prompt:
Chapter: This advance of the enemy had seemed to the youth like a ruthless
hunting.  He began to fume with rage and exasperation.  He beat his
foot upon the ground, and scowled with hate at the swirling smoke that
was approaching like a phantom flood.  There was a maddening quality in
this seeming resolution of the foe to give him no rest, to give him no
time to sit down and think. Yesterday he had fought and had fled
rapidly. There had been many adventures.  For to-day he felt that he
had earned opportunities for contemplative repose.  He could have
enjoyed portraying to uninitiated listeners various scenes at which he
had been a witness or ably discussing the processes of war with other
proved men.  Too it was important that he should have time for physical
recuperation.  He was sore and stiff from his experiences.  He had
received his fill of all exertions, and he wished to rest.

But those other men seemed never to grow weary; they were fighting with
their old speed.

He had a wild hate for the relentless foe.  Yesterday, when he had
imagined the universe to be against him, he had hated it, little gods
and big gods; to-day he hated the army of the foe with the same great
hatred.  He was not going to be badgered of his life, like a kitten
chased by boys, he said.  It was not well to drive men into final
corners; at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws.

He leaned and spoke into his friend's ear.  He menaced the woods with a
gesture.  "If they keep on chasing us, by Gawd, they'd better watch
out.  Can't stand TOO much."

The friend twisted his head and made a calm reply.  "If they keep on
a-chasin' us they'll drive us all inteh th' river."

The youth cried out savagely at this statement.  He crouched behind a
little tree, with his eyes burning hatefully and his teeth set in a
curlike snarl.  The awkward bandage was still about his head, and upon
it, over his wound, there was a spot of dry blood.  His hair was
wondrously tousled, and some straggling, moving locks hung over the
cloth of the bandage down toward his forehead.  His jacket and shirt
were open at the throat, and exposed his young bronzed neck. There
could be seen spasmodic gulpings at his throat.

His fingers twined nervously about his rifle. He wished that it was an
engine of annihilating power.  He felt that he and his companions were
being taunted and derided from sincere convictions that they were poor
and puny.  His knowledge of his inability to take vengeance for it made
his rage into a dark and stormy specter, that possessed him and made
him dream of abominable cruelties.  The tormentors were flies sucking
insolently at his blood, and he thought that he would have given his
life for a revenge of seeing their faces in pitiful plights.

The winds of battle had swept all about the regiment, until the one
rifle, instantly followed by others, flashed in its front.  A moment
later the regiment roared forth its sudden and valiant retort.  A dense
wall of smoke settled slowly down. It was furiously slit and slashed by
the knifelike fire from the rifles.

To the youth the fighters resembled animals tossed for a death struggle
into a dark pit.  There was a sensation that he and his fellows, at
bay, were pushing back, always pushing fierce onslaughts of creatures
who were slippery.  Their beams of crimson seemed to get no purchase
upon the bodies of their foes; the latter seemed to evade them with
ease, and come through, between, around, and about with unopposed skill.

When, in a dream, it occurred to the youth that his rifle was an
impotent stick, he lost sense of everything but his hate, his desire to
smash into pulp the glittering smile of victory which he could feel
upon the faces of his enemies.

The blue smoke-swallowed line curled and writhed like a snake stepped
upon.  It swung its ends to and fro in an agony of fear and rage.

The youth was not conscious that he was erect upon his feet.  He did
not know the direction of the ground.  Indeed, once he even lost the
habit of balance and fell heavily.  He was up again immediately.  One
thought went through the chaos of his brain at the time.  He wondered
if he had fallen because he had been shot.  But the suspicion flew away
at once.  He did not think more of it.

He had taken up a first position behind the little tree, with a direct
determination to hold it against the world.  He had not deemed it
possible that his army could that day succeed, and from this he felt
the ability to fight harder.  But the throng had surged in all ways,
until he lost directions and locations, save that he knew where lay the
enemy.

The flames bit him, and the hot smoke broiled his skin.  His rifle
barrel grew so hot that ordinarily he could not have borne it upon his
palms; but he kept on stuffing cartridges into it, and pounding them
with his clanking, bending ramrod.  If he aimed at some changing form
through the smoke, he pulled his trigger with a fierce grunt, as if he
were dealing a blow of the fist with all his strength.

When the enemy seemed falling back before him and his fellows, he went
instantly forward, like a dog who, seeing his foes lagging, turns and
insists upon being pursued.  And when he was compelled to retire again,
he did it slowly, sullenly, taking steps of wrathful despair.

Once he, in his intent hate, was almost alone, and was firing, when all
those near him had ceased. He was so engrossed in his occupation that
he was not aware of a lull.

He was recalled by a hoarse laugh and a sentence that came to his ears
in a voice of contempt and amazement.  "Yeh infernal fool, don't yeh
know enough t' quit when there ain't anything t' shoot at?  Good Gawd!"

He turned then and, pausing with his rifle thrown half into position,
looked at the blue line of his comrades.  During this moment of leisure
they seemed all to be engaged in staring with astonishment at him. They
had become spectators.  Turning to the front again he saw, under the
lifted smoke, a deserted ground.

He looked bewildered for a moment.  Then there appeared upon the glazed
vacancy of his eyes a diamond point of intelligence.  "Oh," he said,
comprehending.

He returned to his comrades and threw himself upon the ground.  He
sprawled like a man who had been thrashed.  His flesh seemed strangely
on fire, and the sounds of the battle continued in his ears.  He groped
blindly for his canteen.

The lieutenant was crowing.  He seemed drunk with fighting.  He called
out to the youth: "By heavens, if I had ten thousand wild cats like you
I could tear th' stomach outa this war in less'n a week!"  He puffed
out his chest with large dignity as he said it.

Some of the men muttered and looked at the youth in awe-struck ways. It
was plain that as he had gone on loading and firing and cursing without
the proper intermission, they had found time to regard him. And they
now looked upon him as a war devil.

The friend came staggering to him.  There was some fright and dismay in
his voice.  "Are yeh all right, Fleming?  Do yeh feel all right?  There
ain't nothin' th' matter with yeh, Henry, is there?"

"No," said the youth with difficulty.  His throat seemed full of knobs
and burs.

These incidents made the youth ponder.  It was revealed to him that he
had been a barbarian, a beast.  He had fought like a pagan who defends
his religion.  Regarding it, he saw that it was fine, wild, and, in
some ways, easy.  He had been a tremendous figure, no doubt.  By this
struggle he had overcome obstacles which he had admitted to be
mountains.  They had fallen like paper peaks, and he was now what he
called a hero.  And he had not been aware of the process.  He had slept
and, awakening, found himself a knight.

He lay and basked in the occasional stares of his comrades.  Their
faces were varied in degrees of blackness from the burned powder. Some
were utterly smudged.  They were reeking with perspiration, and their
breaths came hard and wheezing.  And from these soiled expanses they
peered at him.

"Hot work!  Hot work!" cried the lieutenant deliriously.  He walked up
and down, restless and eager.  Sometimes his voice could be heard in a
wild, incomprehensible laugh.

When he had a particularly profound thought upon the science of war he
always unconsciously addressed himself to the youth.

There was some grim rejoicing by the men.

"By thunder, I bet this army'll never see another new reg'ment like us!"

"You bet!"

  "A dog, a woman, an' a walnut tree,
   Th' more yeh beat 'em, th' better they be!

That's like us."

"Lost a piler men, they did.  If an' ol' woman swep' up th' woods she'd
git a dustpanful."

"Yes, an' if she'll come around ag'in in 'bout an' hour she'll git a
pile more."

The forest still bore its burden of clamor. From off under the trees
came the rolling clatter of the musketry.  Each distant thicket seemed
a strange porcupine with quills of flame.  A cloud of dark smoke, as
from smoldering ruins, went up toward the sun now bright and gay in the
blue, enameled sky.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: This is the decisive chapter. This is the chapter in which the old "child-like" Henry becomes the new "man-like" Henry. It's the turning point of the whole novel. You should probably read it. OK, so one minute Henry is waiting angrily for battle to begin, and the next he turns into a wild beast, a hell-cat-fighting-machine. He loads and shoots and reloads and shoots and shoots and shoots. Until his rifle is as hot as the proverbial fryin' pan. He now runs toward the enemy without regard for his safety. He is a madman, a "war-devil," a "barbarian," a "beast." The Confederates run away like Sunday School children playing hide-and-seek. Henry continues to shoot at nothing until he realizes the men are laughing at him; the battle is over. Once the mocking is done, the other men declare their love for Henry. Henry is their new God! .) Henry isn't sure how to react to this, especially since he doesn't feel like it was really him doing all that fighting. He feels like he fell asleep and woke up when it was over. The men rejoice and recite this lovely poem: "A dog, a woman, an' a walnut tree, Th' more yeh beat 'em, th' better they be!" And that's not misogynistic at all.


prompt:
Chapter: The ragged line had respite for some minutes, but during its pause the
struggle in the forest became magnified until the trees seemed to
quiver from the firing and the ground to shake from the rushing of the
men.  The voices of the cannon were mingled in a long and interminable
row.  It seemed difficult to live in such an atmosphere.  The chests of
the men strained for a bit of freshness, and their throats craved water.

