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Page 20
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 hand 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.
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