The woods behind them were alive with the blaze of fire, and the great Union batteries were driving back the triumphant and cheering Confederates.
The Union generals on the other side of the Antietam saw the fate that was about to overtake Hooker's valiant men, and Sumner, with another army corps, had crossed the river to the rescue, coming just in time.
They moved up to Hooker's men and the united masses returned to the charge.
The battle grew more desperate with the arrival of fresh troops.

Again it was charge and repulse, charge and repulse, and the continuous swaying to and fro by two combatants, each resolved to win.

There were the Union men who had forced the passes through the mountains to reach this field, and they were struggling to follow up those successes by a victory far greater, and there were the Confederates resolved upon another glorious success.
The fire became so tremendous that the men could no longer hear orders.
Here was a field of ripe corn, the stems and blades higher than a man's head, forty acres or so, nearly a quarter of a mile each way, but the corn soon ceased to hide the combatants from one another.

The fire from the cannon and rifles came in such close sheets that scarcely a stalk stood upright in that whole field.
Long this mighty conflict swayed back and forth.

Dick had seen nothing like it before, not even at the Second Manassas.