How Few Remain (great war)

by Harry Turtledove

  Men in blue-some in the faded uniforms of the regulars, more wearing the dark and almost spotless clothes the volunteers had recently donned-waited in long, stolid lines to board the barges and steamboats that would ferry them over the river so they could fight. Schlieffen had watched boats get hit in midstream. No doubt the soldiers had, too. They kept moving toward the boats anyhow, exactly as Germans would have done. That took discipline and courage both, the combination being especially remarkable for volunteer troops.

  Long trenches paralleled the lines that led down to the waterfront. When the Confederates started sending shells at the men near Schlieffen, they lost their stolidity in a hurry, diving into the trenches to shelter from blast and flying splinters.

  Schlieffen stayed upright. So did Lieutenant Creel. It was surely the first time he'd been under fire. He handled himself well. As soon as the shells stopped falling, the U.S. soldiers scrambled out of the trenches and resumed their places in line as if nothing had happened. Stretcher-bearers carried away a couple of groaning wounded men, but only a couple.

  "These ditches are a good idea," Schlieffen said. "They save casualties."

  "That they do." Archibald Creel sounded as proud as if he'd thought of them himself.

  So, Schlieffen thought, I have here one small worthwhile thing. Is this enough for sending me so far? Is this enough to have gathered from the greatest battle of the war? The answer, in both cases, was painfully obvious. With more temper than he usually showed, Schlieffen rounded on Second Lieutenant Creel: "You can tell me for a fact that U.S. troops arc at this time fighting in Louisville?"

  "Yes, sir, I can tell you that," Lieutenant Creel said.

  "Sehr gut. You cannot, however, tell me where in Louisville or how in Louisville or how well in Louisville they are fighting, nicht wahr?"

  "I don't know those things for certain, no, sir," Creel said. "I wish I did." He laughed nervously. "The fog of war." His wave encompassed the very real layer of thick gray smoke that blanketed Louisville, that hung low and close to the Ohio, and that drifted and swirled in eddies on the U.S. side of the river.

  "Where will they know-where will they have some idea-how goes the fighting in Louisville?" Schlieffen demanded.

  "One place is over across the river, sir," Creel said.

  "Where I cannot go."

  "Where you can't go," the young lieutenant agreed. "The other place would be General Willcox's headquarters." He laughed again. "Well, Confederate headquarters, too, I suppose, but you can't go there, either."

  "No," Schlieffen wondered if the German military attache to the Confederate States was over there. He hoped so. Having reports from both sides of the line would be useful back in Berlin — provided he learned enough here to give his report any value. "Be so good, then, as to conduct me back to General Willcox's tent. To go to the front is for me forbidden, and here in the middle I might as well be in the middle of the sea. Take me back."

  "Yes, sir," Lieutenant Creel said. "I don't know how much the general will let you see with the battle still going hot and heavy, but we'll find out. You come along with me, sir, and I'll take you there."

  Schlieffen would have got there faster by himself, but not much.

  The young U.S. officer had some notion of where he was and a pretty good idea of how to reach headquarters. Schlieffen, who laid a map in his head over the territory it represented as automatically as he breathed, had to do some unobtrusive guiding only once or twice to keep Creel headed in the right direction.

  Creel's presence was enough to get Schlieffen past the sentries outside General Willcox's tent. Given the stream of messengers rushing in and out, Schlieffen suspected he could have got past them without the young lieutenant. Some of those messengers clutched telegrams in their fists. Schlieffen noted that, though he didn't remark on it for fear the Americans would notice him noticing. So they'd managed to get an insulated wire across the Ohio, had they? That would help them. General Willcox would have far more intimate knowledge of what his troops were doing and would be able to send them orders far quicker than if he'd had to rely on boat traffic alone.

  Getting to see him actually directing the battle, though, took a bit of doing. A staff officer senior to Second Lieutenant Creel halted Schlieffen, saying, "This isn't anything we want any foreigners watching."

  "I am not an enemy," Schlieffen said indignantly. "I am a neutral. When General Rosecrans let me come here, he gave me leave to observe the actions of the Army of the Ohio. You are preventing me from doing my duty to my country when you keep me from observing."

