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A young Guilford County soldier named William M. Irwin anxiously surveyed a mile-wide expanse of fields and pastures just outside a small town in Pennsylvania .

Up ahead, the square battle flag of the 22nd N.C. infantry regiment flapped in the hot, summer breeze.

Irwin's heart pounded. In a moment, he would follow the flag into battle.

Two days of bloodshed in this otherwise bucolic place had settled nothing. But that would soon change.

It was July 3, 1863 . It was 3 p.m. at Gettysburg .

At that moment, Irwin and some 12,000 Confederate troops stepped off into history, striding across fields and fences toward Cemetery Ridge and thousands of Union guns waiting behind a low rock wall.

In the next hour, Irwin's life would be changed forever. His regiment would be decimated in the most famous charge of the Civil War and the flag would be lost. But not forever.

Now, what had been a prized war trophy has become a prized but tattered museum artifact. Filed away at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh , the flag can't be displayed because of its deteriorated condition.

It's one of hundreds of museum artifacts, including several with ties to Guilford County , that need conservation. The task requires hundreds of thousands of dollars the state doesn't have.

"All these items are very dear to me," said Tom Belton , the museum's curator of military history . "We have some (silk) flags that look like they were poured out of a box of cornflakes."

To help conserve some of the items, the museum has started an Adopt an Artifact program. It allows residents to make tax-deductible contributions to help protect some of the state's most valuable treasures.

The wool battle flag alone needs an estimated $5,000 worth of work. It shows the wear and tear of war: names of the battles where it flew, holes that curators say could be from bullets, stains that could be blood.

"These flags definitely tell a story," said Dean Knudsen , curator at the Gettysburg National Military Park. "That flag ... has witnessed both victory and defeat."

* * *

No story the old flag could tell would be more horrendous than how it and Pvt. Irwin fell into enemy hands 145 years ago today.

Irwin boasted a checkered military career. A 26-year-old ginner, he'd enlisted on Feb. 22, 1862 . In the next 16 months, he'd been court martialed once, had deserted once and was wounded twice.

His regiment had already fought in a dozen battles. The 22nd, which had been organized on July 11, 1861 , in Raleigh , consisted of nearly 1,000 men from Guilford, Randolph , Caswell , Stokes and other western counties.

Irwin belonged to Company E , which called itself the Guilford Men , the only group from Guilford County to take part in what has become known as Pickett's Charge .

On July 1 , the first day of fighting at Gettysburg, the 22nd sustained heavy loses.

"They were shot to pieces," said John Heiser , a historian at Gettysburg National Military Park . "The regiment was down to just a morsel of what it had been."

On the 3rd, Irwin and his fellow North Carolinians marched onto Seminary Ridge about 9 a.m. They didn't know it then, but Gen. Robert E. Lee planned for his troops to strike the center of the Union line.

But first came the most massive artillery bombardment to that point in the war.

It began at 1 p.m. More than 150 Confederate guns blasted away at the enemy line on Cemetery Ridge. Union gunners quickly fired back. The bombardment, which could be heard 40 miles away, lasted nearly two hours.

When the Union fire slackened, Confederate troops got the order to line up.

"Make the best kind of time crossing the valley," advised Maj. Gen. George E. Pickett , the Virginian for whom the charge took its name. "It is a hell of an ugly looking place over yonder."

The soldiers formed two rows, a tactic that hadn't changed since the Revolutionary War . Irwin, sweating in the 84-degree heat, stood in the second.

Union soldiers watched in amazement as the half-mile-long lines moved across the field.

"They were old soldiers and had been in many battles," Bruce Catton , a Civil War historian , wrote of the Union reaction, "but what they saw took their breath away, and whether they had 10 minutes or 75 years to live, they remembered it until they died.

"There it was, for the last time in this war, perhaps for the last time anywhere, the grand pageantry and color of war in the old style, beautiful, majestic and terrible."

About 100 yards into the advance, the Union artillery opened fire. Exploding shells killed a dozen men at a time.

"The gray lines dribbled rag-doll shapes, each of which left a gap where it had been while in motion," wrote Shelby Foote , a Civil War historian . "Flags plunged with sudden flutters ... only to be taken up at once as the fallen color bearers were replaced."

Battle flags served as a focal point for a regiment. To carry one was both an honor and a death sentence.

"You can imagine walking in front of a regiment," said Tom Belton. "You're a target."

When the Confederates came within about 200 feet of the Union line, they had to cross Emmitsburg Road , a narrow lane that cut through the fields.

Six-foot-high post-and-rail fences lined both sides of the road. The Confederates had no choice but to climb them.

As they did, soldiers behind the wall opened fire.

"That's where all hell broke loose," Heiser said. "The road is a death trap. The remarkable thing is that ... the flags came forward with groups of men gathered around them."

Twenty minutes of intense fighting followed.

"If you can imagine the biggest fireworks display you have ever seen, with its noise and volume, that is as close as I can come to what it sounded like," Heiser said. "The blasts of cannon, (the musket fire), the shouts of men, the groans and moans of the wounded and dying."

At some point in the charge, Irwin sustained a wound and was captured. After he recovered, he switched sides and joined the U.S. cavalry.

"A lot of Confederates who joined the Union forces did so just to get out of POW camps," said Knudsen, the Gettysburg curator.

No one knows how far Irwin's regiment advanced at Gettysburg. Heiser believes remnants of the regiment made it halfway up the slope between the road and the wall.

Eventually, the advance stalled.

"The men, one by one, break and run or walk to the rear," Heiser said. "They knew the jig was up."

Soldiers on both sides would never forget the carnage. One estimate put the Confederate casualties at nearly 4,200 killed and wounded.

"I hope none of my friends will ever look on such a sight as that field," wrote Lt. William A. Tuttle , a member of the 22nd from Caldwell County . "I hope I will get home and disremember it."

* * *

As the Confederates retreated, Union forces celebrated their victory.

"Boys, get me a flag," shouted Brig. Gen. Alexander Hays, a Pennsylvanian . "Get me a flag and come on."

Hays tied the flag - one account says it belonged to the 28th N.C. regiment - to his horse's tail and raced along the wall in front of his cheering men.

Union troops had plenty of flags with which to celebrate. Confederates lost 39 flags in the charge, including 10 from North Carolina regiments.

By one post-war account, the flag of the 22nd made it to the wall that day.

Pvt. Anthony McDermott of the 69th Pennsylvania regiment said he saw "a large rebel flag" propped against the wall as he took charge of some prisoners. As he walked toward the flag, Pvt. Michael McDonough of the 42nd New York ran past him and grabbed it.

"I could have had the flag without any trouble," McDermott recalled. " ... I made the remark then that I did not see anything very brave in that."

Unlike many of the soldiers who captured Confederate flags in the charge, McDonough did not receive a Medal of Honor, likely because his act wasn't considered heroic.

Federal officers shipped the flag and other captured colors to the U.S. War Department.

By the end of the war, the federal government had collected more than 540 captured or surrendered Confederate flags. All went into storage.

In 1905 , after repeated requests, the government returned the flags to their respective states. North Carolina received more than 30 , including one attached to a pine stick with the bark still on it.

Now, the museum has more than 115 Civil War flags, a collection that would be worth millions of dollars on the open market. Collectors say a battle flag in good condition could sell for $500,000 .

About 80 percent of the flags need conservation work.

Since the Adopt an Artifact program began, the museum has collected $18,500 for its conservation effort. None has been designated for work on the flag of the 22nd.

"A Confederate flag is the pinnacle of your collection," Belton said. "Nothing represents the Confederacy more than a battle flag."

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com