The Harrisburg Civil War Round Table will meet on Friday, March 15, at the Central Penn College Conference Center, 600 Valley Road, Summerdale. Doors will open at 5:30 p.m., and a buffet dinner will be served at 6:15 p.m. Anyone wishing to attend the lecture only should arrive no later than 7 p.m. The lecture will also be broadcast via Zoom.

Historian Jeffry D. Wert, the author of more than a dozen books on the Civil War, will examine the desperate, hand-to-hand combat that took place at Spotsylvania Court House during the Overland Campaign of 1864. The Union assault on the Confederate defenses at Spotsylvania, known as the Mule Shoe, on May 12, 1864, triggered unrelenting combat for roughly 20 hours, with the opposing Yankees and Rebels fighting at places only the length of a rifle barrel apart. 

Wert's latest book, "The Heart of Hell: The Soldiers' Struggle for Spotsylvania's Bloody Angle," received the Atlanta Civil War Round Table's Harwell Award in 2023 and the Austin Civil War Round Table's Laney Prize for the best book published on a Civil War subject in 2022.

The lecture is free. There is a fee for the buffet dinner, payable at the door Anyone wishing to attend the dinner should make reservations by noon on Monday, March 11, by contacting Brian Foster at hcwrt.membership@gmail.com or 717-962-6122.

For more information, visit https://harrisburgcwrt.org or contact Stephen Smith, programs chair, at 717-433-0209.