American Front gw-1

by Harry Turtledove

  Karl Buhl was marginally quicker than Craddock. "You want us to feint from one direction and hit them from the other, is that what you're saying, sir?"

  Morrell glanced at his non-coms. They all understood what he was talking about without his having to draw them any pictures. Some of them were liable to end up with higher ranks than either of their present platoon commanders. But Buhl and Craddock were doing their best, so he answered, "That's right. "We'll try going around the right flank, and then, as soon as they're all hot and bothered, the main force will come straight at 'em, with the machine guns de livering suppressive fire. We can assemble back there"-he pointed-"on the little reverse slope they've been kind enough to leave us."

  Had he been commanding the Confederate defenders, he would have moved his line east from the base of the hill to the top of that reverse slope, so he'd have had men covering the ground Rebel bullets could not now reach. If the Rebs were going to be generous enough to give him a present like that, though, he wouldn't turn it down.

  "Flanking party will attack at 0530 tomorrow morning," he said. "Buhl, you'll lead that one. We'll give you a couple of extra machine guns, too. If things go well, you won't be only a feint: your attack will turn into the real McCoy. You understand what you're to do?"

  "Yes, sir," the lieutenant answered crisply. As long as you dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's for him, he did well enough.

  "I'll lead the main force myself, starting at 0545," Morrell said. That left Craddock with no job but support. Morrell didn't care. For that matter, sup port mattered here, and could easily turn into something more. Crossing the open space toward the Confederate trenches was liable to get expensive in a hurry, and Craddock, however imperfectly qualified for company command, was liable to have it thrust upon him.

  The reconnaissance party slid along the front for a while, then drifted back through the forest to where the rest of the company waited. An over- eager sentry almost took a pot-shot at them before they would call out the password. When the soldier started to apologize, Morrell praised him for his alertness.

  After darkness fell, Morrell guided the machine-gun crews forward to the positions he wanted them to take. That was nerve-wracking work; Confeder ate patrols were prowling the woods, too, and he had to freeze in place more than once to keep from giving away his preparations for the assault.

  It was well past midnight when everything was arranged to his satisfaction. He returned to his soldiers, huddled without fire on that chilly reverse slope, and wrapped himself in his green wool blanket. Try as he would, sleep refused to come. Moving pictures kept running behind his eyes: all the differ ent ways the attack might go, all the different things that could go wrong.

  At 0500, his orderly, a scar-faced laconic fellow named Hanley, came to tap him on the shoulder. "I'm already awake," he whispered, and Hanley nod ded and slipped away.

  Just then, somebody fired a shot — a Tredegar by the sound of it, not a U.S. Springfield. The Rebel trenches came alive, with more gunfire ringing out. Morrell tensed, willing his men not to reply. They knew they shouldn't, but- After a couple of minutes, the Confederates stopped shooting. Somebody had seen a shadow he'd misliked, that was all.

  Lieutenant Buhl got his half of the attack going at 0530 on the dot. He was, if uninspired, at least reliable. And, with a couple of machine guns yam mering away for fire support, he sounded as if he had a hell of a lot more than a platoon's worth of men with him.

  Morrell passed the word to the rest of his company: "All right, we move up now. No shooting unless the Rebs discover us, or until the time, whichever comes first. I'll skin the man who opens up too soon and gives us away."

  Morning twilight was just beginning to seep through the branches of the trees. You could see a trunk a couple of paces before you'd walk into it, but not much farther than that.

  The flank attack sounded as if it was going well, not only making progress but also, by the counterfire Morrell heard, drawing Rebels to their left, his right. He held his pocket watch up to his face. Another two minutes, another minute… He blew his whistle, a piercing blast easily audible through the racket of rifles and machine guns.

  At the signal, the Maxims he'd sneaked up close to the Confederate lines started hammering at them. Morrell wouldn't have cared to be under machine- gun fire at what was as close to point-blank range as made little difference. Screams and cries of dismay said the Rebs didn't care for it, either.

