The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians

UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES MEN DO NOT WISH TO BE SHOT

The fighting of the day before had been desultory and indecisive.  At the points of collision the smoke of battle had hung in blue sheets among the branches of the trees till beaten into nothing by the falling rain.  In the softened earth the wheels of cannon and ammunition wagons cut deep, ragged furrows, and movements of infantry seemed impeded by the mud that clung to the soldiers’ feet as, with soaken garments and rifles imperfectly protected by capes of overcoats they went dragging in sinuous lines hither and thither through dripping forest and flooded field.  Mounted officers, their heads protruding from rubber ponchos that glittered like black armor, picked their way, singly and in loose groups, among the men, coming and going with apparent aimlessness and commanding attention from nobody but one another.  Here and there a dead man, his clothing defiled with earth, his face covered with a blanket or showing yellow and claylike in the rain, added his dispiriting influence to that of the other dismal features of the scene and augmented the general discomfort with a particular dejection.  Very repulsive these wrecks looked—­not at all heroic, and nobody was accessible to the infection of their patriotic example.  Dead upon the field of honor, yes; but the field of honor was so very wet!  It makes a difference.

The general engagement that all expected did not occur, none of the small advantages accruing, now to this side and now to that, in isolated and accidental collisions being followed up.  Half-hearted attacks provoked a sullen resistance which was satisfied with mere repulse.  Orders were obeyed with mechanical fidelity; no one did any more than his duty.

“The army is cowardly to-day,” said General Cameron, the commander of a Federal brigade, to his adjutant-general.

“The army is cold,” replied the officer addressed, “and—­yes, it doesn’t wish to be like that.”

He pointed to one of the dead bodies, lying in a thin pool of yellow water, its face and clothing bespattered with mud from hoof and wheel.

The army’s weapons seemed to share its military delinquency.  The rattle of rifles sounded flat and contemptible.  It had no meaning and scarcely roused to attention and expectancy the unengaged parts of the line-of-battle and the waiting reserves.  Heard at a little distance, the reports of cannon were feeble in volume and timbre:  they lacked sting and resonance.  The guns seemed to be fired with light charges, unshotted.  And so the futile day wore on to its dreary close, and then to a night of discomfort succeeded a day of apprehension.

An army has a personality.  Beneath the individual thoughts and emotions of its component parts it thinks and feels as a unit.  And in this large, inclusive sense of things lies a wiser wisdom than the mere sum of all that it knows.  On that dismal morning this great brute force, groping at the bottom of a white ocean of fog among trees that seemed as sea weeds, had a dumb consciousness that all was not well; that a day’s manoeuvring had resulted in a faulty disposition of its parts, a blind diffusion of its strength.  The men felt insecure and talked among themselves of such tactical errors as with their meager military vocabulary they were able to name.  Field and line officers gathered in groups and spoke more learnedly of what they apprehended with no greater clearness.  Commanders of brigades and divisions looked anxiously to their connections on the right and on the left, sent staff officers on errands of inquiry and pushed skirmish lines silently and cautiously forward into the dubious region between the known and the unknown.  At some points on the line the troops, apparently of their own volition, constructed such defenses as they could without the silent spade and the noisy ax.

One of these points was held by Captain Ransome’s battery of six guns.  Provided always with intrenching tools, his men had labored with diligence during the night, and now his guns thrust their black muzzles through the embrasures of a really formidable earthwork.  It crowned a slight acclivity devoid of undergrowth and providing an unobstructed fire that would sweep the ground for an unknown distance in front.  The position could hardly have been better chosen.  It had this peculiarity, which Captain Ransome, who was greatly addicted to the use of the compass, had not failed to observe:  it faced northward, whereas he knew that the general line of the army must face eastward.  In fact, that part of the line was “refused”—­that is to say, bent backward, away from the enemy.  This implied that Captain Ransome’s battery was somewhere near the left flank of the army; for an army in line of battle retires its flanks if the nature of the ground will permit, they being its vulnerable points.  Actually, Captain Ransome appeared to hold the extreme left of the line, no troops being visible in that direction beyond his own.  Immediately in rear of his guns occurred that conversation between him and his brigade commander, the concluding and more picturesque part of which is reported above.