There can be nothing more puzzling than the analysis of one’s feeling on the battle-field.You cannot describe them satisfactorily to yourself or others.To march steadily up to the mouth of a hundred cannon while they pour out fire and smoke, and shot and shell in a storm that mows the men like grass, is horrible beyond description–appalling.It is absurd to say a man can do it without fear.During Hancock’s charge at Fredericksburg, for a long distance the slope was swept by such a hurricane of death that we though every step would be our last, and I am willing to say, for one, that I was pretty badly scared.Whatever may be said about “getting used to it,” old soldiers secretly dread a battle equally with new ones.But the most difficult thing to stand up against is the suspense while waiting, as we waited in Fredericksburg, drawn up in line of battle on the edge of the field watching the columns file past us and disappear in a cloud of smoke, where horses and men and colors go down in confusion, where all sounds are lost in the screaming shells, the cracking of musketry, the thunder of artillery, and knowing our turn comes next, expecting each moment the word “Forward.”It brings a strange kind of relief when “Forward” comes.You move mechanically with the rest.Once fairly in for it, your sensibilities are strangely blunted, you care comparatively nothing about the sights that shock you at first; men torn to pieces by cannon shot becomes a matter of course.At such a time, there comes a latent sustenance from within us, or about us, which no man anticipates who has not been in such a place before, and which most men pass through life without knowing anything about.What is it?Where does it come from?
