The Red Badge of Courage: An Episode of the American Civil War
which to look about him.
Under foot there were a few ghastly forms motionless. They lay twisted
in fantastic contortions. Arms were bent and heads were turned in
incredible ways. It seemed that the dead men must have fallen from some
great height to get into such positions. They looked to be dumped out
upon the ground from the sky.
From a position in the rear of the grove a battery was throwing shells
over it. The flash of the guns startled the youth at first. He thought
they were aimed directly at him. Through the trees he watched the black
figures of the gunners as they worked swiftly and intently. Their labor
seemed a complicated thing. He wondered how they could remember its
formula in the midst of confusion.
The guns squatted in a row like savage chiefs. They argued with abrupt
violence. It was a grim pow-wow. Their busy servants ran hither and
thither.
A small procession of wounded men were going drearily toward the rear.
It was a flow of blood from the torn body of the brigade.
To the right and to the left were the dark lines of other troops. Far
in front he thought he could see lighter masses protruding in points
from the forest. They were suggestive of unnumbered thousands.
Once he saw a tiny battery go dashing along the line of the horizon.
The tiny riders were beating the tiny horses.
From a sloping hill came the sound of cheerings and clashes. Smoke
welled slowly through the leaves.
Batteries were speaking with thunderous oratorical effort. Here and
there were flags, the red in the stripes dominating. They splashed bits
of warm color upon the dark lines of troops.
The youth felt the old thrill at the sight of the emblems. They were
like beautiful birds strangely undaunted in a storm.
As he listened to the din from the hillside, to a deep pulsating
thunder that came from afar to the left, and to the lesser clamors
which came from many directions, it occurred to him that they were
fighting, too, over there, and over there, and over there. Heretofore
he had supposed that all the battle was directly under his nose.
As he gazed around him the youth felt a flash of astonishment at the
blue, pure sky and the sun gleamings on the trees and fields. It was
surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process
in the midst of so much devilment.
Chapter VI.
The youth awakened slowly. He came gradually back to a position from
which he could regard himself. For moments he had been scrutinizing his
person in a dazed way as if he had never before seen himself. Then he
picked up his cap from the ground. He wriggled in his jacket to make a
more comfortable fit, and kneeling relaced his shoe. He thoughtfully
mopped his reeking features.
So it was all over at last! The supreme trial had been passed. The red,
formidable difficulties of war had been vanquished.
He went into an ecstasy of self-satisfaction. He had the most
delightful sensations of his life. Standing as if apart from himself,
he viewed that last scene. He perceived that the man who had fought
thus was magnificent.
He felt that he was a fine fellow. He saw himself even with those
ideals which he had considered as far beyond him. He smiled in deep
gratification.
Upon his fellows he beamed tenderness and good will. “Gee! ain’t it
hot, hey?” he said affably to a man who was polishing his streaming
face with his coat sleeves.
“You bet!” said the other, grinning sociably. “I never seen sech dumb
hotness.” He sprawled out luxuriously on the ground. “Gee, yes! An’ I
hope we don’t have no more fightin’ till a week from Monday.”
There were some handshakings and deep speeches with men whose features
were familiar, but with whom the youth now felt the bonds of tied
hearts. He helped a cursing comrade to bind up a wound of the shin.
But, of a sudden, cries of amazement broke out along the ranks of the
new regiment. “Here they come ag’in! Here they come ag’in!” The man who
had sprawled upon the ground started up and said, “Gosh!”
The youth turned quick eyes upon the field. He discerned forms begin to
swell in masses out of a distant wood. He again saw the tilted flag
speeding forward.
The shells, which had ceased to trouble the regiment for a time, came
swirling again, and exploded in the grass or among the leaves of the
trees. They looked to be strange war flowers bursting into fierce
bloom.
The men groaned. The luster faded from their eyes. Their smudged
countenances now expressed a profound dejection. They moved their
stiffened bodies slowly, and watched in sullen mood the frantic
approach of the enemy. The slaves toiling in the temple of this god
began to feel rebellion at his harsh tasks.
They fretted and complained each to each. “Oh, say, this is too much of
a good thing! Why can’t somebody send us supports?”
“We ain’t never goin’ to stand this second banging. I didn’t come here
to fight the hull damn’ rebel army.”
There was one who raised a doleful cry. “I wish Bill Smithers had trod
on my hand, insteader me treddin’ on his’n.” The sore joints of the
regiment creaked as it painfully floundered into position to repulse.
The youth stared. Surely, he thought, this impossible thing was not
about to happen. He waited as if he expected the enemy to suddenly
stop, apologize, and retire bowing. It was all a mistake.
But the firing began somewhere on the regimental line and ripped along
in both directions. The level sheets of flame developed great clouds of
smoke that tumbled and tossed in the mild wind near the ground for a
moment, and then rolled through the ranks as through a gate. The clouds
were tinged an earthlike yellow in the sunrays and in the shadow were a
sorry blue. The flag was sometimes eaten and lost in this mass of
vapor, but more often it projected, sun-touched, resplendent.
