Why don't they send supports? Do they think--"

The youth in his battle sleep heard this as one who dozes hears.

There was a singular absence of heroic poses. The men bending and
surging in their haste and rage were in every impossible attitude.
The steel ramrods clanked and clanged with incessant din
as the men pounded them furiously into the hot rifle barrels.
The flaps of the cartridge boxes were all unfastened,
and bobbed idiotically with each movement. The rifles,
once loaded, were jerked to the shoulder and fired without
apparent aim into the smoke or at one of the blurred and
shifting forms which upon the field before the regiment
had been growing larger and larger like puppets under a
magician's hand.

The officers, at their intervals, rearward, neglected to stand in
picturesque attitudes. They were bobbing to and fro roaring
directions and encouragements. The dimensions of their howls
were extraordinary. They expended their lungs with prodigal wills.
And often they nearly stood upon their heads in their anxiety
to observe the enemy on the other side of the tumbling smoke.

The lieutenant of the youth's company had encountered a soldier
who had fled screaming at the first volley of his comrades.
Behind the lines these two were acting a little isolated scene.
The man was blubbering and staring with sheeplike eyes at the
lieutenant, who had seized him by the collar and was pommeling him.
He drove him back into the ranks with many blows. The soldier went
mechanically, dully, with his animal-like eyes upon the officer.