Thread by @pptsapper

Thoughts for #MemorialDay

"We had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men,--men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man, and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable?...

"One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order - do we call it? - fraught with such ruin. Was it God's command we heard, or His forgiveness we must forever implore?"

Joshua Chamberlain, "Passing of the Armies"

Chamberlain has a way of writing that makes you stop and read it four or five times, often with eyes that mist over with emotion. He so clearly struggles with the horrors of war and his duty of leadership in a visceral and soul-rending way.

Btw, he's writing about fighting in March of 1865, where while leading his brigade in an attack:
- he advances too far ahead of his men and almost gets captured by rebels, but feigns a southern accent & leads them back to his lines, capturing them (3rd time he's used this ruse)

- a bullet goes thru and thru his horse Charlemagne's neck, strikes him in the arm & chest, but ricochets off his pocket mirror (he's barely recovered from what should've been his death wound at Petersburg 9 months earlier)
- leads multiple assaults on foot after his wounding

Chamberlain is most often remembered for his actions at Little Round Top, but the dude was a seriously tough fighter. He just did not stop. At all. His tenacity in the fighting in '65 is a prime example.

And yes, Charlemagne survived this wound & returned home with JLC