Michael Shaara - The Killer Angels

He looked down on the men, the line running down the hill.

A little ammunition, a little food. We’ll hang onto these rocks, all right. Now if I could just get a little sleep…

”Lawrence? The way them Rebs kept coming yesterday… You got to admire ‘em.”

”Um,” Chamberlain said.

”You think they’ll come again today?”

Chamberlain looked out across the open air, gazed at the miles of campfires.

”Doesn’t look like they’re planning to depart.”

”You think they’ll come again?”

”They’ll come again,” he said. He stirred himself on the branch. They’ll come again, for sure. Must get more ammunition up here. What in God’s name is keeping Rice?

”We only got about two hundred men,” Tom said thoughtfully. Not with worry but with calculation, a new realist, assessing the cold truth.

”But the position is very good,” Chamberlain said.

”I guess so,” Tom admitted. Rumble of cannon. At first he thought it was thunder, out of the dark sky to the north.

But he saw the flashes sparkle on Cemetery Hill and knew it was too early for thunder, and as he looked northward he could see sunlight breaking through the overcast, to the north and west, and shells falling on the far side of the cemetery. He put his glasses to his eyes and looked, but all he could see was smoke and mist, an occasional yellow flash. Below him, on the hilltop, the heads of the men turned north. Chamberlain thought: diversion. To Tom he said, “You go down and alert the pickets. May be a diversion on that flank. They may be coming this way again. Send Ruel Thomas to me, tell him to send another call to Rice for ammunition.”

Tom started down the tree. He scratched himself, swore feebly.

”Lawrence, we’re going to need another runner, sir, old brother. I go up and down this hill much more my legs going to fall off.”

Chamberlain said, “Yes. Tell Ellis Spear to pick a man, send him to me.”

Tom moved down into the dark. Chamberlain waited in the tree. It was a very good position. The hill was flat across the top, about thirty yards of flat rock, an occasional tree, but the ascent on all sides was steep. The ground facing the enemy was rocky and steep and heavy with trees, and the ground behind him fell away abruptly, a sheer drop of at least a hundred feet, no worry about assault from that side.

The men had built another rock wall, and now, with enough ammunition, he could hold there for a long time. The end of the line. Overlooking all the world. They’ll come again. Let ‘em come.

He half expected another assault. But there was no sound from below. The sky was brighter now, breaks in the overcast; light streamed down in blinding rays. He shaded sleep-filled eyes, gazed out across the Southern lines to the blue hills to the east. Lovely country. If I close my eyes, you know, I’ll go to sleep. If they come again, could use some rest first.

He heard a man snoring loudly just below his tree. He saw a round face, bearded, mouth open, flat on his back on a rock ledge, hands folded on his chest. Chamberlain smiled in envy He thought: guess I better get down from here, look around.

But now he had sat for a long time and his leg had stiffened, there was a brutal pain in his foot. He limped along the rock, trying to work out the stiffness. Thirty-four years old, laddie, not the man you used to be. He walked painfully past the sleeping man. A tall thin boy grinned happily upward, touched his cap. Chamberlain said, “Good morning.”

”Colonel, sir.”

”How you getting along?”

”Hungry, sir.” The boy started to get up. Chamberlain held out a hand.

”Never mind that. Take it easy.” He looked down on the round-faced sleeper, smiled.

”Jonas can sleep anywhere,” the boy said proudly.

Chamberlain moved on down the line. The battle in the north was growing. No diversion. Well. He felt oddly disappointed. Then a trace of pride. They tried this flank yesterday and couldn’t move us. Now they’re trying the other flank. He wondered who his opposite number was, the colonel on the far right, the last man on the right of the Union line. What troops did he lead? What was he thinking now? Good luck to you. Colonel, Chamberlain said silently, saluting in his mind. But you don’t have soldiers like these.

He limped among the men, passing each one like a warming fire. He shared with them all the memory of yesterday. He had been with them to that other world; they were in it now, the high clear world of the last man in line, and all the enemy coming. Tozier on the rock with the flag in his hand, Tom plugging the gap, bayonets lifted, that last wild charge. He looked down smiling as he passed, patting shoulders, concerned with small wounds. One boy lay behind a rock. He had been shot through the cheek yesterday but had not gone to the rear, had charged, had come all this way to the top of the hill. Now he was down with a fever, and the wound in the face was inflamed.

Chamberlain ordered him to the field hospital. There were several signs of sickness, one possible case of typhoid.

Nothing to do but detail the men down the hill. But none of them wanted to go, some deathly afraid of the hospital itself, some not wanting to be away from men they knew, men they could trust, the Regiment of Home.

Chamberlain began to grow restless for food. He thought: we’re forgotten up here. Nobody knows what these men did yesterday. They saved the whole line, God knows, and now I can’t even feed them. He was becoming angry. He clambered back up the hill and tore open the wound inside his boot, which began again to bleed. He sat down at the top of the hill, listening to the cannon fire and musketry raging in the north, momentarily grateful that it was over there, and took off the boot, bound the foot, wished he could get something to wash it down with, but what water there was was dirty and bloody. There was a creek down below: Plum Run. Choked with yesterday’s dead. Good to be high up here; the smells of death don’t seem to be rising. Wind still from the south, blowing it away. You know, the Regiment is weary.

That thought had taken a while to form, had formed slowly as he moved up and down the line. Just so far you can push a man.

He thought: a little food. A little rest. They’ll be right again in a bit. Fewer than two hundred now. And there on the rock, sitting staring down at the long line of dark men shapeless under dark trees, he felt for the first time the sense of the coming end. They were dwindling away like sands in a glass. How long does it go on? Each one becoming more precious. What’s left now is the best, each man a rock. But now there are so few. We began with a thousand and so whittled down, polishing, pruning, until what we had yesterday was superb, absolutely superb, and now only about two hundred, and. God, had it not been for those boys from the Second Maine… but the end is in sight.

Another day like yesterday… and the Regiment will be gone. In the Union Army that was the way it was: they fought a unit until it bled to death. There were no replacements.

He shook his head, trying to shake away the thought. He could not imagine them gone. He would go with them. But if the war went on much longer… if there was one more fight like yesterday…

The sound of the battle in the north grew steadily in intensity. Chamberlain, alone, wished he knew anything at all about what was happening. He could not even talk to Ellis Spear, who was down in the woods with the other flank of the Regiment, where it joined the 83rd. He waited, alone, staying awake, listening. After a while there was a courier from Rice. He was a puffing lieutenant staggering up among the rocks.

”Colonel Chamberlain? Sir, that’s some climb.” The lieutenant paused to gasp for air, leaned upon a tree.