That small deadly space
3 July 2026 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dime_novel_heroIn Ron Maxwell’s 1993 film “Gettysburg”, Longstreet describes to the spy Harrison what to expect on this the third day of the battle, what would become known as Pickett’s Charge. If his description is insufficient to impress upon the viewer the carnage that is about to unfold, Maxwell’s direction and a thousand middle aged reenactors hauling their fat asses across that field with static camera shots and the occasional repetitive stunt work only enhances the inadequacy of Longstreet’s prediction.
Actually standing on that battlefield, looking across that mile of open ground, you can begin to understand but, even then, just the space itself is not enough to make it real. You need the context. You need the details. Without having cannons and rifles firing at you, there needs to be, unfortunately, a lot of math.
On the afternoon of July 3rd, 1863, approximately 14,000 Confederate soldiers stepped out of the treeline on Seminary Ridge and began advancing across the field. That field was, at it’s center, about three quarters of a mile across but, as the Confederate line stretched nearly a mile end to end, those soldiers on the right flank faced a distance of a mile and three quarters. If you are able to visit the battlefield, you will find the National Park Service has a grassy path available for you to cross at a distance of a little less than a mile
1,500 yards.
Imagine yourself and a busload or so of tourists stepping out onto the field to recreate Pickett’s Charge. Seventy-five of you lining up next to Robert E. Lee’s statue. There is a fence to your left that points the way. You form up on grass but ahead on the left, on the other side of the fence, is a wheat field. To the right is some corn. Straight ahead in the distance is a low rise. The monuments stand out white but the rest is just a blur. Your destination is a clump of trees.
When I was in high school I was in a championship high school marching band and when I walk to exercise at lunchtime, I still move at the pace and gait I learned then; 8 steps in 5 yards at 110 beats per minute. A brisk 3 mph that is common for all parades and infantry marching manuals. The crossing will take you a little over an hour. You step off.
Then the cannon open up.
Union artillery batteries average 6 guns per battery though, with the losses of previous days, the 29 batteries on Cemetery Ridge is somewhat underpowered. There are about 115 guns active. And though they are spread out over a mile of the ridge, with you at the center of the line, they can all come to bear on you. The guns are an assortment of different calibers but most are 3 inch Ordinance Rifles and 12lb Napoleons, firing 9 pound and, of course, 12 pound solid shot or exploding shells. Firing all at once, the ridgeline explodes silently with fire and white smoke. Three and a half seconds later, the iron balls rip through the line. A man struck by a cannonball looses whatever it was that was struck. An arm. A leg. His head. The rest of the body doesn’t even have time to react and simply drops where it is. Struck in the chest and he ceases to exist. A half second later, the thunderous report.
Advance.
In thirty seconds, you will have taken 55 steps. Thirty-four yards. The artillerymen on the distant ridge have reloaded and fired again. Another half-ton of iron arrives. This will repeat 40 times.
Half an hour.
You haven’t been able to keep that brisk marching pace, what with the nearly 90 degree heat and ton of hot death raining down on you every minute. But you have made it three-quarters of a mile to the Emmetsburg Road. On the near side, there is a fence you have to climb over. The road beyond is slightly sunken so it might provide some cover, but another fence to climb over is just beyond that.
Climbing over the fence, the infantry opens fire.
Two hundred yards ahead is a low stone wall and behind that are federal infantry. A regiment might normally be composed of a thousand soldiers but, with attrition over the course of the war and the previous days’ battles, a regiment might field several hundred. The 71st Pennsylvania Regiment is behind that wall with 331 men, most just behind the wall but several companies further up the hill. At two hundred yards you see them as a blurry line of blue behind the stone wall. A good, well ordered soldier can load and fire his musket three times in a minute. With four lines firing in sequence, three score rounds every 5 seconds.
This close to the wall, you are no longer under the murderous gaze of the entire ridge line of artillery. Instead, there are only a few batteries with you in their sights, a battery 50 yards back from the wall and to the right, another straight ahead but further back atop the rise. They have, however, switched over to canister shot; 9 pounds of thumb-sized iron balls fired like a shotgun, shredding a dozen soldiers at a time. They are still firing every thirty seconds and, should they feel the inclination, might fire double canister.
