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Stepping into the Battle


             Stepping into the Battle .
             Living today all anybody is worried about is the war with Iraq. I feel confused and lost with all the talk of terrorism. Reading a good book can usually help get my mind off today's troubles. Instead of happy tales I personally love to read novels about the old wars. I've always wanted to travel back in time and be able to live during such a time of greatness. Most war novels never get it all quite right, but there are those rare ones that make you feel like you are right in the moment.
             During the past wars I've learned enough background to understand that while all the men continued fighting, they soon forgot what the reason was that they were fighting for. In Michael Shaara's novel, The Killer Angels, it was hard not to get that feeling from Lieutenant General Longstreet. At several points in the novel Shaara had Longstreet sitting alone wondering about what was really going on. The start of the battle was slow and steady. Many of the men were in the back out of fire. What surprised me was how ready these men and boys were to fight. Armistead even put it that he had "never saw troops anywhere so ready for a brawl"(62). Even though they were very brave, it didn't mean they would survive this war. The strange thing was that at one point the men in Longstreet's brigade were discussing "the cause". Some were still staying with slavery, while others said that it didn't have anything to do with it anymore(66-67). Towards the end of the novel Longstreet is sitting on a fence holding a gun in his hand. This was after the brigades had been slaughtered and there were no more men to send out. I often wonder what must have been going through his head. But instead of doing anything irrational he picked up his head and went out onto the battle field to say good-bye to his men(340). In a way if the Union had just given up they could have saved a lot of men, but none of the men would have stood for it.


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