Gettysburg, Day Three [Paperback]

Jeffry D. Wert re-creates the last day of the bloody Battle of Gettysburg in astonishing detail, taking readers from Meade's council of war to the seven-hour struggle for Culp's Hill -- the most sustained combat of the entire engagement. Drawing on hundreds of sources, including more than 400 manuscript collections, he offers brief excerpts from the letters and diaries of soldiers. He also introduces heroes on both sides of the conflict -- among them General George Greene, the oldest general on the battlefield, who led the Union troops at Culp's Hill.
A gripping narrative written in a fresh and lively style,Gettysburg, Day Threeis an unforgettable rendering of an immortal day in our country's history.Chapter 1: Night on the Battlefield

Lieutenant George G. Benedict had never heard the sound before in his life. Like his comrades in the Second Vermont Brigade, the staff officer had been a soldier less than a year, most of that time spent on garrison duty at Washington, D.C. Attached to the Army of the Potomac as it marched north toward Pennsylvania, the Vermonters faced the terribleness of combat for the first time on July 2. Now, with night's darkness across the battlefield, Benedict heard the sound that rolled over the crest of Cemetery Ridge, where he rested with his fellow soldiers, and likened it to a low, steady, indescribable moan.

It came from hundreds of voices, pleading cries for help or for water, give me water. These were the voices of war's wreckage, of dying and wounded men who lay amid the blackness. Everywhere death and maiming had walked on July 2, leaving furrows of victims in the Peach Orchard and the Wheatfield, on Little Round Top, and along Emmitsburg Road. To Benedict and the others who had been spared, the wounded men's mingled imprecations, prayers & groans...were literally heart rending.

Only the living received attention during the night of July 2-3. Aided by a moon just past full, ambulance crewsl£]