Into the youth’s eyes there came a look that one can see in the orbs of
a jaded horse. His neck was quivering with nervous weakness and the
muscles of his arms felt numb and bloodless. His hands, too, seemed
large and awkward as if he was wearing invisible mittens. And there was
a great uncertainty about his knee joints.
The words that comrades had uttered previous to the firing began to
recur to him. “Oh, say, this is too much of a good thing! What do they
take us for—why don’t they send supports? I didn’t come here to fight
the hull damned rebel army.”
He began to exaggerate the endurance, the skill, and the valor of those
who were coming. Himself reeling from exhaustion, he was astonished
beyond measure at such persistency. They must be machines of steel. It
was very gloomy struggling against such affairs, wound up perhaps to
fight until sundown.
He slowly lifted his rifle and catching a glimpse of the thickspread
field he blazed at a cantering cluster. He stopped then and began to
peer as best as he could through the smoke. He caught changing views of
the ground covered with men who were all running like pursued imps, and
yelling.
To the youth it was an onslaught of redoubtable dragons. He became like
the man who lost his legs at the approach of the red and green monster.
He waited in a sort of a horrified, listening attitude. He seemed to
shut his eyes and wait to be gobbled.
A man near him who up to this time had been working feverishly at his
rifle suddenly stopped and ran with howls. A lad whose face had borne
an expression of exalted courage, the majesty of he who dares give his
life, was, at an instant, smitten abject. He blanched like one who has
come to the edge of a cliff at midnight and is suddenly made aware.
There was a revelation. He, too, threw down his gun and fled. There was
no shame in his face. He ran like a rabbit.
Others began to scamper away through the smoke. The youth turned his
head, shaken from his trance by this movement as if the regiment was
leaving him behind. He saw the few fleeting forms.
He yelled then with fright and swung about. For a moment, in the great
clamor, he was like a proverbial chicken. He lost the direction of
safety. Destruction threatened him from all points.
Directly he began to speed toward the rear in great leaps. His rifle
and cap were gone. His unbuttoned coat bulged in the wind. The flap of
his cartridge box bobbed wildly, and his canteen, by its slender cord,
swung out behind. On his face was all the horror of those things which
he imagined.
The lieutenant sprang forward bawling. The youth saw his features
wrathfully red, and saw him make a dab with his sword. His one thought
of the incident was that the lieutenant was a peculiar creature to feel
interested in such matters upon this occasion.
He ran like a blind man. Two or three times he fell down. Once he
knocked his shoulder so heavily against a tree that he went headlong.
Since he had turned his back upon the fight his fears had been
wondrously magnified. Death about to thrust him between the shoulder
blades was far more dreadful than death about to smite him between the
eyes. When he thought of it later, he conceived the impression that it
is better to view the appalling than to be merely within hearing. The
noises of the battle were like stones; he believed himself liable to be
crushed.
As he ran on he mingled with others. He dimly saw men on his right and
on his left, and he heard footsteps behind him. He thought that all the
regiment was fleeing, pursued by those ominous crashes.
In his flight the sound of these following footsteps gave him his one
meager relief. He felt vaguely that death must make a first choice of
the men who were nearest; the initial morsels for the dragons would be
then those who were following him. So he displayed the zeal of an
insane sprinter in his purpose to keep them in the rear. There was a
race.
As he, leading, went across a little field, he found himself in a
region of shells. They hurtled over his head with long wild screams. As
he listened he imagined them to have rows of cruel teeth that grinned
at him. Once one lit before him and the livid lightning of the
explosion effectually barred the way in his chosen direction. He
groveled on the ground and then springing up went careering off through
some bushes.
He experienced a thrill of amazement when he came within view of a
battery in action. The men there seemed to be in conventional moods,
altogether unaware of the impending annihilation. The battery was
disputing with a distant antagonist and the gunners were wrapped in
admiration of their shooting. They were continually bending in coaxing
postures over the guns. They seemed to be patting them on the back and
encouraging them with words. The guns, stolid and undaunted, spoke with
dogged valor.
The precise gunners were coolly enthusiastic. They lifted their eyes
every chance to the smoke-wreathed hillock from whence the hostile
battery addressed them. The youth pitied them as he ran. Methodical
idiots! Machine-like fools! The refined joy of planting shells in the
midst of the other battery’s formation would appear a little thing when
the infantry came swooping out of the woods.
The face of a youthful rider, who was jerking his frantic horse with an
abandon of temper he might display in a placid barnyard, was impressed
deeply upon his mind. He knew that he looked upon a man who would
presently be dead.
Too, he felt a pity for the guns, standing, six good comrades, in a
bold row.
He saw a brigade going to the relief of its pestered fellows. He
scrambled upon a wee hill and watched it sweeping finely, keeping
formation in difficult places. The blue of the line was crusted with
steel color, and the brilliant flags projected. Officers were shouting.
This sight also filled him with wonder. The brigade was hurrying
briskly to be gulped into the infernal mouths of the war god. What