This, to me, is example of Bruce Catton at his best, narrating. He is so skilled a writer, he uses only two paragraphs here, his cadence, mostly of commas and semi-colons, is nearly a run-on sentence and recreates the maniacal non-stop fighting in the separate battles within the battle on July 2.
Lee's army...struck on this day against strong points and wore itself out. It pounded the Federal left, head-on and heads-down, in a peach orchard and a wheat field and in the craggy ravines of a tumbled rock pile known as Devil's Den...
The Army of Northern Virginia tried to storm Little Round Top, fought in a gloomy valley behind that hill, swept across Emmitsburg Road to touch the crest of Cemetery Ridge, wrecking Dan Sickles' III Corps, mangling the V Corps of George Sykes, beating one division of Hancock's II Corps; and each time it came within an inch of success but had to fall back before that final inch could be gained. It took a long row of guns in the heart of the Federal position but could not hold them, and it fought once in a farm yard against massed artillery...losing at last...A division from Ewell's corps struck the Federal right on Culp's Hill, clambering up steep slopes full of young trees and fallen timber, reaching the Federal trenches, occupying parts of them, falling back down hill when rifle fire was too heavy; hanging on in the darkness, with the sputter of musketry making flickering firefly lights in the dark woods; hanging on to renew the fight at dawn. In the evening Lee's army assaulted the sagging ridge between Culp's Hill and Cemetery Hill, broke the XI Corps line in the twilight, got into Howard's artillery, and was driven off after a furious hand-to-hand fight amid the wheels of the guns. Late at night, soldiers from the two armies went to a spring beyond the Federal right to get water, recognized one another in the shaded moonlight as enemies, and fell into a meaningless fight that went on until after midnight and did not but add to the casualty lists.
There was no pattern to any of this...
Ibid, 185-86.
