



Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.








The Red Badge of Courage

An Episode of the American Civil War


by

Stephen Crane





CHAPTER I.

The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs
revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.  As the landscape
changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble
with eagerness at the noise of rumors.  It cast its eyes upon the
roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper
thoroughfares.  A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks,
purled at the army's feet; and at night, when the stream had become of
a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam
of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.

Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to
wash a shirt.  He came flying back from a brook waving his garment
bannerlike.  He was swelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable
friend, who had heard it from a truthful cavalryman, who had heard it
from his trustworthy brother, one of the orderlies at division
headquarters.  He adopted the important air of a herald in red and
gold. "We're goin' t' move t'morrah--sure," he said pompously to a
group in the company street.  "We're goin' 'way up the river, cut
across, an' come around in behint 'em."

To his attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very
brilliant campaign. When he had finished, the blue-clothed men
scattered into small arguing groups between the rows of squat brown
huts.  A <DW64> teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker box with
the hilarious encouragement of twoscore soldiers was deserted.  He sat
mournfully down.  Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude of quaint
chimneys.

"It's a lie! that's all it is--a thunderin' lie!" said another private
loudly.  His smooth face was flushed, and his hands were thrust sulkily
into his trousers' pockets.  He took the matter as an affront to him.
"I don't believe the derned old army's ever going to move.  We're set.
I've got ready to move eight times in the last two weeks, and we ain't
moved yet."

The tall soldier felt called upon to defend the truth of a rumor he
himself had introduced. He and the loud one came near to fighting over
it.

A corporal began to swear before the assemblage.  He had just put a
costly board floor in his house, he said.  During the early spring he
had refrained from adding extensively to the comfort of his environment
because he had felt that the army might start on the march at any
moment.  Of late, however, he had been impressed that they were in a
sort of eternal camp.

Many of the men engaged in a spirited debate. One outlined in a
peculiarly lucid manner all the plans of the commanding general.  He
was opposed by men who advocated that there were other plans of
campaign.  They clamored at each other, numbers making futile bids for
the popular attention.  Meanwhile, the soldier who had fetched the
rumor bustled about with much importance.  He was continually assailed
by questions.

"What's up, Jim?"

"Th' army's goin' t' move."

"Ah, what yeh talkin' about?  How yeh know it is?"

"Well, yeh kin b'lieve me er not, jest as yeh like.  I don't care a
hang."

There was much food for thought in the manner in which he replied.  He
came near to convincing them by disdaining to produce proofs. They grew
excited over it.

There was a youthful private who listened with eager ears to the words
of the tall soldier and to the varied comments of his comrades. After
receiving a fill of discussions concerning marches and attacks, he went
to his hut and crawled through an intricate hole that served it as a
door.  He wished to be alone with some new thoughts that had lately
come to him.

He lay down on a wide bank that stretched across the end of the room.
In the other end, cracker boxes were made to serve as furniture. They
were grouped about the fireplace.  A picture from an illustrated weekly
was upon the log walls, and three rifles were paralleled on pegs.
Equipments hunt on handy projections, and some tin dishes lay upon a
small pile of firewood.  A folded tent was serving as a roof.  The
sunlight, without, beating upon it, made it glow a light yellow shade.
A small window shot an oblique square of whiter light upon the
cluttered floor. The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay
chimney and wreathed into the room, and this flimsy chimney of clay and
sticks made endless threats to set ablaze the whole establishment.

