The Red Badge of Courage
                 Stephen Crane

   The youth, light-footed, was unconsciously in advance.
His eyes still kept note of the clump of trees. From all places
near it the clannish yell of the enemy could be heard. The
little flames of rifles leaped from it. The song of the bullets
was in the air and shells snarled among the treetops. One
tumbled directly into the middle of a hurrying group and
exploded in crimson fury. There was an instant's spectacle
of a man, almost over it, throwing up his hands to shield
his eyes.
   Other men, punched by bullets, fell in grotesque agonies.
The regiment left a coherent trail of bodies.
   They had passed into a clearer atmosphere. There was an
effect like a revelation in the new appearance of the landscape.
Some men working madly at a battery were plain to them, and
the opposing infantry's lines were defined by the gray walls
and fringes of smoke.

     The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, is a story about the Unions side of the Civil War. In this book Crane shows the courage that the men had in fighting this war, and some of the hardships they had to endure. One of the things he shows is men dying right and left. He shows men dying in horrible ways. He also shows that the war wasn't a picnic and that it was a horrible thing. I do think Crane really shows us what the Civil War was really like, and what our forefathers had to endure.