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Once over the fences on the northern edge of the orchard, Hyde re-formed the regiment and marched it back to the Sunken Road. Union artillery bombarded the Piper orchard, and Hyde was actually more worried about that fire than the fire of the Confederates still in the orchard.

As Hyde and his regiment returned to their former position at the left of Irwin's line, the Vermonters stood up and cheered. But with "scarce a man untouched," Hyde wrote his mother a week later, his men didn't feel at all like cheering. "We lay down and all were crying like children."

Little remained of the 7th Maine. Of the 181 officers and men whom Hyde led forward in the attack on the Piper farm, 12 were killed, 63 were wounded and 20 were reported missing; eventually the death toll would reach 25. Only one officer escaped untouched. Adjutant Haskell, who had led the left flank of the regiment into battle and whose horse received three bullets, was shot through both knees. Johnny Begg and George Williams, the two boys whom Hyde had ordered to the rear before the charge, were both casualties. Begg lost an arm, and Williams was buried on the field.

Confederate Brig. Gen. George T. Anderson, whose brigade assisted in the repulse of the 7th, reported later that "in the charge, parts of Wilcox's, Featherstone's and Pryor's brigades participated with mine." Granted, all of those Confederate units were well under-strength at the time of the attack, yet so was the 7th Maine. "In my judgement, we only needed the Vermonters behind us to have cut through to the river," Hyde wrote, "and a few more brigades in support would have ended the business, as at that moment Lee's much-enduring army was fought out." Perhaps, but certainly pitting just one small Union regiment against as many as four Confederate brigades was absolute madness. The odds the British Light Brigade faced at Balaklava couldn't have been any more lopsided.

Hyde learned later that "our efforts were resultant from no plan or design at headquarters, but were from an inspiration of John Barleycorn in our brigade commander alone, I wished I had been old enough, or distinguished enough, to have dared to disobey orders."

The remnants of the 7th Maine gathered around their riddled colors that night, and Hyde cried himself to sleep. The next day, Hyde "went out alone and, though they kept firing on me, I found eight of our wounded who wept to see me. I found many more rebel dead than ours -- but Oh! Every one of ours had been a friend." Some of the wounded had died during the night, while others had been taken back by the Confederates to the Piper buildings.

Several days later, after Lee's Army of Northern Virginia had retreated back across the Potomac River into Virginia, Major Hyde and his division commander, "Baldy" Smith, rode over the field where the 7th Maine had charged on September 17. Smith was astounded that Hyde had been able to bring any of his men back at all. "It was the most gallant feat of arms I ever remember to have seen, heard or read of," Smith told Hyde. "The Seventh Maine has glory enough and shall remain with me." VI Corps commander William Franklin agreed, saying, "You behaved most nobly, Major!"

"The men say nobody could have taken them through it so well," Hyde wrote home after the battle. "I never was so cool or thought so quick as in the battle, and the idea of personal danger did not enter my head."

On September 18, 1862, Colonel Irwin, the man responsible for the attack, was relieved of brigade command by Generals Franklin and Smith. He returned to command of the 49th Pennsylvania, although he would resign his commission in late October 1863.

Shortly after the battle, the regiment was assigned as the headquarters guard for Franklin and Smith, "an honor they consider the highest they can bestow," so the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier reported.

Perhaps even more unexpected was that on October 4, 1862, orders came down from General McClellan that the 7th Maine was to be sent home to recruit. Very seldom would an entire regiment be so instructed. Generally only representatives were returned to the home state for the purpose of finding replacements for the ranks. McClellan referred to "this gallant remnant of a noble body of men, whose bravery has been exhibited on every field," and he asked that the state of Maine do its best "to fill at once their diminished ranks, that I may again see their standard in the Army of the Potomac."

Repercussions of the charge continued long after the war. On April 8, 1891, Major Hyde, for leading "his regiment in an assault on a strong body of the enemy's infantry…keeping up the fight until the greater part of his men had been killed or wounded" and "bringing the remainder safely out of the fight," was awarded the Medal of Honor. No doubt Hyde felt honored, but he probably acknowledged that those who deserved it even more had fallen in what was for the 7th Maine its "own Balaklava.