Battle of the Wilderness • Tour the Battlefield • Monuments & Markers • The Armies
The wayside marker, Hell Itself, is on the walking trail at Stop Eight on the Wilderness Battlefield Auto Tour. It is a short distance from the monument to the Vermont Brigade.
The Hell Itself wayside marker on the Wilderness battlefield. The Vermont Brigade Monument is in the distance.
Text from the marker:
Hell Itself
The Wilderness of today looks different than it did in 1864. Then it was a patchwork of second-growth forest. Brush obscured, briars grabbed, and thickets disrupted the battle lines. One solder described the combat here as “bushwhacking…on a grand scale.” For men accustomed to fighting in open woods and fields, the tangled landscape of the Wilderness translated into sheer horror.
Smoke from thousands of rifles hovered motionless in the air, choking the combatants. Enemy lines rose up, fired a volley, then disappeared into the haze. Many men never even saw their foes; they simply fired at muzzle flashes in the undergrowth. When the dry leaves caught fire, wounded soldiers burned to death. To a Union officer it seemed that “Hell itself had usurped the place of earth.”
The woods would light up with the flashes of musketry, as if with lightning, while the incessant roar of the volleys sounded like the crashing of thunder-bolts. Brave men were falling like autumn leaves, and death was holding high carnival in our ranks.”
Lieutenant Robert Robertson, Union staff officer.
Caption to the inset drawing:
Soldiers often broke from battle lines to fight from behind trees. During lulls in combat, men from both sides helped rescue the wounded from the flames that consumed the undergrowth.
Location of the marker
This is the second wayside marker along the half mile loop trail that begins at the parking area on the south side of Orange Plank Road. (38°18’00.5″N 77°42’34.1″W)