The Civil War Trilogy: Gods and Generals / the Killer Angels / the Last Full Measure

by Michael Shaara

  Kilrain said, “I can stand now, I think.”

  Darker down the hill. Sunset soon. How long had this been going on? Longer pause than usual. But … the Rebel yell. A rush on the left. He stood up. Pain in the right foot, unmistakable squish of blood in the boot. Didn’t know it was bleeding. See them come, bounding up the rocks, hitting the left flank. Kilrain moved by him on the right, knelt, fired. Chamberlain pulled out the pistol. No damn good except at very close range. You couldn’t hit anything. He moved to the left flank. Much smoke. Smoke changing now, blowing this way, blinding. He was caught in it, a smothering shroud, hot, white, the bitter smell of burned powder. It broke. He saw a man swinging a black rifle, grunts and yells and weird thick sounds unlike anything he had ever heard before. A Reb came over a rock, bayonet fixed, black thin point forward and poised, face seemed blinded, head twitched. Chamberlain aimed the pistol, fired, hit the man dead center, down he went, folding; smoke swallowed him. Chamberlain moved forward. He expected them to be everywhere, flood of brown bodies, gray bodies. But the smoke cleared and the line was firm. Only a few Rebs had come up, a few come over the stones, all were down. He ran forward to a boulder, ducked, looked out: dead men, ten, fifteen, lumps of gray, blood spattering everywhere, dirty white skin, a clawlike hand, black sightless eyes. Burst of white smoke, again, again. Tom at his shoulder: “Lawrence?”

  Chamberlain turned. All right? Boyish face. He smiled.

  “They can’t send us no help from the Eighty-third. Woodward said they have got their troubles, but they can extend the line a little and help us out.”

  “Good. Go tell Clarke to shift a bit, strengthen the center.”

  Kilrain, on hands and knees, squinting: “They keep coming in on the flank.”

  Chamberlain, grateful for the presence: “What do you think?”

  “We’ve been shooting a lot of rounds.”

  Chamberlain looked toward the crest of the hill. No Thomas anywhere. Looked down again toward the dark. Motion. They’re forming again. Must have made five or six tries already. To Kilrain: “Don’t know what else to do.”

  Looked down the line. Every few feet, a man down. Men sitting facing numbly to the rear. He thought: Let’s pull back a ways. He gave the order to Spear. The Regiment bent back from the colors, from the boulder, swung back to a new line, tighter, almost a U. The next assault came against both flanks and the center all at once, worst of all. Chamberlain dizzy in the smoke began to lose track of events, saw only blurred images of smoke and death, Tozier with the flag, great black gaps in the line, the left flank giving again, falling back, tightening. Now there was only a few yards between the line on the right and the line on the left, and Chamberlain walked the narrow corridor between, Kilrain at his side, always at a crouch.

  Ruel Thomas came back. “Sir? Colonel Vincent is dead.”

  Chamberlain swung to look him in the face. Thomas nodded jerkily.

  “Yes, sir. Got hit a few moments after fight started. We’ve already been reinforced by Weed’s Brigade, up front, but now Weed is dead, and they moved Hazlett’s Battery in up top and Hazlett’s dead.”

  Chamberlain listened, nodded, took a moment to let it come to focus.

  “Can’t get no ammunition, sir. Everything’s a mess up there. But they’re holdin’ pretty good. Rebs having trouble coming up the hill. Pretty steep.”

  “Got to have bullets,” Chamberlain said.

  Spear came up from the left. “Colonel, half the men are down. If they come again …” He shrugged, annoyed, baffled, as if by a problem he could not quite solve, yet ought to, certainly, easily. “Don’t know if we can stop ’em.”

