The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

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Like many young men his age, Henry Fleming is filled with romantic ideas of going to war. The call to heroism is too great for him to resist the pull of enlistment into the Union army during the American Civil War. But his first encounter with the horrors of battle force him to lose his nerve, and he deserts his regiment to save his own life.

Racked with guilt and shame, he returns to his comrades and seeks to redeem himself through the courage he never knew he had.