  "I'm doing my duty to my own country," the staff officer retorted.

  "I protest," Schlieffen said loudly. He was half the size and twice the age of the soldier barring his path. If the idiot in blue didn't get out of his way, though, he was going to do his best to break him in half.

  Lieutenant Creel saw as much, and put a restraining hand on his arm. "Wait a second, Colonel," he said. "Let me get Captain Richardson. He'll straighten this out." He hurried past the other staff officer, who suffered him to enter General Willcox's sanctum sanctorum.

  "What's all this about?" Richardson said when he came out. "I haven't got time for any nonsense right now." Schlieffen and the other U.S. staff officer both started talking at once, glaring at each other while they did. Richardson listened for a little while, then threw up his hands. "Yes, Colonel Schlieffen, you may observe. Hickenlooper, keep out the Rebs and the Englishmen. Germany 's friendly, and she's likelier to stay that way if you let the attache here do his job."

  "Danke, Captain Richardson," Schlieffen said. He gave the dejected Hickenlooper a severe look as he strode past him.

  As he might have expected, the command center of the Army of the Ohio was more chaotic than that which he'd known while serving in the Franco-Prussian War. Messengers and officers rushed in and out and stood around arguing with one another in a fashion no German general would have tolerated for an instant.

  Orlando Willcox looked up from the enormous map held flat on a table by a couple of stones, a government-issue tin cup, and one bayonet stabbed through the paper and into the wood. "Ah, Colonel Schlieffen," he said. "Glad to see you. We have our landings on the other side of the river, you see."

  Schlieffen bent over the map. Sure enough, pins with blue glass heads showed U.S. forces scattered along the Kentucky shore of the Ohio and controlling the sandy islands in the middle of the river. Even as the attache watched, an aide stuck in another blue-headed pin, this one a little farther from the riverbank.

  "We have to push them back," Willcox said. "We can't bridge the river with snipers picking off our engineers as fast as they get into range. Artillery is bad enough, but Confederates, say what you will about them, produce first-rate sharpshooters. And they'll have every stretch of the Ohio ranged to the inch, too, so they'll know precisely how to sight their rifles."

  "The need for accurate sighting is the major drawback of the modern military rifle," Schlieffen agreed. To reach longer ranges, rifle bullets needed considerable elevation, which meant the angle at which they descended was far from insignificant. It also meant a minor error in estimating range was almost sure to result in a miss out past a couple of hundred yards.

  Willcox pointed to the red pins measling the map of Louisville. "It would appear that the C.S. commander, rather than withdrawing from the city here to engage us on open ground, intends to make his fight within Louisville itself, thereby subjecting it to all the rigors of war. Such callousness as to its fate and the fate of those civilians remaining there cannot win him favor either with his own people or in the eyes of the Lord."

  "This may well be so," Schlieffen said, "but fighting in a built-up area is a good way to cause the foe many casualties. Remember the battle the French had to wage to put down the Paris Commune." He granted the Communards a good deal of thoughtful respect. Their ferocity, along with some of the fighting Napoleon Ill's army had waged even after its cause was lost, in his view gave the lie to
those Germans who reckoned France too weak and decadent ever to be a menace again.

  "Fighting like that is uncivilized," Willcox declared.

  There, he had a point. European practice had long been for armies to engage away from centers of population, both to avoid endangering civilians and to give both sides the greatest possible opportunity to manoeuvre. The Americans had generally followed the same rules during the War of Secession. If the Confederates were changing those rules now… "Have you learned for certain who the C.S. commander is?"

  Willcox looked unhappy. "Rebel prisoners are confirming the rumors we had heard. We do face General Jackson."

  "Ach, so? Sehr interessant," Schlieffen murmured. In the War of Secession, Jackson 's reputation had come from manoeuvre so relentless, his infantry got the name of "foot cavalry." A man who could change his entire strategic concept was one who demanded to be taken seriously.

