A Mystery of Heroism

by Stephen Crane

The dark uniforms of the men were so covered with dust from the continuous fighting of the two armies that the soldiers almost seemed like a part of the high ground which protected them from the shells. On the top of the hill, cannon were arguing in terrifying roars with some other guns and, to the eye of the infantry waiting in the valley below, the guns and the horses, were distinctly outlined on the blue sky. When a cannon was fired, a red flame as round as a log lit everything, like terrible lightning. The men working the cannon wore white trousers, which somehow emphasised their legs and, when they ran and crowded in little groups around the shouting officers, it was more impressive than usual to the infantry.

Fred Collins, of A Company, was saying: "Hell, I wish I had a drink. Ain't there any water round here?" Then, somebody yelled: "There goes the bugler!"

As the eyes of half the men turned in one machine-like movement, there was a moment's picture of a horse in a great death-leap and a rider screaming from a broken arm, his fingers in front of his face. On the ground there was the crimson terror of an exploding shell, with flames that seemed like spears. A shining bugle fell away from the rider, as the horse and the man headed to the ground. In the air was a smell of burning.

Sometimes the infantry looked down at a pretty little meadow which lay at their feet. Its long, green grass was moving gently in a breeze. Past the meadow was the grey shape of a house half torn to pieces by shells and by the busy axes of soldiers looking for firewood. A shell had blown the well to nothingness. Little lines of grey smoke rising upwards showed the place where the barn had stood.

From a curtain of green woods there came the sound of some dreadful fighting, as if two animals the size of islands were fighting. At a distance there were occasional appearances of fast-moving men, horses, guns, flags, and, often, the sound of wild cheers. In the middle of it all, Smith and Ferguson, two privates of A Company, were in a heated discussion, which involved the greatest questions of national existence.

The cannon on the hill began a frightful duel. The white legs of the gunners ran this way and that, and the officers doubled their shouts. The guns, with their look of stolidity and courage, seemed very calm in this noise of death that rushed around the hill.

A private was suddenly hit and fell shaking to the ground and his maddened brothers dragged his torn body in their struggle for him to escape from this danger. A young soldier on a horse swore and furiously pulled at the animal. An officer screamed out an order so violently that his voice broke and ended the sentence in a scream.

The leading group of infantry was in the line of enemy fire and an officer ordered it to move under the shelter of the hill. There was the noise of steel against steel.

A lieutenant rode down from the cannon and passed them, holding his right arm carefully in his left hand. And it was as if this arm was not a part of him at all, but belonged to another man. His horse went slowly. The officer's face was dusty and his uniform was torn as if he had been in a hand-to-hand fight with an enemy. He smiled when the men stared at him. He turned his horse towards the meadow.

Collins, of A Company, said: "I wish I had a drink. I expect there's water in that old well over there!"

"Yes; but how are you going to get it?"

Because the little meadow on this side of the well was now under falling shells. Its green and beautiful calm had vanished. Brown earth was thrown in dreadful handfuls. And there was a massacre of the young grass. It was torn, burnt, destroyed. Some curious chance had made this gentle little meadow the centre of the red hate of the shells, and each one as it exploded seemed like a swear word thrown in the face of a girl.

The wounded officer who was riding across the meadow said to himself: "They couldn't shoot any more if the whole army was here!"

A shell hit the grey ruins of the house and, after the roar, the wall fell to pieces. The infantry, pausing, appeared like men standing on a shore thinking of the madness of the sea. The angel of calamity glanced at the cannon on the hill. Fewer white-legged men worked around the guns now. A shell had hit one of the cannon and, after the smoke, the dust, the rage were gone, it was possible to see white legs stretched on the ground. Behind all this, where the horses stood with their noses waiting for the command to drag their guns out of the destruction, in this line of spectators, there had been dreadful injury and death. From the bleeding horses lying on the ground, the men of the infantry could see one animal raising its body with its front legs and turning its nose towards the sky.

Some friends joked with Collins about his thirst. "Well, if you want a drink so bad, why don't you go get it?"

