William Forstchen: Men of War

Colonel Andrew Lawrence Keane reached up and reverently touched the silken folds of the flag of the 35th Maine. Aged and bloodstained, the fabric was as fragile as the wings of a dying butterfly.

A hundred nameless fields of strife , he thought wistfully. My own blood on that standard, my brother’s, all my comrades. How many of us left? Less than a hundred now. He slowly let his hand drop.

It was early morning, the air heady with the scent of late spring. The grass was up, thick, a lush green, sprinkled with a riot of flowers-blue, yellow, and strange purple orchids unique to this alien world that was now home.

Nature was already hard at work covering over the scars of the bitter winter battle. The deep trenches cut by the besieging Bantag were beginning to erode away, collapsing in on themselves under the incessant drumbeat of the heavy spring rains. Scattered wreckage of battle, discarded cartridge boxes, broken caissons, shell casings, tattered bits of uniform, and even the bones of the fallen were returning to the soil.

His gaze swept across the field, fingering for a moment at the great city of the Roum, looking like a vision of an empire lost to his own world far more than a millennium ago. Pillared temples adorned the hills, the new triumphal arch commemorating the great victory already half-raised in the center of the old forum. Even in the city the scars of the bitter winter battle were beginning to disappear, new buildings rising up out of the wreckage, the distant sound of sawing, hammering; a city being reborn echoed across the fields.

He turned his mount, nudging Mercury with his knees, shifting his gaze to the long lines deployed out behind him, a full corps drawn up for review before heading to the front. It was the glorious old 9th Corps, so badly mauled in the siege. The corps was deployed in battle formation, three divisions, with brigades in column, colors to the fore, occupying a front of more than half a mile. The formation was obsolete for battle use; in an open field it would be torn to shreds by modern firepower. But old traditions died hard, and such a formation could still inspire the ranks, giving them a sense of their strength and numbers.

“They’re starting to look better,” Hans Schuder announced. Andrew looked over to his old friend and nodded, urging Mercury to a slow canter, the flag bearer of the 35th following, as he paraded down the length of the line, saluting the shot-torn standards of the regiments, carefully eyeing the men.

Most of the wear and tear of the winter fight, at least on the exterior, had been repaired … new uniforms to replace the rags that had covered the men by the end of the winter, rifles repaired and well polished, cartridge boxes and haversacks bulging with eighty rounds per man, and five days’ rations.

Here and there the ranks had been replenished with new recruits, but most of the men were veterans: rawboned, tough, lean, eyes dark and hollow. Far too many of the regiments were pitifully small, sometimes down to fewer than a hundred men. Andrew had considered combining units and cutting the corps down to two divisions, but there had been a howl of protest. Regimental pride was as strong on this world as with any army back on the old world, so he had let the formation stand.

Reining in occasionally, he paused to chat, making it a point to single out men who wore the coveted Medals of Honor. Eighteen had been awarded for the siege of Roum, and another five for the units that had flanked the Bantags with Hans Schuder. Self-consciously he looked down at his own medal, given to him personally by President Abraham Lincoln. It still made him feel somewhat guilty that he had thus been singled out. Taking command of the old 35th at Gettysburg after the death of Colonel Estes, he had simply held the line, refusing to budge, the same way the other regiments deployed along Seminary Ridge had fought on that terrible first day of the battle. He had bled the 35th white, lost his only brother, and awakened in the hospital minus an arm. And for that they gave me a medal. He looked over at Hans riding beside him. It wasn’t fair, he thought again. If anyone deserved the medal for that day, it was Hans.

His gaze shifted to a color sergeant from the 14th Roum who had won his medal the hard way, killing over a dozen Bantags in hand-to-hand fighting. Andrew nodded to the sergeant and, as tradition demanded, saluted first in recognition of the medal. The sergeant, really not much more than a boy, grinned with delight and snapped off a salute in return.

“Sergeant, ready to go back up to the front?” Andrew asked, still stumbling over the Latin.

“I think we’re ready, sir.”

Andrew smiled and continued on.

“I think we’re ready,” Andrew said in English, looking over at Hans. “They’ll fight, but they’re worn out.”

“Who isn’t, Andrew?” Hans replied laconically. “The years pass, the fighting continues, the faces keep changing in the ranks. They just keep seem to be getting younger; that boy with the Medal of Honor couldn’t be nineteen.”

“Actually just turned eighteen,” Andrew replied. He looked back again at the boy with the old eyes, and saw the looks of admiration from the others in his company, for Keane had singled him out.

The old game, Andrew thought, “with such baubles armies are led,” Napoleon had once said. Two new awards had been created at the end of the Battle of Roum, and many of the men now wore them, a dark purple stripe on the left sleeve denoting a battle wound, and a silver stripe, also on the same sleeve, for having killed a Bantag in hand-to-hand combat or for a conspicuous display of gallantry. A good third of the corps wore the purple stripe, and several hundred the silver. It just might motivate a frightened boy to stand while others ran.

Coming to the head of the formation Andrew reined in and returned the salute of Stan Bamberg, commander of the 9th Corps and an old gunner of the 44th New York Light Artillery, who today was relinquishing command to head south and take over the 3rd Corps in front at Tyre. Jeff Frady, a redheaded gunner from the 44th had been promoted to take command, and in part this ceremony was the pomp and circumstance for a change of leaders.

“Nice day to be heading up to the front,” Stan announced, looking at the pale blue morning sky. “This is a good corps, Andrew.”

Andrew caught the undercurrent of concern in Stan’s voice. The 9th had been shredded at Roum, and some said the unit had simply broken. The survivors, including Stan, felt that something had to be proven.

“How’s the arm?” Andrew inquired. Stan smiled, flexing it with barely a grimace, a souvenir of the last minutes of the battle for Roum, when the corps commander had gotten a little too enthusiastic, ridden to the front lines, and received a Bantag bullet as a result.

“Ready to head south?”

Stan smiled. “I’ll miss these boys.” He was staring at Jeff, who had been his second for well over a year. “Take good care of them.”

Jeff nodded, not replying.

A steam whistle echoed in the distance, interrupting their thoughts. Looking past Stan, Andrew saw a train coming down the broad open slope, its flatcars empty after delivering half a dozen land ironclads to the front. The corps would need thirty trains to take the ten thousand men and their equipment up to the front lines. Once they were in position everything would be in place for what he prayed would be the blow that cracked the Bantag position wide-open.

He had taken the trip up there only a week before, to see the situation in front of Capua and arrange the final plans for the next offensive. The Bantag withdrawal back to the destroyed town, ninety miles east of Roum, had been thorough and brutal, not a single building, barn, hovel, bridge, or foot of track had been left intact by the retreating Horde. Over the last four months his railroaders had worked themselves to exhaustion, repairing, as well, the damage done by the two umens that had raided between Hispania and Kev.