Killer Angels, The - Michael Shaara [95]
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