He heard his Captain say that 'something' was about to happen!  George D. Nethery, a Private in Second Company G of the 14th Virginia Infantry, knew that Captain William Walter Wood of  his hometown of Clarksville, in southside Virginia's Mecklenburg County, was privy to some very important information.  It was a hot, muggy day as the sun had just begun its trek across the afternoon sky.  At 12:45 p.m., Friday, July 3rd, 1863, George Nethery and some of  his friends and acquaintances were some three hundred miles from home near a little northern town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg.  They had marched in Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett's Division, of  Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's First Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, all the way from Culpepper.  Gen. Robert E. Lee, and President Jefferson Davis of the Confederacy, had decided, for several important reasons, that it was time to take the War to northern soil and end it there.

Suddenly, the heavy boom of a Confederate big gun, a cannon, pierced the hot, humid air!  Just as quickly as he heard it, George Nethery remembered Capt. Wood's warning of some twenty minutes earlier.  Then there was a second cannon shot in rapid-fire motion.  An officer shouted for the men of the 14th Virginia, who were on the far right end of  Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Armistead's Brigade line, to get down and stay alert!  The words were hardly out of the officer's mouth when it seemed that the whole earth was consumed with cannon fire.  From the Emmitsburg Road, in front of Pickett's Virginia Division, to Seminary Ridge and Gen. James Johnston Pettigrew's North Carolina Division, the Confederate guns of Col. E. Porter Alexander belched forth missiles of death and destruction.  The Union guns on Cemetery Ridge began answering back, with deadly accuracy in some instances.

It had been a long, hot, dusty march from the foothills of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains to this place of  hell's fury.  On that march, George D. Nethery had time to think of his life before June 20, 1861, when he, his brother Henry, his brother-in-law Ras Griffin, and friends and neighbors went to sign up for the Confederate Army.  They had been assured that the Conflict would last no more than three to six months.  But it had already been over two years, and George wondered just when it was all going to end.  He had been married to Louisa Griffin, the love of his life, for three years.  Yet the Army had taken away most of their time together.  He was thankful that they had no children, for that would have made it even more painful to leave his home.  It was tough enough to leave Louisa!  But, it was tough also leaving his aged Mother and Daddy, Sarah and Daniel Nethery, who were both now in their seventies.  He missed his farming too.  This was the profession of his family for several generations.  Because of the physical toughness of farm life and being strong of body and mind, the six foot, one hundred and sixty pounds George Nethery was battle-ready and had already been battle-tested.....at Seven Pines, Malvern Hill, and other lesser skirmishes!  He had turned twenty-nine years old on February 28, 1863, having been born on his Grandfather Thomas Nethery, Sr.'s plantation in northwestern Mecklenburg County.  Although he was from five to six years older than the average soldier in Pickett's Division, George knew that he could outmatch some of the best of them when it came to soldiering.  The rigors of farm life had prepared him for such an hour as this.

Good old Gen. Armistead......at least George Nethery thought he was good!  Tough, uncompromising, non-emotional, an officer who demanded strict adherence to orders, and one who was not afraid to challenge anyone who crossed him......this was the Lewis Armistead that George Nethery and the men of the 9th, 14th, 38th, 53rd, and 57th  Infantry Regiments knew.  While some cussed him behind his back and out of ear-shot of other Brigade officers, Nethery liked the man for his thoroughness in preparing his soldiers for battle, oddly giving them a feeling of security, and sticking it out to the last for the common soldiers' rights against all authority.

The long, almost two-hour cannon duel had ceased......but not without a few disastrous effects to the 14th Virginia and other regiments as well.  Then, George Nethery saw him......Gen. Armistead standing in front of the 53rd Virginia Infantry, at the center of his Brigade line, in front of a woodlot that someone said belonged to a farmer named Spangler. In fact, Nethery and the men of the 14th were behind Spangler's house, barn, and apple orchard as they awaited further orders.  Of course, George Nethery had seen Gens. Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, and Armistead on many occasions.  But, today was different!  This was to be the battle that would end the War between the states and declare the Confederacy victorious and free.  Gen. Pickett had just addressed his Division units on the importance of this battle.  Now it was Gen. Armistead's turn.  With a loud voice that could be heard almost from one end of his line to the other, Armistead said something like this, as George Nethery remembered......"Virginians....for your wives, for your sweethearts, for your homes and for your land......battalion of direction, center........F-O-R-W-A-R-R-D..........M-A-R--C--H!!"  And like a mighty ocean wave, the infantry regiments of Armistead began to advance toward that ridge some three quarters of a mile away named for the Cemetery on a hill to the north.

