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, 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 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 beginning there and spreading like a stain. Chamberlain saw movements 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.
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 beginning to shout. Marine 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 mom 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 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.