Covered with Glory: The 26th North Carolina Infantry at the Battle of Gettysburg

7. COVERED WITH GLORY

CHAPTER 7 Covered with Glory Colonel Burgwyn could see the trouble ahead. The enemy’s last volley had dropped men all along his front line, but the 26th had closed ranks and kept going. Now, however, as they emerged from the oat field and approached Willoughby Run, the men faced a swath of creekside underbrush that included dense brambles with quarter-inch thorns. The obstacles would slow down the advance, cause the men to cluster together and make the regiment an easier target for the enemy on the opposite slope. There was no choice, however, and nothing to do but press on, push through the brambles, wade the stream and reform on the other side. As the straight, gray lines continued down the slope and neared the underbrush, the troops slowed down—and were suddenly hit by a deadly spray of Federal artillery fire. Somewhere to the rear of the Iron Brigade’s position, Federal guns momentarily had a line of fire on the regiment. “The Yanks took advantage of that,” a survivor would recall, “and began killing our men like forty.”1 As men tumbled and dropped, wide gaps opened in the lines, and the advance slowed almost to a halt. Color-bearer Hiram Johnson was shot down as he waded through the briars, and the colors fell. Posted to the right of the color guard, Company F was hit hard. Eli Setser, the marble-shooter, went down at some point. He was hit several places in one arm and received a terrible wound to the thigh, which shattered the bone near the hip. His cousin, Private Joseph Setser, was also cut down by a leg wound that splintered his leg bone near the knee. Remarkably, Burgwyn was not hit and neither was Lane. Major Jones was struck by a spent shell fragment but was not seriously injured. A third color-bearer, twenty-year-old Private John Stamper of Company A, raised the flag but was quickly shot down. Another member of the color guard, thirty-year-old Private George Washington Kelly, grabbed the standard and resumed the lead. Stubbornly, the men advanced despite the fire, pushing through the underbrush, ignoring the thorny brambles and then splashing through the shallow, slippery, rock-bottomed creek toward the opposite bank. As he climbed out of Willoughby Run, Private Kelly stumbled and fell, seriously wounded in the ankle. “Get up, George, and come on,” yelled another soldier. “Can’t,” Kelly called back. “I’m hit. I believe my leg is broken.” The shell fragment Kelly believed had wounded him lay nearby, and in one of the oddities of war, he was determined to get it. “Give it to me, please,” he yelled to another soldier. “I’m going to take it home as a souvenir.” Private Larkin A. Thomas, a color-bearer from Company F, picked up the fallen flag, while the rest of the regiment splashed across the creek. Once across, the line of gun-toting men in gray paused on the creek bank to reform. At that moment—just yards away—the black-hatted troops near the base of the ridge delivered another volley of rifle fire from just yards away.2 Fire low! The Federal officers were shouting above the racket. Fire low! A cloud of thick white smoke rolled toward the 26th’s lines, which were suddenly marked by wide gaps and piles of bodies. The black-hatted fighters quickly reloaded and resumed fire, pouring a steady, deadly rain of bullets into the North Carolinians reforming on the creek bank. First Sergeant Jacob Bush of Company I tried to close up the gaps in his company’s line, motioning troops on the right and left to move in. On both sides, however, men were falling so fast he could not seem to fill the gaps. “The bullets were flying around me like hailstones in a storm,” Corporal James Dorsett would later recount. It was a scene he would never forget: “Lots of men near me were falling to the ground, throwing up their arms and clawing the earth. The whole field was covered with gray suits soaked in blood.” Dorsett too went down, hit in the chest and shoulder. Despite the savage fire, Burgwyn, Lane and Jones managed to reform the regiment into a single battle line. Disciplined by countless hours of drill, the troops braved the deadly onslaught, faced the enemy and unleashed a devastating fire.3 Blue-uniformed bodies and black hats fell to the ground...