The Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War

by Michael Shaara

  “That damn fool Sickles, you know him?”

  “Know of him.”

  Another shell passed close, fifty yards to the left, clipped a limb, ricocheted up through the leaves. Vincent glanced that way, then back, went on.

  “The Bully Boy. You know the one. The politician from New York. Fella shot his wife’s lover. The Barton Key affair. You’ve heard of it?”

  Chamberlain nodded.

  “Well, the damn fool was supposed to fall in on the left of Hancock, right there.” Vincent pointed up the ridge to the right. “He should be right here, as a matter of fact, where we’re standing. But he didn’t like the ground.” Vincent shook his head, amazed. “He didn’t like the ground. So he just up and moved his whole corps forward, hour or so ago. I saw them go. Amazing. Beautiful. Full marching line forward, as if they were going to pass in review. Moved right on out to the road down there. Leaving this hill uncovered. Isn’t that amazing?” Vincent grimaced. “Politicians. Well, let’s go.”

  The road turned upward, into dark woods. Shells were falling up there. Chamberlain heard the wicked hum of shrapnel in leaves.

  Vincent said, “Don’t mean to rush you people, but perhaps we better double-time.”

  The men began to move, running upward into the dark. Chamberlain followed Vincent up the rise. The artillery was firing at nothing; there was no one ahead at all. They passed massive boulders, the stumps of newly sawed trees, splinters of shattered ones. Chamberlain could begin to see out across the valley: mass of milky smoke below, yellow flashes. Vincent said, raising his voice to be heard, “Whole damn Rebel army hitting Sickles down there, coming up around his flank. Be here any minute. Got to hold this place. This way.”

  He pointed. They crossed the crown of the hill, had a brief glimpse all the way out across Pennsylvania, woods far away, a line of batteries massed and firing, men moving in the smoke and rocks below. Chamberlain thought: Bet you could see Gettysburg from here. Look at those rocks, marvelous position.

  But they moved down off the hill, down into dark woods. Shells were passing over them, exploding in the dark far away. Vincent led them down and to the left, stopped in the middle of nowhere, rocks and small trees, said to Chamberlain, “All right, I place you here.” Chamberlain looked, saw a dark slope before him, rock behind him, ridges of rock to both sides. Vincent said, “You’ll hold here. The rest of the brigade will form on your right. Look’s like you’re the flank, Colonel.”

  “Right,” Chamberlain said. He looked left and right, taking it all in. A quiet place in the woods. Strange place to fight. Can’t see very far. The regiment was moving up. Chamberlain called in the company commanders, gave them the position. Right by file into line. Vincent walked down into the woods, came back up. An aide found him with a message. He sent to the rest of the brigade to form around the hill to the right, below the crown. Too much artillery on the crown. Rebs liked to shoot high. Chamberlain strode back and forth, watching the regiment form along the ridge in the dark. The sun was behind the hill, on the other side of the mountain. Here it was dark, but he had no sense of temperature; he felt neither hot nor cold. He heard Vincent say, “Colonel?”

  “Yes.” Chamberlain was busy.

  Vincent said, “You are the extreme left of the Union line. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes,” Chamberlain said.

  “The line runs from here all the way back to Gettysburg. But it stops here. You know what that means.”

  “Of course.”

  “You cannot withdraw. Under any conditions. If you go, the line is flanked. If you go, they’ll go right up the hilltop and take us in the rear. You must defend this place to the last.”

  “Yes,” Chamberlain said absently.

  Vincent was staring at him.

  “I’ve got to go now.”

  “Right,” Chamberlain said, wishing him gone.

  “Now we’ll see how professors fight,” Vincent said. “I’m a Harvard man myself.”

  Chamberlain nodded patiently, noting that the artillery fire had slackened. Could mean troops coming this way. Vincent’s hand was out. Chamberlain took it, did not notice Vincent’s departure. He turned, saw Ruel Thomas standing there with his horse. Chamberlain said, “Take that animal back and tie it some place, Sergeant, then come back.”

  “You mean leave it, sir?”

  “I mean leave it.”

