The Red Badge of Courage
A young soldier marches to his first battle, not knowing whether he will run
Page 1
Henry Fleming lay in his tent, listening to the camp. All that summer the army had sat beside this slow brown river, doing nothing, and Henry had begun to wonder about himself. He had dreamed of being a hero in a great battle, the kind they wrote about in the old books, but now that a real war was close by, he did not know what he was made of. Would he stand and fight when the moment came, or would he run? Outside, Jim Conklin, the tall soldier, came striding through the camp saying he had heard for certain: the army was finally going to move at dawn. Wilson, the loud soldier, laughed at him and said Jim Conklin didn't know anything, that it was just another rumor like all the others. The camp buzzed and argued around the fires. Henry lay still, listening, afraid of the answer he might find out about himself.
Page 2
Henry remembered the morning he had left the farm to enlist, though his mother had not wanted him to go. He had imagined she would say something grand and brave, the kind of thing mothers said in the stories he loved, about dying honorably for one's country. Instead, as she milked the cows, she only told him to be a good boy, to send his socks home to be darned, to never shirk his duty no matter who told him to, and to keep away from bad company and bad habits, the way she had always tried to raise him. She did not wave a flag or weep. She simply packed him a lunch, gave him a canteen, and reminded him that God would watch over him, same as always. Henry had ridden away a little disappointed, still hungry for the kind of glory he had read about.
Page 3
At dawn the whole regiment formed up and marched down to the river, where engineers had laid a long bridge of pontoon boats lashed together end to end. Thousands of men crossed in a slow column, boots thudding on the planks, rifles and packs bouncing on their backs. Henry marched among them, his stomach tight with the same old question he could not answer: would he run when the fighting started, or would he stand? Beside him, Wilson, the loud soldier, talked bravely about how he, for one, was not afraid of any rebel alive. But just before they reached the far bank, Wilson grew quiet and pressed a small packet of letters into Henry's hands, asking him to send them home to his family if anything should happen to him. Henry took the packet, surprised, and said nothing, only marched on across the water toward the dark hills where the enemy was waiting.
Page 4
The enemy came across the open field in a long gray line, and the woods exploded with the crash of rifles. Henry found himself kneeling behind the fence rail with the rest of the regiment, loading and firing almost without thinking, swallowed up in the noise and smoke until he forgot to be afraid. He fired again and again, working the same motions over and over, like an animal defending its den, until the gray line broke apart and ran back across the field the way it had come. The men around him let out a wild cheer. Henry cheered too, amazed at himself — he had stood his ground, he had not run, and for one bright moment he felt as brave as any soldier in any story he had ever read. Wilson slapped him on the back, grinning through the smoke, and for a little while the whole regiment believed the worst of the day was already over.
Page 5
Before the regiment could even catch its breath, a second enemy line came rushing out of the trees from a different direction, closer and faster than before. This time the shock of it was too much. Somewhere near Henry, a man turned and ran, then another, and suddenly the fear Henry had carried all along rose up and took hold of him completely. He turned and ran too, pushing past bushes and low branches, his rifle falling from his hands without his noticing, his legs carrying him faster than he had ever run in his life. He did not look back to see whether the rest of the line was holding or breaking. All he knew was the crashing of branches, his own ragged breath, and the single thought that he must get away, deeper and deeper into the dark trees, until the sound of the battle grew small and far behind him.
Page 6
Henry wandered on alone through the forest until the sounds of the fighting faded away completely, and he came to a small, quiet grove where the sunlight fell softly through the leaves. He thought at first he was entirely alone, and then he saw him — a soldier in a gray uniform, sitting very still with his back against a tree, his eyes closed, as though he had simply sat down to rest and had fallen asleep there in the quiet and never woken again. Henry stood frozen, staring. He had wanted to see what death looked like, and now here it was, close and silent, no battle around it at all, just a man alone under a tree. Henry backed away slowly, careful not to make a sound, as if he might disturb him, and then turned and walked on, carrying the stillness of that grove with him like something he could not put down.
Page 7
Henry came out of the woods onto a dusty road crowded with wounded men limping away from the fighting. He fell in beside a ragged, tattered soldier who talked on and on about his own wound, and together they noticed a familiar figure walking strangely among the others — Jim Conklin, Henry's friend, his face pale and dazed, wandering as if he did not know where he meant to go. Henry ran to him, horrified to see how badly Jim was hurt. Jim did not seem to recognize him at first, only kept walking in his odd, careful way, afraid that if he fell, the ambulance wagons might run him down. At last, in an open field beside the road, Jim's strength gave out. He sat down slowly in the grass, with Henry and the tattered man kneeling beside him, and grew quiet and still, his eyes finally closing as the sun slanted low across the field. Henry knelt there afterward for a long moment, unable to move, grieving for his friend in a way he had never grieved for anyone before.
Page 8
As evening came on, Henry found himself swept up in a crowd of retreating soldiers pouring back toward the rear, shouting that the whole army was being beaten. He tried to ask one of them which way to his own regiment, grabbing at his sleeve, but the frightened man wrenched away so suddenly and roughly that the butt of his rifle swung around and struck Henry hard across the head. Henry staggered, his knees buckling, a white light flashing behind his eyes, and for a moment he could not tell up from down. He sat down hard in the dirt at the edge of the trees while the stream of men rushed on past him into the dusk, and nobody stopped to help him, each one too afraid for himself to notice one more dazed boy sitting alone in the gathering dark.
Page 9
A kind stranger found Henry wandering dazed in the dark and walked with him all the way back to his own regiment's campfire before vanishing again into the night without even giving his name. There, Wilson was overjoyed to see him and set about cleaning the swelling on Henry's head with gentle hands, never asking exactly how he'd gotten it, and Henry let him believe it was a graze from a bullet rather than tell the truth. As Wilson fussed over him, Henry noticed how different his friend seemed — quieter, steadier, no longer the loud boastful soldier who had marched to the river bragging. Wilson, growing shy, finally asked for the packet of letters back, mumbling that he hadn't died after all and didn't want the fellows laughing at what he'd written. Henry handed them over without a word, and in that small, firelit moment, each of them quietly forgave the other for being afraid.
Page 10
The next day the regiment fought again, and this time Henry fought like a different person. Ashamed of his own secret, he threw himself into the battle without thinking of running, carrying the regiment's flag forward through the smoke after the color bearer fell, with Wilson fighting fiercely at his side. Together they charged with the rest of the line and helped capture the enemy's flag, and their officers praised them both in front of the whole regiment. Afterward, as the firing died away, the two friends found themselves marching down a muddy road away from the battlefield with the rest of the tired, dusty column. Rain clouds that had hung over them all through the fighting began to break apart, and long rays of sunlight spilled through the gaps, lighting the wet fields and the road ahead in gold. Henry walked on in the fading daylight, his fear and his shame behind him now, feeling at last that he had become the kind of man he had once only imagined being.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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