"Pour it in to them. Close on the colors, boys. Pour it into them!"
Two hundred yards to the rear, the next assault wave reached the south bank of the flood plain, their officers ordering a halt, letting the men catch their breath for a few minutes, to gulp down some water, while forward their comrades died.
Atop the crest the Confederate forces blazed away, some of the men, acknowledged sharpshooters, calling for others to load, to pass their guns up, making sure that every shot counted, though in the still air, now laced again by showers, the smoke quickly built to a hanging cloud of fog.
Men were falling in the trenches, though not near as many as down on the open slope. Rifle balls smacked into the loosely piled dirt, spraying the men; shots when they hit tended to strike arms raised while ramming or, far more deadly, in the chest or face.
A growing line of dead and wounded lay directly behind the trench, dragged out of the way so as to not be trampled under.
The Union artillery was again in full play, though aiming in most cases too high out of fear of striking their own battle line in the confusion. But enough shots were tearing in to do terrible damage, a shell bursting on the lip of the parapet of Williamson's South Carolina troops, sweeping away eight men by his side.
A large cauldron that had been used to boil enough coffee for a regiment was struck by a solid shot, flipping it end over end, scalding men nearby, crushing the life out of a man unfortunate enough to be caught in its path.
An ammunition wagon went galloping off, two of the mules with broken legs the driver dead, the two mules still intact dragging the wreckage in a blind panic.
A brief burst of rain swept along the slope, hard enough that as men tore cartridges open the powder got wet and their guns then misfired. The rain, at least for the moment, cut down the clouds of smoke, opening the visibility.
The forward line of the Union assault was staggering. Men no longer able to take the sweeping blasts, many, especially in front of the batteries, beginning to drop back. A few were running; most were giving ground slowly, angry, bitter that after having come so far, they could go no farther.
Drum rolls echoed along the base of the slope; bugles sounded. The second wave, which had waited, hugging the slope along the flood plain embankment or resting in the shallow trench, stood up.
There was no cheering. These men were grim. They had marched over and through the carnage already wrought, lying alongside dead and wounded comrades and enemies in the shallow trench. More than one had given what was left of his canteen to a gut-shot rebel begging for water or a blinded lieutenant asking for someone to wash the blood from his eyes so he could see again.
As they stood up, the first wave of broken troops coming down the slope passed through them. This was always the hardest moment for the following waves in an attack. All ahead looked to be nothing but chaos and disaster, ground covered with bodies and parts of bodies, men contorted and twisted into only the poses that those who had died violently could assume, soldiers, on the edge of panic, screaming that the battle was lost, visual evidence on all sides of the fate that might be waiting just one more step ahead.
Nevertheless, the regiments rose up, heads bowed, pushing up the slope. Behind them the third wave, which had been waiting, crouched along the banks of the stream, stood up and started forward as well. The broken troops fell back. Some slid into the Confederate trench at the base, of the slope, rallying around a trusted officer, or their flags, though up forward a thin line still held, the colors of several regiments now planted in the ground, marking the point of farthest advance, or lying on the ground, the entire color guard dead or wounded.
For the next two minutes, the charge going up the ridge could not slow to open fire; too many of their own men were still in front Twenty-seven regiments stormed up the slope, men from New Jersey, two entire brigades from New York, and another from Pennsylvania, regiments from Ohio and Indiana, a lone regiment from the mountains of West Virginia, and another from the flat coastal plains of Delaware.
The lash of the hurricane descended on them. Gone was the panicked firing of the Confederate batteries about to be overrun by Kelly's now-annihilated brigade. Gunners took a few extra seconds, sighting their weapons as barrels were swabbed out and canister charges set in.
At two hundred yards, one entire battalion of guns cut loose with a salvo.
The impact dropped the entire line across a front of nearly a hundred yards, sweeping it to the ground like toy soldiers cast down by an angry child. At that point of the mile-wide advance the charge did not simply stop, it just disappeared into the ground.
To either flank of this hole, the survivors of the two divisions coming from Second and Twelfth Corps surged onward, in many places storming over the forward edge of the line held by their comrades of the first wave, formations breaking up as men slowed to move around the bodies, which at some points seemed almost to have been laid down in perfect lines.
The charge was getting closer to the Confederate lines, the blaze of rifle fire atop the crest a continual thunder sweeping up and down the length of the parapet On the extreme left, this second wave finally broke over the bastion built around the ruins of the mill complex, the Confederate regiment within swarmed under in a frenzy of clubbed muskets and bayonet thrusts, the survivors scrambling out the back of the bastion and running up to the main line, their enraged attackers coming on behind them.
If someone could have hovered far above the battle and -not seen the minute details, they might have assumed that this charge would indeed break over the top. Yet within the ranks of the charge, the sheer volume of fire coming down upon them was having a deadly effect It seemed that with every step another man went down in every company of every regiment Officers screamed themselves hoarse shouting for the men to keep closing on the colors, to follow the colors, the torn flags in many places nothing more than dim shadows in a surreal Stygian twilight of smoke and fire.
The air actually felt hot from all the fire. Men's legs felt like rubber both from fear and from exhaustion after the long run up the slope. The pace slowed and yet it was so maddeningly close, not fifty yards away in many places; one bulge, led by a couple of Ohio regiments of Carroll's brigade of Hays's division of the Second Corps, literally got up to the edge of the breastworks and there leveled their rifles, firing a scathing volley into the enemy from less than fifteen feet away. This caused a momentary breech in the line, the surviving Confederates diving down for cover, or breaking, pulling back out of the trench.
The flag bearer of one of the Ohio regiments stood atop the breastworks, waving the national colors before going down, struck by three rounds in a matter of seconds. As he fell, the colors dropped into the trench, and the Ohioans piled in, desperate to retrieve their precious colors.
In many places regimental commanders called for volley fire, slower perhaps than independent fire, but far more devastating psychologically when striking into an enemy so close that you literally could catch glimpses of the whites of their eyes.
Along the Confederate front a madness took hold as well. Gone was any sense of compassion, of admiration of the higher ideals that many spoke of. Now it was a killing frenzy, a rage at those who kept pressing in, not letting them rest not letting them breathe just a few gulpfuls of fresh air. Men began to curse wildly, slamming charges down barrels thick with gummy residue after having fired thirty to forty • rounds or more.
Ammunition carriers staggered down the line, passing out packets of ten cartridges, which men stuffed into their pockets. A shell struck one of these carrying parties, the two men dying instantly, the thousand rounds in the heavy wooden box going off like firecrackers.