"Your soldier's heart almost stood still as he watched those sons of Erin fearlessly rush to their death. The brilliant assault on Marye's Heights of their Irish Brigade was beyond description. Why, my darling, we forgot they were fighting us, and cheer after cheer at their fearlessness went up all along our lines." - General George Pickett in a letter to his fiancée
It was on one of those terrifically hot, motionless country days that only happen in places like southern Pennsylvania that I came upon the striking monument.
Formed of a mass of bronze carved into a towering Celtic cross, it sits on a boulder of a granite that gives it an imposing height.
A shamrock is set in the heart of the cross; below it, three circles with the numbers "63," "69," and "88" inside to represent each of the brigade's regiments. A shield and harp are embossed closer the bottom, and at the base, a bronzed Irish wolfhound lay.
Not far from that spot, almost exactly 148 years before, the 532 surviving members of the Army of the Potomac's legendary Irish Brigade received orders to move forward to support a crumbling salient in the Union army line. To a man, they knew what that meant.
They'd numbered 2,200 when first formed two years earlier in New York City by the Irish Republican Thomas Meagher, and it was he who had led them through some of the most brutal battles in American history.
The unit had distinguished itself accordingly - always, when other men had faltered, the Irish had advanced, gallantly marching forward under rippling emerald flags as if unaware of the hail of bullets combing the air around them.
But that gallantry had come with a price.
They'd lost 1,400 men in a single day during the ghastly assault on Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg seven months earlier, and it was there that Robert E. Lee coined the phrase "Fighting 69th" as he watched that regiment break upon the stone wall manned by his southerners.
Just three months prior to that at Antietam, at a place known now as "Bloody Lane," they'd stormed a sunken road by charging into a withering fire that would kill two out of three men in two regiments.
By Gettysburg, less than a quarter of the original number remained, and every man, from brigade commander Colonel Patrick Kelly to the lowest infantryman, had taken part in every northern offensive that had been guaranteed to keep the reaper occupied.
And on that equally hot, motionless summer day in July of 1863, as the Irishmen waited to cross into immortality in one of the great battles in history, the unit chaplain, Father William Corby, mounted a large boulder to begin a ceremony that one Union officer later called "awe-inspiring."
Other soldiers watched as the entire brigade dropped to its knees and, to a menacing soundtrack of rifle fire and booming cannons, Corby gave the general absolution to the all-Catholic brigade (at that time, still a rarity.)
"Dominus noster Jesus Christus te absolvat," he began, and as the soldiers made the sign of the cross on themselves, many knew that those were their last moments on Earth. For a unit of those who'd been called "lions in any fight, be it on the battlefield or in the barroom," it must have been some comfort.
"No doubt many a prayer from men of Protestant faith who could conscientiously not bow the knee went up to God in that impressive moment," a Pennsylvania soldier later wrote of the spectacle.
And like men, when the absolution was over, they rose up off their knees and charged headlong into war's gruesome maelstrom once more - and stopped the Confederate advance cold.
As always, they paid dearly for their temerity; over half would never leave that place, which is now referred to as simply "The Wheatfield."
148 years later, all is quiet on the green fields of Gettysburg, and all that remains of the Irish Brigade is that one magnificent cross that looms in mute witness to the intrepid bravery of those "fearless sons of Erin."
But though the rest of the brigade is gone, the "Fighting 69th" has somehow endured. The regiment fondly known as "Mrs. Meagher's Own" marched forward to the strains of the Garryowen not only in the Civil War, but also at the Second Battle of the Marne and the Battle of Chateau-Thierry in World War I, at Saipan and Okinawa in World War II.
They were among the first military units to respond to the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, and were later deployed to Iraq, where they suffered a hundred casualties during "Operation Wolfhound" - so named for their mascot.
And this Saturday, in the greatest city in the world, the soldiers of the Fighting 69th will march proudly, wolfhounds in tow, down Fifth Avenue to lead off the St. Patrick's Day Parade as they have always done.
I hope that somehow, somewhere, those old souls, those "bravest of the brave," can tip their spectral hats and know that over the centuries, the Gaelic motto inscribed on the bottom of their old green flag still rings true: "Riamh Nar Dhruid O Spairn Iann" - "Those who never retreated from the clash of spears."
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
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