  A messenger burst in and said, "General Willcox, sir, Colonel Sully says the First Minnesota is melting like St. Paul ice in May. They're pinned down on the waterfront, down to a couple of hundred men now. The Rebs in front of 'em arc too strong for 'em to go forward, and if they retreat they swim."

  "What in heaven's name does Sully want me to do?" Willcox demanded.

  "Sir, he asks if you could put some artillery on the Rebs in his front," the messenger answered. "They're either behind barricades or fighting from houses and shops and all. Makes the goddamn sons of bitches twice as hard to kill, sir, hopin' you'll pardon my French."

  "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain," Willcox said, which gave Alfred von Schlieffen at least a partial understanding of what the idiom meant. Schlieffen knew French, and knew the man had not been speaking it. Willcox consulted the map, then went on, "The First Minnesota is close by Second Street?"

  "No, sir-more like Sixth Street," the messenger told him. "Somebody's boats next to ours took a-a goldanged pounding, sir, and we had to slide downstream a ways to keep from gettin' rammed."

  " Sixth Street," Willcox snarled, as if it were an obscenity. "I'll do what I can, soldier. I make no promises. Has Colonel Sully no other way to escape his predicament?"

  "Sir, yes, sir," the messenger said. "He told me to tell you if he didn't get some kind of help some kind of way pretty… danged quick, he was going to have to surrender."

  Willcox jerked as if wounded. "I'll do what I can," he repeated. The messenger saluted and hurried away. When the fellow was gone, Willcox turned to a runner from the signals office. "A wire across the river: Colonel Sully is to attempt to regain his position as indicated in the plan for the attack. That failing, he is at minimum to hold his present position at all hazards. He is to be informed that I am endeavoring to obtain artillery support for him."

  The runner departed with a scrawled order. Schlieffen noted that Willcox made no effort to give the First Minnesota the artillery support he'd said he was trying to arrange. Sometimes, when all resources were committed elsewhere, that kind of deception was necessary to keep a unit fighting a while longer. Sometimes it meant only that the commanding officer wasn't doing as much as he should to solve a problem.

  Which was it here? Schlieffen didn't know enough to be certain. The Army of the Ohio had a foothold on the far side of its eponymous river. Schlieffen would not have given good odds on that before the battle began. The next question was what Willcox would do with his bridgehead-and what Stonewall Jackson would do to it.

  Edgar Leary dumped three telegrams on Sam Clemens' desk. "Here you go," the young reporter said: "More wires on the Louisville fighting."

  "These are-what? The sixth, seventh, and eighth today?" Clemens asked. Leary nodded. The editor of the San Francisco Morning Call puffed out smoke like a steamboat. "Almost makes me wish the lines in Utah were still down."

  He skimmed through the wires. Except for some new casualty figures, higher than the ones he'd seen a couple of days before, he didn't see anything he hadn't known already. He threw two of the telegrams into the trash, keeping the one with the numbers. He'd been about to start a new editorial; they would come in handy.

  War, he wrote, is a good deal like a meat grinder, in that you feed in fresh chunks of whole meat at one end, and what comes out the other is fit only for stuffing into frankfurters. By all reports, General Willcox is working the crank for all he is worth in the Louisville campaign. Military meat is different from the ordinary kind, because some of the fragments that come out the business end of the grinder are still able to tell you what they were like before they went into the hopper.

  If the figures we have are accurate-and God save the soul of the poor devil charged with aggregating the total-the United States have in the past several days gained anywhere from a quarter of a mile to a mile of land formerly having suffered the great misfortune of flying the Confederate flag, and have purchased this real estate at a cost of, to date, 17,409 young soldiers mutilated and killed. That we have here a great bargain can hardly be denied, for "Excuse me, Mr. Clemens," Edgar Leary said. "A couple of gentlemen are here to see you."

  "If they're gentlemen," Clemens replied without looking up, "they'll wait till I'm ready to see them. Christ, Edgar, you know better than to jog my elbow when I'm trying to get words down on paper."

  "It's not a social call, Clemens," a rough, unfamiliar voice said.

  Angrily, Sam spun his chair around. He discovered he was looking down the barrels of two Colt revolvers, each held by a burly individual who did not look as if he would have much compunction about pulling the trigger. Ignoring the guns, he said, "People who use my surname commonly have the courtesy to put Mister in front of it, as my friend there did."