Two hundred yards to the wall.
As you are in range of Federal infantry, so too are they in range of your guns. After a half hour of walking across that hellish field with your rifle on your shoulder, you line up after crossing the fences and the road to finally return fire. Reload. Fire again. Ten, twenty, fourty times.
You stand, fire, and advance for 15 minutes.
But you are still a hundred yards from the wall. You can see their faces. They can see yours as they aim and fire. Another 20 seconds, another report, another ounce of soft lead finds its target. A hundred times over. At this range with soldiers packed together, every shot is likely to hit something.
“Give ‘em the steel, boys!”
Run the last 100 yards to the wall to be met with a line of bayonets. Sixteen inches of steel. And pistols. And sabers. And fists. Blood and guts making the stone wall slippery. If you are able to push your way over the wall and the bodies you are among them now. A violent soup of blue, gray, and red. Ten horrific minutes of this and the Federals begin to fall back. Maybe a cheer goes up and for a moment it seems like the tide has turned. There are several artillery pieces there for the taking. You run up to them, turn turn them back on the Federals, but there is no more ammunition. Fifty yards ahead, the 71st Pennsylvania has reformed at the top of the rise. There is a battery of artillery that hasn’t run out of canister. Men from Delaware and Connecticut are to the left. To the right, between you and the trees that were your destination, another Pennsylvania Regiment and men from New York.
Turn around. . .
You are alone.
That busload or so of tourists that started out with you back beside the statue of Lee. . . 75 people. . . are gone. Of the 14,000 soldiers they represent, half died on that field, the rest staggered back to Seminary Ridge. You alone represent the few hundred that made it over the wall. The high tide that was never going to be enough to win the day.
“General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, by regiments, by divisions, and armies, and I should know, as well as anyone, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.”
Longstreet was right. It’s been a little over an hour since this walk began.
Look back over that wall, over that field, over that time, imagine yourself a poor Southern dirt farmer off to war and that all of this death and devastation was so that, back home, rich Southern landowners could profit through the enslavement of poor people. People just like you excepting the color of their skin.
This was the cause.
Actually standing on that battlefield, looking across that mile of open ground, you can begin to understand but, even then, just the space itself is not enough to make it real. You need the context. You need the details. Without having cannons and rifles firing at you, there needs to be, unfortunately, a lot of math.
On the afternoon of July 3rd, 1863, approximately 14,000 Confederate soldiers stepped out of the treeline on Seminary Ridge and began advancing across the field. That field was, at it’s center, about three quarters of a mile across but, as the Confederate line stretched nearly a mile end to end, those soldiers on the right flank faced a distance of a mile and three quarters. If you are able to visit the battlefield, you will find the National Park Service has a grassy path available for you to cross at a distance of a little less than a mile
1,500 yards.
Imagine yourself and a busload or so of tourists stepping out onto the field to recreate Pickett’s Charge. Seventy-five of you lining up next to Robert E. Lee’s statue. There is a fence to your left that points the way. You form up on grass but ahead on the left, on the other side of the fence, is a wheat field. To the right is some corn. Straight ahead in the distance is a low rise. The monuments stand out white but the rest is just a blur. Your destination is a clump of trees.
When I was in high school I was in a championship high school marching band and when I walk to exercise at lunchtime, I still move at the pace and gait I learned then; 8 steps in 5 yards at 110 beats per minute. A brisk 3 mph that is common for all parades and infantry marching manuals. The crossing will take you a little over an hour. You step off.
Then the cannon open up.
