Even before Chamberlain's defense of Little Round Top began the battle in the valley just to the west was well under way. In the area around the Devil's Den and the Rose Woods Hood's Confederate Division had begun the attack of Sickles salient.

In a location and orientation like that of the road that enters from the left of this picture is where the 4th Maine Regiment was located. Through the difficult terrain Capt. James E. Smith somehow managed to get his guns to the top of this hill to the right of the outcropping of rocks. On his right were the 124th New York, 86th New York, 20th Indiana and finally the 99th Pennsylvania. These five infantry regiments were part of Brigadier General J.H. Hobart Ward's Brigade, attached to the First Division of Sickles 3rd Corps.

Today the outcropping of granite on the hill is known as the Devil's Den, but perhaps the valley of the gorge to the south of there, where the valley is filled with the granite boulders as seen in this picture and the next is the area at the time of the battle that was known by that name.

Even though there were many people around me, when I turned my back on them to look at and think about this part of Plum Run that was strewn with boulders, I could see the soldiers of the 44th and 48th Alabama Regiments behind the rocks, popping their heads up long enough to fire off a shot at either the troops of the 4th Maine or at Smith's Cannoneer's. This vision was pretty short lived because some woman walked up behind me. I wonder if she was having the same vision that I was having, or was wondering what I was looking at and if she was missing something. The only thing that she was missing were my hallucinations.

In this picture there is, I felt at the time and still do, an act of sacrilegious disrespect for the battlefield. There are people on one of the rocks in this picture flying rubberband powered airplanes off the heights. Hey I like those kinds of toys as well as the next big kid, but I don't believe that this is the place for that.

Yes, I crawled through these rocks. But as I did so I imagined a Yankee on the other side of each as I crossed them waiting to either; run me through with his bayonet, blast me with his musket, or attempt to split my melon open with the butt of his rifle.

At the end of the day the Confederate forces held these rocks and trees on hill in the first picture on this page. But the cost on both sides was staggering. The pictures taken after the battle of broken bodies of men and horses so thick make that scene almost unrecognizable.