There was one shot through the body, who raised a cry of bitter
lamentation when came this lull.  Perhaps he had been calling out
during the fighting also, but at that time no one had heard him.  But
now the men turned at the woeful complaints of him upon the ground.

"Who is it?  Who is it?"

"It's Jimmie Rogers.  Jimmie Rogers."

When their eyes first encountered him there was a sudden halt, as if
they feared to go near. He was thrashing about in the grass, twisting
his shuddering body into many strange postures. He was screaming
loudly.  This instant's hesitation seemed to fill him with a
tremendous, fantastic contempt, and he damned them in shrieked
sentences.

The youth's friend had a geographical illusion concerning a stream, and
he obtained permission to go for some water.  Immediately canteens were
showered upon him.  "Fill mine, will yeh?"  "Bring me some, too."  "And
me, too." He departed, ladened.  The youth went with his friend,
feeling a desire to throw his heated body onto the stream and, soaking
there, drink quarts.

They made a hurried search for the supposed stream, but did not find
it.  "No water here," said the youth.  They turned without delay and
began to retrace their steps.

From their position as they again faced toward the place of the
fighting, they could of course comprehend a greater amount of the
battle than when their visions had been blurred by the hurling smoke of
the line.  They could see dark stretches winding along the land, and on
one cleared space there was a row of guns making gray clouds, which
were filled with large flashes of orange-colored flame.  Over some
foliage they could see the roof of a house.  One window, glowing a deep
murder red, shone squarely through the leaves.  From the edifice a tall
leaning tower of smoke went far into the sky.

Looking over their own troops, they saw mixed masses slowly getting
into regular form. The sunlight made twinkling points of the bright
steel.  To the rear there was a glimpse of a distant roadway as it
curved over a slope.  It was crowded with retreating infantry.  From
all the interwoven forest arose the smoke and bluster of the battle.
The air was always occupied by a blaring.

Near where they stood shells were flip-flapping and hooting. Occasional
bullets buzzed in the air and spanged into tree trunks. Wounded men and
other stragglers were slinking through the woods.

Looking down an aisle of the grove, the youth and his companion saw a
jangling general and his staff almost ride upon a wounded man, who was
crawling on his hands and knees.  The general reined strongly at his
charger's opened and foamy mouth and guided it with dexterous
horsemanship past the man.  The latter scrambled in wild and torturing
haste.  His strength evidently failed him as he reached a place of
safety.  One of his arms suddenly weakened, and he fell, sliding over
upon his back.  He lay stretched out, breathing gently.

A moment later the small, creaking cavalcade was directly in front of
the two soldiers.  Another officer, riding with the skillful abandon of
a cowboy, galloped his horse to a position directly before the general.
The two unnoticed foot soldiers made a little show of going on, but
they lingered near in the desire to overhear the conversation. Perhaps,
they thought, some great inner historical things would be said.

The general, whom the boys knew as the commander of their division,
looked at the other officer and spoke coolly, as if he were criticising
his clothes.  "Th' enemy's formin' over there for another charge," he
said.  "It'll be directed against Whiterside, an' I fear they'll break
through there unless we work like thunder t' stop them."

The other swore at his restive horse, and then cleared his throat.  He
made a gesture toward his cap.  "It'll be hell t' pay stoppin' them,"
he said shortly.

"I presume so," remarked the general.  Then he began to talk rapidly
and in a lower tone.  He frequently illustrated his words with a
pointing finger.  The two infantrymen could hear nothing until finally
he asked: "What troops can you spare?"

The officer who rode like a cowboy reflected for an instant.  "Well,"
he said, "I had to order in th' 12th to help th' 76th, an' I haven't
really got any.  But there's th' 304th.  They fight like a lot 'a mule
drivers.  I can spare them best of any."

The youth and his friend exchanged glances of astonishment.

The general spoke sharply.  "Get 'em ready, then.  I'll watch
developments from here, an' send you word when t' start them.  It'll
happen in five minutes."

As the other officer tossed his fingers toward his cap and wheeling his
horse, started away, the general called out to him in a sober voice: "I
don't believe many of your mule drivers will get back."

The other shouted something in reply.  He smiled.

With scared faces, the youth and his companion hurried back to the line.

These happenings had occupied an incredibly short time, yet the youth
felt that in them he had been made aged.  New eyes were given to him.
And the most startling thing was to learn suddenly that he was very
insignificant.  The officer spoke of the regiment as if he referred to
a broom.  Some part of the woods needed sweeping, perhaps, and he
merely indicated a broom in a tone properly indifferent to its fate. It
was war, no doubt, but it appeared strange.

As the two boys approached the line, the lieutenant perceived them and
swelled with wrath. "Fleming--Wilson--how long does it take yeh to git
water, anyhow--where yeh been to."

But his oration ceased as he saw their eyes, which were large with
great tales.  "We're goin' t' charge--we're goin' t' charge!" cried the
youth's friend, hastening with his news.

"Charge?" said the lieutenant.  "Charge? Well, b'Gawd!  Now, this is
real fightin'."  Over his soiled countenance there went a boastful
smile.  "Charge?  Well, b'Gawd!"

A little group of soldiers surrounded the two youths.  "Are we, sure
'nough?  Well, I'll be derned!  Charge?  What fer?  What at?  Wilson,
you're lyin'."

"I hope to die," said the youth, pitching his tones to the key of angry
remonstrance.  "Sure as shooting, I tell you."

And his friend spoke in re-enforcement.  "Not by a blame sight, he
ain't lyin'.  We heard 'em talkin'."

They caught sight of two mounted figures a short distance from them.
One was the colonel of the regiment and the other was the officer who
had received orders from the commander of the division.  They were
gesticulating at each other. The soldier, pointing at them, interpreted
the scene.

One man had a final objection: "How could yeh hear 'em talkin'?"  But
the men, for a large part, nodded, admitting that previously the two
friends had spoken truth.

They settled back into reposeful attitudes with airs of having accepted
the matter.  And they mused upon it, with a hundred varieties of
expression.  It was an engrossing thing to think about.  Many tightened
their belts carefully and hitched at their trousers.

A moment later the officers began to bustle among the men, pushing them
into a more compact mass and into a better alignment.  They chased
those that straggled and fumed at a few men who seemed to show by their
attitudes that they had decided to remain at that spot.  They were like
critical shepherds struggling with sheep.

Presently, the regiment seemed to draw itself up and heave a deep
breath.  None of the men's faces were mirrors of large thoughts.  The
soldiers were bended and stooped like sprinters before a signal.  Many
pairs of glinting eyes peered from the grimy faces toward the curtains
of the deeper woods.  They seemed to be engaged in deep calculations of
time and distance.

They were surrounded by the noises of the monstrous altercation between
the two armies. The world was fully interested in other matters.
Apparently, the regiment had its small affair to itself.

The youth, turning, shot a quick, inquiring glance at his friend.  The
latter returned to him the same manner of look.  They were the only
ones who possessed an inner knowledge.  "Mule drivers--hell t'
pay--don't believe many will get back."  It was an ironical secret.
Still, they saw no hesitation in each other's faces, and they nodded a
mute and unprotesting assent when a shaggy man near them said in a meek
voice: "We'll git swallowed."

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: After the battle, Wilson and Henry offer to go find water. This is an unsuccessful mission. What they do find is a general and another officer talking about which regiment they can most easily do without. The officer says that he'd be glad to spare the 304th because they fight like "mule drivers" . The general says fine, send the "mule drivers" to the front. He also says he doesn't believe many of the mule drivers will make it back, i.e., will not live to drive many more mules.) Henry and Wilson are beyond insulted at hearing all their grand fighting described thusly. They go back to camp and report what they've heard. The men are astounded and not too thrilled to hear that they will be the ones leading the charge against the enemy. Henry and Wilson give each other meaningful looks. "We'll git swallowed," one of the soldiers says .


prompt:
Chapter: The youth stared at the land in front of him. Its foliages now seemed
to veil powers and horrors.  He was unaware of the machinery of orders
that started the charge, although from the corners of his eyes he saw
an officer, who looked like a boy a-horseback, come galloping, waving
his hat.  Suddenly he felt a straining and heaving among the men.  The
line fell slowly forward like a toppling wall, and, with a convulsive
gasp that was intended for a cheer, the regiment began its journey. The
youth was pushed and jostled for a moment before he understood the
movement at all, but directly he lunged ahead and began to run.

He fixed his eye upon a distant and prominent clump of trees where he
had concluded the enemy were to be met, and he ran toward it as toward
a goal.  He had believed throughout that it was a mere question of
getting over an unpleasant matter as quickly as possible, and he ran
desperately, as if pursued for a murder.  His face was drawn hard and
tight with the stress of his endeavor.  His eyes were fixed in a lurid
glare.  And with his soiled and disordered dress, his red and inflamed
features surmounted by the dingy rag with its spot of blood, his wildly
swinging rifle and banging accouterments, he looked to be an insane
soldier.

