A Mystery Of Heroism

“The dark uniforms of the men were so coated with dust from the incessant wrestling of the two armies that the regiment almost seemed a part of the clay bank which shielded them from the shells.” 

Crane does not name the war or the battle but instead makes the “incessant wrestling” seem timeless, as if it has no beginning and no end. There is no mention of the Civil War and its two opposing sides, but instead the uniforms all seem to have become one color—the color of the earth. This coating foreshadows the way the clay earth will serve to coat the men once they have been killed on the battlefield.

“As the eyes of half of the regiment swept in one machinelike movement there was an instant’s picture of a horse in a great convulsive leap of a death wound and a rider leaning back with a crooked arm and spread fingers before his face.” 

Much of the story takes place as a series of images, as the gaze of the infantry sweeps all around their surroundings. The gaze appears to be “machinelike,” as the eyes move, riveted by one explosion after another. “Machinelike” also recalls the fact that machines kill the men, causing the “convulsive leap.”The eyes, like a camera, capture the instant in mid-explosion, showing the moment of death for the horse and the imminent injury for the rider, who instinctively attempts to protect his face from what is coming. 

“Sometimes they of the infantry looked down a fair little meadow which spread at their feet. Its long, green grass was rippling gently in a breeze.”

Again, the infantry takes in the sights that surround them. The meadow with its “long green grass [...]rippling gently in a breeze” is incongruous in this land of violent, shocking death.