  Chamberlain turned back. The men were digging in, piling rocks to make a stone wall. The position was more than a hundred yards long, Chamberlain could see the end of it, saw the 83rd Pennsylvania forming on his right. On his left there was nothing, nothing at all. Chamberlain called Kilrain, told him to check the flank, to see that the joint between regiments was secure. Chamberlain took a short walk. Hold to the last. To the last what? Exercise in rhetoric. Last man? Last shell? Last foot of ground? Last Reb?

  The hill was shaped like a comma, large and round with a spur leading out and down:

  The 20th Maine was positioned along the spur, the other regiments curved around to the right. At the end of the spur was a massive boulder. Chamberlain placed the colors there, backed off. To the left of his line there was nothing. Empty ground. Bare rocks. He peered off into the darkness. He was used to fighting with men on each side of him. He felt the emptiness to his left like a pressure, a coolness, the coming of winter. He did not like it.

  He moved out in front of his line. Through the trees to his right he could see the dark bulk of a larger hill. If the Rebs get a battery there. What a mess. This could be messy indeed. He kept turning to look to the vacant left, the dark emptiness. No good at all. Morrill’s B Company was moving up. Chamberlain signaled. Morrill came up. He was a stocky man with an angular mustache, like a messy inverted U. Sleepy-eyed, he saluted.

  “Captain, I want you to take your company out there.” Chamberlain pointed to the left. “Go out a ways, but stay within supporting distance. Build up a wall, dig in. I want you there in case somebody tries to flank us. If I hear you fire I’ll know the Rebs are trying to get round. Go out a good distance. I have no idea what’s out there. Keep me informed.”

  Company B was fifty men. Alone out in the woods. Chamberlain was sorry. They’d all rather be with the regiment. Messy detail. Well, he thought philosophically, so it goes. He moved on back up the hill, saw Morrill’s men melt into the trees. Have I done all I can? Not yet, not yet.

  Artillery was coming in again behind him. All down the line, in front of him, the men were digging, piling rocks. He thought of the stone wall at Fredericksburg. Never, forever. This could be a good place to fight. Spirits rose. Left flank of the whole line. Something to tell the grandchildren.

  Nothing happening here. He hopped up the rocks, drawn toward the summit for a better look, saw an officer: Colonel Rice of the 44th New York, with the same idea.

  Rice grinned happily. “What a view!”

  He gestured. Chamberlain moved forward. Now he could see: masses of gray rock wreathed in smoke, gray men moving. If Sickles had a line down there it had already been flanked. He saw a Union battery firing to the south, saw sprays of men rush out of the woods, the smoke, and envelop it, dying, and then the smoke drifted over it. But now more masses were coming, in clots, broken lines, red battle flags plowing through the smoke, moving this way, drifting to the left, toward the base of the hill.

  Rice said, glasses to his eyes, “My God, I can see all of it. Sickles is being overrun.” He put the glasses down and smiled a foolish smile. “You know, there are an awful lot of people headin’ this way.”

  Chamberlain saw gleams in the woods to the south. Bayonets? Must get back to the regiment. Rice moved off, calling a thoughtful “good luck.” Chamberlain walked down back into the dark. Awful lot of people coming this way. Sixty rounds per man. Ought to be enough.

  “Colonel?”

  At his elbow: Glazier Estabrook. Incapable of standing up straight; he listed, like a sinking ship. He was chewing a huge plug of tobacco. Chamberlain grinned, happ
y to see him.

  “Colonel, what about these here prisoners?”

  Chamberlain looked: six dark forms squatting in the rocks. The hard cases from the Second Maine. He had completely forgotten them.

  Glazier said slowly, around the wet plug, “Now I wouldn’t complain normal, Colonel, only if there’s goin’ to be a fight I got to keep an eye on my cousin. You understand, Colonel.”

  What he meant was that he would under no circumstances tend these prisoners during the coming engagement, and he was saying it as politely as possible. Chamberlain nodded. He strode to the prisoners.

  “Any of you fellas care to join us?”

  “The Rebs really coming?” The man said it wistfully, cautiously, not quite convinced.

  “They’re really comin’.”

  One man, bearded, stretched and yawned. “Well, be kind of dull sittin’ up here just a-watchin’.”