As the regiment swung from its position out into a cleared space the
woods and thickets before it awakened.  Yellow flames leaped toward it
from many directions.  The forest made a tremendous objection.

The line lurched straight for a moment.  Then the right wing swung
forward; it in turn was surpassed by the left.  Afterward the center
careered to the front until the regiment was a wedge-shaped mass, but
an instant later the opposition of the bushes, trees, and uneven places
on the ground split the command and scattered it into detached clusters.

The youth, light-footed, was unconsciously in advance.  His eyes still
kept note of the clump of trees.  From all places near it the clannish
yell of the enemy could be heard.  The little flames of rifles leaped
from it.  The song of the bullets was in the air and shells snarled
among the tree-tops.  One tumbled directly into the middle of a
hurrying group and exploded in crimson fury. There was an instant's
spectacle of a man, almost over it, throwing up his hands to shield his
eyes.

Other men, punched by bullets, fell in grotesque agonies.  The regiment
left a coherent trail of bodies.

They had passed into a clearer atmosphere. There was an effect like a
revelation in the new appearance of the landscape.  Some men working
madly at a battery were plain to them, and the opposing infantry's
lines were defined by the gray walls and fringes of smoke.

It seemed to the youth that he saw everything.  Each blade of the green
grass was bold and clear.  He thought that he was aware of every change
in the thin, transparent vapor that floated idly in sheets.  The brown
or gray trunks of the trees showed each roughness of their surfaces.
And the men of the regiment, with their starting eyes and sweating
faces, running madly, or falling, as if thrown headlong, to queer,
heaped-up corpses--all were comprehended.  His mind took a mechanical
but firm impression, so that afterward everything was pictured and
explained to him, save why he himself was there.

But there was a frenzy made from this furious rush.  The men, pitching
forward insanely, had burst into cheerings, moblike and barbaric, but
tuned in strange keys that can arouse the dullard and the stoic.  It
made a mad enthusiasm that, it seemed, would be incapable of checking
itself before granite and brass.  There was the delirium that
encounters despair and death, and is heedless and blind to the odds. It
is a temporary but sublime absence of selfishness.  And because it was
of this order was the reason, perhaps, why the youth wondered,
afterward, what reasons he could have had for being there.

Presently the straining pace ate up the energies of the men.  As if by
agreement, the leaders began to slacken their speed.  The volleys
directed against them had had a seeming windlike effect.  The regiment
snorted and blew.  Among some stolid trees it began to falter and
hesitate. The men, staring intently, began to wait for some of the
distant walls of smoke to move and disclose to them the scene.  Since
much of their strength and their breath had vanished, they returned to
caution.  They were become men again.

The youth had a vague belief that he had run miles, and he thought, in
a way, that he was now in some new and unknown land.

The moment the regiment ceased its advance the protesting splutter of
musketry became a steadied roar.  Long and accurate fringes of smoke
spread out.  From the top of a small hill came level belchings of
yellow flame that caused an inhuman whistling in the air.

The men, halted, had opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping
with moans and shrieks.  A few lay under foot, still or wailing. And
now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands,
and watched the regiment dwindle.  They appeared dazed and stupid. This
spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal
fascination.  They stared woodenly at the sights, and, lowering their
eyes, looked from face to face.  It was a strange pause, and a strange
silence.

Then, above the sounds of the outside commotion, arose the roar of the
lieutenant.  He strode suddenly forth, his infantile features black
with rage.

"Come on, yeh fools!" he bellowed.  "Come on!  Yeh can't stay here. Yeh
must come on." He said more, but much of it could not be understood.

He started rapidly forward, with his head turned toward the men.  "Come
on," he was shouting.  The men stared with blank and yokel-like eyes at
him.  He was obliged to halt and retrace his steps.  He stood then with
his back to the enemy and delivered gigantic curses into the faces of
the men.  His body vibrated from the weight and force of his
imprecations.  And he could string oaths with the facility of a maiden
who strings beads.

The friend of the youth aroused.  Lurching suddenly forward and
dropping to his knees, he fired an angry shot at the persistent woods.
This action awakened the men.  They huddled no more like sheep.  They
seemed suddenly to bethink them of their weapons, and at once commenced
firing.  Belabored by their officers, they began to move forward.  The
regiment, involved like a cart involved in mud and muddle, started
unevenly with many jolts and jerks.  The men stopped now every few
paces to fire and load, and in this manner moved slowly on from trees
to trees.

The flaming opposition in their front grew with their advance until it
seemed that all forward ways were barred by the thin leaping tongues,
and off to the right an ominous demonstration could sometimes be dimly
discerned. The smoke lately generated was in confusing clouds that made
it difficult for the regiment to proceed with intelligence.  As he
passed through each curling mass the youth wondered what would confront
him on the farther side.

The command went painfully forward until an open space interposed
between them and the lurid lines.  Here, crouching and cowering behind
some trees, the men clung with desperation, as if threatened by a wave.
They looked wild-eyed, and as if amazed at this furious disturbance
they had stirred.  In the storm there was an ironical expression of
their importance.  The faces of the men, too, showed a lack of a
certain feeling of responsibility for being there.  It was as if they
had been driven.  It was the dominant animal failing to remember in the
supreme moments the forceful causes of various superficial qualities.
The whole affair seemed incomprehensible to many of them.

As they halted thus the lieutenant again began to bellow profanely.
Regardless of the vindictive threats of the bullets, he went about
coaxing, berating, and bedamning.  His lips, that were habitually in a
soft and childlike curve, were now writhed into unholy contortions.  He
swore by all possible deities.

Once he grabbed the youth by the arm. "Come on, yeh lunkhead!" he
roared.  "Come on!  We'll all git killed if we stay here.  We've on'y
got t' go across that lot.  An' then"--the remainder of his idea
disappeared in a blue haze of curses.

The youth stretched forth his arm.  "Cross there?"  His mouth was
puckered in doubt and awe.

"Certainly.  Jest 'cross th' lot!  We can't stay here," screamed the
lieutenant.  He poked his face close to the youth and waved his
bandaged hand.  "Come on!"  Presently he grappled with him as if for a
wrestling bout.  It was as if he planned to drag the youth by the ear
on to the assault.

The private felt a sudden unspeakable indignation against his officer.
He wrenched fiercely and shook him off.

"Come on yerself, then," he yelled.  There was a bitter challenge in
his voice.

They galloped together down the regimental front.  The friend scrambled
after them.  In front of the colors the three men began to bawl: "Come
on! come on!"  They danced and gyrated like tortured savages.

The flag, obedient to these appeals, bended its glittering form and
swept toward them.  The men wavered in indecision for a moment, and
then with a long, wailful cry the dilapidated regiment surged forward
and began its new journey.

Over the field went the scurrying mass.  It was a handful of men
splattered into the faces of the enemy.  Toward it instantly sprang the
yellow tongues.  A vast quantity of blue smoke hung before them.  A
mighty banging made ears valueless.

The youth ran like a madman to reach the woods before a bullet could
discover him.  He ducked his head low, like a football player.  In his
haste his eyes almost closed, and the scene was a wild blur.  Pulsating
saliva stood at the corners of his mouth.

Within him, as he hurled himself forward, was born a love, a despairing
fondness for this flag which was near him.  It was a creation of beauty
and invulnerability.  It was a goddess, radiant, that bended its form
with an imperious gesture to him.  It was a woman, red and white,
hating and loving, that called him with the voice of his hopes. Because
no harm could come to it he endowed it with power.  He kept near, as if
it could be a saver of lives, and an imploring cry went from his mind.

In the mad scramble he was aware that the color sergeant flinched
suddenly, as if struck by a bludgeon.  He faltered, and then became
motionless, save for his quivering knees.

He made a spring and a clutch at the pole. At the same instant his
friend grabbed it from the other side.  They jerked at it, stout and
furious, but the color sergeant was dead, and the corpse would not
relinquish its trust.  For a moment there was a grim encounter.  The
dead man, swinging with bended back, seemed to be obstinately tugging,
in ludicrous and awful ways, for the possession of the flag.

It was past in an instant of time.  They wrenched the flag furiously
from the dead man, and, as they turned again, the corpse swayed forward
with bowed head.  One arm swung high, and the curved hand fell with
heavy protest on the friend's unheeding shoulder.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: As the men rush toward the enemy, Henry seems to see everything with complete and utter clarity. Each blade of grass, every tree trunk, the individual corpses, are all suddenly clear to him in a way nothing has ever been before. He and the other men hesitate as if sensing their own deaths, but their lieutenant screams at them in a "blue haze of curses" . The lieutenant could "string oaths with the facility of a maiden who strings beads" . The men run forward, including Henry, who has suddenly recovered his "inner war-beast." The flag bearer gets shot and nearly drops the flag, but Henry the war-beast grabs the flag and runs with it straight at the enemy, with Wilson's aid.


prompt:
Chapter: When the two youths turned with the flag they saw that much of the
regiment had crumbled away, and the dejected remnant was coming slowly
back.  The men, having hurled themselves in projectile fashion, had
presently expended their forces.  They slowly retreated, with their
faces still toward the spluttering woods, and their hot rifles still
replying to the din.  Several officers were giving orders, their voices
keyed to screams.

