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and the spy shivered, wondering, Why do there have to be men like that, men who enjoy another man’s dying?
the same light, calm, pleasant manner that he had developed when talking to particularly rebellious students who had come in with a grievance and who hadn’t yet learned that the soft answer turneth away wrath.
aint fit to pour pee outen a boot
with instructions on the heel.
But the truth is much more than that. Truth is too personal. Don’t know if I can express it. He paused in the heat. Strange thing. You would die for it without further question, but you had a hard time talking about it. He shook his head. I’ll wave no more flags for home. No tears for Mother. Nobody ever died for apple pie.
The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.
He saw the lone officer, much closer now, sitting regally on horseback, outlined against a darkening sky. The man was looking his way, with glasses. Buford waved. You never knew what old friend was out there.
Your great fat horse is transportation, that’s all he is, with no more place on a modern battlefield than a great fat elephant.
Children never die: they live on in the brain forever.
The thing about the heart was that you could not coax it or force it, as you could any other disease.
A good officer rode as little as possible.
Little humor but sometimes the door opened and you saw the warmth within a long way off, a certain sadness, a slow, remote, unfathomable quality as if the man wanted to be closer to the world but did not know how.
“What a piece of work is man … in action how like an angel!” And the old man, grinning, had scratched his head and then said stiffly, “Well, boy, if he’s an angel, he’s sure a murderin’ angel.” And Chamberlain
had gone on to school to make an oration on the subject: Man, the Killer Angel.
same. I was born up there but I’m no stranger here. Have always felt at home everywhere, even in Virginia, where they hate me. Everywhere you go there’s nothing but the same rock and dirt and houses and people and deer and birds. They give it all names, but I’m at home everywhere.
Two things an officer must do, to lead men. This from old Ames, who never cared about love: You must care for your men’s welfare. You must show physical courage.
“Honor without intelligence is a disaster. Honor could lose the war.”
He remembered an old Indian joke: follow cigar smoke; fat men there.
Well, of course, the South is the Old Country. They haven’t left Europe. They’ve merely transplanted it. And that’s what the war is about.
I had one of those moments when you feel that if the rest of the world is right, then you yourself have gone mad. Because I was really thinking of killing him, wiping him off the earth, and it was then I realized for the first time that if it was necessary to kill them, then I would kill them, and something at the time said: You cannot be utterly right. And there is still something every now and then which says, ‘Yes, but what if you are wrong?’ ”
“The truth is, Colonel, that there’s no divine spark, bless you. There’s many a man alive no more value than a dead dog.
the past cannot keep a good man in chains, and that’s the nature of the war.
Hood took the hand, held it for a moment. Sometimes you touched a man like this and it was the last time, and the next time you saw him he was cold and white and bloodless, and the warmth was gone forever.
On little things like that—a cup of water—battles were decided.
“To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. That is … a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so very few good officers. Although there are many good men.”
Little Round Top. Battle of Little Round Top. Well. I guess we’ll remember it.
“But you know, Marshall, it won’t do any good.” “We can try, sir.” “Right.” Longstreet touched his cap. “We can at least do that.”
“God in Heaven,” Longstreet said, and repeated it, “there’s no strategy to this bloody war. What it is is old Napoleon and a hell of a lot of chivalry. That’s all it is.
Longstreet thought: you always know the truth; wait long enough and the mind will tell you.
He shuddered. He remembered that day in church when he prayed from the soul and listened and knew in that moment that there was no one there, no one to listen.
Longstreet said nothing. The war was about slavery, all right. That was not why Longstreet fought but that was what the war was about, and there was no point in talking about it, never had been.
that was interestin’. He said, whole time he’s been in this country, he never heard the word ‘slave.’ He said we always call them ‘servants.’ Now you know, that’s true. I never thought of it before, but it’s true.”
Armistead’s voice wavered; he took a deep breath. “Well, I was crying, and I went up to Win and I took him by the shoulder and I said, ‘Win, so help me, if I ever lift a hand against you, may God strike me dead.’ ”
He remembered the night in Arlington when the news came: secession. He remembered a paneled wall and firelight. When we heard the news we went into mourning. But outside there was cheering in the streets, bonfires of joy. They had their war at last.
But I cannot even do that. Cannot leave the man alone. Cannot leave him with that attack in the hands of Hill. Cannot leave because I disagree, because, as he says, it’s all in the hands of God. And maybe God really wants it this way. But they will mostly all die. We will lose it here. Even if they get to the hill, what will they have left, what will we have left, all ammunition gone, our best men gone? And the thing is, I cannot even refuse, I cannot even back away, I cannot leave him to fight it alone, they’re my people, my boys. God help me, I can’t even quit.
Chamberlain thought: their casualties much worse than mine. In a fight, it always seems that your fight is the hardest. Must remember that. What happened to them was much worse than what happened to us.
There are no good-tempered generals.
Some things a man cannot be asked to do. Killing of brothers.
Sometimes he believed in a Heaven, mostly he believed in a Heaven; there ought to be a Heaven for young soldiers, especially young soldiers, but just as surely for the old soldier; there ought to be more than just that metallic end, and then silence, then the worms, and sometimes he believed, mostly he believed, but just this moment he did not believe at all, knew Kilrain was dead and gone forever, that the grin had died and would not reappear, never, there was nothing beyond the sound of the guns but the vast dark, the huge nothing, not even silence, just an end …
hunched, a bloody horse running eerily by, three-legged, horrible sight, running toward the road. Another horse down with no head, like a broken toy.
“We have some educated troops, you know, gentlemen privates. Well, I was riding along the line and I heard one of these fellas, ex-professor type, declaiming this poem, you know the one: ‘Backward, turn backward, oh Time, in your flight, and make me a child again, just for this fight.’ And then there’s a pause, and a voice says, in a slow drawl, ‘Yep. A gal child.’ ”
And Longstreet said nothing, staring at him, staring, and Armistead felt an eerie turning, like a sickness, watching Longstreet’s face, and then he saw that Longstreet was crying. He moved closer. The general was crying. Something he never saw or ever expected to see, and the tears came to Armistead’s eyes as he watched,
It was the first time in Armistead’s life he had ever really known a man would die. Always before there was at least a chance, but here no chance at all, and now the man was his oldest friend.
The batteries on the Rocky Hill were enfilading him, shooting right down his line, sometimes with solid shot, and you could see the damn black balls bouncing along like bowling balls, and here and there, in the air, tumbling over and over like a blood-spouting cartwheel, a piece of a man.
“Come on, boy. What will you think of yourself tomorrow?”
A voice said, “I was riding toward you, sir, trying to knock you down. You didn’t have a chance.” He looked up: a Union officer. I am not captured, I am dying. He tried to see: help me, help me. He was lifted slightly.
“Will you tell General Hancock, please, that General Armistead sends his regrets. Will you tell him … how very sorry I am …”
He was through. They had all died for nothing and he had sent them. He thought: A man is asked to bear too much. And he refused. He began slowly to walk forward. He was all done. He would find a gun somewhere and take a walk forward.
“It’s no good trying to get yourself killed, General. The Lord will come for you in His own time.”
himself. He thought of Lee as he had looked riding that hill, his hat off so that the retreating men could see him and recognize him. When they saw him they actually stopped running. From Death itself.
