Unshoveled path tells somber tale

There is a tiny piece of Maine in the rolling hills of southern Pennsylvania.

The spot was won with the blood, courage and lives of the “Tenacious Maine 20th,” as the Gettysburg battlefield monument states. Here on July 3, 1863, Joshua Chamberlain led the Maine 20th to fight off a brutal assault by the 15th Alabama, led by Col. William Oates.

The 20th Maine was assigned to the extreme left flank of the Union forces. If they failed, the bloody battle would have been lost. If the North lost that battle, “Today, there would be three countries: the North, the South and the West,” according to Gettysburg tour guide Jack Hoke.

But the one-hour tour of the snow-covered battlefield last week did not include Little Round Top, where the Maine men fought and died. The path to the monument remained unshoveled.

The tour concentrated on Big Round Top, instead. Hoke explained that the role of Chamberlain’s unit was “exaggerated” by movies and books.

“The movie was not really the truth. Chamberlain was actually in reserve. It’s only a movie. It’s all hype. But it gets people to come here,” he said while driving the tour bus.

I certainly am no historian, but it would be hard to “exaggerate” the role of Chamberlain and the Maine unit. Their orders were to “hold the ground at all hazards” and that they did, with 38 killed or “mortally wounded” and 93 more wounded out of 358 soldiers on that brutal July afternoon.

That was nothing compared to the carnage in the 15th Alabama, which lost 343 men and 19 officers, about half the unit. Col. Oates’ own brother was shot six times. Oates said after the battle that “the dead literally covered the ground.”

Historians said the rocks of Little Round Top held pools of blood from both sides. As the battle raged, the Maine unit ran out of ammunition and Chamberlain called for a bayonet charge. As Chamberlain said in his memoirs, “The word [bayonet] was enough. It ran like fire from man to man and rose into a shout.”

After hearing about the historic battle for decades, a visit to Gettysburg seemed an obvious detour on the annual trek to baseball spring training games.

The gravity of history hangs over the famous battlefield like a fog. It is as quiet as a church. Even a brief tour will touch any heart for the lives lost here.

Every account seems to differ, but more than 50,000 men and 5,000 horses died here in the greatest battle ever conducted on American soil. It was the turning point of the Civil War, even if it lasted two more years. Both sides lost just over 25,000 men, but that loss was irreplaceable for the outmanned Confederates, even if they were led by the brilliant Gen. Robert E. Lee. Lee had hoped to capture Harrisburg, the northernmost incursion by Southern troops, when the battle started, almost by accident.

The South lost an estimated 10,000 soldiers in the infamous Pickett’s charge across a glorious wheat field.

The cannon battle was so furious that it could be heard in Philadelphia. The carnage was so great that holes were drilled in the makeshift hospital in barns and houses, to let the blood out.

At least 1,000 men are missing on the battlefield. Every few years, another body is found in a shallow grave, as if the soldiers were struggling to get back to their battlefield. There are endless ghost stories about the lonely battlefield.

The Oak Ridge Peace Memorial at Gettysburg holds a gas flame to commemorate the men from both armies who died here. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, visited the memorial just a few weeks before Kennedy was assassinated. It was here that Jackie got the idea for the eternal flame monument that now graces Kennedy’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery.

The house where President Abraham Lincoln wrote his immortal Gettysburg Address remains standing, although the exact spot where he gave the speech is lost. The speech did not create much interest at the time, since the war still was raging.

He said, “We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who gave their lives that that nation may live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.”

That battlefield includes a tiny piece of Maine, at Little Round Top.

Maybe it should be added to the tour.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.