Chapter 19 Red Badge of Courage Rewritten

The youth stared at the land in front of him. Its foliages veiled powers and horrors.He did not know of the machinery of orders that started the charge, although from the corners of his eyes, he seemingly saw a boyish officer waving his hat and riding a galloping horse. Suddenly, he felt a straining and heaving among the men. The line fell slowly forward like a toppling wall, and, intending a cheer with a convulsive gasp, the regiment began its journey. The regiment pushed and jostled the youth for a moment before he understood the movement at all, but directly he lunged ahead and began to run.


He fixed his eye upon a distant and prominent clump of trees where he concluded the soldiers were meeting the enemy, and he ran toward it as toward a goal. He believed throughout that he simply must get over an unpleasant matter as quickly as possible, and he ran desperately, as if running from murderous pursuit. He drew his face hard and tight with the stress of his endeavor. He fixed his eyes in a lurid glare.

And with his soiled and disordered dress, the dingy rag with its spot of blood, his wildly swinging rifle, and banging accouterments surmounted his red and inflamed features, he resembled an insane soldier. As the regiment swung from its position out into a cleared space, the woods and thickets around it awakened. Yellow flames leaped toward it from many directions. The forest made a tremendous objection.

The line lurched straight for a moment. Then the right wing swung forward; then the left surpassed the right. Afterward the center careered to the front until the regiment formed a wedge-shaped mass, but an instant later the opposition of the bushes, trees, and uneven places on the ground split the command and scattered it into detached clusters.