"Where in hell yeh goin'?" the lieutenant was asking in a sarcastic
howl.  And a red-bearded officer, whose voice of triple brass could
plainly be heard, was commanding: "Shoot into 'em! Shoot into 'em, Gawd
damn their souls!"  There was a melee of screeches, in which the men
were ordered to do conflicting and impossible things.

The youth and his friend had a small scuffle over the flag.  "Give it
t' me!"  "No, let me keep it!"  Each felt satisfied with the other's
possession of it, but each felt bound to declare, by an offer to carry
the emblem, his willingness to further risk himself.  The youth roughly
pushed his friend away.

The regiment fell back to the stolid trees. There it halted for a
moment to blaze at some dark forms that had begun to steal upon its
track. Presently it resumed its march again, curving among the tree
trunks.  By the time the depleted regiment had again reached the first
open space they were receiving a fast and merciless fire. There seemed
to be mobs all about them.

The greater part of the men, discouraged, their spirits worn by the
turmoil, acted as if stunned.  They accepted the pelting of the bullets
with bowed and weary heads.  It was of no purpose to strive against
walls.  It was of no use to batter themselves against granite.  And
from this consciousness that they had attempted to conquer an
unconquerable thing there seemed to arise a feeling that they had been
betrayed. They glowered with bent brows, but dangerously, upon some of
the officers, more particularly upon the red-bearded one with the voice
of triple brass.

However, the rear of the regiment was fringed with men, who continued
to shoot irritably at the advancing foes.  They seemed resolved to make
every trouble.  The youthful lieutenant was perhaps the last man in the
disordered mass.  His forgotten back was toward the enemy.  He had been
shot in the arm.  It hung straight and rigid. Occasionally he would
cease to remember it, and be about to emphasize an oath with a sweeping
gesture.  The multiplied pain caused him to swear with incredible power.

The youth went along with slipping, uncertain feet.  He kept watchful
eyes rearward.  A scowl of mortification and rage was upon his face. He
had thought of a fine revenge upon the officer who had referred to him
and his fellows as mule drivers.  But he saw that it could not come to
pass.  His dreams had collapsed when the mule drivers, dwindling
rapidly, had wavered and hesitated on the little clearing, and then had
recoiled. And now the retreat of the mule drivers was a march of shame
to him.

A dagger-pointed gaze from without his blackened face was held toward
the enemy, but his greater hatred was riveted upon the man, who, not
knowing him, had called him a mule driver.

When he knew that he and his comrades had failed to do anything in
successful ways that might bring the little pangs of a kind of remorse
upon the officer, the youth allowed the rage of the baffled to possess
him.  This cold officer upon a monument, who dropped epithets
unconcernedly down, would be finer as a dead man, he thought. So
grievous did he think it that he could never possess the secret right
to taunt truly in answer.

He had pictured red letters of curious revenge. "We ARE mule drivers,
are we?"  And now he was compelled to throw them away.

He presently wrapped his heart in the cloak of his pride and kept the
flag erect.  He harangued his fellows, pushing against their chests
with his free hand.  To those he knew well he made frantic appeals,
beseeching them by name. Between him and the lieutenant, scolding and
near to losing his mind with rage, there was felt a subtle fellowship
and equality.  They supported each other in all manner of hoarse,
howling protests.

But the regiment was a machine run down. The two men babbled at a
forceless thing.  The soldiers who had heart to go slowly were
continually shaken in their resolves by a knowledge that comrades were
slipping with speed back to the lines.  It was difficult to think of
reputation when others were thinking of skins.  Wounded men were left
crying on this black journey.

The smoke fringes and flames blustered always.  The youth, peering once
through a sudden rift in a cloud, saw a brown mass of troops,
interwoven and magnified until they appeared to be thousands.  A
fierce-hued flag flashed before his vision.

Immediately, as if the uplifting of the smoke had been prearranged, the
discovered troops burst into a rasping yell, and a hundred flames
jetted toward the retreating band.  A rolling gray cloud again
interposed as the regiment doggedly replied.  The youth had to depend
again upon his misused ears, which were trembling and buzzing from the
melee of musketry and yells.

The way seemed eternal.  In the clouded haze men became panicstricken
with the thought that the regiment had lost its path, and was
proceeding in a perilous direction.  Once the men who headed the wild
procession turned and came pushing back against their comrades,
screaming that they were being fired upon from points which they had
considered to be toward their own lines. At this cry a hysterical fear
and dismay beset the troops.  A soldier, who heretofore had been
ambitious to make the regiment into a wise little band that would
proceed calmly amid the huge-appearing difficulties, suddenly sank down
and buried his face in his arms with an air of bowing to a doom.  From
another a shrill lamentation rang out filled with profane allusions to
a general. Men ran hither and thither, seeking with their eyes roads of
escape.  With serene regularity, as if controlled by a schedule,
bullets buffed into men.

The youth walked stolidly into the midst of the mob, and with his flag
in his hands took a stand as if he expected an attempt to push him to
the ground.  He unconsciously assumed the attitude of the color bearer
in the fight of the preceding day.  He passed over his brow a hand that
trembled.  His breath did not come freely. He was choking during this
small wait for the crisis.

His friend came to him.  "Well, Henry, I guess this is good-by--John."

"Oh, shut up, you damned fool!" replied the youth, and he would not
look at the other.

The officers labored like politicians to beat the mass into a proper
circle to face the menaces.  The ground was uneven and torn.  The men
curled into depressions and fitted themselves snugly behind whatever
would frustrate a bullet.

The youth noted with vague surprise that the lieutenant was standing
mutely with his legs far apart and his sword held in the manner of a
cane. The youth wondered what had happened to his vocal organs that he
no more cursed.

There was something curious in this little intent pause of the
lieutenant.  He was like a babe which, having wept its fill, raises its
eyes and fixes upon a distant toy.  He was engrossed in this
contemplation, and the soft under lip quivered from self-whispered
words.

Some lazy and ignorant smoke curled slowly. The men, hiding from the
bullets, waited anxiously for it to lift and disclose the plight of the
regiment.

The silent ranks were suddenly thrilled by the eager voice of the
youthful lieutenant bawling out: "Here they come!  Right onto us,
b'Gawd!"  His further words were lost in a roar of wicked thunder from
the men's rifles.

The youth's eyes had instantly turned in the direction indicated by the
awakened and agitated lieutenant, and he had seen the haze of treachery
disclosing a body of soldiers of the enemy.  They were so near that he
could see their features. There was a recognition as he looked at the
types of faces.  Also he perceived with dim amazement that their
uniforms were rather gay in effect, being light gray, accented with a
brilliant-hued facing.  Too, the clothes seemed new.

These troops had apparently been going forward with caution, their
rifles held in readiness, when the youthful lieutenant had discovered
them and their movement had been interrupted by the volley from the
blue regiment.  From the moment's glimpse, it was derived that they had
been unaware of the proximity of their dark-suited foes or had mistaken
the direction. Almost instantly they were shut utterly from the youth's
sight by the smoke from the energetic rifles of his companions.  He
strained his vision to learn the accomplishment of the volley, but the
smoke hung before him.

The two bodies of troops exchanged blows in the manner of a pair of
boxers.  The fast angry firings went back and forth.  The men in blue
were intent with the despair of their circumstances and they seized
upon the revenge to be had at close range.  Their thunder swelled loud
and valiant.  Their curving front bristled with flashes and the place
resounded with the clangor of their ramrods.  The youth ducked and
dodged for a time and achieved a few unsatisfactory views of the enemy.
There appeared to be many of them and they were replying swiftly.  They
seemed moving toward the blue regiment, step by step.  He seated
himself gloomily on the ground with his flag between his knees.

As he noted the vicious, wolflike temper of his comrades he had a sweet
thought that if the enemy was about to swallow the regimental broom as
a large prisoner, it could at least have the consolation of going down
with bristles forward.

But the blows of the antagonist began to grow more weak.  Fewer bullets
ripped the air, and finally, when the men slackened to learn of the
fight, they could see only dark, floating smoke.  The regiment lay
still and gazed.  Presently some chance whim came to the pestering
blur, and it began to coil heavily away.  The men saw a ground vacant
of fighters.  It would have been an empty stage if it were not for a
few corpses that lay thrown and twisted into fantastic shapes upon the
sward.

At sight of this tableau, many of the men in blue sprang from behind
their covers and made an ungainly dance of joy.  Their eyes burned and
a hoarse cheer of elation broke from their dry lips.

It had begun to seem to them that events were trying to prove that they
were impotent.  These little battles had evidently endeavored to
demonstrate that the men could not fight well.  When on the verge of
submission to these opinions, the small duel had showed them that the
proportions were not impossible, and by it they had revenged themselves
upon their misgivings and upon the foe.