"Well, I will in a minute, if you don't shut up!"

A private at the back of the army looked out over the meadow and then turned to a friend and said, "Look there, Jim!" It was the wounded officer from the cannon, who some time before had started to ride across the meadow, holding his right arm carefully with his left hand. This man had met a shell at a time when no-one noticed him, and he could now be seen lying face downward with a foot across the body of his dead horse. Around this motionless pair, the shells still roared.

There was a quarrel in A Company. Collins was shaking his fist in the faces of some laughing friends. "I ain't afraid to go. If you say so, I will go!"

"Of course, you will! You'll run through that meadow, won't you?"

Collins said, in a terrible voice: "You see now!"

Collins gave them a dark look and went to find his captain, who was talking with the colonel.

"Captain," said Collins, saluting and standing at attention. "Captain, I want to get permission to go get some water from that well over there!"

The colonel and the captain turned simultaneously and stared across the meadow. The captain laughed. "You must be pretty thirsty, Collins?"

"Yes, sir, I am."

"Well," said the captain. After a moment, he asked, "Can't you wait?"

"No, sir."

The colonel was watching Collins's face. "Look here, my lad," – Collins was not a lad – "don't you think that's taking a pretty big risk for a little drink of water."

"I don’t know," said Collins uncomfortably. Some of the anger with his companions, which perhaps had forced him into this, was beginning to fade. "I don’t know."

The colonel and the captain looked at him thoughtfully for a time.

"Well," said the captain finally.

"Well," said the colonel, "if you want to go, go!"

Collins saluted. "Thank-you, sir."

As he moved away, the colonel called after him. "Take some of the other boys' empty water bottles with you and hurry back."

"Yes, sir, I will."

The colonel and the captain looked at each other then, for it had suddenly occurred that they could not tell whether Collins wanted to go or not.

They turned to look at Collins, and as they saw him surrounded by his friends, the colonel said: "Well, by God! I think he's going."

Collins appeared like a man dreaming. In the middle of the questions, the advice, the warnings, all the excited talk of his friends, he was curiously silent.

They were very busy preparing him. When they looked at him carefully, they were amazed by the whole affair.

"Are you sure you are going?" they asked again and again.

"Certainly I am," cried Collins furiously.

He walked away from them. He was holding five or six empty water bottles. It seemed that his cap would not stay on his head and he often pulled it down over his forehead.

There was a general movement among the soldiers. Hundreds of eyes were turned on Collins.

"Well, sir, if that ain't the strangest thing! I never thought Fred Collins had the courage for that kind of business."

"What's he going to do, anyhow?"

"He's going to that well there after water."

"We ain't dying of thirst, are we? That's stupidity."

"Well, somebody put him up to it, and he's doing it."

"He must be desperate."

When Collins faced the meadow and walked away from his friends, he was vaguely aware that a deep valley was suddenly between him and them. It was provisional, but the provision was that he returned victorious. He had blindly followed his anger and must now walk up to the face of death.

But he was not sure that he wished to change his mind, even if he could do so without shame. As a matter of fact, he was sure of very little. He was mainly surprised.

It seemed strange to him that he had allowed his mind to get his body into such a situation. He understood that it might be called great.

However, he had no appreciation of anything, except that he was actually dazed. He could feel his dull mind looking for the shape and colour of this incident. He wondered why he did not feel some sharp agony of fear cutting him like a knife. He wondered at this, because stories had told loudly for centuries that men should feel afraid of certain things and that all men who did not feel this fear were heroes.

He was, then, a hero. He felt that disappointment which we would all have if we discovered that we were capable of those actions which we admire in legends. This, then, was a hero. So, heroes were not much after all.

No, it could not be true. He was not a hero. Heroes had no shame in their lives, and, as for him, he remembered borrowing fifteen dollars from a friend and promising to pay it back the next day, and then avoiding that friend for ten months. When he was at home and his mother had woken him for early work on the farm, he had often been irritable and childish and his mother had died since he had come to the war.

He saw that, in getting water from the well, he was an intruder in the land of fine actions.