George Nethery and Ras Griffin, brothers-in-law, were near each other as  Armistead's Brigade followed those of Gens. Garnett on the left and Kemper on the right.  Farther to the left, they could see Gen. James Johnston Pettigrew's Division of North Carolinians, Mississippians, Tennesseans, some Virginians and others advancing in concert with Pickett's Division.  In Pettigrew's Division were men they had known for many years.  They were mostly of the 55th North Carolina Infantry Regiment of  Gen. Joseph Davis's Mississippi Brigade, and they were from northern Granville County which adjoined their own Mecklenburg County, Virginia.  There were the Hobgoods, Daniels, Blackwells, Currins, and others.  Somewhere within the ranks of his own 14th Va. Infantry, George Nethery knew that his cousin, Richard Nethery, was advancing with the troops.  Yet, he could not see him!  Further over in the 53rd Virginia was another cousin, Joseph Nethery,  the younger brother of  Richard.  George, Ras, nor any of the regular soldiers knew exactly where they were going in this advance.  They just knew that somewhere over those rolling fields of wheat, corn, barley, etc., were the men in Union blue.  They were going to meet them, but it was not going to be a friendly greeting!

Cannon shot and small arms fire increased as Armistead's men advanced to their destiny at the Union wall on that low-lying ridge.  Men were dropping like flies in some instances.  But other men stepped up and filled the gap.  There was no lagging and no way to go but forward.  The further they advanced, the stronger the cursing, swearing, and rebel yell became.   Nethery glanced up to see Gen. Armistead as he bounded over the Virginia worm fence at a dirt road.  Others were knocking down fence rails as they moved forward by a house and  through its orchard.  Gen. Armistead placed his old black slouch hat on the tip of his sword as he crossed, what Nethery learned later was called, the road to the town of Emmitsburg in Maryland.

As the double-quick was ordered and word passed through the ranks, George Nethery got his first glance of the Union line.  Two great Armies began to be locked en masse in a fight to the death!  It was sheer bedlam, confusion, and the rage of men gone wild.  Armistead's men were running, running......mixing in with Garnett's and Kemper's men, and some of the men of Pettigrew's Division.  In his right front, George Nethery saw his Colonel of the 14th Virginia, Dr. James Gregory Hodges, with only a sword in his hand, shot to death at the Union wall with a bullet to the head.  Men were falling, falling.....crying out and cursing!  Nethery wanted to get to his beloved Colonel, but it was too difficult, too impossible, and too late...as the Colonel's wound caused instant death.  Running, halting, shooting, them running forward again, George Nethery crossed the stone wall with southern and northern men mixing it up!  Oh the carnage, the death, the arrogant capture of Americans by Americans!  To add to his misery, Nethery saw Gen. Armistead as he lay wounded against a cannon wheel.  That was the last time that he saw him.

Nethery, and others who had followed Armistead over the Union wall, were being pushed back toward the wall.....at least those who were surviving!  Raising his rifle-musket to fire, George Nethery was unable to get the gun to his shoulder.  Someone....he never knew who....yelled for him to retreat because he had been shot!  Suddenly, his left shoulder began to burn as though a red, hot fire tong was pressed against it!  Till his dying day, Nethery never understood how he got away from that Union wall, wounded, and without being captured!!  Of course, there were others who made it too, but that never lessened what he considered was his own miraculous escape.

George Nethery always said that it was as rough retreating to the safety of the Confederate line on Seminary Ridge as it was advancing in the Charge.  It took Nethery and many others a long time to get to Pickett's Division Hospital at Bream's Mill on Marsh Creek, near the road to Fairfield and Hagerstown.  Yet, he made it, and some eight days later arrived with other wounded at the Confederate General Hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The following day, July 13, they were put on a train for Richmond, where he entered General Hospital No. 9 for treatment of wounds.  Nethery stayed in the hospital and at home for six months of recuperation.  He rejoined his old unit on or about December 31, 1863.

