[KG_SSpoom]

As Hyde rode ahead, the men of the 7th Maine "dashed forward in line with a cheer, advancing nearly a quarter of a mile at double-quick." Confederate skirmishers in some haystacks to their front retired, and the 7th ran after their foe just as a long line of Confederates behind the stone wall along the Hagerstown Pike rose up and slammed the Federals with a volley.

Hyde wrote that this enemy fire "did not do so much damage as was to be expected, we were going so fast." Regardless, Hyde ordered the regiment to "left oblique," a move that shifted the line of attack more to the left and brought the regiment to a slight rise of ground that protected the 7th from Confederate fire along the Hagerstown Pike. They were now marching up the hill, just to the right of the Piper barn. Confederate soldiers on the reverse slope around the Piper barn tightened their grip on their muskets and awaited the approach of Hyde and his men.

"As we breasted this hill, being some twenty feet in front of the regiment," Hyde wrote, "I saw over its top before they did, and there were several times our number waiting for us at the ready.…" Hyde immediately ordered the 7th Maine to march by the "left flank." This brought the regiment from a line of battle into a marching column, moving to the left, away from the obvious danger over the brow of the hill.

The 7th Maine didn't have just Confederate musket and rifle fire to contend with; enemy artillery got into the act, too. Lee may have been short on infantry, but he had plenty of artillery at Antietam -- nearly 250 pieces -- and he used them well. Among the many Confederate batteries available was Captain Robert Boyce's Macbeth Artillery from South Carolina. In his after-action report, Boyce wrote that when the 7th Maine attack began, he "went forward and placed my guns on the hill within canister range of the enemy. A few shots soon drove them beyond reach of canister. I afterward used solid shot, cutting down his flag and driving him back."

Back in the Union lines, Lt. Col. Charles B. Stoughton, commander of the 4th Vermont, asked his brigade commander, Brig. Gen. William T.H. Brooks, if Stoughton could advance his regiment and help the 7th Maine. "Too dangerous, sir!" Brooks replied. "You'll never see that regiment again." The 7th Maine had walked into a cauldron of fire, but no one was willing to come to its aid. Colonel Irwin claimed later that he wanted to support the 7th, but that his "orders were positive not to advance my line." That may be, although one wonders what would have happened had even just one brigade been sent to help Hyde. William Crosby of the 7th's Company H later wrote that if "we had been supported, we would have gone over and held it; but it was madness to send so few."

While others watched, Hyde moved his 7th Maine off to the left, toward the fences that surrounded the Piper orchard. Although those fences were sturdily built, the men did get through, but as Sergeant Benson was "wrenching it apart to let my horse through," Hyde wrote, "a shot struck his haversack, and we had to laugh at the flying hard-tack." It is amazing what men in battle will find entertaining, even under the most trying conditions.

Once inside the orchard, the ground rises until it levels off, then dips back down toward the Sunken Road. During that phase of the Mainers' adventure the regiment took its greatest loss. "My horse was shot through the mouth and the hip," Hyde recounted, "he rearing full and I under him, and I saw between his legs the colors of the enemy near enough to read the names emblazoned upon them." While he was on the ground, trying to get up from the fall, he noticed "how the twigs and branches of the apple-trees were being cut off by musket balls and were dropping in a shower."

Captain John B. Cook, commander of Company I, 7th Maine, remembered that it was in the orchard "that I learned how thickly the bullets can fly. On getting four rods into the orchard, I was wounded in the legs." William Crosby of Company H recalled that "in the orchard it was the thickest -- bullets, men and apples were dropping on all sides. Here I had one pass through my haversack, grinding up the hard bread, another graze my left hand and another my right arm. The last felt like the cut of a whip, but didn't break the skin." Amazingly enough, in the midst of this heavy fighting, some members of the regiment picked apples off the trees.

By this time, the 7th Maine had formed in line again at the northern edge of the orchard, just inside of a fence. Confederates were rushing from the Piper farm by then, pouring a deadly fire into Hyde's boys, "as the pile of dead found there after the battle attested."

Hyde remounted his bloody but still serviceable steed, and rode away, escaping "a volley fired by two regiments at me," he recalled. Despite the gunfire, he "only received a scratch in the hand as I waved it at them. Being splashed from head to foot with blood, I supposed myself wounded." While riding off to catch up with his men, Hyde heard the cries of Color Sergeant Harry Campbell, who lay mortally wounded. Hyde started back for him, but a number of Confederates made a dash to capture the major, so Hyde turned his horse around again and rode off for the northern edge of the orchard. There, he found himself trapped by the fence, with the enemy closing in on all sides. The Confederates were close to nabbing Hyde when another sergeant shouted: "Back boys and save the Major!" "They rushed back," Hyde wrote, "delivered a volley which killed six of the foremost -- not ten feet from me -- and Sgt. Hill cut down the fence with his huge saber-bayonet and got me out."