2nd Delaware in the Wheatfield Gettysburg

As the fighting continued in the Devil's Den and along Houck's Ridge, the conflict grew to include the Wheatfield and Peach Orchard to the northwest. Survivors of the fighting in Gettysburg's Wheatfield remembered it as "a whirlpool of death". On July 2nd, Colonel Patrick Kelly and the 530 men serving in the Irish Brigade stubbornly fought to drive their Confederate foes from this ground. Despite an early success, the Irish Brigade, like so many other Union soldiers who would enter the fray, would find themselves withdrawing back to their lines. The continued efforts by the game butternuts would not however be able to crack the Union line along the ridge. Men from the Federal 3rd, 2nd, and 5th Corps would wreck themselves against the Confederate juggernaut. With the arrival of the Federal 6th Corps, the largest in the Army of the Potomac, the men in gray would find themselves withdrawing, leaving the wounded of both sides to agonize in a devastated no-man's land.
By sundown, the Irish Brigade counted 198 casualties leaving just over 300 remaining of the original 2,500 men who had enlisted when the war began. The wolfhound faithfully keeping watch at the base of the monument represents the traditional Irish symbol of loyalty.