at he is on his own, his sense of fear rises. This sense of fear in Fleming entices him to retreat and leave his friend Jim behind. After running a few miles Fleming stops when he sees a dead man sitting with his back against a tree.“He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a column like tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that once had been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the trundling was some sort of bundle along the upper lip. The sight of the dead man made Fleming “horror stricken.” He is afraid to go back to his regiment, thinking that they will mock him because of his coward ness. He then finds wounded soldiers marching and falls into line with them. He realizes that one of the solders is his friend Jim, who has been deeply wounded; he realizes he must leave his friend to die at the edge of a forest. Fleming wishes he had a wound because he envied the marching soldiers’ “red badges of courage,” which was any sign of blood or a wound on oneself.While wandering amongst the other regiments, Fleming gets knocked over the head by a rifle, and he finds his way back to camp, where his fellow soldiers in his regiment assume that a bullet has struck him. He finds new confidence in his friends’ ignorance of his secret. At the same time he overhears from two officers that his regiment is not doing well in the army, and this is the turning point in the novel. He seeks to disprove this statement, so he leads his regiment into the next battle where they successfully fend off a group of soldiers. However, once they fend off another group of soldiers, they are told that they did not advance far enough. Despite this disgrace and disappointment, Fleming receives prais...
