My first years as a ranger/historian at Gettysburg were some
of the most rewarding of my career.

First, I was living in a legendarily historical place I’d
read about and visited with my parents since I was a child. Second, the job
consisted of being stationed at one of several battle sites throughout the park
and presenting the history once an hour, imparting tales of sacrifice, tragedy,
military events and the meaning of it all to dozens of visitors. Dozens? Let me
re-phrase: Dozens at each talk. I think I calculated, according to the average
number of people at my talks and the number of talks I gave, that I spoke to
roughly ten or eleven thousand people
that first summer. With twenty or so seasonal rangers on duty, that gives you
an idea of the numbers of people we touched.

One of my duty stations was Little Round Top. We were told not to go into too much detail, to keep descriptions of the fighting on a large scale. But on Little Round Top I couldn’t help but tell the story of the gallant men of the 20th Maine and their commander Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain. I had read The 20th Maine, the classic regimental history by John J. Pullen, and felt that the story of men holding the extreme left flank of the entire Union Army, under attack by a larger force and running out of ammunition was dramatic enough to spend a few extra minutes relating.

Periodically I’d get a family that was from Maine and they would
ask where the monument for the 20th Maine was. I would tell them to
head down the hill on the road and look for a deer path on the left and follow
it back through the woods to the monument. Nine times out of ten they would
return, having missed the turn-off or not having gone deep enough into the
woods. If I had the time before my next talk, I’d lead them back to the
monument, pushing aside the limbs and brush.

But since the publication of Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels (another classic, but in the historical fiction genre) and the movie “Gettysburg,” based upon the novel, the hardly discernible pathway has become a wide, paved, marked footpath—for that area virtually a “superhighway”—back to the monument to the now famous regiment.

(Interestingly enough, after I published my book of Chamberlain Through Blood and Fire: Selected Civil War Papers of Major General Joshua Chamberlain I was invited to Chamberlain’s home in Brunswick, Maine to an autograph session. They seated me at the table with none other than my boyhood idol, John J. Pullen. Also interestingly, I got to know Michael Shaara through an early publisher of mine. Finally, I met Jeff Shaara, Michael’s son who is the author of countless historical novels of all eras of American Military History. Small world, Gettysburg.)

Below the monument is a parking area and it is from that lot,
looking to the right of the 20th Maine monument, one can see what
appears to be a road along the backside of Little Round Top. And on days when
the front slope of the famous hill is overrun with schools groups, boy scouts
and tourists, Chamberlain Avenue, with its screen of trees, is relatively
quiet.

But that belies the fury and horror that once filled the
area.

Per standard tactical arrangement, Chamberlain placed Color
Sergeant Andrew Tozier and his color guard at the center of the regimental line.
His brigade commander, Colonel Strong Vincent, told him to hold the position at
all hazards. A look around no doubt impressed Chamberlain with the sobering fact
that they were the last troops in the line.

Chamberlain sent Company B off into the woods to your right as
you face the monument from the parking lot. (That position is also accessible
via a pathway and is identified by historical markers.) Artillery opened on
them as they got into position and it is probably at this time Chamberlain was
wounded for the first time—a shot to his right instep, painful but not
debilitating. His men were barely into a semi-circular position when the first
Confederate assault rolled up the hill.

Colonel William C. Oates’s 15th Alabama got to
within 40 yards of the Union troops on the south slope of Little Round Top when
they were met with, according to Oates, “the most destructive fire I ever
witnessed.” As this fire came from troops to the right of Chamberlain’s, Oates
began to wheel his men away from the fire to try to flank the line. The
movement brought him face-to-face with the 20th Maine. To protect
the movement toward his flank, Chamberlain bent his line back making an angle from
where the monument now stands and stretching the line dangerously thin.

Oates’s men sidled more to their right and advanced up the
slope again, this time wavering like “a man trying to walk against a strong
wind.” Some of the 20th Maine were pushed back almost to the
“hogback” ridge on that part of the hill, but then pressed back down the slope
against the enemy. Chamberlain recalled how “the edge of the conflict swayed to
and fro”—a seesaw battle for the southern spur of Little Round Top. Chamberlain
sent one of his younger soldiers to the rear with a wicked bullet wound to the
forehead “to die in peace” as he recalled. “Within a half hour, in a desperate
rally I saw that noble youth amidst the rolling smoke as an apparition from the
dead with bloody bandage for the only covering of his head, in the thick of the
fight.”

Between the Confederate assaults there were three or four
lulls as both sides re-arranged their lines—the Alabamians closing ranks where
gaps marked the fallen; the Mainers piling rocks for a little more meager protection
and pulling in the wounded and dead, stripping them of their ammunition.
Suddenly, from the hazy woods, came yet another assault.

The Confederates had moved further to their right. The
fighting was generally now along what later became Chamberlain Avenue. Oates,
in later years, referred to “ledges” along the slope of Little Round Top upon
which the Yankees made their stands and from which military expediency dictated
the Alabamians must drive them. The construction of Chamberlain Avenue was
either upon one of these “ledges” or obliterated one of them.

