Chapter V.

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 knotting 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 resentful

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 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 thoughts, 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 _débris_ 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 emblems. They were

like beautiful birds strangely undaunted in a storm.

As he listened to the din from the hillside, to a deep pulsating

thunder that came from afar to the left, and to the lesser clamors

which came from many directions, it occurred to him that they were

fighting, too, over there, and over there, and over there. Heretofore

he had supposed that all the battle was directly under his nose.

As he gazed around him the youth felt a flash of astonishment at the

blue, pure sky and the sun gleamings on the trees and fields. It was

surprising that Nature had gone tranquilly on with her golden process

in the midst of so much devilment.