Shiloh by Shelby Foote

and said, "Let this be my share of the
spoils today," and used it instead of a sword to direct the battle.
    They came down the ridge and stopped under a big oak at the
bottom, near where I was, and Governor Harris got off between the horses and
eased the general down to the ground. He began to ask questions, trying to make
him answer, but he wouldn’t —couldn’t. He undid the general's collar and unfastened
his clothes, trying to find where he was shot, but he couldn’t find it. He took
out a bottle and tried to make him drink (it was brandy; I could smell it) but
he wouldn’t swallow, and when Governor Harris turned his head the brandy ran
out of his mouth.
    Then a tall man, wearing the three stars of a colonel, came
hurrying down the slope, making straight for where General Johnston was laid
out on the ground. He knelt down by his side, leaning forward so that their
faces were close together, eye to eye, and begun to nudge him on the shoulder
and speak to him in a shaky voice: "Johnston, do you know me. Johnston, do
you know me?"
    But the general didn’t know him; the general was dead. He
still looked handsome, lying there with his eyes glazing over.
     
    4
    Private Otto Flickner
    Cannoneer, 1st Minnesota Battery
     
     
    He would have reached about to my chin if he'd stood up, but
he wouldn’t; he just sat there. When I asked him to rise and take his
punishment for calling me a coward, he said: "If you’re so allfired brave, sonny, what you doing back here with us
skulkers then?"
    "I ain’t scared the way you made out," I said.
"I'm what they call demoralized."
    "Yair?"
    "It's just I lost my confidence."
    "Yair?" He kept saying that.
    "Get up here, I'll show you."
    But he wouldn’t. He just sat there hugging his knees and
looking at me with a lop-sided grin on his face. "If what you want's a
fight, go up the bluff. That’s where the fighting is." Then he said, still
grinning:
    "I’ve already showed the whole wide world I'm
yellow."
    I intended to jump him, sitting or no, but what can you do
when a man talks like that? saying right out in front of God and everybody that
he's scared; it would be the same as fighting something you found when you
picked up a rotted log. The others thought it was fun, guffawed at hearing him
talk that way. They could laugh about it now—they had got used to being scared
and now they made jokes about it.
    They would come down from above looking shamefaced but after
a while, when they’d been down here an hour, they’d brighten up and begin to
bluster, bragging about how long they held their ground before they broke.
"I’ve done my part," they’d
say, wagging their heads. But they were all thinking the selfsame thing: I might be a disgrace to my country. I might
be a coward, even. But I’m not up there in those woods getting shot at.
    And I must admit I had it reasoned the same way. You would
form at the warning and get set for some honest fighting, stand up and slug,
and they’d come squalling that wild crazy yell—not even human, hardly—and you
would stand there at the guns throwing solid shot, then canister and grape,
holding them good. And then, sure enough, word would come to bring up the
horses: it was time to retire to a new position because some paddle-foot outfit
on your left or right was giving way and you had to fall back to keep from
getting captured. Twice was all right—you thought maybe that was the way it was
supposed to be. But three times was once too often. Men began to walk away,
making for the rear. When Lieutenant Pfaender called to them to stand-to they’d
just keep walking, not even looking round. So finally, after the third time, I
walked too. So much is enough but a little bit more is too much.
    There were ten thousand of us under the bluff before the day
was through (—that’s the number I heard told and I believe it) —some scrunched
down on the sand where the bluff reared up a hundred feet in the air, others
going along the riverbank