  "Narrow arc!" Morrell yelled. "Narrow arc!" The gunners were supposed to know that already; he'd told them their jobs the night before. If they made the Confederates stay under cover in the areas covered by those narrow arcs of fire, his men would have stretches of trench they could storm with minimal risk. If that didn't happen, his men would get slaughtered.

  And so would he. He blew the whistle again, this time twice, burst from the cover of the woods, and ran, bad leg aching under him, toward the Confederate trenches. If you led like that, your soldiers had no excuse not to follow. Follow they did, yelling like so many madmen, firing their Springfields from the hip as they came. You weren't likely to hit anybody that way, but you made the fellows on the other team keep their heads down. That meant they couldn't do as much shooting at you.

  A few bullets did crack past Morrell. He fired a couple of shots himself, but made sure he kept a round in the chamber for when he'd really need it. Faster than he imagined possible, he jumped down into the enemy trench.

  Nobody waited there to bayonet him or fire at him while he was leaping. A Rebel with the top of his head neatly clipped off sprawled dead; another writhed and moaned, clutching a bleeding arm. But the only healthy Confed erates were trying to get away, not fighting back.

  One of his men hurled a grenade at the fleeing Rebs: a half-pound block of Triton explosive with sixteen-penny nails taped all around it, and with five seconds' worth of fuse hooked up to a blasting cap. Unlike guns, grenades could be used around corners and without showing yourself, which made them wonderfully handy for fighting in trenches. Talk was, the munitions factories would start making standardized models any day now. Till they did, improvised versions served well enough.

  More grenades, more gunfire. A few Confederates kept fighting. More threw down their rifles and threw up their hands. And still more fled through the gulleys that ran east and south from their trench line.

  "Shall we pursue, sir?" Lieutenant Craddock asked, panting. He had the look of a man who'd seen a rabbit pulled out of a hat he thought assuredly empty. Sounding happy but dazed, he went on, "We haven't lost but a man or two wounded, I don't think, and nobody killed."

  "Good," Morrell said; it was, in fact, far better than he'd dared hope. Af ter thinking for a moment, he shook his head. "No, Lieutenant, no pursuit, not in that terrain. The Rebs would rally and bushwhack us." He pointed ahead. "Where I want to be is the top of that hill. We control that, we control the countryside around it, too, and we can start flushing the Rebels out at our leisure."

  Some of his men were already out of the Confederate trench lines and heading up the steep, rocky slopes. Around here, the elevation, which might have reached fifteen hundred feet, was reckoned a mountain; Morrell didn't like dignifying it with a name he didn't think it deserved. Whatever you called it, though, it was the high ground, and he intended to seize it. He scrambled out of the trench himself. He got to the top of the hill bare moments after the sun came out and let him see for miles. He pulled his watch out of his pocket and looked at it in some surprise: a few minutes past six. His part of the fight had taken only a bit more than twenty minutes. He put the watch back. He'd seen a couple of officers carrying pocket watches on leather straps round their wrists. That was more convenient than having to dig it out whenever you wanted to know the time. Maybe he'd do it himself one day soon.

  "King of the mountain, sir," one of his soldiers said with a big grin.

  "King of the mountain — such as it is," Morrell echoed, liking the sound of it. He would have liked it eve
n better had the elevation been a more important conquest. But every little bit helped. Enough victories and you won the war. He rubbed his chin. "Now that we're up here, let's see what else we can do."

  When Jefferson Pinkard and Bedford Cunningham came back to their side-by-side cottages after another day at the foundry, their wives were standing out in front, talking. The grass was still brown, but would be going green soon; spring wasn't that far away. That wasn't so unusual; Fanny and Emily were good friends, if not so tight together as their husbands, and Emily Pinkard had helped Fanny get a job at the munitions plant where she was already working.

  What was unusual was the buff-colored envelope Fanny held in her left hand. Only one outfit used paper that color: the Confederate Conscription Bu reau. Jeff recognized the envelope for what it was before his friend did, but kept his mouth shut. You didn't want to be the one who gave your buddy news like that.

  Then Bed Cunningham spotted the CCB envelope. He stopped in his tracks. Pinkard walked on a couple of steps before he stopped, too. "Oh, hell," Cunningham said. He shook his head in profound disgust. "They went and called me up, the sons of bitches."