The impetus of enthusiasm was theirs again. They gazed about them with
looks of uplifted pride, feeling new trust in the grim, always
confident weapons in their hands.  And they were men.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Henry remembers the mule driver comment and yells at his fellow officers to keep going, but they are tired and sick of fighting. Things are looking grim. Wilson says, "Well, Henry, I guess this is goodbye." Henry looks at him and says, "Oh, shut up, you damned fool!" . The fighting gets even more fierce and desperate. Suddenly, the bullets cease whizzing and the rifle shots quit zinging. The Confederates have turned their gray-coated tails and run. The Union troops look at each other in amazement and joy. "And they were men" .


prompt:
Chapter: Presently they knew that no firing threatened them.  All ways seemed
once more opened to them.  The dusty blue lines of their friends were
disclosed a short distance away.  In the distance there were many
colossal noises, but in all this part of the field there was a sudden
stillness.

They perceived that they were free.  The depleted band drew a long
breath of relief and gathered itself into a bunch to complete its trip.

In this last length of journey the men began to show strange emotions.
They hurried with nervous fear.  Some who had been dark and unfaltering
in the grimmest moments now could not conceal an anxiety that made them
frantic.  It was perhaps that they dreaded to be killed in
insignificant ways after the times for proper military deaths had
passed.  Or, perhaps, they thought it would be too ironical to get
killed at the portals of safety.  With backward looks of perturbation,
they hastened.

As they approached their own lines there was some sarcasm exhibited on
the part of a gaunt and bronzed regiment that lay resting in the shade
of trees.  Questions were wafted to them.

"Where th' hell yeh been?"

"What yeh comin' back fer?"

"Why didn't yeh stay there?"

"Was it warm out there, sonny?"

"Goin' home now, boys?"

One shouted in taunting mimicry: "Oh, mother, come quick an' look at
th' sojers!"

There was no reply from the bruised and battered regiment, save that
one man made broadcast challenges to fist fights and the red-bearded
officer walked rather near and glared in great swashbuckler style at a
tall captain in the other regiment.  But the lieutenant suppressed the
man who wished to fist fight, and the tall captain, flushing at the
little fanfare of the red-bearded one, was obliged to look intently at
some trees.

The youth's tender flesh was deeply stung by these remarks.  From under
his creased brows he glowered with hate at the mockers.  He meditated
upon a few revenges.  Still, many in the regiment hung their heads in
criminal fashion, so that it came to pass that the men trudged with
sudden heaviness, as if they bore upon their bended shoulders the
coffin of their honor.  And the youthful lieutenant, recollecting
himself, began to mutter softly in black curses.

They turned when they arrived at their old position to regard the
ground over which they had charged.

The youth in this contemplation was smitten with a large astonishment.
He discovered that the distances, as compared with the brilliant
measurings of his mind, were trivial and ridiculous.  The stolid trees,
where much had taken place, seemed incredibly near.  The time, too, now
that he reflected, he saw to have been short. He wondered at the number
of emotions and events that had been crowded into such little spaces.
Elfin thoughts must have exaggerated and enlarged everything, he said.

It seemed, then, that there was bitter justice in the speeches of the
gaunt and bronzed veterans.  He veiled a glance of disdain at his
fellows who strewed the ground, choking with dust, red from
perspiration, misty-eyed, disheveled.

They were gulping at their canteens, fierce to wring every mite of
water from them, and they polished at their swollen and watery features
with coat sleeves and bunches of grass.

However, to the youth there was a considerable joy in musing upon his
performances during the charge.  He had had very little time previously
in which to appreciate himself, so that there was now much satisfaction
in quietly thinking of his actions.  He recalled bits of color that in
the flurry had stamped themselves unawares upon his engaged senses.

As the regiment lay heaving from its hot exertions the officer who had
named them as mule drivers came galloping along the line.  He had lost
his cap.  His tousled hair streamed wildly, and his face was dark with
vexation and wrath. His temper was displayed with more clearness by the
way in which he managed his horse.  He jerked and wrenched savagely at
his bridle, stopping the hard-breathing animal with a furious pull near
the colonel of the regiment.  He immediately exploded in reproaches
which came unbidden to the ears of the men.  They were suddenly alert,
being always curious about black words between officers.

"Oh, thunder, MacChesnay, what an awful bull you made of this thing!"
began the officer. He attempted low tones, but his indignation caused
certain of the men to learn the sense of his words.  "What an awful
mess you made! Good Lord, man, you stopped about a hundred feet this
side of a very pretty success!  If your men had gone a hundred feet
farther you would have made a great charge, but as it is--what a lot of
mud diggers you've got anyway!"

The men, listening with bated breath, now turned their curious eyes
upon the colonel. They had a ragamuffin interest in this affair.

The colonel was seen to straighten his form and put one hand forth in
oratorical fashion. He wore an injured air; it was as if a deacon had
been accused of stealing.  The men were wiggling in an ecstasy of
excitement.

But of a sudden the colonel's manner changed from that of a deacon to
that of a Frenchman. He shrugged his shoulders.  "Oh, well, general, we
went as far as we could," he said calmly.

"As far as you could?  Did you, b'Gawd?" snorted the other.  "Well,
that wasn't very far, was it?" he added, with a glance of cold contempt
into the other's eyes.  "Not very far, I think.  You were intended to
make a diversion in favor of Whiterside.  How well you succeeded your
own ears can now tell you."  He wheeled his horse and rode stiffly away.

The colonel, bidden to hear the jarring noises of an engagement in the
woods to the left, broke out in vague damnations.

The lieutenant, who had listened with an air of impotent rage to the
interview, spoke suddenly in firm and undaunted tones.  "I don't care
what a man is--whether he is a general or what--if he says th' boys
didn't put up a good fight out there he's a damned fool."

"Lieutenant," began the colonel, severely, "this is my own affair, and
I'll trouble you--"

The lieutenant made an obedient gesture. "All right, colonel, all
right," he said.  He sat down with an air of being content with himself.

The news that the regiment had been reproached went along the line. For
a time the men were bewildered by it.  "Good thunder!" they ejaculated,
staring at the vanishing form of the general.  They conceived it to be
a huge mistake.

Presently, however, they began to believe that in truth their efforts
had been called light.  The youth could see this conviction weigh upon
the entire regiment until the men were like cuffed and cursed animals,
but withal rebellious.

The friend, with a grievance in his eye, went to the youth.  "I wonder
what he does want," he said.  "He must think we went out there an'
played marbles!  I never see sech a man!"

The youth developed a tranquil philosophy for these moments of
irritation.  "Oh, well," he rejoined, "he probably didn't see nothing
of it at all and got mad as blazes, and concluded we were a lot of
sheep, just because we didn't do what he wanted done.  It's a pity old
Grandpa Henderson got killed yestirday--he'd have known that we did our
best and fought good.  It's just our awful luck, that's what."

"I should say so," replied the friend.  He seemed to be deeply wounded
at an injustice. "I should say we did have awful luck!  There's no fun
in fightin' fer people when everything yeh do--no matter what--ain't
done right.  I have a notion t' stay behind next time an' let 'em take
their ol' charge an' go t' th' devil with it."

The youth spoke soothingly to his comrade. "Well, we both did good. I'd
like to see the fool what'd say we both didn't do as good as we could!"

"Of course we did," declared the friend stoutly.  "An' I'd break th'
feller's neck if he was as big as a church.  But we're all right,
anyhow, for I heard one feller say that we two fit th' best in th'
reg'ment, an' they had a great argument 'bout it.  Another feller, 'a
course, he had t' up an' say it was a lie--he seen all what was goin'
on an' he never seen us from th' beginnin' t' th' end.  An' a lot more
struck in an' ses it wasn't a lie--we did fight like thunder, an' they
give us quite a send-off.  But this is what I can't stand--these
everlastin' ol' soldiers, titterin' an' laughin', an' then that
general, he's crazy."

The youth exclaimed with sudden exasperation: "He's a lunkhead!  He
makes me mad. I wish he'd come along next time.  We'd show 'im what--"

He ceased because several men had come hurrying up.  Their faces
expressed a bringing of great news.

"O Flem, yeh jest oughta heard!" cried one, eagerly.

"Heard what?" said the youth.

"Yeh jest oughta heard!" repeated the other, and he arranged himself to
tell his tidings.  The others made an excited circle.  "Well, sir, th'
colonel met your lieutenant right by us--it was damnedest thing I ever
heard--an' he ses: 'Ahem! ahem!' he ses.  'Mr. Hasbrouck!' he ses, 'by
th' way, who was that lad what carried th' flag?' he ses.  There,
Flemin', what d' yeh think 'a that?  'Who was th' lad what carried th'
flag?' he ses, an' th' lieutenant, he speaks up right away: 'That's
Flemin', an' he's a jimhickey,' he ses, right away.  What?  I say he
did.  'A jim-hickey,' he ses--those 'r his words.  He did, too. I say
he did.  If you kin tell this story better than I kin, go ahead an'
tell it.  Well, then, keep yer mouth shet.  Th' lieutenant, he ses:
'He's a jimhickey,' an' th' colonel, he ses: 'Ahem! ahem! he is,
indeed, a very good man t' have, ahem!  He kep' th' flag 'way t' th'
front.  I saw 'im.  He's a good un,' ses th' colonel.  'You bet,' ses
th' lieutenant, 'he an' a feller named Wilson was at th' head 'a th'
charge, an' howlin' like Indians all th' time,' he ses.  'Head 'a th'
charge all th' time,' he ses.  'A feller named Wilson,' he ses.  There,
Wilson, m'boy, put that in a letter an' send it hum t' yer mother, hay?
'A feller named Wilson,' he ses.  An' th' colonel, he ses: 'Were they,
indeed?  Ahem! ahem!  My sakes!' he ses.  'At th' head 'a th'
reg'ment?' he ses.  'They were,' ses th' lieutenant.  'My sakes!' ses
th' colonel. He ses: 'Well, well, well,' he ses, 'those two babies?'
'They were,' ses th' lieutenant. 'Well, well,' ses th' colonel, 'they
deserve t' be major generals,' he ses.  'They deserve t' be
major-generals.'"

