Killer Angels, The - Michael Shaara [57]
"The papers, of course, all side with Jackson." Longstreet blew out a breath.
"And Jackson is dead. So now Garnett will have to die bravely to erase the stain."
And he saw that Fremantle agreed. Only thing for a gentleman to do. Longstreet shook his head. A weary bitterness fogged his brain. He knew Garnett would die, no help for it now, unturnable, ridiculous, doomed with a festering, unseen wound.
Fremantle said, "You are not, ah, Virginia born, sir?"
"South Carolina," Longstreet said.
"Ah. That's in the far south isn't it, sir?"
"True," Longstreet said. He was weary of talk. "Honor," he said. "Honor without intelligence is a disaster. Honor could lose the war."
Fremantle was vaguely shocked.
"Sir?"
"Listen. Let me tell you something. I appreciate honor and bravery and courage. Before God... but the point of the war is not to show how brave you are and how you can die in a manly fashion, face to the enemy. God knows it's easy to die. Anybody can die."
In the darkness he could not see Fremantle's face. He talked to darkness.
"Let me explain this. Try to see this. When we were all young, they fought in a simple way. They faced each other out in the open, usually across a field.
One side came running. The other got one shot in, from a close distance, because the rifle wasn't very good at distance, because it wasn't a rifle.
Then after that one shot they hit together hand to hand, or sword to sword, and the cavalry would ride in from one angle or another. That's the truth, isn't it? In the old days they fought from a distance with bows and arrows and ran at each other, man to man, with swords. But now, listen, now it's quite a bit different, and quite a few people don't seem to know that yet. But we're learning. Look.
Right now, take a man with a good rifle, a good man with a good rifle, which has a good range and may even be a repeater. He can kill at, oh, conservatively, two, three hundred yards shooting into the crowd attacking him.
Forget the cannon. Just put one man behind a tree. You can hardly see him from two hundred yards away, but he can see you. And shoot. And shoot again. How many men do you think it will take to get to that man behind a tree, in a ditch, defended by cannon, if you have to cross an open field to get him? How many men? Well, I've figured it. At least three. And he'll kill at least two.
The way you do it is this: one man fires while one man is moving, and the other is loading and getting ready to move. That's how the three men attack.
There's always one moving and one firing. That way you can do it. If you forget the cannon. But you'll lose one man most probably on the way across the field, at least one, probably two, against a cannon you'll lose all three, no matter what you do, and that's across the field. Now. If you are attacking uphill..."
He broke it off. No point in talking this way to a foreigner. Might have to fight him sometime. But the man would not see. Longstreet had spoken to his own officers.
They found what he said vaguely shameful. Defense? When Lee dug trenches around Richmond they called him, derisively, the King of Spades. Longstreet took a deep breath and let it go, remembering again that damned black hill, fires like eyes.
Fremantle said, bewildered, "But, sir, there is the example of Solferino. And of course the Charge of the Light Brigade."
"Yes," Longstreet said. Like all Englishmen, and most Southerners, Fremantle would rather lose the war than his dignity. Dick Garnett would die and die smiling. "Had he his hurts before?" Aye, then he died like a man. Longstreet, who had invented a transverse trench, which no one would use, filed the matter forcefully in the dark cavern of his swelling brain and rode into camp.
That night, at supper, someone remarked casually that since the army needed ammunition, wouldn't it be proper for the ammunition factories to stay open on Sunday? Most of the officers agreed that it had not yet come to that.
Longstreet stayed up talking, as long as there was company, as long as there