- Pvt. Jim Conklin: Just as sure as I'm standin' here, we're movin' to Marshall.
- [soldiers howl in disbelief]
- Pvt. Jim Conklin: I got it from a friend who got it from a cavalryman who just happens to be one of the orderlies over at divisional headquarters.
- [crowd of soldiers peppers Jim with questions]
- Pvt. Jim Conklin: I told you tomorrow mornin'! We goin' down the river and we're goin' to come in right behind the enemy!
- Narrator: Into this wilderness came two great armies - 190,000 men... all of them expendable. The company of the 304th New York was among the smallest, the greenest and the most expendable of all.
- [last lines]
- Narrator: The battle had lasted four days. When it was over 25,000 men had been killed or wounded. The wounded on these fields of battle had all received their red badge of courage. But the youth, Henry Fleming, however, he emerged from his struggles with something else. He knew that he would no more quail before his guide wherever it should point him. He had been to touch the Great Death... and found that, after all, it was but the Great Death. He was a man.