“I saw around me more of the enemy than of my own men,”
Chamberlain recalled. Looking back through the black powder smoke, he saw
Tozier and only two men left of the color guard standing next to him. Tozier
himself had the colors tucked under his arm and was biting off cartridges,
loading and firing as fast as he could. The three men, plugging a gap in the
center of the bent-back line, then disappeared in the smoke. Chamberlain sent
his own brother Tom to tell them to fall back a bit to close the gap on either
side of them. Tom vanished in the haze like a ghost and Chamberlain sent a
second courier in case his brother didn’t make it.

It is doubtful that Chamberlain, in the tumult, heard Oates
order “Forward, men, to the ledge!” By Oates’s count there were five rallies by
the northerners to drive him from his position. In one of the counter-attacks,
Oates saw one Union man reach for the 15th Alabama regimental colors
just ten feet away from him. An Irish Sergeant fighting for the South, drove
his bayonet into the head of the Union soldier who dared to reach for the
colors, a gruesome sight that haunted Oates the rest of his life.

Oates looked down the line just in time to see his own
brother John riddled with bullets and mortally wounded. Oates shouted an order down
the line and Captain James H. Ellison leaned closer to hear. A bullet slammed
into his head and Oates watched, horror-stricken as Ellison fell on his side,
rolled to his back, raised his clenched fists, convulsed once or twice, then
died.

The Alabamians were slowly working their way farther to their
right along the general path of what is now Chamberlain Avenue. Chamberlain
continued stretching his line thinner and thinner as they met the Confederate
flanking movement. Then, echoing through the woods behind and to either side of
him he heard the calls: ‘Ammunition!” “Cartridges, here!”

During a brief lull in the fighting, Lt. Holman Melcher
approached through the haze and requested to go out in front of his lines to
gather the wounded. Chamberlain, grasping the desperate situation, said “I am
about to order a charge.”

There is a controversy—this is Gettysburg, remember?—about
whether Chamberlain actually gave an order to charge.

We do know that he shouted, “Bayonet!” and the clink of steel
bayonets being fixed on musket barrels rattled through the woods. We also know
that Oates’s men were a few short yards away, either preparing to advance or
already in motion. The men of the 20th Maine were seasoned veterans
and they knew the situation and what was coming. Chamberlain may have called
out “Forward!” but the men never needed the order. Like the assault up
Missionary Ridge four and a half months later, each man became his own
commander and the Mainers launched themselves over their breastworks.

Yet there was seemingly some order to the charge as the
center of the line became the pivot upon which the left wing swung across
present Chamberlain Avenue and into the Confederates, driving them down the
valley between the Round Tops. Some Confederates ended up running toward
Company B in the woods. According to Chamberlain, Company B was also on the
move toward them, all of the 20th Maine then driving Oates’s men
down the valley toward Devils Den, as well as up the slope of Big Round Top.
Oates would later say that the 20th Maine’s success was due in part
because he had already ordered a retreat.

Directions to Chamberlain
Avenue: Coming from Devil’s Den or Big Round Top go to the small parking
lot on the south end of Little Round Top and park.This area is part of the
Gettysburg National Park, so be sure to adhere to the seasonal closing times.

If you are going do a paranormal investigation, keep in mind
that the NPS has designated EMF (electromagnetic field) meters as “metal
detectors” and are therefore banned from usage on the battlefield. (I have
tested the four or five different models of EMF meters I own by holding them pressed against a Civil War era Enfield
musket and a light artillery saber with no reaction from the meters whatsoever.
But why go through the hassle of having your equipment confiscated and fighting
a citation before a Federal magistrate in Pennsylvania—especially if you are
from far away.) A discrete investigation using cameras, video recorders, and audio
recorders is the way to go.

Remember, Little Round Top was the site of the two reenactors who, on a hot evening on the anniversary of the battle, were approached by a figure dressed as authentically as they had ever seen. He spoke to them, mentioning the hot day they’d all been through and handing them cartridges before vanishing back down the slope and into the tangled brush. The reenactors were astounded. These were authentic Civil War era paper cartridges, complete with lead minié ball, correctly tied string, and beeswax coating. (Objects passing from one dimension into another is not unheard of in the paranormal world—it is called an apport.) Before he left, he said, “Take these. You boys may need these tomorrow,” in what can only be seen as an otherworldly reference to them running out of ammunition on Little Round Top. (See Ghosts of Gettysburg II.)

If you attempt to gather electronic voice phenomena (EVP) you
may want to address some of the men specifically mentioned by Chamberlain in
his writings:

Sergeant George Washington Buck, Co. H, from Linneus, ME, whom
Chamberlain found mortally wounded on Little Round Top, shot in the chest. Buck
had been earlier demoted to private, unwarranted in Chamberlain’s opinion.
Chamberlain promoted him back to sergeant as he lay dying on the field.

Second Lt. Warren L. Kendall, Co. G, from Belfast, ME, killed
in action.

First Sergeant George S. Noyes, Co. K, from Pownal, ME,
killed in action.

First Sgt. Charles W. Steele, Co. H, killed in action.

First Lt. Arad H. Linscott, Co. I, from Jefferson, ME,
wounded on Little Round Top, died July 27, 1863.

I have gotten EVP on Chamberlain Ave., but even though I wrote a book about him, nothing from Colonel Joshua Chamberlain yet. I addressed Noyes, one of the men killed in action on Little Round Top, who seems to have answered on the digital recorder.