From BATTLEFIELD by Peter Svenson

 

"The rebel yell, a bloodcurdling scream of fear and fearlessness, was a Confederate soldier's personal talisman against the odds. Soldiers from both sides yelled as they advanced upon each other (as soldiers have always done), but the rebel yell was different. It was a combination of baying at the moon and cussing without words: a white man's war whoop. To my mind the rebel yell signaled the obsolescence of those eightteenth-century tactics in that it functioned not only as a war cry, but also as an expression of pure terror, a soulful reaction to the deadly science of gunnery. To maintain courage in a hail of lead that pierced the body with holes the size of a dime and exited with holes the size of a fist, to maintain courage against the pressure of canister shot that clipped huge gaps in battle lines- to keep one's mind amid the din and smoke of the carnage- it was necessary to scream at the top of the lungs. It had nothing to do with valor." 

"Like the general in Dr. Strangelove who rode an A-bomb out the open hatch, combatants will continue to yell the rebel yell, or something that approximates it, but nobody will be listening. Technology does not have ears or a soul."