  “Send out word,” Chamberlain said. “Take ammunition from the wounded. Make every round count.” Tom went off, along with Ruel Thomas. Reports began coming in. Spear was right. But the right flank was better, not so many casualties there. Chamberlain moved, shifting men. And heard the assault coming, up the rocks, clawing up through the bushes, through the shattered trees, the pocked stone, the ripped and bloody earth. It struck the left flank. Chamberlain shot another man, an officer. He fell inside the new rock wall, face a bloody rag. On the left two Maine men went down, side by side, at the same moment, and along that spot there was no one left, no one at all, and yet no Rebs coming, just one moment of emptiness in all the battle, as if in that spot the end had come and there were not enough men left now to fill the earth, that final death was beginning there and spreading like a stain. Chamberlain saw movement below, troops drawn toward the gap as toward a cool place in all the heat, and looking down, saw Tom’s face and yelled, but not being heard, pointed and pushed, but his hand stopped in mid-air, not my own brother, but Tom understood, hopped across to the vacant place and plugged it with his body so that there was no longer a hole but one terribly mortal exposed boy, and smoke cut him off, so that Chamberlain could no longer see, moving forward himself, had to shoot another man, shot him twice, the first ball taking him in the shoulder, and the man was trying to fire a musket with one hand when Chamberlain got him again, taking careful aim this time. Fought off this assault, thinking all the while coldly, calmly, perhaps now we are approaching the end. They can’t keep coming. We can’t keep stopping them.

  Firing faded. Darker now. Old Tom. Where?

  Familiar form in familiar position, aiming downhill, firing again. All right. God be praised.

  Chamberlain thought: Not right, not right at all. If he was hit, I sent him there. What would I tell Mother? What do I feel myself? His duty to go. No, no. Chamberlain blinked. He was becoming tired. Think on all that later, the theology of it.

  He limped along the line. Signs of exhaustion. Men down, everywhere. He thought: we cannot hold.

  Looked up toward the crest. Fire still hot there, still hot everywhere. Down into the dark. They are damned good men, those Rebs. Rebs, I salute you. I don’t think we can hold you.

  He gathered with Spear and Kilrain back behind the line. He saw another long gap, sent Ruel Thomas to this one. Spear made a count.

  “We’ve lost a third of the men, Colonel. Over a hundred down. The left is too thin.”

  “How’s the ammunition?”

  “I’m checking.”

  A new face, dirt-stained, bloody: Homan Melcher, lieutenant, Company F, a gaunt boy with buck teeth.

  “Colonel? Request permission to go pick up some of our wounded. We left a few boys out there.”

  “Wait,” Chamberlain said.

  Spear came back, shaking his head. “We’re out.” Alarm stained his face, a grayness in his cheeks.

  “Some of the boys have nothing at all.”

  “Nothing,” Chamberlain said.

  Officers were coming from the right. Down to a round or two per man. And now there was a silence around him. No man spoke. They stood and looked at him, and then looked down into the dark and then looked back at Chamberlain. One man said, “Sir, I guess we ought to pull out.”

  Chamberlain said, “Can’t do that.”

  Spear: “We won’t hold ’em again. Colonel, you know we can’t hold ’em again.”

  Chamberlain: “If we don’t hold, they go right on by and over the hill and the whole flank caves in.”

  He looked from face to face. The enormity of it, the weight of the line, was a mass too great to express. But he could see it as clearly as in a broad wide vision, a Biblical dream: If the line broke here, then the hill was gone, all these boys from Pennsylvania, New York, hit from behind, above. Once the hill went, the flank of the army went. Good God! He could see troops running; he could see the blue flood, the bloody tide.

  Kilrain: “Colonel, they’re coming.”

  Chamberlain marveled. But we’re not so bad ourselves. One recourse: Can’t go back. Can’t stay where we are. Result: inevitable.

  The idea formed.

  “Let’s fix bayonets,” Chamberlain said.

  For a moment no one moved.

  “We’ll have the advantage of moving downhill,” he said.
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br />   Spear understood. His eyes saw; he nodded automatically. The men coming up the hill stopped to volley; weak fire came in return. Chamberlain said, “They’ve got to be tired, those Rebs. They’ve got to be close to the end. Fix bayonets. Wait. Ellis, you take the left wing. I want a right wheel forward of the whole regiment.”

  Lieutenant Melcher said, perplexed, “Sir, excuse me, but what’s a ‘right wheel forward’?”

  Ellis Spear said, “He means ‘charge,’ Lieutenant, ‘charge.’ ”

  Chamberlain nodded. “Not quite. We charge, swinging down to the right. We straighten out our line. Clarke hangs onto the Eighty-third, and we swing like a door, sweeping them down the hill. Understand? Everybody understand? Ellis, you take the wing, and when I yell you go to it, the whole regiment goes forward, swinging to the right.”

  “Well,” Ellis Spear said. He shook his head. “Well.”

