Putting myself there. Killer Angels.

Sometimes when we teach our students we want them to try to put themselves in the circumstance or situation to feel a little more, to have empathy or to get a better grasp of the situation, in the Killer Angels I found this passage particularly effective at putting me on the battlefield (p. 329-330):

[Chamberlain] became aware for the first time of the incredible variety of sound. The great roar was composed

of a thousand different rips and whispers, most incredible noise he had ever heard or imagined, like a great

orchestra of death: the whicker whicker of certain shells, the weird thin scream of others, the truly frightful

sound made by one strange species that came every few moments, an incredible keening, like old Death as a

woman gone mad and a-hunting you, screaming, that would be the Whitworth, new English cannon the Rebs

had. Then there were the sounds of the bursts, flat splats in the air, deeper bursts in ground, brutal smash and

crack of shot into rock, shot splattering dirt and whining off, whispers of rock fragments and dirt fragments

and small bits of metal and horse and man rippling the air, spraying the ground, humming the air, and the

Union cannon braying away one after another, and an occasional scream, sometimes even joy, some of the

cannoneers screaming with joy at hitting something as when they saw a caisson blow up across the way.

If I close my eyes and really try to visualize the situation and use Shaara's words I get a small sense of being there. Does anybody else have a passage that made an impact on them?