The youth and his friend had said: "Huh!" "Yer lyin', Thompson."  "Oh,
go t' blazes!" "He never sed it."  "Oh, what a lie!"  "Huh!" But
despite these youthful scoffings and embarrassments, they knew that
their faces were deeply flushing from thrills of pleasure.  They
exchanged a secret glance of joy and congratulation.

They speedily forgot many things.  The past held no pictures of error
and disappointment. They were very happy, and their hearts swelled with
grateful affection for the colonel and the youthful lieutenant.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Henry and the men head back to their camp. Oddly, they are met with jeers and jokes. One soldier says in a high voice, "Oh, mother, come quick an' look at th' so'jers!" . Henry's pride is wounded. When he thinks about it, though, he realizes that they weren't quite the war machines that he had thought. They only covered a little ground; they didn't kill that many men, etc. However, he is happy with his performance anyway. One soldier shows up and says he heard the "mule driver" general asking about who the brave "flag bearer" was. Supposedly, he said that Henry and Wilson deserve to be "generals." Henry and Wilson are buoyed by this remark.


prompt:
Chapter: When the woods again began to pour forth the dark-hued masses of the
enemy the youth felt serene self-confidence.  He smiled briefly when he
saw men dodge and duck at the long screechings of shells that were
thrown in giant handfuls over them.  He stood, erect and tranquil,
watching the attack begin against a part of the line that made a blue
curve along the side of an adjacent hill.  His vision being unmolested
by smoke from the rifles of his companions, he had opportunities to see
parts of the hard fight.  It was a relief to perceive at last from
whence came some of these noises which had been roared into his ears.

Off a short way he saw two regiments fighting a little separate battle
with two other regiments.  It was in a cleared space, wearing a
set-apart look.  They were blazing as if upon a wager, giving and
taking tremendous blows. The firings were incredibly fierce and rapid.
These intent regiments apparently were oblivious of all larger purposes
of war, and were slugging each other as if at a matched game.

In another direction he saw a magnificent brigade going with the
evident intention of driving the enemy from a wood.  They passed in out
of sight and presently there was a most awe-inspiring racket in the
wood.  The noise was unspeakable.  Having stirred this prodigious
uproar, and, apparently, finding it too prodigious, the brigade, after
a little time, came marching airily out again with its fine formation
in nowise disturbed.  There were no traces of speed in its movements.
The brigade was jaunty and seemed to point a proud thumb at the yelling
wood.

On a slope to the left there was a long row of guns, gruff and
maddened, denouncing the enemy, who, down through the woods, were
forming for another attack in the pitiless monotony of conflicts.  The
round red discharges from the guns made a crimson flare and a high,
thick smoke.  Occasional glimpses could be caught of groups of the
toiling artillerymen.  In the rear of this row of guns stood a house,
calm and white, amid bursting shells.  A congregation of horses, tied
to a long railing, were tugging frenziedly at their bridles.  Men were
running hither and thither.

The detached battle between the four regiments lasted for some time.
There chanced to be no interference, and they settled their dispute by
themselves.  They struck savagely and powerfully at each other for a
period of minutes, and then the lighter-hued regiments faltered and
drew back, leaving the dark-blue lines shouting. The youth could see
the two flags shaking with laughter amid the smoke remnants.

Presently there was a stillness, pregnant with meaning.  The blue lines
shifted and changed a trifle and stared expectantly at the silent woods
and fields before them.  The hush was solemn and churchlike, save for a
distant battery that, evidently unable to remain quiet, sent a faint
rolling thunder over the ground.  It irritated, like the noises of
unimpressed boys.  The men imagined that it would prevent their perched
ears from hearing the first words of the new battle.

Of a sudden the guns on the slope roared out a message of warning.  A
spluttering sound had begun in the woods.  It swelled with amazing
speed to a profound clamor that involved the earth in noises.  The
splitting crashes swept along the lines until an interminable roar was
developed.  To those in the midst of it it became a din fitted to the
universe.  It was the whirring and thumping of gigantic machinery,
complications among the smaller stars.  The youth's ears were filled
up.  They were incapable of hearing more.

On an incline over which a road wound he saw wild and desperate rushes
of men perpetually backward and forward in riotous surges. These parts
of the opposing armies were two long waves that pitched upon each other
madly at dictated points.  To and fro they swelled. Sometimes, one side
by its yells and cheers would proclaim decisive blows, but a moment
later the other side would be all yells and cheers. Once the youth saw
a spray of light forms go in houndlike leaps toward the waving blue
lines. There was much howling, and presently it went away with a vast
mouthful of prisoners.  Again, he saw a blue wave dash with such
thunderous force against a gray obstruction that it seemed to clear the
earth of it and leave nothing but trampled sod.  And always in their
swift and deadly rushes to and fro the men screamed and yelled like
maniacs.

Particular pieces of fence or secure positions behind collections of
trees were wrangled over, as gold thrones or pearl bedsteads.  There
were desperate lunges at these chosen spots seemingly every instant,
and most of them were bandied like light toys between the contending
forces.  The youth could not tell from the battle flags flying like
crimson foam in many directions which color of cloth was winning.

His emaciated regiment bustled forth with undiminished fierceness when
its time came. When assaulted again by bullets, the men burst out in a
barbaric cry of rage and pain.  They bent their heads in aims of intent
hatred behind the projected hammers of their guns. Their ramrods
clanged loud with fury as their eager arms pounded the cartridges into
the rifle barrels.  The front of the regiment was a smoke-wall
penetrated by the flashing points of yellow and red.

Wallowing in the fight, they were in an astonishingly short time
resmudged.  They surpassed in stain and dirt all their previous
appearances.  Moving to and fro with strained exertion, jabbering the
while, they were, with their swaying bodies, black faces, and glowing
eyes, like strange and ugly friends jigging heavily in the smoke.

The lieutenant, returning from a tour after a bandage, produced from a
hidden receptacle of his mind new and portentous oaths suited to the
emergency.  Strings of expletives he swung lashlike over the backs of
his men, and it was evident that his previous efforts had in nowise
impaired his resources.

The youth, still the bearer of the colors, did not feel his idleness.
He was deeply absorbed as a spectator.  The crash and swing of the
great drama made him lean forward, intent-eyed, his face working in
small contortions.  Sometimes he prattled, words coming unconsciously
from him in grotesque exclamations.  He did not know that he breathed;
that the flag hung silently over him, so absorbed was he.

A formidable line of the enemy came within dangerous range.  They could
be seen plainly--tall, gaunt men with excited faces running with long
strides toward a wandering fence.

At sight of this danger the men suddenly ceased their cursing monotone.
There was an instant of strained silence before they threw up their
rifles and fired a plumping volley at the foes.  There had been no
order given; the men, upon recognizing the menace, had immediately let
drive their flock of bullets without waiting for word of command.

But the enemy were quick to gain the protection of the wandering line
of fence.  They slid down behind it with remarkable celerity, and from
this position they began briskly to slice up the blue men.

These latter braced their energies for a great struggle.  Often, white
clinched teeth shone from the dusky faces.  Many heads surged to and
fro, floating upon a pale sea of smoke. Those behind the fence
frequently shouted and yelped in taunts and gibelike cries, but the
regiment maintained a stressed silence.  Perhaps, at this new assault
the men recalled the fact that they had been named mud diggers, and it
made their situation thrice bitter.  They were breathlessly intent upon
keeping the ground and thrusting away the rejoicing body of the enemy.
They fought swiftly and with a despairing savageness denoted in their
expressions.

The youth had resolved not to budge whatever should happen.  Some
arrows of scorn that had buried themselves in his heart had generated
strange and unspeakable hatred.  It was clear to him that his final and
absolute revenge was to be achieved by his dead body lying, torn and
gluttering, upon the field.  This was to be a poignant retaliation upon
the officer who had said "mule drivers," and later "mud diggers," for
in all the wild graspings of his mind for a unit responsible for his
sufferings and commotions he always seized upon the man who had dubbed
him wrongly.  And it was his idea, vaguely formulated, that his corpse
would be for those eyes a great and salt reproach.

