Chapter: There were moments of waiting.  The youth thought of the village street
at home before the arrival of the circus parade on a day in the spring.
He remembered how he had stood, a small, thrillful boy, prepared to
follow the dingy lady upon the white horse, or the band in its faded
chariot.  He saw the yellow road, the lines of expectant people, and
the sober houses. He particularly remembered an old fellow who used to
sit upon a cracker box in front of the store and feign to despise such
exhibitions.  A thousand details of color and form surged in his mind.
The old fellow upon the cracker box appeared in middle prominence.

Some one cried, "Here they come!"

There was rustling and muttering among the men.  They displayed a
feverish desire to have every possible cartridge ready to their hands.
The boxes were pulled around into various positions, and adjusted with
great care.  It was as if seven hundred new bonnets were being tried on.

The tall soldier, having prepared his rifle, produced a red
handkerchief of some kind.  He was engaged in knitting it about his
throat with exquisite attention to its position, when the cry was
repeated up and down the line in a muffled roar of sound.

"Here they come!  Here they come!"  Gun locks clicked.

Across the smoke-infested fields came a brown swarm of running men who
were giving shrill yells.  They came on, stooping and swinging their
rifles at all angles.  A flag, tilted forward, sped near the front.

As he caught sight of them the youth was momentarily startled by a
thought that perhaps his gun was not loaded.  He stood trying to rally
his faltering intellect so that he might recollect the moment when he
had loaded, but he could not.

A hatless general pulled his dripping horse to a stand near the colonel
of the 304th.  He shook his fist in the other's face.  "You 've got to
hold 'em back!" he shouted, savagely; "you 've got to hold 'em back!"

In his agitation the colonel began to stammer. "A-all r-right, General,
all right, by Gawd!  We--we'll do our--we-we'll d-d-do--do our best,
General."  The general made a passionate gesture and galloped away. The
colonel, perchance to relieve his feelings, began to scold like a wet
parrot.  The youth, turning swiftly to make sure that the rear was
unmolested, saw the commander regarding his men in a highly regretful
manner, as if he regretted above everything his association with them.

The man at the youth's elbow was mumbling, as if to himself: "Oh, we
're in for it now! oh, we 're in for it now!"

The captain of the company had been pacing excitedly to and fro in the
rear.  He coaxed in schoolmistress fashion, as to a congregation of
boys with primers.  His talk was an endless repetition.  "Reserve your
fire, boys--don't shoot till I tell you--save your fire--wait till they
get close up--don't be damned fools--"

Perspiration streamed down the youth's face, which was soiled like that
of a weeping urchin. He frequently, with a nervous movement, wiped his
eyes with his coat sleeve.  His mouth was still a little ways open.

He got the one glance at the foe-swarming field in front of him, and
instantly ceased to debate the question of his piece being loaded.
Before he was ready to begin--before he had announced to himself that
he was about to fight--he threw the obedient, well-balanced rifle into
position and fired a first wild shot.  Directly he was working at his
weapon like an automatic affair.

He suddenly lost concern for himself, and forgot to look at a menacing
fate.  He became not a man but a member.  He felt that something of
which he was a part--a regiment, an army, a cause, or a country--was in
a crisis.  He was welded into a common personality which was dominated
by a single desire.  For some moments he could not flee no more than a
little finger can commit a revolution from a hand.

If he had thought the regiment was about to be annihilated perhaps he
could have amputated himself from it.  But its noise gave him
assurance.  The regiment was like a firework that, once ignited,
proceeds superior to circumstances until its blazing vitality fades. It
wheezed and banged with a mighty power.  He pictured the ground before
it as strewn with the discomfited.

There was a consciousness always of the presence of his comrades about
him.  He felt the subtle battle brotherhood more potent even than the
cause for which they were fighting.  It was a mysterious fraternity
born of the smoke and danger of death.

He was at a task.  He was like a carpenter who has made many boxes,
making still another box, only there was furious haste in his
movements.  He, in his thought, was careering off in other places, even
as the carpenter who as he works whistles and thinks of his friend or
his enemy, his home or a saloon.  And these jolted dreams were never
perfect to him afterward, but remained a mass of blurred shapes.

Presently he began to feel the effects of the war atmosphere--a
blistering sweat, a sensation that his eyeballs were about to crack
like hot stones.  A burning roar filled his ears.

Following this came a red rage.  He developed the acute exasperation of
a pestered animal, a well-meaning cow worried by dogs.  He had a mad
feeling against his rifle, which could only be used against one life at
a time.  He wished to rush forward and strangle with his fingers.  He
craved a power that would enable him to make a world-sweeping gesture
and brush all back.  His impotency appeared to him, and made his rage
into that of a driven beast.

