling back, comrades to their rear pushing forward.
'Take aim! 'Fire!'
Another volley.
The sheer momentum of the reserve brigade of the Second Division, Sixth Corps, actually pushed the charge forward to within ten yards of the fence. These hardened veterans, filled with rage, would not break in spite of the surprise, the terror that had met them in this cornfield. It was Antietam again, and as one of them had once said,