At the Battle of Chester Station, Virginia (in the Drewry's Bluff Campaign) on May 10, 1864, George Nethery was wounded a second time, when a railroad tie hit him in the abdomen as the result of a cannon shot.  His unit, and the others of  the late Gen. Armistead's Brigade, were commanded at that time by Gen. Seth Barton.  Nethery was sent to Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond and then to the Confederate General Hospital in Danville, Virginia.  He was out of service for three months recuperating from this wound, and returned to his unit in August, 1864.

On returning home after Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to Union Commander Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, George Nethery renewed his farming operations.  He and Louisa also became the parents of five children:  Anna, born in 1865; James Daniel, born in 1866; William Thomas (Sr.), born in 1869.....my grandfather; Robert Howard, born in 1872; and, John Walter, born in 1879.  Anna was married but died at twenty-two years of age without children.  John Walter died at age nineteen from tuberculosis.  Jim, Tom, and Bob Nethery lived to raise rather large families.

George D. Nethery could not do very much farm labor after returning from the War, especially as he advanced in age.  On a Confederate Army Pension application in Boydton, Virginia, in 1892, he stated that due to his wounds at Gettysburg and Chester Station, he had only partial use of his left arm and could not stoop over because of bladder problems.  Fortunately, his sons were able to compensate for his war injuries, and carried on the farming operations which was sharecropping.  George Nethery never owned any land in his life.  It is said that he was fearful to take the risk of such a purchase since his father, Daniel, lost his own inherited land by default on a mortgage.  Sadly, Daniel Nethery had taken the mortgage for a family member in a debt, and the family could not or would not pay said debt.  Thus, Daniel and Sarah Nethery lost everything
material!

Nursing old war wounds, George Nethery began to decline more in health as he got older.  He and his family lived in southern Mecklenburg County, Va. very near the Virginia-North Carolina border in the late 1890's.   They lived "on the River" as it was called.......meaning the Roanoke River......that begins in the Virginia foothills, flows through the Old Dominion's southside into North Carolina, and into the Albemarle Sound at Washington, N. C.  The lands "on the River" were rich and grew tobacco which the Netherys sold in Petersburg, Va. and Henderson, N. C.  Their main crop, however, was corn and it was sold to a distillery company in Clarksville.

An old gentleman, by the name of Richardson, told my Daddy that he remembered George D. Nethery, when he (Mr. Richardson) was just a young teenager.  He said that George Nethery would ride his horse, named "John", the five miles from his home in Virginia to the village of  Townsville, N. C., in Vance County, to John J. White's General Store.  While there, Nethery would consume some whiskey, then begin the five miles back home on "John".  Mr. Richardson said that as my great grandfather Nethery would lean to one side or the other in the saddle, because of his inebriated condition, "John" would turn his body in such a direction as to keep my great grandfather Nethery balanced and from falling!  Mr. Richardson said it was a funny sight to see!

In the late hours of the night of December 17, 1899, George D. Nethery suffered a massive stroke of the brain due to his declining physical condition.  Dr. Victor Epps, Jr. was sent for, but his examination and subsequent diagnosis was that death was imminent.  Sadly, Louisa faithfully sat by the bed of her husband, with her sons and her old maid sister-in-law, Martha Nethery, in adjoining rooms taking turns with Louisa in watching over their beloved father and brother.  It was during Louisa's watch that she was abruptly aroused from light sleep by mumblings coming from her husband.  She rushed the few steps to his bed, to observe him lift his head ever so slightly from his pillow.  She heard him say almost inaudibly......"I'm a-coming Gen'l, I'm a-coming. I'm a-gonna make it cross dat wall."  With that, his head sunk back into his pillow, as George Daniel Nethery approached and crossed his last stone wall into that Celestial Land of eternal freedom.  It was 2:03 Monday morning, the 18th of December 1899.

On the cold day of December 19th, he was laid to rest in the Cemetery of the Rock Spring Baptist Church near Townsville, N.C., with the Rev. Dr. Joshua A. Stradley of the Oxford Baptist Church, Oxford, a former pastor of the Rolesville Baptist Church, Rolesville, officiating.  There his remains rest today among other relatives and friends.