80.

This was the first battle I’d ever directly witnessed. I suppose I had imagined men in pressed blue uniforms whirling sabers in the air, calling other men on to a glorious attack. It was nothing like that at all. At Gettysburg I saw soldiers pressed forth into withering fire, muskets popping and blasting, the oncoming men knowing not which way they should run. I saw the guns chew the land up and spit out corpses, flinging them high in the air. I saw much blood; and many dead men, far more than I could stomach. They lay in heaps, or strewn about the field as if they’d been lead soldiers, tossed aside by a bored and impatient child. They were hauled back behind the line when it was possible, which was rarely, and there stacked like cordwood. The wounded far outnumbered them, but the sight of these was almost worse. So many men begging for water, for a surgeon, and so few of those to go around. There was always some man screaming his last, and some other begging him to shut his mouth and be quiet.

This was the second day of the battle, which had been running hot all day. Lee held the northwest, and all of Seminary Ridge while we faced him across a sunken roadway from the top of Cemetery Ridge. Rebels came roaring up that incline, their weapons high, their packs swinging, and they were chopped down like wheat at harvest. As they ran they screeched and hollered and bleated out the worst noise I have ever heard. This was the famed “Rebel Yell,” and its design was to strike fear into our hearts. It worked well enough on me.

—THE PAPERS OF WILLIAM PITTENGER