  "It'll be me next," Pinkard said, offering what consolation he could.

  "It's not that I'm afraid to go or anything like that," Cunningham said. "You know me, Jeff — I ain't yellow." Jefferson Pinkard nodded, for that was true. His friend went on, "Hell and damnation, though, ain't I worth more to the country here in Birmingham than I am somewhere on the front line totin' a rifle? Any damn fool can do that, but how many folks can make steel?"

  "Not enough," Pinkard said. Like a lot of men, he'd picked up almost an attorney's knowledge of the way wartime conscription worked. "You could appeal it, Bed. If the local Bureau board won't listen to you, I bet the governor would."

  But Cunningham gloomily shook his head. He'd kept his ear to the ground when it came to conscription, too. "Heard tell the other day how often the governor overrules the CCB when it comes to suckin' people into the Army. Three and a half percent of the time, that's it. Hell, three and a half per cent don't even make good beer."

  "I missed that one," Jeff Pinkard admitted.

  "Three and a half percent," Cunningham repeated with morose satisfac tion. "States' rights ain't like what it was in the War of Secession, when a governor could stand up and spit in Jeff Davis' eye and he'd have to take it. Don't dare do that no more, not with everybody so beholden to Richmond.

  Sorry damn world we live in, when a governor ain't any better'n the president's nigger, but that's how it goes."

  Slowly, they went on to Cunningham's walk and headed up it together. The expressions on their wives' faces took away any doubt about what might have been in the CCB envelope. Bedford Cunningham took it out of Fanny's hand, removed the paper inside, and read the typewritten note before crumpling it up and throwing it on the ground.

  "When do you have to report?" Pinkard asked, that seeming the only question still open.

  "Day after tomorrow," Cunningham answered. "They give a man a lot of time to get ready, now don't they?"

  "It's not right," Fanny Cunningham said. "It's not fair, not even a little bit."

  "Fair is for when you're rich," her husband answered. "All I could do is the best I could. We'll get by all right now that you're workin', honey. I didn't like the notion, I tell you that much, but it's turned out pretty good." He set a hand on Jefferson Pinkard's shoulder. "You're the one I feel sorry for, Jeff."

  "Me?" Pinkard scratched his head. "I'm just goin' on doin' what I always did. They ain't messed with me, way they have with you."

  "Not yet they ain't, but they're gonna, an' quicker'n you think." Cunningham sounded very certain, and proceeded to explain why: "All right, I take off my overalls an' they deck me out in butternut. Foundry work's got to go on, though — we all know that. Who they gonna get to take my place?"

  Emily Pinkard saw what that meant before her husband did. "Oh, lordy," she said softly.

  The light went on in Jeff's head a moment later. "They ain't gonna put no nigger on day shift," he exclaimed, but he didn't sound certain, even to himself.

  "Hope you're right," Cunningham said. "I won't be around here to see it, one way or the other. You drop me a line, though, once I find out where my mail should head to, and you tell me whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong. Bet you a Stonewall I'm right." The Confederate five-dollar goldpiece bore Jackson 's fierce, bearded image.

  They shook hands on the bet, solemnly. Pinkard thought he was likelier to lose it than win, but made it anyhow. Five dollars wouldn't break him, and they'd come in handy to a private bringing in less than a dollar a day.

  Muttering under his breath, Cunningham led Fanny into their house. The evening breeze picked up the conscription notice and skirled it away. Emily and Jeff walked across the lawn to their own cottage, up the steps, and inside. They were both very quiet over the chicken stew Emily served up for supper. Afterwards, when Jefferson got a pipe going, Emily said hesitantly, "Jeff, they wouldn't really put a nigger alongside you — would they?"

  Pinkard savored a mouthful of honeyed tobacco before he answered, "You ask me that last year, before the war started, I'd've laughed till I ripped a seam in my britches — either that or I'd've grabbed me a shotgun and loaded it with double-aught buck. Nowadays, though, the war goin' like it is, suckin' up white men like a sponge sucks up water, who the devil knows what they'll do?"

