General Gordon sent for the captains of two of his largest batteries.
"Train every gun you've got," he said, "on that man and horse. He's doing more damage than a whole Yankee regiment."
Quietly the guns of the two far-apart positions were swung around until they all pointed directly at that horseman against the sky. A white handkerchief was waved from the farthest battery and with a crash every gun went off. When the smoke cleared away, man and horse were down, the guns dismounted and the gunners killed. The Confederate forces swept on their way unchecked across the field that had been swept and winnowed by Wilkeson's deadly guns. As they went over the crest, they found him under his dead horse and surrounded by his dead gunners still alive but desperately wounded. He was carried in to the Allen House along with their own wounded and given what attention was possible, which was little enough. It was plain to be seen that he was dying. Suffering from that choking, desperate thirst which attacks every wounded man who has lost much blood he faintly asked for water. There was no water to be had, but finally one of the Confederate officers in charge managed to get a full canteen off a passing soldier. Wilkeson stretched out his hands for what meant more to him than anything else in the world. Just then a wounded Confederate soldier next to him cried out, "For God's sake give me some."
Wilkeson stopped with the canteen half to his mouth and then by sheer force of will passed it over to the other. In his agonizing thirst the wounded Confederate drank every drop before he could stop himself. Horror-stricken he turned to apologize. The young lieutenant smiled at him, turned slightly—and was gone. It took more courage to give up that flask of cold water than to fight his battery against the whole Confederate Army.
The hero-folk on that great day were not all men and boys. Among the many, many monuments that crowd the field of Gettysburg there is one of a young girl carved from pure translucent Italian marble. It is the statue of Jennie Wade, the water-carrier for many a wounded and dying soldier during two of those days of doom. Although she knew it not, Jennie was following in the footsteps of another woman, that unknown wife of a British soldier at the Battle of Saratoga in the far-away Revolutionary days. When Burgoyne's army was surrounded at Saratoga, some of the women and wounded men were sent for safety to a large house in the neighborhood where they took refuge in the cellar. There they crouched for six long days and nights while the cannon-balls crashed through the house overhead. The cellar became crowded with wounded and dying men who were suffering agonies from thirst. It was only a few steps to the river, but the house was surrounded by Morgan's sharp-shooters and every man who ventured out with a bucket was shot dead. At last the wife of one of the soldiers offered to go and in spite of the protests of the men ventured out. The American riflemen would not fire upon a woman and again and again she went down to the river and brought back water to the wounded in safety.
Jennie Wade was a girl of twenty who lived in a red-brick house right in the path of the battle. They could not move to a safer place, for her married sister was there with a day-old baby, so the imprisoned family was in the thick of the battle. Recently when the old roof was taken off to be repaired, over two quarts of bullets were taken from it. During the first day, Jennie's mother moved her daughter and her baby so that her head rested against the foot of the bed. She had no more been moved than a bullet crashed through the window and struck the pillow where her head had lain an instant before. While her mother watched her daughter and the baby, Jennie carried water to the soldiers on the firing-line. At the end of the first day fifteen soldiers lay dead in the little front yard and all through that weary day and late into the night Jennie was going back and forth filling the canteens of the wounded and dying soldiers as they lay scattered on that stricken field. Throughout the second day she kept on with this work and many and many a wounded soldier choking with thirst lived to bless her memory. On this day a long procession of blue-clad men knocked at the door of the house asking for bread until the whole supply was gone. After dark on the second day, Jennie mixed up a pan of dough and set it out to rise. She got up at daybreak and as she was lighting a fire, a hungry soldier-boy knocked at the door and asked for something to eat. Jennie started to mix up some biscuit and as she stood with her sleeves rolled up and her hands in the dough, a minie ball cut through the door and she fell over dead without a word. Her statue stands as she must have appeared during those first two days of battle. In one hand she carries a pitcher and over her left arm are two army-canteens hung by their straps. Not the least of the heroic ones of that battle was Jennie Wade who died while thus engaged in homely, helpful services for her country.
These are the stories of but a few who fought at Gettysburg that men might be free and that their country might stand for righteousness. The spirit of that battle has been best expressed in a great poem by Will H. Thompson with which we end these stories of some of the brave deeds of the greatest battle of the Civil War.
HIGH TIDE AT GETTYSBURG
A cloud possessed the hollow field,
The gathering battle's smoky shield;