Spare a thought for the fallen Irish of Gettysburg on this July morning. People are heading from the four corners of the compass for the Pennsylvania town this week to mark the 140th anniversary of the battle that was the turning point in the American Civil War.
It could be argued that the fate of not just the United States, but of the world as we know it, was decided in the hills and fields that surround what was once little more than a cluster of white clapboard homes at a dusty crossroads about 100 miles west of Philadelphia, and 10 miles west of a another crossroads hamlet called Irishtown.
The Battle of Gettysburg was not a planned event. The Union and Confederate armies that were to fight the battle over three scorching July days had been marching around south-eastern Pennsylvania for some weeks before elements of each more or less blundered into each other on July 1 1863.
General Robert E Lee, commander of the Confederate Army of Virginia, had sent one of his divisions on a probing exercise in the general direction of Gettysburg and it came into contact with a force of Union cavalry. The early encounters went in favour of the grey-clad southerners with Union troops being pushed off two positions, McPherson Ridge and Seminary Ridge.
But the blue-clad troops had been able to buy time. Those that were in and around Gettysburg were armed with breech loading carbines. They could fire eight shots a minute to three for the musket-armed Confederate infantry.
Still, by late in the afternoon of the first day, a hot one, the Union forces were in exhausted retreat. But strong reinforcements were moving in fast.
The Union army commander, General George Meade, was headquartered nine miles from Gettysburg, just over the state line in Taneytown, Maryland. The Union had gone through a number of top commanders since the outbreak of the war in April 1861. Gettysburg would be ground upon which President Abraham Lincoln's latest choice would be tested. He arrived at the scene of the fighting shortly before midnight.
What followed on July 2 and 3 would be a sprawling battle of attrition in the fields, woods and hilltops around the town. Cemetery Hill, Little Round Top, the Devil's Den, The Wheatfield and the Peach Orchard would be places whose names would become synonymous with courage and slaughter, military adroitness and outright stupidity.
And of course there were huge numbers of Irish soldiers in the middle of it all. On both sides.
One of them was Colonel Dennis O'Kane, commander of the Union army's almost entirely Irish 69th Pennsylvania Infantry.
On the third and ultimate day of the battle, O'Kane's men shot the heart out of Confederate General George Pickett's brigade.
'Pickett's Charge' would go down in history as an almost medieval clash in which 15,000 men marched across an open field in perfect formation to their doom. The 69th also suffered heavy losses defend-ing the Union line. Half the regiment went down and Col O'Kane was wounded. He died two days later.
Much has been written about the central role of the various Irish units in the Union army throughout the war, but in recent years there has been growing attention paid to those Irish who fought with the Confederate side, most notably with regiments from Louisiana and Georgia.
Willie Mitchel, son of Jail Journal author John Mitchel, was killed during Pickett's Charge. Mitchel was a 'Johnny Reb' in the 1st Virginia regiment that ran into the wall of fire from the Irishmen of the 69th Pennsylvania, no doubt a few green rebel hearts among them.
One of the noted "Irish" regiment's in the confederate army was the 24th Georgia Rifles commanded by Colonel Robert McMillan, a Co Tyrone native. The 24th had helped repulse the attack by regiments of the Union's "Irish Brigade" at the battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia in December 1862. It would do the same at Gettysburg.
But strategic disagreement and tactical blunders would be the ultimate decider on July 1, 2 and 3 of 1863. The fact that Union troops occupied most of the high ground and that nobody persuaded George Pickett that a frontal assault would be lunacy resulted in an inevitable Confederate withdrawal.
The American Civil War was a modern conflict in so many respects, a precursor to World War One. But it still retained more archaic military traditions, one of them being the view that you won the battle if you held the field at the end of the day.
The casualties over the three days were appalling. Total Union losses were over 23,000 when the dead, the wounded and the missing were counted together. Combined Confederate losses were just over 28,000 men.
In so many ways, battles like Gettysburg would indeed be a sign of things to come. Willie Mitchel gave, in Abraham Lincoln's words, his "full measure of devotion" on a green field in Pennsylvania. The likes of Willie McBride, made famous in song, would do the same in the fields of Flanders just over fifty years later. There are numerous monuments at Gettysburg to various regiments and particular actions during the battle.
One of them is a Celtic Cross dedicated to Irish soldiers who fought in regiments that had been mustered in New York under the banner of the Irish Brigade. The cross was sculpted in 1888 by an Irish immigrant by way of Louisiana named Rudolph O'Donovan. He had fought in the Confederate ranks on July 1, 2 and 3 but the ties that bind can seemingly survive even the bloodiest of wars.
