Ultimate Deathmatch: Skull-Crushing True Stories of the Most Hardcore Duels, Showdowns, Fistfights, Last Stands, Suicide Charges, and Military Engagements of All Time by Ben Thompson

Author:Ben Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

So Colonel Chamberlain, a schoolteacher in his regular life (kind of like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan), completely out of ammo and with the entire fate of the Civil War hinging on his ability to hold this line without being horribly mutilated beyond recognition, ordered the most kickass thing he could think of—he told his exhausted, wounded men to fix bayonets and prepare to stab their way into American history.

As the bloodied men from Alabama reformed their lines and began making their sixth full-speed charge up Little Round Top, they were greeted by the last thing they thought they’d ever see—a hundred guys from Maine running screaming toward them in a makeshift battle line, hollering like madmen, bayonet points glinting in the afternoon sun. This was the last straw for the Alabama boys—these exhausted warriors had already marched twenty-four miles that morning, reaching G’burg just in time to be sent straight into the battle and charge up a damned mountain five times in a row while guys shot bullets in their faces, and the sight of a hundred-bayonet-point phalanx was enough to make even these hardcore Southern-fried badasses throw up their hands and say “Screw this.” The entire Fifteenth Alabama was killed or captured on the slopes of Little Round Top.

Old Baldy, meanwhile (the man, not the horse), didn’t even get going on his end of the pincer attack at Culp’s Hill until 6:30 p.m., well after the fighting was over on Little Round Top and the fate of the day had been decided. Man, that guy was worthless.

On the third day of the battle, Robert E. Lee made the biggest tactical mistake of his otherwise untarnished career. Lee, who may or may not have been having a stroke at the time, decided that if the Union troops were as strong on the wings as they seemed, they had to be soft in the middle like an Everlasting Gobstopper. So he reasoned that a full-on attack by three divisions of infantry launched at the dead center of the Union lines would split the Yankee forces in half, roll them up, and pulverize them into a meaty blue sludge once and for all. So, after a two-hour artillery barrage by 143 Confederate guns did its best to pepper the Union troops on Cemetery Ridge with enough shrapnel to set off every metal detector in Pennsylvania, Lee ordered fifteen thousand troops from Virginia and North Carolina to form a battle line a mile long, fix bayonets, and march a mile and a half across open ground toward the enemy infantry and artillery positions. Along the way they could expect not only to be fired on by the twenty thousand troops across from them, but also to be bombarded with cannon fire from Little Round Top and possibly even Culp’s Hill. Every man out there knew this would totally suck, but that victory in the war would depend on their success here. They didn’t even complain.

With the battle cry “Up, men, and to your posts—don’t forget that you are from Old Virginia!” General George E.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.