He was now about thirty steps from his friends. The soldiers had just turned their many faces towards him.

From the forest of terrific noises there suddenly appeared a little line of men. They fired rapidly at distant trees where little puffs of white smoke appeared. The noise of firing rifles was added to the thunder of the guns on the hill. The little line of men ran forwards. A sergeant fell flat, as if he had slipped on ice.

Collins suddenly felt that two fingers were pressed into his ears. He could see nothing but flying arrows, flaming red. He nearly fell from the shock of this explosion, but he made a mad rush for the house, which he viewed as a man with water up to his neck might view the shore. In the air, little pieces of shell roared and the earthquake explosions drove him insane when he thought of the danger. As he ran the empty bottles knocked together.

He neared the house and each detail became vivid to him. He was aware of some bricks from the vanished chimney lying on the ground. There was a door only hanging in the wall.

Rifle bullets came from the far-off trees. They mixed with the shells and the pieces of shells until the air was torn in all directions. The sky was full of devils who directed all their wild rage at his head.

When he came to the well, he threw himself face downward and stared into its darkness. He grabbed one of the empty bottles, and lowered it down with a rope. The water flowed lazily in.

And now as he lay with his face turned away, he was suddenly filled with terror. All the power faded from him. For a moment he was no more than a dead man.

The empty bottles filled with a maddening slowness. Soon he recovered his strength. He leaned over the well until it was as if he intended to push water into the bottles with his hands. His eyes as he looked down into the well shone like two pieces of metal. The stupid water played with him.

There was the roaring thunder of a shell. Crimson light shone through the smoke and made a pink reflection on part of the wall of the well. Collins pulled out his arm and the bottle with the same movement that a man would use in taking his head from an oven. On the ground near him lay the old bucket with a length of chain. He lowered it quickly into the well. The bucket hit the water and then, turning lazily over, sank. When he pulled it out, it often knocked against the walls of the well and spilled some of its water.

In running with a full bucket, a man can only move in one way. So through this terrible field, with screaming angels of death over his head, Collins ran like a farmer chased by a bull.

His face went white with fear – fear of a hit that would turn him around and down. He would fall as he had seen other men fall, the life knocked out of them so suddenly that their knees were no quicker to touch the ground than their heads. He saw the long blue line of soldiers, but his friends were standing looking at him from the edge of an impossible star. He was aware of some deep holes in the earth beneath his feet.

The officer who had fallen in this meadow had been crying. These futile cries from his agony were heard only by shells, bullets. When wild-eyed Collins came running, this officer raised himself. His face moved with pain, he was about to make some great cry. But suddenly his face straightened and he called:

"Say, young man, give me a drink of water, will you?"

Collins had no room in his emotions for surprise. He was mad from the risk of destruction.

"I can't!" he screamed, and his reply was a full description of his fear. His cap was gone. His clothes made it look like he had been dragged over the ground by the legs. He ran on.

The officer's head sank down. His foot still lay over the body of his horse and the other leg was under it.

But Collins turned. He came dashing back. His face had now turned grey and in his eyes was terror. "Here it is! Here it is!"

The officer was sinking to the ground, to lie face downward.

Collins grabbed him by the shoulder. "Here it is. Here's your drink. Turn over. Turn over, man, for God's sake!"

With Collins pulling at his shoulder, the officer turned his body and fell with his face turned. There was the faintest shadow of a smile on his lips as he looked at Collins. He gave a sigh, a little primitive breath like that from a child.

Collins tried to hold the bucket steadily, but his shaking hands caused the water to pour all over the face of the dying man. Then he pulled it away and ran on.

The soldiers gave him a welcoming roar. The dirty faces were wrinkled in laughter.

His captain waved the bucket away. "Give it to the men!"

The two joking young lieutenants were the first to get it. They played over it.

When one tried to drink the other jokingly knocked his elbow. "Don't, Billie! You'll make me spill it," said the one. The other laughed.

Suddenly there was a noise of wood on the ground and a swift murmur of astonishment among the soldiers. The two lieutenants glared at each other. The bucket lay on the ground empty.