Yes. it's wonderful. It's interesting you interpret the reactions as the men wondering how a schoolteacher could lead them through battle. I see it differently. I see something that can't be nailed down that easily. It's an abstract absurdity of the contrast of war and humanity. You listen to him and you question who you are and why are you even there? Any patriotic quest to stop Nazism is long gone and far from this reality. It's the whole mindset of competition, winning or losing, fighting battles; versus living a simple natural happy life with another person. But that's just me. I abhor the societal imposition of competition and sports logic over humanity, in a most oxymoron world of things things like "sports injury" or "sports medicine". We're supposed to be so superhuman, "men of steel" and yet we so easily fall to injury. No shit. That it the goal of sports. How absurd. (please forgive the rant) Anyway, I love that you and I can have such different reactions that are more about us than whatever is going on in the movie. I think that is what's so powerful about implicit subtext, which we see here as only facial reactions and expressions.

It's not only a great scene, it sets up the great scene at the end where he's dying, and he tells Ryan to make their efforts worth it... leading to the great scene at the end where Ryan is in the cemetery and asks his wife, "have I been a good man?" Sort of the first of a triptych of scenes.