The road southward from the Fords of the Rapidan by which Grant's army was compelled to move leads through this region. In the midst of the forest the north and south road is crossed by two others running nearly east and west. Down these intersecting roads Lee poured his columns, striving to strike the dangerously extended Union line in flank, break it into fragments, and while entangled in the Wilderness play havoc with it. At the most important of these road-junctions, at the vital point of the Union line, the position which must be held at any cost, on the afternoon of the fifth of May Getty's Division of the Sixth Corps was posted with the Vermont Brigade in front. They await the arrival of Hancock with the Second Corps, hoping then to push the enemy, now retarded in their advance by skirmishers and by the difficult nature of the ground, away from the danger-point, back into more open country where more even battle can be had. General Grant grows impatient; he orders Getty to attack at once without waiting for Hancock. The narrow road is the only place where artillery can be used. It is occupied by a battery; the infantry brigades must feel and fight their way through the thicket on either side. Suddenly the opposing lines meet. Volleys leap like sheaves of lightning from the brush, men fall by scores, there are charges and counter-charges; but in that Wilderness maze where foes phantom-like appear and disappear the bayonet is useless. The battle settles down to a grim trial of endurance. To stand up is death; the opposing lines, only a few yards distant from each other, lie down and fight close to the ground. Neither can advance, because neither will give way. The men of the South, on their native heath, taking advantage of every foot of familiar ground, creeping up here or there where smallest advantage appears, are bent on hewing a path to the Brock Road. The Vermonters, upon whom now the weight of the battle is falling, will not yield an inch. Then was seen the close clanship of those men of the Green Mountains. Like brothers their five regiments stick together, each ready to help each without confusion, with quick comprehension of every emergency, cool, desperate, deadly in the blows they give a common enemy. But their ranks are melting mournfully in the savage heat of the weird combat; from the Vermont officers especially the Southern rifles are taking ghastly toll; for while the men fight lying down, the officers must be on their feet moving from place to place along the line. One who was there with them says, "One after another of the officers fell not to rise again, or was borne bleeding to the rear. The men's faces grew powder-grimed and their mouths black from biting cartridges; the musketry silenced all sounds, and the air of the woods was hot and heavy with sulphurous vapour; the tops of the bushes were cut away by the leaden storm that swept through them."