  He stood. The others watched. At that moment a solid shot passed through the trees above them, tore through the leaves, ripped away a branch, caromed out into the dark over the line. A shower of granite dust drifted down. The ball must have grazed a ledge above. Granite dust had salt in it. Or perhaps the salt was from your own lips.

  Chamberlain said, “Any man that joins us now, there’ll be no charges.”

  “Well,” another one said. He was the youngest; his beard was only a fuzz. “No man will call me a coward,” he said. He rose. Then a third, a man with fat on him. The other three sat mute. Two looked away from his eyes; the last looked back in hate. Chamberlain turned away. He did not understand a man who would pass by this chance. He did not want to be with him. He turned back.

  “I’ll waste no man to guard you. I’ll expect to find you here when this is over.”

  He walked down the hill with the three men, forgetting the incomprehensible three who would not come. He gave the three volunteers to Ruel Thomas, to post along the line. There were no rifles available. Chamberlain said, “You men wait just a bit. Rifles will be available after a while.”

  And now the softer roar of musketry began opening up behind him; the popping wave of an infantry volley came down from above, from the other side of the hill. The Rebs were pressing the front, against Rice’s New York boys, the rest of the brigade. Now there was sharper fire, closer to home; the 83rd was opening up. The battle moved this way, like a wall of rain moving through the trees. Chamberlain strode down along the line. Tom came up behind him, Kilrain above. Private Foss was on his knees, praying. Chamberlain asked that he put in a kind word. Amos Long was sweating.

  “ ’Tis a hell of a spot to be in, Colonel. I cannot see fifty yards.”

  Chamberlain laid a hand on his shoulder. “Amos, they’ll be a lot closer than that.”

  Jim and Bill Merrill, two brothers, were standing next to a sapling. Chamberlain frowned.

  “Boys, why aren’t you dug in?”

  Jim, the older, grinned widely, tightly, scared but proud.

  “Sir, I can’t shoot worth a damn lying down. Never could. Nor Bill either. Like to fight standin’, with the Colonel’s permission.”

  “Then I suggest you find a thicker tree.”

  He moved on. Private George Washington Buck, former sergeant, had a place to himself, wedged between two rocks. His face was cold and gray. Chamberlain asked him how it was going. Buck said, “Keep an eye on me, sir. I’m about to get them stripes back.”

  A weird sound, a wail, a ghost, high and thin. For a vague second he thought it was the sound of a man in awful pain, many men. Then he knew: the Rebel yell. Here they come.

  He drifted back to the center. To Tom he said, “You stay by me. But get down, keep down.” Kilrain was sitting calmly, chewing away. He was carrying a cavalry carbine. A great roar of musketry from behind the hill. Full battle now. They must be swarming Sickles under. Kilrain was right. Flank attack. Whole Reb army coming right this way. Wonder who? Longstreet? He it was behind the stone wall at Fredericksburg. Now we have our own stone wall. Chamberlain hopped down along the line, telling men to keep good cover, pile rocks higher, fire slowly and carefully, take their time. Have to keep your eye on some of them; they loaded and loaded and never fired, just went on loading, and some of them came out of a fight with seven or eight bullets rammed home in a barrel, unfired. He looked again to the left, saw the bleak silence, felt a crawling uneasiness. Into his mind came the delayed knowledge: You are the left of the Union. The Army of the Potomac ends here.

  He stopped, sat down on a rock.

  A flank attack.

  Never to withdraw.

  He took a deep breath, smelled more granite dust. Never to withdraw. Had never heard the order, nor thought. Never really thought it possible. He looked around at the dark trees, the boulders, the men hunched before him in blue mounds, waiting. Don’t like to wait. Let’s get on, get on. But his mind said cheerily, coldly: Be patient, friend, be patient. You are not leaving here. Possibly not forever, except, as they say, trailing clouds of glory, if that theory really is true after all and they do send some sort of chariot, possibly presently you will be on it. My, how the mind does chatter at times like this. Stop thinking. Depart in a chariot of fire. I suppose it’s possible. That He is waiting. Well. May well find out.

