The main thing to note in this chapter is the further characterization of Chamberlain. He is an unusual man, a college professor turned regiment commander, and he views the war and the people around him much differently than a West Point graduate would. He is more a philosopher, and it shows in the things he thinks about.
Chamberlain ponders the army life; for all its inconvenience and discomforts, he loves it. He also thinks about the Battle of Fredericksburg, where his group was unable to retreat in the dark, pinned down near the stone wall all night, using dead bodies to shelter them from enemy fire.
He thinks of his father — the silent, hard-working, instinctive man — and remembers a conversation from his boyhood. Chamberlain told his father of a line from Shakespeare about man being an angel, and his father responded that man must be a murdering one. It inspired Chamberlain to deliver an oration at school on Man, the Killer Angel. His father was so proud, something he rarely showed, and Chamberlain wonders now how proud his father might be, given Chamberlain's current role in the war. He also reflects on "home," and that is home anywhere you are. Any one place is just dirt and rock. Home is within.