The regiment bled extravagantly.  Grunting bundles of blue began to
drop.  The orderly sergeant of the youth's company was shot through the
cheeks.  Its supports being injured, his jaw hung afar down, disclosing
in the wide cavern of his mouth a pulsing mass of blood and teeth. And
with it all he made attempts to cry out. In his endeavor there was a
dreadful earnestness, as if he conceived that one great shriek would
make him well.

The youth saw him presently go rearward. His strength seemed in nowise
impaired.  He ran swiftly, casting wild glances for succor.

Others fell down about the feet of their companions.  Some of the
wounded crawled out and away, but many lay still, their bodies twisted
into impossible shapes.

The youth looked once for his friend.  He saw a vehement young man,
powder-smeared and frowzled, whom he knew to be him.  The lieutenant,
also, was unscathed in his position at the rear.  He had continued to
curse, but it was now with the air of a man who was using his last box
of oaths.

For the fire of the regiment had begun to wane and drip.  The robust
voice, that had come strangely from the thin ranks, was growing rapidly
weak.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Henry and the men rest briefly. Then guns and cannons begin to roar, and the soldiers are back in it again. Henry is now the official flag bearer. The regiment is way tired to be fighting again so soon. Suddenly, the troops are so close to the Confederates that they can see them for the first time. This turns the mule drivers into mule mushers . Henry is so hyped up that he thinks he should die on this very battlefield, just to spite the "mule driver" guy. He is pleased to see that Wilson and the Lieutenant haven't been shot yet.


prompt:
Chapter: The colonel came running along back of the line.  There were other
officers following him. "We must charge'm!" they shouted.  "We must
charge'm!" they cried with resentful voices, as if anticipating a
rebellion against this plan by the men.

The youth, upon hearing the shouts, began to study the distance between
him and the enemy. He made vague calculations.  He saw that to be firm
soldiers they must go forward.  It would be death to stay in the
present place, and with all the circumstances to go backward would
exalt too many others.  Their hope was to push the galling foes away
from the fence.

He expected that his companions, weary and stiffened, would have to be
driven to this assault, but as he turned toward them he perceived with
a certain surprise that they were giving quick and unqualified
expressions of assent.  There was an ominous, clanging overture to the
charge when the shafts of the bayonets rattled upon the rifle barrels.
At the yelled words of command the soldiers sprang forward in eager
leaps. There was new and unexpected force in the movement of the
regiment.  A knowledge of its faded and jaded condition made the charge
appear like a paroxysm, a display of the strength that comes before a
final feebleness.  The men scampered in insane fever of haste, racing
as if to achieve a sudden success before an exhilarating fluid should
leave them.  It was a blind and despairing rush by the collection of
men in dusty and tattered blue, over a green sward and under a sapphire
sky, toward a fence, dimly outlined in smoke, from behind which
spluttered the fierce rifles of enemies.

The youth kept the bright colors to the front. He was waving his free
arm in furious circles, the while shrieking mad calls and appeals,
urging on those that did not need to be urged, for it seemed that the
mob of blue men hurling themselves on the dangerous group of rifles
were again grown suddenly wild with an enthusiasm of unselfishness.
From the many firings starting toward them, it looked as if they would
merely succeed in making a great sprinkling of corpses on the grass
between their former position and the fence.  But they were in a state
of frenzy, perhaps because of forgotten vanities, and it made an
exhibition of sublime recklessness.  There was no obvious questioning,
nor figurings, nor diagrams.  There was, apparently, no considered
loopholes.  It appeared that the swift wings of their desires would
have shattered against the iron gates of the impossible.

He himself felt the daring spirit of a savage religion mad.  He was
capable of profound sacrifices, a tremendous death.  He had no time for
dissections, but he knew that he thought of the bullets only as things
that could prevent him from reaching the place of his endeavor.  There
were subtle flashings of joy within him that thus should be his mind.

He strained all his strength.  His eyesight was shaken and dazzled by
the tension of thought and muscle.  He did not see anything excepting
the mist of smoke gashed by the little knives of fire, but he knew that
in it lay the aged fence of a vanished farmer protecting the snuggled
bodies of the gray men.

As he ran a thought of the shock of contact gleamed in his mind.  He
expected a great concussion when the two bodies of troops crashed
together.  This became a part of his wild battle madness.  He could
feel the onward swing of the regiment about him and he conceived of a
thunderous, crushing blow that would prostrate the resistance and
spread consternation and amazement for miles.  The flying regiment was
going to have a catapultian effect.  This dream made him run faster
among his comrades, who were giving vent to hoarse and frantic cheers.

But presently he could see that many of the men in gray did not intend
to abide the blow. The smoke, rolling, disclosed men who ran, their
faces still turned.  These grew to a crowd, who retired stubbornly.
Individuals wheeled frequently to send a bullet at the blue wave.

But at one part of the line there was a grim and obdurate group that
made no movement. They were settled firmly down behind posts and rails.
A flag, ruffled and fierce, waved over them and their rifles dinned
fiercely.

The blue whirl of men got very near, until it seemed that in truth
there would be a close and frightful scuffle.  There was an expressed
disdain in the opposition of the little group, that changed the meaning
of the cheers of the men in blue.  They became yells of wrath,
directed, personal.  The cries of the two parties were now in sound an
interchange of scathing insults.

They in blue showed their teeth; their eyes shone all white.  They
launched themselves as at the throats of those who stood resisting. The
space between dwindled to an insignificant distance.

The youth had centered the gaze of his soul upon that other flag.  Its
possession would be high pride.  It would express bloody minglings,
near blows.  He had a gigantic hatred for those who made great
difficulties and complications. They caused it to be as a craved
treasure of mythology, hung amid tasks and contrivances of danger.

He plunged like a mad horse at it.  He was resolved it should not
escape if wild blows and darings of blows could seize it.  His own
emblem, quivering and aflare, was winging toward the other.  It seemed
there would shortly be an encounter of strange beaks and claws, as of
eagles.

The swirling body of blue men came to a sudden halt at close and
disastrous range and roared a swift volley.  The group in gray was
split and broken by this fire, but its riddled body still fought.  The
men in blue yelled again and rushed in upon it.

The youth, in his leapings, saw, as through a mist, a picture of four
or five men stretched upon the ground or writhing upon their knees with
bowed heads as if they had been stricken by bolts from the sky.
Tottering among them was the rival color bearer, whom the youth saw had
been bitten vitally by the bullets of the last formidable volley.  He
perceived this man fighting a last struggle, the struggle of one whose
legs are grasped by demons.  It was a ghastly battle. Over his face was
the bleach of death, but set upon it was the dark and hard lines of
desperate purpose.  With this terrible grin of resolution he hugged his
precious flag to him and was stumbling and staggering in his design to
go the way that led to safety for it.

But his wounds always made it seem that his feet were retarded, held,
and he fought a grim fight, as with invisible ghouls fastened greedily
upon his limbs.  Those in advance of the scampering blue men, howling
cheers, leaped at the fence.  The despair of the lost was in his eyes
as he glanced back at them.

The youth's friend went over the obstruction in a tumbling heap and
sprang at the flag as a panther at prey.  He pulled at it and,
wrenching it free, swung up its red brilliancy with a mad cry of
exultation even as the color bearer, gasping, lurched over in a final
throe and, stiffening convulsively, turned his dead face to the ground.
There was much blood upon the grass blades.

At the place of success there began more wild clamorings of cheers. The
men gesticulated and bellowed in an ecstasy.  When they spoke it was as
if they considered their listener to be a mile away.  What hats and
caps were left to them they often slung high in the air.

At one part of the line four men had been swooped upon, and they now
sat as prisoners. Some blue men were about them in an eager and curious
circle.  The soldiers had trapped strange birds, and there was an
examination.  A flurry of fast questions was in the air.

One of the prisoners was nursing a superficial wound in the foot.  He
cuddled it, baby-wise, but he looked up from it often to curse with an
astonishing utter abandon straight at the noses of his captors.  He
consigned them to red regions; he called upon the pestilential wrath of
strange gods.  And with it all he was singularly free from recognition
of the finer points of the conduct of prisoners of war.  It was as if a
clumsy clod had trod upon his toe and he conceived it to be his
privilege, his duty, to use deep, resentful oaths.

Another, who was a boy in years, took his plight with great calmness
and apparent good nature.  He conversed with the men in blue, studying
their faces with his bright and keen eyes.  They spoke of battles and
conditions. There was an acute interest in all their faces during this
exchange of view points.  It seemed a great satisfaction to hear voices
from where all had been darkness and speculation.

The third captive sat with a morose countenance.  He preserved a
stoical and cold attitude. To all advances he made one reply without
variation, "Ah, go t' hell!"

The last of the four was always silent and, for the most part, kept his
face turned in unmolested directions.  From the views the youth
received he seemed to be in a state of absolute dejection.  Shame was
upon him, and with it profound regret that he was, perhaps, no more to
be counted in the ranks of his fellows.  The youth could detect no
expression that would allow him to believe that the other was giving a
thought to his narrowed future, the pictured dungeons, perhaps, and
starvations and brutalities, liable to the imagination.  All to be seen
was shame for captivity and regret for the right to antagonize.

