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.

 After seizing the flag from the fallen color bearer, Henry and Wilson see the regiment slinking back toward them, the enemy having broken their charge. The lieutenant cries out angrily, but the men fall back to a row of trees, relatively safe from the deadly hail of gunfire. After a scuffle, Henry succeeds in pulling the flag away from Wilson, and bears it himself. As the men march across the battlefield, they are pelted with bullets, and surrounded by fortified groups of enemy soldiers. Henry, who entertains the notion of a victory as "a fine revenge upon the officer who had referred to him and his fellows as mule drivers," mulls with shame and rage that victory is not to be. Still, he holds the flag proudly and urges the men to fight, even though the regiment is in tatters and men are beginning to scatter. Soon, the enemy is upon Henry's regiment, which, at the last minute, mounts a respectable defense. Henry comforts himself with the thought that if the enemy is meant to win the battle, their victory will at least not be an easy one. As the 304th fights, he is assured of its confidence in combat. In a pitched battle, Henry's regiment succeeds in forcing the enemy soldiers to retreat. The spirits of all the men in Henry's group are uplifted; they feel as though they have regained their capabilities, and proceed with a new enthusiasm