  “Let’s go.” Chamberlain raised his saber, bawled at the top of his voice, “Fix bayonets!”

  He was thinking: We don’t have two hundred men left. Not two hundred. More than that coming at us. He saw Melcher bounding away toward his company, yelling, waving. Bayonets were coming out, clinking, clattering. He heard men beginning to shout, Maine men, strange shouts, hoarse, wordless, animal. He limped to the front, toward the great boulder where Tozier stood with the colors, Kilrain at his side. The Rebs were in plain view, moving, firing. Chamberlain saw clearly a tall man aiming a rifle at him. At me. Saw the smoke, the flash, but did not hear the bullet go by. Missed. Ha! He stepped out into the open, balanced on the gray rock. Tozier had lifted the colors into the clear. The Rebs were thirty yards off. Chamberlain raised his saber, let loose the shout that was the greatest sound he could make, boiling the yell up from his chest: Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! He leaped down from the boulder, still screaming, his voice beginning to crack and give, and all around him his men were roaring animal screams, and he saw the whole regiment rising and pouring over the wall and beginning to bound down through the dark bushes, over the dead and dying and wounded, hats coming off, hair flying, mouths making sounds, one man firing as he ran, the last bullet, last round. Chamberlain saw gray men below stop, freeze, crouch, then quickly turn. The move was so quick he could not believe it. Men were turning and running. Some were stopping to fire. There was the yellow flash and then they turned. Chamberlain saw a man drop a rifle and run. Another. A bullet plucked at Chamberlain’s coat, a hard pluck so that he thought he had caught a thorn but looked down and saw the huge gash. But he was not hit. He saw an officer: handsome full-bearded man in gray, sword and revolver. Chamberlain ran toward him, stumbled, cursed the bad foot, looked up and aimed and fired and missed, then held aloft the saber. The officer turned, saw him coming, raised a pistol, and Chamberlain ran toward it downhill, unable to stop, stumbling downhill seeing the black hole of the pistol turning toward him, not anything else but the small hole yards away, feet away, the officer’s face a blur behind it and no thought, a moment of gray suspension rushing silently, soundlessly toward the black hole … and the gun did not fire; the hammer clicked down on an empty shell, and Chamberlain was at the man’s throat with the saber and the man was handing him his sword, all in one motion, and Chamberlain stopped.

  “The pistol too,” he said.

  The officer handed him the gun: a cavalry revolver, Colt.

  “Your prisoner, sir.” The face of the officer was very white, like old paper. Chamberlain nodded.

  He looked up to see an open space. The Rebs had begun to fall back; now they were running. He had never seen them run; he stared, began limping forward to see. Great cries, incredible sounds, firing and yelling. The regiment was driving in a line, swinging to the fight, into the dark valley. Men were surrendering. He saw masses of gray coats, a hundred or more, moving back up the slope to his front, in good order, the only ones not running, and thought: If they form again we’re in trouble, desperate trouble, and he began moving that way, ignoring the officer he had just captured. At that moment a new wave of firing broke out on the other side of the gray mass. He saw a line of white smoke erupt, the gray troops waver and move back this way, stop, rifles begin to fall, men begin to run to the right, trying to get away. Another line of fire—Morrill. B Company. Chamberlain moved that way. A soldier grabbed his Reb officer, grinning, by the arm. Chamberlain passed a man sitting on a rock, holding his stomach. He had been bayoneted. Blood coming from his mouth. Stepped on a dead body, wedged between rocks. Came upon Ellis Spear, grinning crazily, foolishly, face stretched and glowing with a wondrous light.

  “By God, Colonel, by God, by God,” Spear said. He pointed. Men were running off down the valley. The regiment was moving across the front of the 83rd Pennsylvania. He looked up the hill and saw them waving and cheering. Chamberlain said, aloud, “I’ll be damned.”

  The regiment had not stopped, was chasing the Rebs down the long valley between the hills. Rebs had stopped everywhere, surrendering. Chamberlain said to Spear, “Go on up and stop the boys. They’ve gone far enough.”

  “Yes, sir. But they’re on their way to Richmond.”

  “Not today,” Chamberlain said. “They’ve done enough today.”

  He stopped, took a deep breath, stood still, then turned to look for Tom. Saw Morrill, of Company B, wandering toward him through thick brush.