After the men had celebrated sufficiently they settled down behind the
old rail fence, on the opposite side to the one from which their foes
had been driven.  A few shot perfunctorily at distant marks.

There was some long grass.  The youth nestled in it and rested, making
a convenient rail support the flag.  His friend, jubilant and
glorified, holding his treasure with vanity, came to him there.  They
sat side by side and congratulated each other.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: An officer says the men have to charge the fence. It seems the Johnny Rebs are hiding behind this fence and must be flushed out. Henry gets ready to flush. He "felt the daring spirit of a savage religion-mad. He was capable of profound sacrifices, a tremendous death" . He thinks of the "bullets only as things that could prevent him from reaching the place of his endeavor" . The two armies fight and clash for possession of the all-important fence. Henry sees something else he wants: the Confederate flag! Conveniently, the rebel flag bearer just happens to be wounded. Badly. Henry makes a super-human effort and "spr at the flag as a panther at prey" . He manages to obtain the Confederate flag as well as retain his own Union flag. Meanwhile, the Union soldiers have captured some POWs. Henry and the other men are surprised to see how the Confederates look and act just like them, like real people and everything. With the battle over, Henry can once again shoot the breeze with Wilson.


prompt:
Chapter: The roarings that had stretched in a long line of sound across the face
of the forest began to grow intermittent and weaker.  The stentorian
speeches of the artillery continued in some distant encounter, but the
crashes of the musketry had almost ceased.  The youth and his friend of
a sudden looked up, feeling a deadened form of distress at the waning
of these noises, which had become a part of life.  They could see
changes going on among the troops.  There were marchings this way and
that way.  A battery wheeled leisurely.  On the crest of a small hill
was the thick gleam of many departing muskets.

The youth arose.  "Well, what now, I wonder?" he said.  By his tone he
seemed to be preparing to resent some new monstrosity in the way of
dins and smashes.  He shaded his eyes with his grimy hand and gazed
over the field.

His friend also arose and stared.  "I bet we're goin' t' git along out
of this an' back over th' river," said he.

"Well, I swan!" said the youth.

They waited, watching.  Within a little while the regiment received
orders to retrace its way. The men got up grunting from the grass,
regretting the soft repose.  They jerked their stiffened legs, and
stretched their arms over their heads. One man swore as he rubbed his
eyes.  They all groaned "O Lord!"  They had as many objections to this
change as they would have had to a proposal for a new battle.

They trampled slowly back over the field across which they had run in a
mad scamper.

The regiment marched until it had joined its fellows.  The reformed
brigade, in column, aimed through a wood at the road.  Directly they
were in a mass of dust-covered troops, and were trudging along in a way
parallel to the enemy's lines as these had been defined by the previous
turmoil.

They passed within view of a stolid white house, and saw in front of it
groups of their comrades lying in wait behind a neat breastwork.  A row
of guns were booming at a distant enemy. Shells thrown in reply were
raising clouds of dust and splinters.  Horsemen dashed along the line
of intrenchments.

At this point of its march the division curved away from the field and
went winding off in the direction of the river.  When the significance
of this movement had impressed itself upon the youth he turned his head
and looked over his shoulder toward the trampled and debris-strewed
ground.  He breathed a breath of new satisfaction.  He finally nudged
his friend.  "Well, it's all over," he said to him.

His friend gazed backward.  "B'Gawd, it is," he assented.  They mused.

For a time the youth was obliged to reflect in a puzzled and uncertain
way.  His mind was undergoing a subtle change.  It took moments for it
to cast off its battleful ways and resume its accustomed course of
thought.  Gradually his brain emerged from the clogged clouds, and at
last he was enabled to more closely comprehend himself and circumstance.

He understood then that the existence of shot and counter-shot was in
the past.  He had dwelt in a land of strange, squalling upheavals and
had come forth.  He had been where there was red of blood and black of
passion, and he was escaped.  His first thoughts were given to
rejoicings at this fact.

Later he began to study his deeds, his failures, and his achievements.
Thus, fresh from scenes where many of his usual machines of reflection
had been idle, from where he had proceeded sheeplike, he struggled to
marshal all his acts.

At last they marched before him clearly. From this present view point
he was enabled to look upon them in spectator fashion and to criticise
them with some correctness, for his new condition had already defeated
certain sympathies.

Regarding his procession of memory he felt gleeful and unregretting,
for in it his public deeds were paraded in great and shining
prominence. Those performances which had been witnessed by his fellows
marched now in wide purple and gold, having various deflections.  They
went gayly with music.  It was pleasure to watch these things.  He
spent delightful minutes viewing the gilded images of memory.

He saw that he was good.  He recalled with a thrill of joy the
respectful comments of his fellows upon his conduct.

Nevertheless, the ghost of his flight from the first engagement
appeared to him and danced.  There were small shoutings in his brain
about these matters.  For a moment he blushed, and the light of his
soul flickered with shame.

A specter of reproach came to him.  There loomed the dogging memory of
the tattered soldier--he who, gored by bullets and faint for blood, had
fretted concerning an imagined wound in another; he who had loaned his
last of strength and intellect for the tall soldier; he who, blind with
weariness and pain, had been deserted in the field.

For an instant a wretched chill of sweat was upon him at the thought
that he might be detected in the thing.  As he stood persistently
before his vision, he gave vent to a cry of sharp irritation and agony.

His friend turned.  "What's the matter, Henry?" he demanded.  The
youth's reply was an outburst of crimson oaths.

As he marched along the little branch-hung roadway among his prattling
companions this vision of cruelty brooded over him.  It clung near him
always and darkened his view of these deeds in purple and gold.
Whichever way his thoughts turned they were followed by the somber
phantom of the desertion in the fields. He looked stealthily at his
companions, feeling sure that they must discern in his face evidences
of this pursuit.  But they were plodding in ragged array, discussing
with quick tongues the accomplishments of the late battle.

"Oh, if a man should come up an' ask me, I'd say we got a dum good
lickin'."

"Lickin'--in yer eye!  We ain't licked, sonny. We're goin' down here
aways, swing aroun', an' come in behint 'em."

"Oh, hush, with your comin' in behint 'em. I've seen all 'a that I
wanta.  Don't tell me about comin' in behint--"

"Bill Smithers, he ses he'd rather been in ten hundred battles than
been in that heluva hospital.  He ses they got shootin' in th'
night-time, an' shells dropped plum among 'em in th' hospital.  He ses
sech hollerin' he never see."

"Hasbrouck?  He's th' best off'cer in this here reg'ment.  He's a
whale."

"Didn't I tell yeh we'd come aroun' in behint 'em?  Didn't I tell yeh
so?  We--"

"Oh, shet yeh mouth!"

For a time this pursuing recollection of the tattered man took all
elation from the youth's veins.  He saw his vivid error, and he was
afraid that it would stand before him all his life.  He took no share
in the chatter of his comrades, nor did he look at them or know them,
save when he felt sudden suspicion that they were seeing his thoughts
and scrutinizing each detail of the scene with the tattered soldier.

Yet gradually he mustered force to put the sin at a distance.  And at
last his eyes seemed to open to some new ways.  He found that he could
look back upon the brass and bombast of his earlier gospels and see
them truly.  He was gleeful when he discovered that he now despised
them.

With this conviction came a store of assurance.  He felt a quiet
manhood, nonassertive but of sturdy and strong blood.  He knew that he
would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point.  He
had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was
but the great death.  He was a man.

So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath
his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover
tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares were not.  Scars faded as
flowers.

It rained.  The procession of weary soldiers became a bedraggled train,
despondent and muttering, marching with churning effort in a trough of
liquid brown mud under a low, wretched sky.  Yet the youth smiled, for
he saw that the world was a world for him, though many discovered it to
be made of oaths and walking sticks.  He had rid himself of the red
sickness of battle.  The sultry nightmare was in the past. He had been
an animal blistered and sweating in the heat and pain of war.  He
turned now with a lover's thirst to images of tranquil skies, fresh
meadows, cool brooks--an existence of soft and eternal peace.

Over the river a golden ray of sun came through the hosts of leaden
rain clouds.

[Transcriber's Note: I have tried to retain the inconsistent renderings
of contractions as joined or separate, e.g., "we 'll" or "we'll."

I have made the following changes to the text:

PAGE  PARA.  LINE  ORIGINAL          CHANGED TO
  18     3      3  estabiish         establish
  40     3      2  skirmish          skirmish-
  78     4      4  a air             an air
 130            2  recognzied        recognized
 130     4     12  could a'          could 'a
 139     2      4  not began         not begun
 193     2     16  illusions to      allusions to]

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The battle is over and Henry now has the opportunity to rethink all that has happened. He feels bad about running away and about deserting "the Tattered Soldier." However, he feels good about everything else, like stealing the rebel flag and destroying the Death Star. He realizes that he, like all men, is a mixture of good and bad, weakness and strength. He realizes that now "he a man" . Henry thinks that because of his experiences, his soul is changed and he can now leave behind the "red sickness of battle" . Also, the sun comes out, as a little red-headed orphan once predicted.