  "If they do… what'll you do?"

  "Gotta make the steel. Gotta win the war," he said after some thought. "Don't win the damn war, nothin' else matters. Nigger don't get uppity, reckon I have to work with him — for now. Come the day the war's over, though, comes the day of payin' back debts. I got me a vote, an' I know what to do with it. Gets bad enough, I got me a gun, too, an' I know what to do with that."

  Slowly, Emily nodded. "I like the way you got o' lookin' at things, honey."

  "Wish there were some things I didn't have to look at," Pinkard said. "Maybe we're all wrong. Maybe I'll win that Stonewall from Bed after all. Never can tell."

  Word of Cunningham's call to the colors spread fast. All the next day, people came by the foundry floor with flasks and bottles and jars of home- cooked whiskey. The foremen looked the other way, except when they swung by to grab a nip themselves. If any of them knew who was going to replace Cunningham, they kept their mouths shut.

  The day after that, Pinkard walked to Sloss Foundry by himself, which seemed strange. His head pounded as if someone were pouring molten metal in there, then rolling and trip-hammering it into shape. He'd done more drinking after he and Bed got home. Hangovers made some men mean. He didn't feel mean, just drained, empty, as if part of his world had been taken away.

  He got to the foundry on time, hangover or no hangover. There waiting for him stood Agrippa and Vespasian, the two Negroes who were his and Bed ford Cunningham's night-shift counterparts. However wrong having them around had seemed at first, he'd grown used to it. Most days, he'd nod when he came on and even stand around shooting the breeze with them before they went home to get some sleep, almost as if they'd been white men.

  He didn't nod this morning. His face went hard and tight, as if he were in a saloon and getting ready for a fight. Three black men stood waiting for him today, not just two. "Mornin", Mistuh Pinkard," Vespasian said. Agrippa echoed him a moment later. They knew what he had to be thinking.

  "Mornin'," Pinkard said curtly. The moment had really come. He hadn't believed it. No, he hadn't wanted to believe it. It was here anyhow. What was he supposed to do about it? Before it turned true, telling your wife you'd stay was easy. Now — Should he stand up on his hind legs and go home? If he didn't do that, he'd have to stay here, and if he stayed here, he'd have to work side by side with this Negro.

  "Mistuh Pinkard, this here's Pericles," Vespasian said, nodding at the black man Jeff hadn't seen before.

  "Mornin', Mistuh Pinkard," Pericles offered. Like all the Negroes Sloss Foundry had hired since the
war began, he was a big, strapping buck, with muscles hard and thick from years in the cotton fields. He couldn't have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two; he had open, friendly features and a thin little mustache you could hardly see against his dark skin.

  Years in the cotton fields… Pinkard almost demanded to see his pass book. Odds were, Pericles had no legal right to be anywhere but on a plantation. But the same probably held true for Agrippa and Vespasian, and for most of the other newly hired Negroes at the foundry. If the inspectors ever started checking hard, they'd shut the Sloss works down — and the steel had to be made.

  "He kin do the work, Mr. Pinkard," Vespasian said. "We been learnin' him on nights, so he be ready if the time come." He hesitated, then added, "He be my wife's cousin. I vouch for him, I surely do."

  Fish or cut bait, Jeff thought. Damn it to hell, how could you walk out on your job when your country was in the middle of a war? You had to win first; then you figured out what was supposed to happen next — he'd had that much right, talking with Emily the night before. "Let's get to work," he said.

  "Thank you, Mr. Pinkard," Vespasian breathed. Pinkard didn't answer. Vespasian and Agrippa didn't push him. Even if things were changing, they knew better than that. They nodded to Pericles and headed off the floor.

  For the first couple of hours after his shift started, Pinkard didn't say word one to Pericles. When he wanted the Negro to go somewhere or do something, he pointed. Pericles did as he was directed, not with any great skill-a few nights' watching and pitching in couldn't give you that-but with willing enthusiasm.

  When Pinkard finally did speak, it wasn't aimed at Pericles, but at the world at large, the same useless complaint Fanny Cunningham had made the night before: "It ain't fair."