by Eric Gurr
Hasty plans were made to rally to the north and try to rescue the N groups. Davis had finally contacted a few of them on the walk back. They were holding out, but down to a few thousand men. The news from the west group was much worse. They had been surprised and flanked on both sides.
The injured had been carried off and fifty men were left behind to guard the hospital as they were treated. The dead were left lying in the creek bed and the fields.
Davis and Hartwick sat in the back of a truck. Davis was working his spreadsheets in furious fashion. After just a few minutes he slammed the laptop closed.
“I have no idea what’s going on. We may have lost half our men John.”
“What the hell happened?” Hartwick asked.
“You have spies in your group.” Evans answered the question from the front seat of the truck. He was in the passenger seat.
“What?” Hartwick asked.
“It’s the only explanation. Someone in your group is a spy. Probably several. How do you vet your soldiers? I know no one asked me anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have to find out where these guys are from. If a man shows up alone, let him join, but keep him in the dark about everything.
You guys did a great job of dividing your forces the way you did. Multiple attacks on several fronts should have worked. But the enemy knew the plan. You need keep information on a need to know basis.”
“Shit.” Hartwick said. “How come none of these military guys told us this?”
“That’s another problem John. You have no real chain of command. The sergeants you did have, not the military just the ones you put in charge, they just look to you. You need a chain of command.
You be the general. I’ll take one of these armies of four or five thousand. And I want my sergeants from this battle. Then find another colonel and put him in charge of another army.”
Hartwick was just nodding. “What else?”
“Well, you need to get your guys some firing practice. Did you see how well those southern rebels could shoot? Your guys can’t do that. It’s a big problem.”
“Yeah, our guys are mostly from the suburbs. We just haven’t been in a fight like this yet. Everything else went smooth compared to this shit.” Hartwick said.
“Well, it will get better. But the next time we try this, we need a few weeks to prepare.”
The farmer with backpacks was driving. “Hey farmer, sorry, what’s your name?” Evans asked.
“Jack Roark, pleased to meet you.”
“How many of those footballs do we have left?
“Six”
“How quick can you make more? And how many?”
“About as many as you want. I have plenty of stuff to make them. I just ran out of footballs. They only take a few minutes. But I can’t do it now.”
“Yeah, I know Jack. John I think we bail these guys out in the north and head back home for a few weeks. We need to get a better plan together and we need more of Jack’s magic footballs.”
“We need a helluva lot more men to.” Davis said.
“Naw. You had plenty of men. If they don’t get a rush of new support here, you should have plenty.”
They pulled into the parking lot of the next designated rally point. They were just five miles north of the fighting. Evans jumped out of the car and looked towards the end of the road they had turned from.
“Weren’t those guys with us?” He asked.
There were trucks speeding away from them.
Hartwick nodded. “Well, yes they were. Shit. How many you figure we lost?”
“Looks like just seven or eight trucks. That’s not bad at all. I figured you’d lose half.”
As quickly as they could, the men gathered around Hartwick and Evans. They slowly marched towards the sound of fire. They could see their own men. As they got closer and the sound of gunfire grew louder, a few more bailed out and ran for home. Everyone understood.
Most of these men were not professional soldiers. Some had joined for the adventure of fighting. They left quickly. Others wanted to fight, but the terror of combat was too much for untrained men.
By the time they reached the line of trees that marked their defense point there were just seven hundred of the one thousand who had left the creek bed.
The woods were poor cover. But just a hundred and fifty yards beyond them was a long winding hill. The hill was not high, but it was much too far to throw the footballs.
Every few minutes they could see someone pop up from the hill and fire at them. Between the hill and the tree line was an open field. Several bodies were scattered around the middle.
“Those our guys?” Hartwick ask.
“Yep. We pulled out of these woods way to fast. They just mowed us down.
Had they waited two minutes longer they would have killed us all. But as soon as we stepped out they started firing. When we got back into the trees they were still chasing us. We had the other field behind us, so we knew we had to turn and fight. They backed off pretty quick and it’s been a stalemate ever since.”
“How many did you lose?”
“I don’t know sir, I know it was more than a hundred. But at least four hundred more were shot and wounded. We lost a couple thousand more just getting those guys out to safety.
They gathered up what we could of the dead and they headed back to Springfield. Then about another half just deserted us. They kept running at the beginning and never came back. Can’t say as I blame them. We were hoping you would bring more fighters. What’s our plan to get out of here?”
“We have a surprise for you. At least I thought we did. We have football bombs. They are like hand grenades. But we can only throw them about thirty or forty yards.”
“How are we going to get those footballs all the way over there?” Hartwick said to Evans.
“Battlefield engineering.” Evans answered.
“What’s that?” Hartwick asked.
“It means we need to figure something out.”
There was some discussion to just leaving. The problem was that if they started to withdraw, the rebels would see it and could advance on them.
