TLC for Gettysburg statues Bungled attempts to preserve war memorials are being corrected, stroke by stroke. A dozen are being targeted. Gettysburg statues get experts' attention

GETTYSBURG, Pa. — The battle that turned the tide of the Civil War lasted only three days. The monuments erected to the fallen soldiers years later were supposed to last forever.

But the ravages of weather and vandals - aggravated by misguided restoration attempts - now threaten some of the 1,300 bronze and granite statues depicting Union and Confederate soldiers, their leaders and horses - one of the largest collections of outdoor sculptures in the nation.

In the decades after the Civil War, veterans groups, mainly from Northern states, campaigned for monuments to honor every regiment that fought at Gettysburg. Fields of the bronze and granite statues rose at strategic battle sites throughout the Gettysburg National Military Park between 1870 and 1920.

Gettysburg Park employees routinely maintain the statues, but a special group of conservators has triaged a dozen monuments that are showing more than a little battle fatigue. Conservation experts and University of Delaware graduate students from the Winterthur Program in Art Conservation are painstakingly scraping off acrylic coatings applied in the 1980s that did more harm than good.

Across a field below Cemetery Ridge, the Confederate Army made its final push against the North in what would be the bloodiest battle of the Civil War.

It was here that Gen. Robert E. Lee's soldiers met Union forces in "Pickett's Charge," the July 3, 1863, battle that halted the South's advance across the Mason-Dixon line for good. When it was over, 51,000 men were dead - 28,000 of them Confederate soldiers and 23,000 who fought for the Union Army.

The statues mark the Union line along what is now Hancock Avenue, one of the most highly visited areas in the 6,000-acre park, which draws 1.8 million visitors a year.

The work started last summer. The conservators hope to average two a year.

One monument, to the 42d New York Infantry, was repaired last year. The team this year is attempting to reverse damage on two other monuments, one commemorating the First Pennsylvania Cavalry and the other, the soldiers who fought with the First New York Light Artillery.