Robert Wilson - Julian Comstock - A Story of 22-nd Century America

Though Julian had said nothing, the men around him reacted as if he had given an order to advance. Our standard-bearer, who was hardly more than a dozen years old, leapt up and ran forward with the regimental flag in his hands. The rest of us fired our weapons almost in unison, and then joined the charge, whooping.

The smoke of battle provided cover enough that we came close to the Dutch entrenchments without being decimated, and our reckless charge had a greater than anticipated effect. Only a moment seemed to pass before we were athwart the Mitteleuropan trenches, firing our Pittsburgh rifles with abandon or dropping to reload them with fresh cassettes. The Dutch at close proximity looked much like Americans, apart from their peculiar uniforms, and so it was their uniforms I fired at, half convinced that I was killing, not human beings, but enemy costumes, which had borne their contents here from a distant land; and if some living man suffered for his enslavement to the uniform, or was penetrated by the bullets aimed at it―well, that was unavoidable, and the fault couldn’t be placed at my feet.

This private charade was not equivalent to Courage, but it enabled a Callousness that served a similar purpose.

I lost sight of Julian in the melee, and in truth I could not spare much thought for him at this chaotic moment. Even today the memory is little more than a collage of noise and ugly incidents. The battle evolved quickly, or took forever―in all honesty I cannot say which―and then we heard a new and alarming sound. It was a sort of gunfire: not the sharp report of a Pittsburgh rifle but a staccato chain of gunshots, sustained for seconds and then repeated.

Sam explained later what had happened. General Galligasken had sent his cavalry out on a flank attack against the Dutch positions―hardly an unusual maneuver; but the cavalry had been training in secret with a new weapon, which was our answer to the Chinese Cannon.

This weapon, which came to be called the Trench Sweeper, was a heavy rifle with an enormous cassette the size and shape of a pie-plate, which fed bullets to its chamber and fired them in rapid succession―a volley of gunshots continuing for as long a time as the trigger was depressed. The Porter & Earle Works had produced relatively few of these guns, but a number of them had been distributed to Galligasken’s cavalry division for occasions such as this.

The cavalry, riding into the Dutch at their flanks, encountered a fierce resistance; but the Dutch commander had been fooled by Galligasken’s frontal attack, and he had weakened his left and right in order to shore up the center. A good many American cavalrymen were killed before the Dutch defenses were penetrated, but eventually the Trench Sweepers were brought to bear, and the resultant rain of fire caused enemy troops to panic and abandon their positions in increasing numbers. Before long they were fleeing across the river at which they had made their stand. Scores of them were drowned in the process, and their bodies littered the shore like branches from a thunderstruck tree.

It was a rout, ultimately. More than a thousand of the enemy were killed, and twice that number were taken prisoner. Our own corpses numbered just a little over five hundred.

General Galligasken ordered a pursuit of the fleeing Dutch army, and captured a few stragglers and some supply wagons and horses; but the main column disappeared into the hills and forests, and Galligasken wisely held back, fearing an ambush, and was content with the spoils of the day. This was eventually called the Battle of Mascouche (“Mascouche” being the name of a nearby Tip). It was a stirring victory, all in all, except that we did not capture the Chinese Cannon; it had been kept to the rear of the action, and was dismantled and spirited away before we could reach it.

In the aftermath of the battle I found Sam and Julian, both more or less un-hurt, and we made a new camp on the riverside as supplies were trucked forward and field hospitals established for the wounded. By nightfall we had been fed, and were resting in our tents. It was an incongruously warm, benevolent evening, sweet as April butter, and the moon was bright and cheerfully indifferent to the shed blood congealing beneath it.

Julian said very little that evening. In truth, although he had survived the fight with only a nick to his earlobe, I was afraid for him. It seemed that something just as vital as blood had drained out of him during the exciting events of the day.

As we were getting ready to sleep he leaned from his bedroll and whispered, “I don’t know how many men I killed today, Adam.”

“Enough to help ensure a victory,” I said.

“Is it really a victory? What we saw today? It more closely resembled a fire in a charnel house.” He added, “It’s a bitter thing to kill a stranger―worse to kill strangers beyond counting.”

He was speaking hyperbole; but the very flatness of his voice suggested a grievance too deep for words. And to a degree I shared it. To fire a bullet into the heart or brains of one’s fellow man―even a fellow man striving to do the same to you―creates what might be called an unassimilable memory : a memory that floats on daily life the way an oil stain floats on rainwater. Stir the rain barrel, scatter the oil into countless drops, disperse it all you like, but it will not mix; and eventually the slick comes back, as loathsomely intact as it ever was.

“We can never again be what we once were,” Julian whispered.

I sat up indignantly. “I’m still just Adam Hazzard. Adam Hazzard from Williams Ford hasn’t gone away, Julian. He just went to war. Someday he’ll go somewhere else. New York City, perhaps.”

Julian evidently took some comfort from my crude philosophizing, for he grasped my hand warmly, and said in a trembling voice, “Thank you for saying so.”

“Sleep on it,” I suggested. “Perhaps we won’t have to kill anyone tomorrow, and you can get some useful rest.”

But I couldn’t take my own advice―couldn’t sleep, despite my exhaustion, any more than Julian could; so we lay awake while the moon shone down on the battlefield where we had driven back the Dutch, and on the hospital tents with their detritus of severed limbs, and on the river that flowed somewhat bloodstained to the mighty St. Lawrence and all the way to the shoreless sea.

Because of General Galligasken’s humanitarian concern for the Army of the Laurentians we were not obliged to fight the following day, nor did we march in pursuit of the enemy, but stayed where we were, and buried our dead, and consolidated our defenses in case the Dutch attempted a counterattack.

In another month or less this land would be a steaming Gehenna, hospitable only to the mosquitos and the horseflies that feed on human and animal flesh; and our marches, should we make any, would be mortal contests of endurance. Already the hospital tents, where they were not wholly preoccupied with wounded men, hosted a number of invalids down with “the summer complaint,” and there was the ever-present danger of an outbreak of cholera or some other communicable disease. We drew water from local streams to drink, for the Army barrel-water was stagnant and fusty; and we hoped for the best.

But the weather held calm and pleasant for a few days more. On Sunday afternoon after Dominion services a general lassitude fell over the camp, and I wandered among the tents like an Aristo strolling through his garden (though aristocratic gardens are generally more pleasing to the nose than military encampments).

It was while I was strolling, and sampling the sunshine, and humming tunes to myself, that I heard a noise which puzzled and interested me.