Harry Turtledove: The Guns of the South

““Here you go, First Sergeant.” Ben Whitley handed Caudell a repeater. He held it in both hands, marveling at how light it was compared to the Springfield that hung from pegs on the wall back in his cabin. He slung it as Lang had done. It seemed to weigh next to nothing on his shoulder. Toting this kind of rifle, a man might march forever before he got sore.

“Let me have a turn with it, Nate,” Edwin Powell said. With a twinge of regret, Caudell passed him the carbine. He brought it up to firing position, looked down the barrel. “Fancy kind of sight,” he remarked. His grin turned rueful. “Maybe I can nail me a Yankee or two without get tin’ hit my own self.”

“Goin’ up to the firin’ line without your ‘shoot me’ sign’d probably be a good idea, too, Edwin,” Dempsey Eure said. The sergeants all laughed. So far as anybody knew, Powell was the only man in the regiment who’d been wounded at three different fights.

Ben Whitley came by again a few minutes later. This time, he gave Caudell a curved, black-painted metal object. Caudell had no idea what it was until he turned it and saw that it held brass cartridges. “Talk about your fancy now, Edwin,” he said, handing it on to Powell. “This looks to beat Millie balls all hollow.”

“Sure does, if there’s enough of these here bullets so as we don’t run out halfway through a battle,” Powell answered—anybody who’d been shot three times developed a certain concern about such things.

“Does every group have an AK-47 and a banana clip?” Lang asked. He waited to see if anyone would say no. When no one did, he continued: “Turn your weapon upside down. In front of your trigger guard, you’ll see a catch. It holds the clip in place.” He pointed to it on his own carbine. “Everyone finger that catch. Pass your weapon back and forth. Everyone needs to put hands on it, not just watch me.”

When the AK-47 came back to him, Caudell obediently fingered the catch. Lang had the air of a man who’d taught this lesson many times and knew it backwards and forwards. As a teacher himself, Caudell recognized the signs.

The man in the patchwork-looking clothes went on, “Now everyone take turns clicking the clip into place and freeing it. The curved end goes toward the muzzle. Go ahead, try it a few times.” Caudell inserted the clip, released the catch, took it away. Lang said, “This is one place where you want to be careful. Warn your other ranks about it, too. If the lips of the magazine are bent, or if you get dirt in there, it won’t feed rounds properly. In combat, that could prove embarrassing.”

He let out a dry chuckle. The laughs that rose in answer were grim. A rifle that wouldn’t shoot hundreds of rounds a minute was less use than one that would shoot two or three.

In the group next to Caudell, his captain stuck up his hand. “Mr. Lang?”

“Yes, Captain, ah—?”

“I’m George Lewis, sir. What do we do if the lips of this—banana clip, you called it?—somehow do get bent? I’ve been shot once, sir”—he was only recently back to the regiment himself—”and I don’t care a damn to be, ah, embarrassed again.”

“Don’t blame you a bit, Captain. The obvious answer is, switch to a fresh clip. If you haven’t but one good one left, you can load cartridges into it one at a time, in two staggered rows, like this. As I said when I fired, the clip holds thirty rounds.” He pulled a clip and some loose cartridges from his haversack and demonstrated. “We’ll come back to that later. You’ll all have a chance to do it. Now, though, let whoever’s holding the gun put that magazine in place.”

Caudell was holding the AK-47. He carefully worked the banana clip into position, listened for the click that showed it was where it belonged. “Good,” Lang said. “Now you’re ready to chamber your first round. Here, pull this handle all the way back.” Again, he demonstrated. Caudell followed suit. The action worked with a resistant smoothness that was unlike anything he had ever felt before.

“Very good once more,” Lang said. “All of you with rifles come forward and form a firing line. Take aim at your target and fire.” Caudell pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. No one else’s carbine went off, either. The instructor chuckled. “No, they’re not defective. Look at the short black lever under the handle you just pulled. See how it’s parallel to the muzzle. That little lever is called the change lever. When it’s in the top position, it’s on safety, and the weapon can’t fire. That’s how you’ll carry it on march, to avoid accidents. Now move it down two positions—make sure it’s two, mind—then aim and fire again.”

Caudell peered down the sights. They seemed close together; he was used to a longer weapon. He squeezed the trigger. The rifle barked and spat out a cartridge case. Compared to what he was used to, the kick was light. “Lordy,” someone halfway down the line exclaimed, “I could fire this piece right off my nose.” The kick wasn’t that light, but it wasn’t far away, either.

“Fire another round,” Lang said. “You don’t have to do anything but pull the trigger again.” Caudell pulled. The repeater fired. Intellectually, he had expected it would. Intellectually expecting something, though, was different from having it happen. The chorus of whistles and low-voiced exclamations of wonder that went up from the firing line showed he was not alone.

“Thirty rounds to this thing?” somebody said. “Hell, just load it on Sunday and shoot it all week long.”

Lang said, “Each time you fire, the spring in the magazine pushes up another round, so you have one in the chamber again. Take off the magazine, why don’t you, then fire that last round to empty the weapon and pass it to someone in your group so he can have his three practice rounds.”

Caudell moved the lever up, thumbed the catch that held the magazine where it belonged. When it separated from the carbine, he did not know what to do with it, for a moment. Finally he thrust it inside the front of his trousers. He aimed the weapon, felt the light jolt of its kick when he fired.

“My turn now,” Allison High said, tapping him on the shoulder.

High was half a dozen years younger than Caudell, two inches taller, and several inches wider through the chest. Not only that, it was his turn. Even so, Caudell said, “I don’t want to give it to you, Allison. I want to keep it to myself.”

“It ain’t your wife, Nate. It’s only a gun,” High said reasonably. “ ‘Sides, from what this Lang feller’s been sayin’, we’ll each get one all our own ‘fore long.”

A little embarrassed, Caudell surrendered the rifle and the banana clip. High clicked the magazine back into place. The sound reminded Caudell of a faithless lover’s laugh as she slipped into the arms of someone new. He laughed, too, at himself.

Benny Lang took the new firing line through the drill of working the change lever, chambering a round, and firing the rifle. The instructor had the knack of repeating his lessons without sounding bored. Caudell listened just as hard without the carbine in his hand as he had when he held it. Soon enough, he’d be teaching privates. He wanted to make sure he could stay ahead of them.

Lang kept at it until everyone had had a turn shooting an AK-47. Then he said, “This weapon can do one other thing I haven’t shown you yet. When you move the change lever all the way down instead of to the middle position, this is what happens.” He stuck a fresh clip in the repeater, turned toward the target circle, and blasted away. He went through the whole magazine almost before Caudell could draw in a startled breath.

“Good God almighty,” Rufus Daniel said, peering in awe at the brass cartridge cases scattered around Lang’s feet “Why didn’t he show us that in the first place?”