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The army will start. The soldiers have waited for days, fed up with the still in the countryside,
and to not a lot of distance of the rebellious army. A youth soldier listens the news of the next
departure toward her first battle.. she enrolled against her mother's will, with the heroic idea
of belonging to the government's lines, and she left full with maternal recommendations and a
big pride before the admiration of partners and friends. But they have been many inactive
months and now the rumor of the imminent confrontation runs. Suddenly it feels fear and the
desire of escaping: he/she wanted to know if some of the other ones experiences the same
thing, and he/she understands that only when entering in battle he/she will know how he/she
will behave each one, included him same. The tension takes place in the soldiers different
attitudes: jokes, projects of death, bravuconadas, while the youth is tormented in the face of
the uncertainty about her own behavior. Suddenly the group puts on in movement and it is
dragged by the human tide that forces him to run for not being flat, while he/she thinks that
he/she would want to be in any place that was not this. He finds everything terrifying, their
initial warlike ardor has disappeared, while its partners go denoting feelings very different to
his: they seem full with enthusiasm and value. He/she wanted to speak to him, to make them
understand that they go toward a sure death that the generals are giving them to the enemy,
but nobody will listen to it. They group, they form trenches, they accommodate their weapons,
they get up again, they change position, while the first skirmishes make it want of a single time
the death to finish with that torture. He/she wants for moments to already enter in battle
same, when suddenly the roar of the weapons of a front brigade surprises him and he/she
understands that it is in the means of the battle and it will face, panicky, to the enemy that
comes closer in flocks. It accommodates the rifle and he/she begins to throw to the crazy thing,
without pointing between the smoke and the deafening noise. After a while it seemed that the
enemy has been repelled, and screams of joy and victory are listened among their partners. To
their surroundings there are many wounded, but he relaxes himself in a feeling of pride and
exhaustion willing to celebrate the victory, when suddenly somebody screams giving the voice
then of alert the confederates returning to attack. The terror invades it again, and it combats
until he/she understands that the only thing wise it is to escape from the massacre. It
undertakes the escape, it loses the weapon, you go that other they also escape, and he/she
begins to run and to run moving away from the battle field. Exhausted, it feels that their
attitude has been the correct one that those that still continue fighting are lost and they don't
know that they make, still when he/she understands that there are groups battling convinced
of being defeating the enemy. There are battalions that indeed they are repelling the rebellious
forces, but he doesn't care it, he/she only wants to look for a good refuge it more far possible
of there.
When he/she wakes up the following day, he/she listens the deafening explosions of the battle
again, then he/she heads to the place for not getting lost the fearful show of the war. In their
itinerary he/she crosses with countless quantity of bleeding wounded that return, helping you
like they can, to be aided. It advances for the forest to come closer more and more and the
crowd of wounded makes him feel the desire to belong one to them, to also possess as those
brave a "red badge of anger."
Continuing their advance meets with one of their good known partners of the brigade that is
very wounded, and a deep shame takes possession of the youth. Desperate when seeing the
state in that their friend is, he wants to help, to accompany him, to attenuate the worthy agony
somehow with which he walks wobbly; suddenly you go, when still of foot, how a stertor twists
it and how, with a sound desgarrante he/she falls showing the terrible heridade its side. He/she
understands the envy that feels before those that were hurt in the battle then and they won't
have to hide the secret of their cowardice during all their life. In their hesitant march he/she
meets with a combatant that returns of the front in retreat, and he/she tries to ask reason they
return, reason returns; before their insistence he/she receives in answer a terrible blow in the
head, given by the infuriated soldier's breech. The pain is unbearable and it is about to faint,
when somebody goes to aid him, and with solidarity and wisdom accompanies him until
finding the regiment to which belonged.
They receive it with happiness, they cure him, they take care of it, they believe that it has been
combatting next to other regiments. When the following day feels better, a new confrontation
forces them to take the weapons and to attack the rebels. But a change takes place in the
youth's thought, it is resolved to recover its dignity and in the combat, the rage, the
desperation, also the shame, they contribute to that acts as a hero. The youth's mental
structure during this and the subsequent combats suffers a substantial modification and a new
man arises of the ruins of a cowardly spirit until arriving, with the defeat on the enemy, to
become a hero and to be redeemed before itself.