  The larger of the two men-the one who had spoken before- said, "Next Rebel spy I hear tell of who deserves to get called Mister'W be the first."

  "Rebel spy?" That sent Clemens bouncing to his feet in fury. "Who the devil says I am, and how in hell has he got the nerve to say it?"

  Quick as a striking rattler, the smaller ruffian snatched from his desk the editorial on which Sam had been working. After reading the couple of paragraphs there, he said, "Sure as hell sounds like treason to me."

  "God damn you!" Clemens shouted. "Give me that back before I punch you in your stupid nose." He kept on ignoring the Colts leveled at him. So did the men holding them. "If Adolph Imbecile Sutro tries to throw a newspaperman in jail for what he writes, he'll have every newspaperman in San Francisco by this time tomorrow, and that includes the heathen Chinese. There still is such a thing as the First Amendment to the Constitution, which has a thing or two to say on the subject of a free press. Has either of you blockheads ever heard of it?"

  Reporters, typesetters, and printers had been edging through the Morning Call offices toward the altercation. A savage grin stretched across Sam's face. If these hooligans tried hauling him away by force, they'd have a battle on their hands. Newspapermen looked after their own.

  But then the bigger intruder said, "We ain't here on account of what you write, Mister Clemens." Unexpectedly, he had the wit to load that with irony, and to add, "Hell, nobody reads it, anyways. We're here on account of it's done been reported that you are a veteran of the Confederate States of America. Is it so or ain't it that you were in the Confederate Army during the War of Secession?"

  Clemens started to laugh. Then he got a look at the faces of the men who worked with him at the Morning Call. None of them had ever heard the story of his brief, absurd stint as a Rebel private in Missouri. None of them looked interested in hearing it, either. Even before he could answer, they started slipping back toward the places where they worked.

  "Is it or ain't it?" the ruffian repeated.

  "Not to speak of," Sam said at last. "The company I was in never did more than mooch around a bit to impress the girls."

  "But you were in, were you?" the big man with the revolver said. "You come along with us, then, pal. You can do your explaining to the soldiers. If they reckon you're on the up and up, then they do, is al
l. But if they don't, they'll put you away where you can't get into any mischief."

  "This is an outrage!" Clemens thundered. Nobody else in the offices said anything at all. The smaller ruffian seemed to remember he had a gun. He jerked the muzzle in the direction of the doorway. With a sigh, Clemens walked to the door. He grabbed his hat off the tree as he went by. "Let's get this over with. The sooner we do, the sooner I can come back here and let the world know what a pack of damned fools we've got running around loose these days."

  The men with revolvers didn't seem inclined to argue with him. As long as he did what they said, they didn't care what else he did: stacked against a Colt, what did an insult or two matter? They had a buggy tied up outside the building. The silence behind Sam as he shut the door hurt him worse than his sallies hurt the spy-hunters.

  "The both of you are plumb loco," Clemens said as the smaller fellow took up the reins and began to drive. "If I've been such a grand and dreadful terror to the United States lo these many years, what in sweet Jesus' name was I doing as assistant to the governor's secretary in Nevada Territory even before the blamed war was over?" That the secretary had been his brother Orion, after whom his son was named, he did not bother mentioning.

  "Don't know," replied the bigger gunman, the one with some trace of wit. "What were you doing there?" By his tone, Sam might have been sending a daily telegram to Richmond from Carson City.

  Clemens replied only with dignified silence. He also did not ask where they were going, as he had intended. He judged that would become obvious in short order, a judgment vindicated when the little ruffian headed north and west, away from the heart of the city. The only thing of any consequence in that direction was the Presidio, the Army base charged with defending San Francisco.

  No matter how long Sam had lived in these parts, he never ceased to marvel at the beauty of the view across the Golden Gate, looking north toward Sausalito: blue sky, green-blue sea, the wooded headland rising swiftly above it. A ferry boat, thin black plume of smoke rising from its stack, gave a touch of human scale to nature's grandeur.