Union artillery batteries average 6 guns per battery though, with the losses of previous days, the 29 batteries on Cemetery Ridge is somewhat underpowered. There are about 115 guns active. And though they are spread out over a mile of the ridge, with you at the center of the line, they can all come to bear on you. The guns are an assortment of different calibers but most are 3 inch Ordinance Rifles and 12lb Napoleons, firing 9 pound and, of course, 12 pound solid shot or exploding shells. Firing all at once, the ridgeline explodes silently with fire and white smoke. Three and a half seconds later, the iron balls rip through the line. A man struck by a cannonball looses whatever it was that was struck. An arm. A leg. His head. The rest of the body doesn’t even have time to react and simply drops where it is. Struck in the chest and he ceases to exist. A half second later, the thunderous report.
Advance.
In thirty seconds, you will have taken 55 steps. Thirty-four yards. The artillerymen on the distant ridge have reloaded and fired again. Another half-ton of iron arrives. This will repeat 40 times.
Half an hour.
You haven’t been able to keep that brisk marching pace, what with the nearly 90 degree heat and ton of hot death raining down on you every minute. But you have made it three-quarters of a mile to the Emmetsburg Road. On the near side, there is a fence you have to climb over. The road beyond is slightly sunken so it might provide some cover, but another fence to climb over is just beyond that.
Climbing over the fence, the infantry opens fire.
Two hundred yards ahead is a low stone wall and behind that are federal infantry. A regiment might normally be composed of a thousand soldiers but, with attrition over the course of the war and the previous days’ battles, a regiment might field several hundred. The 71st Pennsylvania Regiment is behind that wall with 331 men, most just behind the wall but several companies further up the hill. At two hundred yards you see them as a blurry line of blue behind the stone wall. A good, well ordered soldier can load and fire his musket three times in a minute. With four lines firing in sequence, three score rounds every 5 seconds.
This close to the wall, you are no longer under the murderous gaze of the entire ridge line of artillery. Instead, there are only a few batteries with you in their sights, a battery 50 yards back from the wall and to the right, another straight ahead but further back atop the rise. They have, however, switched over to canister shot; 9 pounds of thumb-sized iron balls fired like a shotgun, shredding a dozen soldiers at a time. They are still firing every thirty seconds and, should they feel the inclination, might fire double canister.
Two hundred yards to the wall.
As you are in range of Federal infantry, so too are they in range of your guns. After a half hour of walking across that hellish field with your rifle on your shoulder, you line up after crossing the fences and the road to finally return fire. Reload. Fire again. Ten, twenty, fourty times.
You stand, fire, and advance for 15 minutes.
But you are still a hundred yards from the wall. You can see their faces. They can see yours as they aim and fire. Another 20 seconds, another report, another ounce of soft lead finds its target. A hundred times over. At this range with soldiers packed together, every shot is likely to hit something.
“Give ‘em the steel, boys!”
Run the last 100 yards to the wall to be met with a line of bayonets. Sixteen inches of steel. And pistols. And sabers. And fists. Blood and guts making the stone wall slippery. If you are able to push your way over the wall and the bodies you are among them now. A violent soup of blue, gray, and red. Ten horrific minutes of this and the Federals begin to fall back. Maybe a cheer goes up and for a moment it seems like the tide has turned. There are several artillery pieces there for the taking. You run up to them, turn turn them back on the Federals, but there is no more ammunition. Fifty yards ahead, the 71st Pennsylvania has reformed at the top of the rise. There is a battery of artillery that hasn’t run out of canister. Men from Delaware and Connecticut are to the left. To the right, between you and the trees that were your destination, another Pennsylvania Regiment and men from New York.
Turn around. . .
You are alone.
That busload or so of tourists that started out with you back beside the statue of Lee. . . 75 people. . . are gone. Of the 14,000 soldiers they represent, half died on that field, the rest staggered back to Seminary Ridge. You alone represent the few hundred that made it over the wall. The high tide that was never going to be enough to win the day.
“General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, by regiments, by divisions, and armies, and I should know, as well as anyone, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.”
Longstreet was right. It’s been a little over an hour since this walk began.
Look back over that wall, over that field, over that time, imagine yourself a poor Southern dirt farmer off to war and that all of this death and devastation was so that, back home, rich Southern landowners could profit through the enslavement of poor people. People just like you excepting the color of their skin.
This was the cause.
