"The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara - page 227

Wow. After slogging through so many thick pages of Russian History, it sure is fun to be in a book that moooooves. One thing I love about Shaara is his speculations on the conversations that each of the figures in this battle is having inside his head. Longstreet who battles the image of his dead children, Lee carefully choosing what is worth worrying about, and Chamberlain wondering, if only for a moment, if he could be wrong, and carefully convincing himself he is not.

What Shaara ultimately demonstrates through these in sights is that most of these men were incredibly disciplined in their thoughts. He must have inferred this based upon their actions for as a good student of the human condition, he must know that actions follow in the ruts formed by thoughts.

This brings me to Chamberlain’s fixed bayonet charge, one of most exhilarating passages I have ever read in any book.

“He saw an officer: handsome, full-bearded man in gray, sword and revolver. Chamberlain ran toward him, stumbled, cursed the bad foot, looked up and aimed and fired and missed, then held aloft the saber. The officer saw him coming, raised a pistol, and Chamberlain ran toward it downhill, unable to stop, stumbling downhill seeing the black hole of the pistol turning toward him, not anything but the small hole yards away, feet away, the officer’s face a blur behind it and no thought, a moment of gray suspension rushing silently, soundlessly toward the black hole . . . and the gun did not fire; the hammer clicked down on an empty shell and Chamberlain was at the man’s throat with the saber, and the man was handing him his sword, and in one motion and Chamberlain stopped. ‘The pistol too,’ he said.

The officer handed him the gun: a cavalry revolver, Colt. ‘Your prisoner, sir.’ The face of the officer was very white, like old paper. Chamberlain nodded.”

Yes, despite the best rhetoric Chamberlain could muster to convince himself that he was right, it must have been nothing compared to the argument made by God’s great protection . . . and the officer in gray knew it too.