Buried in the smoke of many rifles his anger was directed not so much
against the men whom he knew were rushing toward him as against the
swirling battle phantoms which were choking him, stuffing their smoke
robes down his parched throat.  He fought frantically for respite for
his senses, for air, as a babe being smothered attacks the deadly
blankets.

There was a blare of heated rage mingled with a certain expression of
intentness on all faces. Many of the men were making low-toned noises
with their mouths, and these subdued cheers, snarls, imprecations,
prayers, made a wild, barbaric song that went as an undercurrent of
sound, strange and chantlike with the resounding chords of the war
march.  The man at the youth's elbow was babbling.  In it there was
something soft and tender like the monologue of a babe.  The tall
soldier was swearing in a loud voice.  From his lips came a black
procession of curious oaths.  Of a sudden another broke out in a
querulous way like a man who has mislaid his hat.  "Well, why don't
they support us?  Why don't they send supports?  Do they think--"

The youth in his battle sleep heard this as one who dozes hears.

There was a singular absence of heroic poses. The men bending and
surging in their haste and rage were in every impossible attitude.  The
steel ramrods clanked and clanged with incessant din as the men pounded
them furiously into the hot rifle barrels.  The flaps of the cartridge
boxes were all unfastened, and bobbed idiotically with each movement.
The rifles, once loaded, were jerked to the shoulder and fired without
apparent aim into the smoke or at one of the blurred and shifting forms
which upon the field before the regiment had been growing larger and
larger like puppets under a magician's hand.

The officers, at their intervals, rearward, neglected to stand in
picturesque attitudes.  They were bobbing to and fro roaring directions
and encouragements.  The dimensions of their howls were extraordinary.
They expended their lungs with prodigal wills.  And often they nearly
stood upon their heads in their anxiety to observe the enemy on the
other side of the tumbling smoke.

The lieutenant of the youth's company had encountered a soldier who had
fled screaming at the first volley of his comrades.  Behind the lines
these two were acting a little isolated scene.  The man was blubbering
and staring with sheeplike eyes at the lieutenant, who had seized him
by the collar and was pommeling him.  He drove him back into the ranks
with many blows.  The soldier went mechanically, dully, with his
animal-like eyes upon the officer.  Perhaps there was to him a divinity
expressed in the voice of the other--stern, hard, with no reflection of
fear in it.  He tried to reload his gun, but his shaking hands
prevented.  The lieutenant was obliged to assist him.

The men dropped here and there like bundles. The captain of the youth's
company had been killed in an early part of the action.  His body lay
stretched out in the position of a tired man resting, but upon his face
there was an astonished and sorrowful look, as if he thought some
friend had done him an ill turn.  The babbling man was grazed by a shot
that made the blood stream widely down his face.  He clapped both hands
to his head.  "Oh!" he said, and ran.  Another grunted suddenly as if
he had been struck by a club in the stomach.  He sat down and gazed
ruefully.  In his eyes there was mute, indefinite reproach.  Farther up
the line a man, standing behind a tree, had had his knee joint
splintered by a ball.  Immediately he had dropped his rifle and gripped
the tree with both arms.  And there he remained, clinging desperately
and crying for assistance that he might withdraw his hold upon the tree.

At last an exultant yell went along the quivering line.  The firing
dwindled from an uproar to a last vindictive popping.  As the smoke
slowly eddied away, the youth saw that the charge had been repulsed.
The enemy were scattered into reluctant groups.  He saw a man climb to
the top of the fence, straddle the rail, and fire a parting shot.  The
waves had receded, leaving bits of dark debris upon the ground.

Some in the regiment began to whoop frenziedly.  Many were silent.
Apparently they were trying to contemplate themselves.

After the fever had left his veins, the youth thought that at last he
was going to suffocate. He became aware of the foul atmosphere in which
he had been struggling.  He was grimy and dripping like a laborer in a
foundry.  He grasped his canteen and took a long swallow of the warmed
water.

A sentence with variations went up and down the line.  "Well, we 've
helt 'em back.  We 've helt 'em back; derned if we haven't."  The men
said it blissfully, leering at each other with dirty smiles.

The youth turned to look behind him and off to the right and off to the
left.  He experienced the joy of a man who at last finds leisure in
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 emblem.  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.

 Suddenly someone yells, "Here they come!" And sure enough, the Confederates rush at Henry's group of soldiers. Henry surprises himself by totally forgetting his own fear. He shoots and reloads like a madman. He feels as if he is a part of something large and multi-bodied . There are many excellent descriptions of the injured dead and dying. Really gruesomely gorgeous stuff. When one soldier tries to run away, the lieutenant beats him up. When it is over, Henry feels weary, but proud at seeing the Union flag still flying. He is also amazed to see that the sun is still shining; that nature takes no notice of the bloody deeds done on its tranquil soil.

