Bullets whipped back from the Yankees. Stabs of flame showed where they fired, and Starbuck saw that the flame lances were getting closer as the attackers advanced, their progress fed by the rear ranks, who moved up to take the place of the dead. The rebels were backing away, not in panicked retreat, but step by step, keeping their line, firing and firing at the blue horde that slowly, inexorably, like men wading against an outflowing tide, was forcing its way to the cornfield’s southern edge. It was there that they stopped, not because the rebel fire grew worse, but simply because the field’s margin served as a natural boundary. Behind them was the illusory cover of what corn remained standing, while ahead of the cornfield were open pastures and rebel batteries, and the Yankee officers could not persuade their men to march into the smoky, death-swept vacancy. The rebel line had also checked, aligned now on its guns, and there the two sides stayed and traded shot for shot and death for death. The wounded hobbled back from their line, but the rebels could spare no men now to carry the injured back to the surgeons. The rebel wounded must bleed to death or else crawl on hands and knees beneath the bruising noise of the big guns.

The Georgians were bringing in reinforcements, and then Colonel Swynyard appeared behind Starbuck with the big 65th Virginia battalion. “Nate! Nate!” Swynyard was only yards away, but the noise of the battle was so great that he needed to shout. “They’re firing on the graveyard!” He pointed to the East Woods, meaning that Yankees had somehow reached the trees’ southern end and were threatening Swynyard’s reserve of ammunition. “Find out what’s happening for me!”

Swynyard feared his right flank was about to be turned, but for the moment he would hold on in the pasture where he was tumbling his battalions into the tiny space where the firefight was hottest and where he would fight his brigade as though it were one single battalion. Starbuck, running to his right, sensed that this dawn slaughter was horrendous. He could not ever remember a battle swelling into horror so fast, nor ever seeing so many wounded or dead, yet miraculously his despised battalion had stood the fire and was still standing it and still giving back as good as they got. “Well done!” he shouted at them, “well done!” No one heard him. They were deafened by the blistering noise.

He ran into the trees. A score of wounded rebels had taken shelter beneath the closest trees, and some men, even though unwounded, had joined them there, but Starbuck had no time to stir those laggards back to their duty. Instead he ran northward in the cover of the trunks to where he could hear his skirmishers fighting. They were very close by, evidence that the Yankees had indeed pushed them hard back. Truslow’s men were among Potter’s skirmishers, who in turn were mixed up with a company of Georgian skirmishers who had retreated to the trees rather than risk the canister that had been cutting the corn short, and now they all fought together. Starbuck saw Truslow reloading his rifle behind an elm tree that was scarred by bullet strikes. He dropped beside him. “What’s happening?”