  The 83rd engaged. Chamberlain moved to the right. He had been hoping to face a solid charge, unleash a full volley, but the Rebs seemed to be coming on like a lapping wave, rolling up the beach. He told the right to fire at will. He remained on the right while the firing began. A man down in E Company began it, but there was nothing there; he had fired at a falling branch, and Chamberlain heard a sergeant swearing, then a flurry of fire broke out to the right and spread down the line and the white smoke bloomed in his eyes. Bullets zipped in the leaves, cracked the rocks. Chamberlain moved down closer to the line. Far to the left he could see Tozier standing by the great boulder, with the colors.

  Then he saw the Rebs.

  Gray-green-yellow uniforms, rolling up in a mass. His heart seized him. Several companies. More and more. At least a hundred men. More. Coming up out of the green, out of the dark. They seemed to be rising out of the ground. Suddenly the terrible scream, the ripply crawly sound in your skull. A whole regiment. Dissolving in smoke and thunder. They came on. Chamberlain could see nothing but smoke, the blue mounds bobbing in front of him, clang of ramrods, grunts, a high gaunt wail. A bullet thunked into a tree near him. Chamberlain turned, saw white splintered wood. He ducked suddenly, then stood up, moved forward, crouched behind a boulder, looking.

  A new wave of firing. A hole in the smoke. Chamberlain saw a man on his knees before him, facing the enemy, arms clutching his stomach. A man was yelling an obscene word. Chamberlain looked, could not see who it was. But the fire from his boys was steady and heavy and they were behind trees and under rocks and pouring it in, and Chamberlain saw gray-yellow forms go down, saw a man come bounding up a rock waving his arms wide like a crazy Indian and take a bullet that doubled him right over so that he fell forward over the rocks and out of sight, and then a whole flood to the right, ten or twelve in a pack, suddenly stopping to kneel and fire, one man in fringed clothes, like buckskin, stopping to prop his rifle against a tree, and then to go down, punched backward, coming all loose and to rubbery pieces and flipping back so one bare foot stood up above a bloody rock. A blast of fire at Chamberlain’s ear. He turned: Kilrain reloading the carbine. Said something. Noise too great to hear. Screams and yells of joy and pain and rage. He saw bloodstains spatter against a tree. Turned. Fire slowing. They were moving back. Thought: We’ve stopped ’em. By God and by Mary, we’ve stopped ’em.

  The firing went on, much slower. Smoke was drifting away. But the din from the right was unceasing; the noise from the other side of the hill was one long huge roar, like the ground opening. Kilrain looked that way.

  “Half expect ’em to come in from behind.”

  Chamberlain said, “Did you hear Morrill’s company?”

  “No, sir. Couldn’t hear noth
ing in that mess.”

  “Tom?”

  Tom shook his head. He had the look of a man who has just heard a very loud noise and has not yet regained his hearing. Chamberlain felt a sudden moment of wonderful delight. He put out a hand and touched his brother’s cheek.

  “You stay down, boy.”

  Tom nodded, wide-eyed. “Damn right,” he said.

  Chamberlain looked out into the smoke. Morrill might have run into them already, might already be wiped out. He saw: a red flag, down in the smoke and dark. Battle flag. A new burst of firing. He moved down the line, Kilrain following, crouched. Men were down. He saw the first dead: Willard Buxton of K. Neat hole in the forehead. Instantaneous. Merciful. First Sergeant Noyes was with him. Chamberlain touched the dead hand, moved on. He was thinking: With Morrill gone, I have perhaps three hundred men. Few more, few less. What do I do if they flank me?

  The emptiness to the left was a vacuum, drawing him back that way. Men were drinking water. He warned them to save it. The new attack broke before he could get to the left.

  The attack came all down the line, a full, wild, leaping charge. Three men came inside the low stone wall the boys had built. Two died; the other lay badly wounded, unable to speak. Chamberlain called for a surgeon to treat him. A few feet away he saw a man lying dead, half his face shot away. Vaguely familiar. He turned away, turned back. Half the right jawbone visible, above the bloody leer: face of one of the Second Maine prisoners who had volunteered just a few moments past—the fat one. Never had time to know his name. He turned to Kilrain. “That was one of the Maine prisoners. Don’t let me forget.”

  Kilrain nodded. Odd look on his face. Chamberlain felt a cool wind. He put a hand out.