Gettysburg: Company B Flanks the Flank at Little Round Top
Pennsylvania
The story of Little Round Top usually centers on Colonel Joshua Chamberlain and his famous bayonet charge. But a short way east of the main monument stands a smaller marker for an action that may have been just as decisive.
Captain Walter Morrill led Company B of the Twentieth Maine, roughly forty men, along with a squad of United States Sharpshooters, on a detached position along the base of the hill. When the Confederates pressed the Union left and Chamberlain ordered the charge downhill, Morrill's hidden company rose from behind a stone wall and fired a volley into the Confederate flank.
Caught between the charging regiment above and the volley from Morrill's men below, the Confederate assault collapsed. The two actions together secured the Union's far left and, many historians argue, prevented a flanking movement that could have broken the entire line.
