"Do Your Duty Boys" By: D.J.Neary

The first rays of light filter through the early morning fog revealing ranks of men in blue drawn up along Water Street near the Fredericksburg city wharf. Columns of smoke rise from the burning town and the rumble of cannon from the heights west of the city combines the crash of shells to mark the dawn of a day of battle. It is December 13, 1862 and the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac's famed Irish Brigade ready themselves to storm the Confederate entrenchments of Marye's Heights.