The Killer Angels

”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 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, a

”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 peeked stone, the ripped and bloody earth. It struck the left flank.

Chamberlain shot another man, an officer. He fell inside me 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 begi

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 ca

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 Pe

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.

Results: 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.

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 Eight-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 begi

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!