L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

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[259] Ridge. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes go by like a reluctant century. The batteries roll like a drum; between the second and last lines of rebel works is the torrid zone of the battle; the hill sways up like a wall before them at an angle of forty-five degrees, but our brave mountaineers are clambering steadily on-up-upward still! You may think it strange, but I would not have recalled them if I could. They would have lifted you, as they did me, in full view of the heroic grandeur: they seemed to be spurning the dull earth under their feet, and going up to do Homeric battle with the greater gods.

And what do those men follow? If you look you shall see that the thirteen thousand are not a rushing herd of human creatures; that along the Gothic roof of the Ridge a row of inverted Vs is slowly moving up in line, a mighty lettering on the hill's broad side. At the angles of those Vs is something that glitters like a wing. Your heart gives a great bound when you think what it is-the regimental flag-and glancing along the front count fifteen of those colors that were borne at Pea Ridge, waved at Shiloh, glorified at Stone River, riddled at Chickamauga. Nobler than Caesar's rent mantle are they all! And up move the banners, now fluttering like a wounded bird, now faltering, now sinking out of sight. Three times the flag of one regiment goes down. And you know why. Three dead color-sergeants lie just there, but the flag is immortal-thank God!-and up it comes again, and the Vs move on. At the left of Wood, three regiments of Baird-Turchin, the Russian thunderbolt, is there-hurl themselves against a bold point strong with rebel works; for a long quarter of an hour