Harry Turtledove: The Guns of the South

Excitement ran through Caudell. The cavalry had got itself new rifles the past couple of weeks. So had Major General Anderson’s infantry division, whose winter quarters were even closer to Orange Court House than those of Henry Heth’s division, of which the 47th North Carolina was a part. If half—if a tithe—of the stories about those rifles were true.

Colonel George Faribault limped around from the far side of the wagon. He moved slowly and with the aid of a stick; he’d been wounded in the foot and in the shoulder at Gettysburg and was just back to the regiment. By his pallor, even standing was not easy for him. He said, “Gentlemen, it is as you may have guessed: our brigade and our division are next to receive the new repeater, the AK-47 they call it. Here”—he pointed to the stranger in the suit of many muddy colors—”is Mr. Benny Lang, who will show you how to operate the rifle, so you can go on and teach your men. Mr. Lang.”

Lang jumped lightly down from the wagon. He was about five-ten, dark, and on the skinny side. His clothes bore no rank badges of any sort, but he carried himself like a soldier. “I usually get two questions at a time like this,” he said. “The first one is, why don’t you teach everyone yourself? Sorry, but we haven’t the manpower. Today, my friends and I are working with General Kirkland’s brigade: that’s you people, the 11th North Carolina, the 26th North Carolina, the 44th North Carolina, and the 52d North Carolina. Tomorrow we’ll be with General Cooke’s brigade, and so on. You’ll manage. You have to be more than stupid to screw up an AK-47. You have to be an idiot, and even then it’s not easy.”

Listening to him, Caudell found himself frowning. Camp rumor said these fellows in the funny clothes were not merely from North Carolina but from his own home county, Nash. Lang didn’t sound like a Carolina man, though, or like any kind of Southerner. He didn’t sound like a Yankee, either; in the past two years, Caudell had heard plenty of Yankee accents. The first sergeant kept listening:

“The other question I hear is, why bother trying anything new when we’re happy with our regular rifles? I’d sooner show you why than tell you. Who’s your best chap with Springfield or Enfield or whatever you use?”

All eyes swung to the regimental ordnance sergeant. He was a polite, soft-spoken man; he looked around to see if anyone else would volunteer. When no one did, he took a step forward out of line. “Reckon I am, sir. George Hines.”

“Very good,” Lang said. “Would you be so kind as to fetch your weapon and ammunition for it? And while he’s doing that, Private Whitley, why don’t you move the wagon so we don’t frighten the horses?”

“Sure will.” Whitley drove the team perhaps fifty feet, then jumped down and walked back over to watch what was going on.

Ordnance Sergeant Hines returned a minute or so later, rifle musket on his shoulder. He carried the piece like a part of him, as befit any man who wore a star in the angle of his sergeant’s stripes. Benny Lang pointed to a tall bank of earth that faced away from the soldiers’ huts. “Is that what you use for target practice?”

“Yes, sir, it is,” Hines answered.

Lang trotted over, pinned a circular paper target to the bank. He trotted back to the group, then said, “Ordnance Sergeant Hines, why don’t you put a couple of bullets in that circle for us, fast as you can load and fire?”

“I’ll do that,” Hines said, while the men who stood between him and the target moved hastily out of the way.

Watching the ordnance sergeant handle his rifle, Nate Caudell thought, was like being back on the target range at Camp Mangum outside of Raleigh, hearing the command, “Load in nine times: load!” Hines did everything perfectly, smoothly, just as the manual said he should. To load, he held the rifle upright between his feet, with the muzzle in his left hand and with his right already going to the cartridge box he wore at his belt.

Caudell imagined the invisible drillmaster barking, “Handle cartridge!” Hines brought the paper cartridge from the box to his mouth, bit off the end, poured the powder down the muzzle of his piece, and put the Minié ball in the muzzle. The bluntly. pointed bullet was about the size of the last joint of a man’s finger, with three grooves around its hollow base which expanded to fill the grooves on the inside of the rifle barrel.

At the remembered command of “Draw rammer!” the long piece of iron emerged from its place under the rifle barrel. Next in the series was “Ram,” which the ordnance sergeant did with a couple of sharp strokes before returning the ramrod to its tube. At “Prime,” he half-cocked the hammer with his right thumb, then took out a copper percussion cap and put it on the nipple.

The next four steps went in quick sequence. “Shoulder” brought the weapon up. At “Ready” it went down again for a moment, while Hines took the proper stance. Then up it came once more, with his thumb fully cocking the hammer. “Aim” had him peering down the sights, his forefinger set on the trigger. “Fire,” and the rifle roared and bucked against his shoulder.

He set the butt end of the piece on the ground, repeated the process without a single changed motion. He fired again. Another cloud of fireworks-smelling smoke spurted from his rifle. The two shots were less than half a minute apart. He scrubbed at the black powder stain on his chin with his sleeve, then turned with quiet pride to face Lang. “Anything else, sir?”

“No, Ordnance Sergeant. You’re as good with a rifle musket as any man I’ve seen. However—” Lang brought up his own rifle, blazed away at the white paper target. The sharp staccato bark, repeated again and again and again, was like nothing Caudell had ever heard. Silence fell again in less time than Hines had needed to fire twice. Lang said, “That was thirty rounds. If I had this weapon and the ordnance sergeant that one, whose chances would you gentlemen like better?”

“Goddam,” somebody behind Caudell said softly, stretching the word out into three syllables. It seemed as good an answer as any, and better than most.

Benny Lang drove the point home anyhow: “If you had this weapon and the Federals that one, whose chances would you gentlemen like?”

For a long moment, no one replied. No one needed to. Privates came dashing onto the parade ground, drawn as if by magnets to learn what sort of rifle had fired like that. Then somebody cut loose with a rebel yell. In an instant, the shrill, hair-raising cry rose from every throat.

Caudell yelled with the rest. Like most of them, he had come back from Pickett’s charge. Far too many of their one-time comrades hadn’t, not in the face of the barrage the Federals poured down on them. He was all in favor of having the firepower on his side for a change.

Colonel Faribault waved the private soldiers off the drill field. “Your turn will come,” he promised. The men withdrew, but reluctantly.

While that was going on, Benny Lang walked over to the wagon, lowered the tailgate, and began taking out repeaters like the one he had reslung. Nate Caudell’s palms itched to get hold of one. Lang said, “I have two dozen rifles here. Why don’t you men form by companies, two groups to a company, and Private Whitley and I will pass them out so I can show you what you need to know.”

“A few minutes of milling about followed, as men joined with others from their units. Caudell and his messmates—Sergeants Powell, High, Daniel, and Eure—naturally gravitated together. That left the Invincibles’ two corporals who were present for duty grouped with Captain Lewis and his pair of lieutenants. “It’s all right,” Lewis said. “We’re all new recruits at this business.”