Free Virtues of War by Steven Pressfield Page B

phalanx is without peer, as the foe’s shorter spears cannot get within five feet of the Macedonian front, while our men can cut the enemy down at will, and, in fact, the only real problem we faced was fatigue and the efficient rotation of rested men into the line to press the slaughter. The foe’s thousands became hundreds, and his hundreds scores.
    You could hear voices of individual officers of the foe crying out to their comrades to sell their lives dearly. I called to them to see sense and surrender. They would not. At several points in the melee, stout fellows of the foe closed ranks into knots of bronze and iron and sought to break out through the ocean of Macedonians enveloping them. Though these individuals fought with the desperation of self-preservation, they had no hope, as our ranks were too deep and too stoutly disciplined and officered. Our fellows crowded in from all quarters, at points twenty and thirty deep, elevating their sarissas to the vertical and pushing with their elbows and shoulders upon the backs of the men in the ranks before them. The brave warriors of the foe expired amid this press, going down like drowning men in the sea.
    At such point it becomes the victor’s responsibility to calculate the consequence of excessive slaughter and to direct the cessation of strife. I cry cease and call out again to the foe to capitulate. He still refuses. A courier gallops up from my father, summoning me to an assembly of commanders. Hephaestion’s squadrons, triumphant, have joined us now from the wing; other riders spur up in joy from Parmenio in the center. Victory in every quarter! It is over. We have won! I feel no fatigue, only elation, and a monumental sense of relief.
    I set Antipater and Coenus to oversee the finish of the Sacred Band, with orders to spare as many as they can, dishonoring none. With Hephaestion I transit the hinter ground on the track of my father’s courier. It is the type of field a cavalryman dreams of. We are in the enemy rear; our companies range without opposition. Everywhere the foe is in flight. I am just clasping Hephaestion’s arm in congratulation, when I see Coenus’s adjutant Polemarchus overhauling us from the wing. He gallops up, begrimed and breathless.
    â€œThe last of the Sacred Band, Alexander . . . some are taking their own lives. What shall we do?”

E
ight
    THE SACRED BAND
    T HE SURVIVORS OF THE SACRED BAND are about two score. They have been disarmed now by Antipater and Coenus and stripped of all means of harming themselves. It is minutes after the fight. The scene is as heartbreaking as it is ghastly. All who have survived are maimed and disabled, no few horribly, yet somehow they have managed to crawl or hobble or drag one another onto one spot, the sand bank where their corps had first taken station. The lone cypress overstands them, looking like a tree of hell.
    I ride up with Hephaestion and Polemarchus. One of the foe has had both legs crushed, beneath our Companions’ hooves no doubt, and been blinded, among other wounds; how many it is impossible to tell beneath the matting of blood and grime that coats his arms, face, beard, and breast. This warrior, knowing his countrymen have been vanquished and the main of his comrades slain, hauls himself onto one elbow, begging the victors for death. Around him several hundred Macedonians and allies have collected, gawking at the beaten men as if they were bears in a pound.
    In a hundred battles this is the rarest sight: men who stand and fight to the death. It never happens. Even the most elite units, when they know they are beaten, will seek terms or contrive measures to extricate themselves from their predicament. Yet the Sacred Band has stood and died. The survivors make no move to bind their wounds, some even opening them, seeking to bleed their substance into the sand. They have guts, these bastards. It is a measure, further, of their hatred for us, their identification