The young man cringed in guilt. “So they have won after
all!” he thought. The line of idiot soldiers still remained and was triumphant in
spite of everything, and he could hear them cheering in the distance.
He
stood up on his toes and looked off towards the fight. As he looked, he saw a
yellow fog drifting through the treetops and beneath it he heard the clattering
of muskets, advancing with hoarse, indeterminate shouts of victory.
He
turned away in wrath and amazement, and within his heart blazed the bitter,
inescapable feeling that he had been grossly cheated.
As
he tried to collect his memories, he still told himself that he had fled
because otherwise he would have been annihilated. “I have done well to save
myself,” he mused, “for I am only a little piece of the army, and as far as I’m
concerned the moment that I have just ran from was a time in which it is better
that every man save himself rather than be slaughtered in full. Indeed, after
the initial retreat,” he continued to contemplate, “ the officers could round
us up and build a new front, if they so chose to, so why should it be that no
one retreat in the face of impending death? It is wiser still for us little
pieces to run and hide, for without us there would be no army, and in our
deaths there would be no one to bear the flag.” It was clear to him, then, that
he was not a deserter as he may have once feared but had followed the greater
set of rules after all. How wise was he to obey this strategy instead! Indeed,
he possessed a master’s legs and a patriot’s mind.
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