“If we had three old trucks, we could rig them up with the balls at the front. Then light the fuses, put a brick on the gas pedal and send them towards the hills.”
They found three soldiers with old trucks who volunteered them. Anything to get them out of this mess. When Hartwick reached in to his pants pocket and pulled out two huge stacks of money to pay them for the trucks they were even happier.
Evans just stared at Hartwick as he peeled off the hundreds.
“I’ll explain later.” Hartwick said.
It took more than an hour to bring everything together. The farmer, Jack Roark, worked with some of the other guys to rig longer fuses together. Ropes were used to tie down the steering wheels so the trucks would drive straight.
The truck in the center and the truck to the right held course. But the truck to the left started to turn. Luckily it turned towards the center and was guided alongside the middle vehicle.
The bombs were attached to the front of the trucks. As soon as the fuses were lit the gas pedals were dropped and off they went.
The rebels, believing there were drivers in the trucks, opened fire. Fire was returned and all was chaos for several seconds.
As soon as the trucks hit the hill the first two bounced up and came crashing down. Just seconds later they both exploded.
The second truck kept going. It was ten long seconds before it finally exploded.
Hartwick and his soldiers hiding in the woods saw several bodies fly into the air.
Beyond the hill they could see men running everywhere. John, Matt, Troy Evans, and their worn out soldiers had their chance. There would be no more gunfire. They all turned and ran.
The rebels were sure that the United States Army was helping Hartwick’s group. There was no other explanation for the bombs, as Tanner Ritchie had said.
Two days later, Hartwick gathered the remaining men in Springfield. Of the forty-thousand who had started there were less than 9000 left. Half had simply returned home. But eleven thousand men had been killed or wounded.
Hartwick drove to Indianapolis to pick up the bags of money left by Scotch Anderson. He gave fifty-thousand dollars to Troy Evans.
To the six sergeants he gave twenty-thousand. This was done quietly. To the other men who had fought, he offered to pay what they needed. If each asked for just one thousand dollars he knew he would run out soon.
Luckily most men refused the money. The ones who did ask for money ask for a few hundred dollars.
Three days later Troy Evans arranged for twenty men to go back to St. Louis for surveillance. They would try to blend in and get all of the information they could.
For the next two weeks, Hartwick and Evans built an army. A real army. Trucks were fitted with plate steel. Old car tires were used to make bullet proof vests and additional armor for the front of a dozen trucks. These would be the tanks.
Roark the farmer, worked with engineers and other technical people. They devised fuses that didn’t need to be lit.
They also planned. Every day a group of men would drive towards St. Louis to meet with the spies. The discovered that they were building their own bombs and placing them in the middle of the road. They also noticed that they placed the bombs in the exact places they had fought in last time.
This was proof that they had kept the spies out of their own army. Only the people who needed to know, knew where they would attack next. And none of the previous battle areas were on the list.
On the day they were set to leave they had managed to arrange an army of only ten thousand. Others were helping, tens of thousands. But they did not want to fight.
Then a group of welders and machinists approached Evans and Hartwick.
“We’ve got something for you boys.”
Behind them were two huge pickup trucks with the cabs and the beds covered in canvas. The men who had worked to build the trucks, together tore back the canvas and revealed something none of the men had ever seen or would have believed.
In the bed, over the top of the cab, were guns. Dozens of them all stacked together. They were on a swivel platform with a seat behind and a trigger device.
“You like it?” One of the welders asked.
Troy Evans was grinning from ear to ear. He ran up to the trucks and was counting. There were one hundred guns rigged together to two triggers. Fifty guns per trigger. The guns were each slightly offset from the ones below so that longer magazines could be fitted.
“Each mag holds one hundred rounds of ammo. In the tool box are one hundred more magazines. That means each truck can fire off ten thousand rounds of ammunition. It takes a while to reload, but we got cover for that as well.”
Jack Roark spoke up.
“I made you five hundred bombs this time. Some boys had to steal the footballs. But we got them. The boys who built this helped with another couple of trucks. Hope you don’t mind John, but we needed some of that money and Davis gave it to us to buy the trucks.”
Hartwick and Evans were both in awe. The next two trucks had catapults on the back.
“These will launch them footballs about five hundred years. The fuses and catapults are all timed to work. You just press the button. Can you believe that? They made a fuse with a timer. We don’t even have to light it.”
Troy Evans looked at the trucks. “This is the kind of stuff those mountain Arabs made in Afghanistan.” He said. “Battlefield engineering at its finest.”
When the army was about to move out, Hartwick went to check with Evans so they could communicate during the fight.
“Hey Evans, I think you’ve done a great job. This feels like an army now.”
“Thank you sir.” Evans said, and then saluted Hartwick. He started to get in to one of the tank trucks and Hartwick stopped him.
“Troy!”
“Yeah?”
“It looks like everyone has a place to be and knows exactly what they are doing. Where do I go?”
“You don’t sir. You stay back here.”
