The guns swung about, dismounted, and in less than a minute opened up, pounding the bastion with solid shot and case shot.

And then the heavy hundred-pounder erupted. There was a brilliant flash, four seconds later a thunderclap roar as the shell hit the ground just forward of the slope, sending a geyser of dirt and mud a hundred feet into the air, dropping several gunners.

In the fields behind the slope the first wave of infantry was beginning to advance. There was no cheering, just grim determination.

He could no longer contain himself. Turning about, he raced down the slope and reached the left flank of his advancing line, the few battered men of Hood. Standing in his stirrups, he drew his saber.

"Come on, boys, come on!" he roared. "Win this one and we are back in Old Virginia. Virginia, boys, covered with glory for all that we have done. Do this and victory is still ours!"

There was a desperate tone to his voice, conveyed to the men.

"I am with you, boys."

He turned about, taking the lead, as the battered battalions, fifty to a hundred men behind each flag, swept forward, and for some the dream was still alive. Win this one and we are across the water, safe, to live another day, perhaps to still win this war.

4:45 P.M.

Sergeant Major Robinson was at the fore of his regiment. Seventy-two men left, according to roll call just before going in. Seventy-two men gathered round one tattered flag. But at the sight of Lee their hearts were full. If Lee was before them, then victory was still before them. They marched up the slope, guns silhouetted at the top of the crest, wreathed in smoke, pounding away, every few minutes a terrible explosion erupting along the line. Robinson looked to his right. Other regiments were coming forward: He saw the men of the Fourth Texas, not more than a hundred, a few score with the Second Texas. Next to them men of a brigade he didn't know, most likely some of Beauregard's men.

Gone were the days when Hood's Texans went forward in their glory, thousands of them, their wild cheer, the knowledge that when they went forward all would flee before them.

But Lee was in the front. What waited ahead, after the nightmare of yesterday, could not be anywhere near so bad.

"Come on, boys!" Robinson roared. "Do you want to live forever?"

5:00 P.M.

The first wave of the charge crested the slope and Win-field Scott Hancock stood silent, field glasses raised. If what was coming forward was a beaten army, it most certainly did not look so at this instant.

Though ragged, their lines were coming forward. He looked about the bastion. Gunners were in place, orders shouted to shift fire from the enemy guns to the infantry, fuses cut to two seconds. The bastion on the far side of the Monocacy was opening with enfilade, thirty-pound shells bursting in air. "Stand clear!"

Hancock stepped back and covered his ears. The hundred-pounder lit off, its heavy shell screaming down-range, bursting in the air two seconds later, dropping several dozen of the advancing infantry.

"Reload with canister!"

He was about to shout a countermand, but then realized these men knew their business. The heavy monster took minutes to reload, and by that time the waves of infantry would be in range. Four twenty-five-pound bags of canister and grape were loaded into the barrel, over a thousand iron balls, propelled by thirty pounds of powder. One gun with the firepower of two batteries of Napoleons.

The charge was coming closer, still out of rifle range. He caught a glimpse of an officer mounted on a gray horse, turned his field glasses on him. My God, it was Lee himself. He was surrounded by a half dozen cavalryman, who were forcibly pushing before him, holding him back.

That revealed much. Lee was here, and he was desperate, wanting to lead this mad charge.

All the guns were loaded with canister, and they waited.

The charge was down to three hundred yards and then started to hit the edge of the entrapments, men tripping into spider holes, falling, lines breaking apart as they pushed through rows of sharpened stakes and tangled piles of brush.

Three hundred yards. "Stand clear!"

He stepped back again and the hundred-pound Parrott recoiled with a thunderclap.

The hurricane of iron swept through the ranks of the Texans. Dozens dropped from the blast of the great Parrott.gun. It looked as if the entire Fourth Texas went down from just that single blast.

Lee was no longer in front of them. A cavalry colonel and his men were forcing him back in spite of his protests.

They were down to two hundred yards and something spontaneous now happened up and down this line of hard, bitter veterans. They knew that the next two minutes would decide their fate forever.

They had been in enough charges to know that moment when, if but one man wavered, if a foolish officer shouted for them to stop, to return fire, they would be slaughtered. Their only hope was to charge! To charge with mad abandon, the way they had at Gaines Mill, Groveton, Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, Taneytown, Gunpowder River. To stand out here even for a few minutes longer was death. "Charge!"

The cry was picked up. It wasn't the officers, it was the men, the veterans, the final chosen few, who knew that if there was any hope of personal survival, any hope of getting back across the river, any hope of their cause surviving, it had to be now.

Robinson was in the fore, looking back, screaming for his men to charge, to run straight at them, to get over the wall and into the fort.

The wavering line took strength and set off in a wild run. Spontaneously, driven by no one mind, but imbued with the spirit of the general who watched them, whose face was streaming tears, they sprinted across the open field, dozens dropping, falling into the spider traps, knocked over by volleys fired from the battlement walls.

And then he saw the heavy guns rolling forward in their embrasures, barrels cranked down. "Texas!"

The four thirty-pounders and the hundred-pounder recoiled-and hundreds dropped.

Robinson was jerked off his feet, thrown backward, his left side numb. He looked to his shoulder, his arm shredded, nearly gone. Beside him was the flag bearer of the First Texas, colors on the ground beside him, the man dead.

His flag, his beloved flag. The one he had carried for a few minutes at Fort Stevens, the one in his hand when he had stopped Robert E. Lee at Taneytown. His flag… his beloved flag.

As if in a dream he stood up, picked up the flag from the mud.

'Texas!"

He wasn't sure if any were behind him now. The crest of the bastion was ablaze with fire. 'Texas!"

He went down into the muddy moat and crawled up the slope of the fort, using the flag as a staff to keep himself upright.

My God, give me the strength to do this today. All other thoughts were disappearing, of his wife, of his young son Seth, at fifteen wanting to join the army, of his three-year-old baby girl, of his home. It was now just the flag he carried, praying that someone, anyone, was still behind him.

He reached the top of the slope, planting the flag atop the crest.

There was a brief, an all-so-brief moment when he looked down the length of the battle, dreaming that dozens of flags like his, from Arkansas, Georgia, Virginia, and the Carolinas crowned the heights, the way they had so many times before.

His was the only one.

"Sergeant!"

He looked down. A Yankee officer, a general leaning on a cane, had pistol raised, pointed straight at him. "It's over, Sergeant."

He collapsed inside the wall of the fort, colors falling over with him as he clutched the staff.