  “Hey, Colonel, glad to see you. I was beginning to wonder.”

  Chamberlain stared. “You were beginning to wonder?”

  “I tell you, Colonel, I keep thinking I better come back and help you, but you said stay out there and guard that flank, so I did, and I guess it come out all right, thank the Lord. Nobody came nowhere near me until just a few minutes ago. Then they come backin’ my way, which I didn’t expect. So we opened up, and they all turned around and quit, just like that. Damnedest thing you ever saw.” He shook his head, amazed. “Easiest fight I was ever in.”

  Chamberlain sighed. “Captain,” he said, “next time I tell you to go out a ways, please don’t go quite so far.”

  “Well, Colonel, we looked around, and there was this here stone wall, and it was comfortin’, you know?”

  Tom was here, well, untouched. Chamberlain opened up into a smile. Tom had a Reb officer in tow, a weary gentleman with a face of grime and sadness, of exhausted despair.

  “Hey, Lawrence, want you to meet this fella from Alabama. Cap’n Hawkins, want you to meet my brother. This here’s Colonel Chamberlain.”

  Chamberlain put out a hand. “Sir,” he said. The Alabama man nodded slightly. His voice was so low Chamberlain could hardly hear it. “Do you have some water?”

  “Certainly.” Chamberlain offered his own canteen. Off to the right a huge mass of prisoners: two hundred, maybe more. Most of them sitting, exhausted, heads down. Only a few men of the regiment here, mostly Morrill’s company. Ironic. Chamberlain thought: Well, he’s the only one with ammunition.

  Firing was slacking beyond the hill. The charge of the 20th Maine had cleared the ground in front of the 83rd Pennsylvania; they were beginning to move down the hill, rounding up prisoners. As the Reb flank on this side fell apart and running men began to appear on the other side of the hill the attack there would break up. Yes, firing was less. He heard whoops and hollers, felt a grin break out as if stepping into lovely sunshine. We did it, by God.

  The Alabama man was sitting down. Chamberlain let him alone. Kilrain. Looked. Where? He moved painfully back up the rocks toward the position from which they had charged. Hip stiffening badly. Old Kilrain. Unhurtable.

  He saw Kilrain from a distance. He was sitting on a rock, head back against a tree, arm black with streaked blood. But all right, all right, head bobbing bareheaded like a lively mossy white rock. Ruel Thomas was with him, and Tozier, working on the arm. Chamberlain bounded and slipped on wet rocks, forgetting his hurts, his throat stuffed. He knelt. They had peeled back the shirt and the arm was whitely soft where they had cleaned it and there was a mess
around the shoulder. Great round muscle: strong old man. Chamberlain grinned, giggled, wiped his face.

  “Buster? How you doin’? You old mick.”

  Kilrain peered at him vaguely cheerily. His face had a linen softness.

  “They couldn’t seem hardly to miss,” he said regretfully, apologizing. “Twice, would you believe. For the love of Mary. Twicet.”

  He snorted, gloomed, looked up into Chamberlain’s eyes and blinked.

  “And how are you, Colonel darlin’? This fine day?”

  Chamberlain nodded, grinning foolishly. There was a tight long silent moment. Chamberlain felt a thickness all through his chest. It was like coming back to your father, having done something fine, and your father knows it, and you can see the knowledge in his eyes, and you are both too proud to speak of it. But he knows. Kilrain looked away. He tried to move bloody fingers.

  “In the armpit,” he gloomed forlornly. “For the love of God. He died of his wounds. In the bloody bleedin’ armpit. Ak.”

  To Tozier, Chamberlain said, “How is that?”

  Tozier shrugged. “It’s an arm.”

  “By God,” Chamberlain said. “I think you’ll live.”

  Kilrain blinked hazily. “Only an arm. Got to lose something, might’s well be an arm. Can part with that easier than the other mechanics of nature, an thass the truth.” He was blurring; he stretched his eyes. “Used to worry about that, you know? Only thing ever worried, really. Losing wrong part.” His eyes closed; his voice was plaintive. “I could do with a nip right now.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “You do pretty good.” Kilrain blinked, peered, looking for him.

  “Colonel?”

  “Right here.”

  “The army was blessed …” But he ran out of breath, closed his eyes.

  “You take it easy.”