Hartwick was flabbergasted. “What the hell Troy, I fought okay. I even killed a guy.” He protested.
“Sir, this army needs one leader. You’re it. If you get killed out there, the whole thing will fall apart. You’re the general now. Your days of being on the front lines are over. You and Davis. You two and the data team stay here and coordinate for us. There should be at least ten thousand more men on the way here, right Davis?”
“Yes. We have commitments for a reserve force. Some are already arriving.”
“Good. Keep in touch with all of us officers and sergeants and get them out to us quick if it goes as bad as it did last time.”
Evans got back in the truck. The driver started to pull back but Evans stopped him.
In front of him were two men texting on their phones. One was a younger guy, early twenties, maybe younger. The other was late thirties, maybe forties. Evans watched. The younger man’s eyes were darting around as he texted. Evans noticed he held his phone slightly away from the man and kept glancing at him. Troy jumped out of the truck.
“Hey you guys all set? You know who you’re going with?”
“Yeah. Were supposed to wait for about ten minutes and then join the rear support group.” The older guy said. A rifle was slung over his shoulder. The younger man just nodded.
“Where’s your gun soldier?”
“The younger man smiled nervously. Sorry sir, it’s back with my other gear. I’ll go get it.”
“Hang on. Do you two know each other? Are you brothers?”
“Yes sir. We’re not brothers but we know each other.” The young man said.
“This is Doug and my name is Jason Fitz.”
The older guy, Doug, walked forward with his hand extended to shake Troy’s hand.
“Doug Wilson, nice to meet you.”
Evans shook his hand. “Who are you guys calling?”
“Calling my wife. Just want to tell her I love her before we had out.” Wilson said.
Jason Fritz waved his phone quickly towards Evans and smiled. “Girlfriend sir.”
“Okay.” Evans said. “Sorry to bug you boys. It’s just we’ve had some spies infiltrate from the Southern Rebels and we need to make sure everything’s okay.”
Doug pulled out his wallet from his back pocket.
“Those guys are the reason I’m fighting. I came up from outside St. Louis a few days ago. On the way up I stopped at a gas station and that’s where Jason and I met.” He took a few pictures out of his wallet and handed them to Evans.
“This is why I need to fight.”
It was four pictures of small black kids. All were smiling. Evans knew instantly this was a proud grandfather.
“Oh so you guys just met.”
“Well yes sir, Fritz replied. Evans noticed the kid was becoming visibly nervous.
He looked back to the truck and motioned the men to help him.
“Let me see that phone son.”
“Why? You don’t need to see my phone. I’m just texting my girlfriend.”
Fritz started to run but Doug Wilson quickly grabbed him. Troy joined and they held him down and grabbed the phone.
Evans picked up the phone and started going through the texts.
The last text said, ‘They are moving out now. Heading for the fields we talked about before. They are going to line up behind the hill. Should be there in two hours tops.’
Evans started typing into the phone.
‘Slight delay. Something is wrong so they are regrouping. They won’t be leaving for another two hours.’
“You know kid, in war spies are shot on sight.” He turned to the men guarding Fritz. “Take him to Hartwick and tell him to question him and get every bit of info they can. Then throw him in prison until afte
r the war.”
Evans noticed the visible relief that washed over young Jason Fritz, and he knew he would cooperate.
The message he had sent to the rebels caused him to change his plans slightly. In five minutes he moved the battle trucks to the front and left in a hurry.
A mile outside of the designated battle area he knew the text he had sent for Fritz had worked. They slowed to a few miles per hour. There were rebel soldiers pouring over the hill into the rear areas. He saw spotters to his left and right. The rebels were trapped. They weren’t expecting an attack for two more hours. The trucks raced forward that last mile and took position.
Bullets were flying in both directions but Ritchie’s army had no time to take proper cover.
The two trucks with the multi-rifle machine gun contraption opened fire. In less than two minutes, twenty-thousand bullets had been fired into the enemy army and around the edges. Thousands of men fell instantly to their deaths.
When Evans saw the retreat was to the south, he moved the catapult tanks forward a few hundred yards and let the bombs fly.
These were much bigger than the football bombs. The explosions were enormous. The fuses didn’t work perfectly, but even that had worked as an advantage.
When the bombs would fall silent for a few seconds enemy soldiers would stand and start running again. Then the explosion would rip through them.
Evans’ soldiers began to feverishly reload the multi-guns. They would not be necessary.
Colonel Troy Evans, field commissioned officer, was certain he had his first victory.
He waited for five minutes and then ordered the troops to slowly move forward. As they approached the hill two lone footballs were seen flying through the air.
Evans turned and shouted at his men to pull back. But it was too late. The bombs, copied almost entirely from the ones the farmer had made two weeks ago exploded.
Dozens of soldiers from Hartwick’s newly named ‘New Freedom Army’ lay wounded or dead. Right next to Troy a man had shrapnel rip through the right side of his body. He grabbed the man’s left arm and started running back.