Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/redbadge.zip/FILE5.TXT

Text File | 1993-06-14 | 14KB | 219 lines

                               CHAPTER FIVE

          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 them back!" he shouted. savagely; "you've got
     to hold them back!"
          In his agitation the colonel began to stammer. "All---all
     right, General, all right, by God! We---we'll do our---we---we'll
     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 way 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--
     -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 chant-like 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 o£ their howls were
     extraordinary. They expended their lungs with prodigal wills. And
     o£ten they nearly stood upon their heads in their anxiety to
     observe the enemy on the other side of the tumbling smoke.
          The lieutenant o£ 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 sheep-like 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 o£ the
     other---stern, hard, with no reflection o£ 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 o£
     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 held them back. We've held them back; darned 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 gleaming 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.