Far from the road and far from the eyes of anyone except the few peering into the distant thicket to catch a glimpse, a simple, humble monument sits along the banks of the stagnant Plum Run on the Gettysburg battlefield, scene of a vicious fight on one of the Civil War’s crucial days: July 2, 1863. It marks the spot where one of Gettysburg’s forgotten heroes met an untimely death.
George Lamb Willard was born and raised in New York City on August 15, 1827. From a young age, Willard “evinced a preference for the military profession” and sought an appointment either as a midshipman in the Navy or an appointment to West Point. Believing business suited him better, Willard’s friends and family sent him to Ohio. But before he was 20, Willard enlisted in the United States Army at the outbreak of the Mexican War, where he rose to the rank of Sergeant in the 8th United States Infantry. Cited for gallantry during the storming of Chapultepec, Willard remained in the army following the war and was a captain by the time hostilities erupted between North and South.
Initially declining to resign his commission with the Regular Army early in the war—where Willard was brevetted a Lt. Col. during his service in the Peninsula Campaign—Willard accepted the colonelcy of the 125th New York following his 35th birthday in August 1862. New to war, the 125th New York became trapped in Harpers Ferry during the garrison’s capitulation to Stonewall Jackson in September 1862, earning them—and the rest of the brigade—the inglorious nickname of the “Harpers Ferry Cowards.”
During the second Confederate invasion of the North in June and July 1863, the brigade of “cowards”—the 39th, 111th, 125th, and 126th New York—was now led by George Willard. At the height of the Confederate attack launched against the southern end of the Federal line at Gettysburg on July 2, Union generals called upon Willard and his men to advance headlong into the jaws of the advancing Southerners west of Cemetery Ridge to stop or slow the sea of attackers, who greatly outnumbered the Union soldiers working to patch together a defensive line.
Willard’s 1,500 infantry charged into what one member of the brigade called a “constant rain of missiles….” “Remember Harpers Ferry,” the men screamed as they closed in on the gray clad soldiers to their front. Driving the Confederates through the Plum Run thicket downhill from Cemetery Ridge’s crest, the “cowards” continued driving the rebels in front of them. Suddenly, Confederate artillery fire stopped the pursuit cold, and Willard ordered his men to fall back to safer ground. Once the New Yorkers returned to Plum Run, an artillery shell tore away most of George Willard’s face; he was dead before he hit the ground.
Willard’s body returned to his wife’s home in Troy, New York, where the fallen colonel rests today. “As an officer he held a high reputation; as a citizen he was universally esteemed and beloved,” an obituary noted. Willard’s Brigade lost 47.3% of the men they carried into the fight at Gettysburg (these casualties include the fighting on both July 2 and 3). A superior officer wrote of their actions: “The history of this brigade’s operations is written in blood” and “the acts of traitors at Harper’s Ferry had not stained their [the men of Willard’s Brigade] patriotism.”
Though oft forgotten today, Willard’s and his men’s contributions to the Union victory at Gettysburg should not be overlooked. Next time you have the opportunity to walk that hallowed ground, take some time to find the monument to Willard, who “died as a true soldier and a martyr to this cruel rebellion.”
"The Great Task Remaining" 