It's around 0730 on the sunny, already-humid morning of July 1, 1863

July 3, 2021 10:01 AM

The fighting on Blocher's Knoll, Barlow's position, is brutal & fierce. 19-year old Bayard Wilkeson, commanding Battery G, 4th US Artillery, is unhorsed by a rebel shell, his leg horrifically mangled. Still directing the fire of his guns, he amputates his own leg with a penknife

One detail that stood out for me from Angry Staff Officer's currently still ongoing retelling of the Battle of Gettysburg
posted by MartinWisse (11 comments total)

That's some penknife.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:07 AM on July 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

...or not much of a leg
posted by DangerIsMyMiddleName at 11:21 AM on July 3, 2021 [7 favorites]

19 years old, in charge of a gun battery, and still directing the battery's fire. Wow.
posted by me & my monkey at 11:40 AM on July 3, 2021 [4 favorites]

Hardcore!
posted by kirkaracha at 11:44 AM on July 3, 2021

More info:

A conspicuous target on his white horse, an enemy shell went through Wilkeson’s horse and mangled his right leg below the knee. With unimaginable courage, he took a small knife from his pocket and cut through the remaining pieces of flesh that kept his leg attached to his body. He then ordered four of his men to carry him to a nearby house, and then sent them to return to battle. 11th Corps artillery chief Maj. Thomas W Osborn met Bayard being carried to the rear. "One leg had been cut off at the knee by a cannon shot," he recalled, "I knew at a glance that the wound was fatal." Wilkeson lay in the cellar of what became a makeshift hospital with wounded from both sides, but with little medical staff.

His father Samuel Wilkeson was a New York Times war correspondent with the Army of the Potomac.

[He] found the young lieutenant lifeless in the cellar of a now-bustling field hospital. The elder Wilkeson later recalled, “a Negro woman and also an Irish woman [who] occasionally visited the room in which Bayard laid, said that after a while he became weak and suffered dreadful pains, moaning and groaning and calling loudly upon his father and his mother, writhing in tortures most horrible, and so continued till about 10 o’clock when he died.”
...
However, Samuel Wilkeson also learned that his son had performed one last noble act before his death. In his last several hours, Bayard Wilkeson supposedly lent his canteen to a suffering man lying on the floor next to him. This, along with numerous other testimonials from Bayard’s superiors, among them his corps commander Oliver Otis Howard, would affirm the lieutenant’s bravery and courage for a 19-year old officer.
...
On the evening of July 4th, the body of his son by his side, Wilkeson would finally begin to write his story on the events of the battle. His now famous introduction flagrantly displays the writer’s newly felt anguish and despair in its first few lines, which read, “Who can write the history of a battle whose eyes are immovably fastened upon a central figure of transcendingly absorbing interest — the dead body of an oldest born son, crushed by a shell in a position where a battery should never have been sent, and abandoned to death in a building where surgeons dared not to stay?”

posted by kirkaracha at 12:05 PM on July 3, 2021 [8 favorites]

Did anyone else here follow the Civil War Gazette as it went along through the war from 2011 to 2015?
posted by Fukiyama at 12:22 PM on July 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

Some classic lines -
"in front the grand old ensign that first waved in battle at Saratoga in 1777, and which these people coming would rob of half its stars, stood up, and the west wind kissed it as the sergeants sloped its lance towards the enemy."
"I believe that not one above whom it then waved but blessed his God that he was loyal to it, and whose heart did not swell with pride towards it, as the emblem of the Republic before that treason’s flaunting rag in front."
posted by phigmov at 1:06 PM on July 3, 2021 [3 favorites]

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
posted by scruss at 2:14 PM on July 3, 2021 [1 favorite]

Angry Staff Officer:

"We interrupt today's Gettysburg tweetstorm to bring you the most quality of content: cats in hammocks on board warships."
posted by clavdivs at 2:49 PM on July 3, 2021 [2 favorites]

Nice thread, thanks for sharing it.

Describing the turning point of Pickett’s Charge 158 years ago today, Angry Staff Officer tweets:

Several hundred Confederates are over the wall at the angle, including General Armistead, Hancock's pre-war friend, who is shot down at Cushing's guns. The 72nd PA, held in reserve, charges forward in a melee at the angle, as reserve regiments surge to seal the gap

As quickly as it began, Pickett's charge is over. The attackers have left half their number dead and wounded on the field, thousands being taken into captivity….

It’s possible he’s just glossing over the details because Twitter, but since he’s very familiar with the battlefield he may have internalized an incorrect history of the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment based on their monument near the rock wall on the battlefield. The details are interesting because they tell a story about how even the good guys use monuments to tell self-serving lies about the Civil War.

The 72nd Pennsylvania was part of a brigade which also included the 69th and 71st Pennsylvania infantry regiments as well as Alonzo Cushing’s Battery A, the brigade was commanded by Brig. Gen. Alexander Webb. Webb placed the 72nd Pennsylvania in reserve behind the crest of Cemetery Ridge, about 100 yards back from the rest of the brigade which formed the front line along the rock wall, from “The Angle” (literally an angle in the wall) to the copse of trees (the target of Pickett’s advance). When the 71st Pennsylvania started falling back as Confederate Brig. Gen. Lewis Armistead’s men were approaching the wall, Webb called on the 72nd Pennsylvania to counter-charge to support their front line position. They didn’t budge:

As the Confederates approached the wall, Webb went over to the 72nd and urged them forward. So did Captain Charles H. Banes, the brigade’s adjutant. The regiment reportedly did not move. Webb said he attempted to grab the flag from the color-bearer and personally lead the regiment forward, but the man refused to let go.  Frustrated, Webb moved over to the 69th Pennsylvania.

Webb essentially yoloed it and charged into battle without the 72nd, he was able to rally the 69th and 71st to hold off long enough for reinforcement from several other regiments to arrive from elsewhere along the line (including the 19th and 20th Massachusetts, the 42nd and 59th New York, and the 7th Michigan). Webb was wounded in battle and was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his personal gallantry in repulsing the assault. The 72nd Pennsylvania is said by many witnesses to have arrived after the fighting had completed, Capt. Barnes testified, “The fight was all over when they went down to the front.”

But the men of the 72nd claimed they were they to there to repel the charge, they were unsatisfied with their monument marking their spot behind Cemetery Ridge and they lobbied for another monument along the rock wall on the front lines between the monuments to the 69th and 71st. It ended up turning into a bitter legal battle over the rules of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association. A 72nd veteran was even arrested for trespass for digging out the foundation in the site near The Angle they wanted their memorial which did not conform to the GBMA rules.

The 72nd prevailed, they built another memorial on the front lines, and it’s a stunner, you might recognize it from Pennsylvania’s 2011 America the Beautiful quarter. But it’s probably a lie, by most accounts the 72nd disregarded orders and missed the fighting. Veterans of the 72nd wrote themselves back into the fight by putting up a statue of their bravery in hand-to-hand combat decades later. If you visit the site of the engagement that turned out to be the symbolic turning point of the Civil War and read the monuments, you wouldn’t know any better.
posted by peeedro at 9:39 PM on July 3, 2021 [5 favorites]

The 72nd prevailed, they built another memorial on the front lines, and it’s a stunner

Wow, that's a great memorial and an awesome photo.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:57 PM on July 3, 2021