Harry Turtledove - Alternate Generals

“Someone get a doctor,” Clemens shouted.

“Too late for that,” Reno said between coughs.

“Get O’Connor to write my obituary. He can make a hero out of any old fool.”

“O’Connor?” Clemens said out loud, cradling the dying major in his arms until a pair of medics arrived to take him back to the base hospital.

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” the officer accompanying the medic team offered, “but you know how old soldiers are, particularly when a comrade of ours has died, let alone one who has meant as much to us as President Custer.”

“The General,” Clemens said.

“That’s what we who served with him called him.”

“So you were part of the company at the Little Big Horn?”

“That’s right,” the officer replied.

“Served right next to that sorry wretch,” he added. Gesturing towards the prone body of Reno that was being carried out the door.

“Its a damned shame how some men go to pieces.”

Clemens put his hand on the officer’s shoulder to detain him for just another minute.

“He said something about an O’Connor,” the author asked.

“Was he part of the Seventh Cavalry on that day of glory?”

“Not really,” the officer replied, disentangling himself from Sam and the crowd to follow his medics and Reno, “he was a reporter from the New York Herald. He was assigned to follow Custer around.”

Clemens returned to his drink and made yet another mental note.

Tomorrow he would have to return to New York and he was pretty sure that he knew what he would find there.

The trip back northward was uneventful, and Sam Clemens was able to enjoy the privacy of his compartment for the entire trip, a situation that he took advantage of with the able assistance of a porter who for the right price had easy access to liquor and ladies in search of companionship. As his expenses were all on the New York Herald, he decided to make the most of it while he still could as he had a feeling that his days on Bennett’s dole would soon be coming to an end.

His office was as he had left it and he realized that he would not miss it when he had to give it up.

As Marshall, his keeper, was out with a hopefully fatal or at least uncomfortable malady, the writer decided to expedite his own fate, and after a quick trip to the archives with a brief stopover in the personnel department, he gathered up his notes and the one or two belongings that he had kept in his office that he considered worth keeping, and set off for the night club where he knew that his benefactor would be enjoying an expensive cigar and a snifter of fine brandy.

Clemens was told to wait at the bar until Mr. Bennett was made aware of his arrival. The bartender offered him a drink, but he uncharacteristically declined, preferring to have a clear head for the upcoming discussion. After a few minutes the majordomo returned, and escorted him to a private sitting room where James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald and the New York World, waited, cigar in one hand, brandy snifter in the other.

The large man set down his drink on an end table, and stood to greet his employee.

“Sam,” he boomed, “this is an unexpected pleasure.

How was Washington?”

“Unsettling,” Sam replied, avoiding taking the publishers hand by reaching into his own jacket to extract a cigar.

“How so?” the publisher asked. Sam detected a certain guarded quality in his tone.

“Surely, you picked up more than enough material for a suitable memorial for the great man who has passed from the earth.”

“I prefer to make my own fiction, thank you.”

“Your assignment was to write a suitable memorial for President Custer that we could publish on the anniversary of his victory against all odds at the Little Big Horn.”

“Why don’t you have O’Connor do it? He was a Herald reporter,” Clemens said, adding, “Oh, that’s right. He’s probably too busy being a press secretary and all.”

The publisher asked pointedly, “And the point of all this is?”

“Custer was a fraud,” Clemens barked, “and you abetted him.”

Bennett laughed.

“Custer was a pawn,” the publisher corrected, “and I made him. Grant wanted to seek a third term. That was contrary to the interests of a group of very important people. The corruption investigations helped to undermine his administration, but certain sources within the Republican party leaked that they were preparing to nominate Rutherford B. Hayes in his place. No one is more popular than an old war hero, except, perhaps, for a new war hero. Custer was the Democrats’ answer since he could suit the bill on both counts. Civil War hero and Indian fighter—at least that was the case after we of the press worked our magic on him.”

“Little Big Horn was a fraud!” Clemens insisted.

“No,” the publisher corrected, “it was a terrible massacre of innocent white men at the hands of bloodthirsty savages … and out of that bloodstained ridge, a living legend was born. We knew the toll the battle would take.

That’s why we were very careful to put the proper interpretation on the events. Custer had to emerge both a hero and alive. He wouldn’t have been much of a candidate if he was dead.”

“But what about his men,” Clemens countered, “the ones who really died on that ridge?”

“Men die in war,” the publisher said matter-of-factly.

“No doubt about it. But their deaths served a good cause.”

“Your cause,” Clemens countered.

“And those of a few of my compatriots,” the publisher conceded, “as well as that of Custer, and the American people for that matter. He didn’t have greatness thrust upon him. He asked for my help in attaining it. I was willing to assist him so that he could in turn assist me in other areas. Anything to get rid of those damned Republicans.”

“Like ousting Grant and his lot.”

“Exactly,” the publisher agreed, took a drag from his cigar.

“But this is water under a bridge. Your job is to further enshrine Custer in history. It is important that the legend outlive the facts.”

“Why?” Clemens demanded.

“Custer had a nephew by the name of Autie Reed,” Bennett replied.

“I think that it would only be fitting that he ride his uncle’s coattails to the White House.”

“To protect your interests?”

“And those of my friends.”

Clemens removed an envelope from inside his jacket, and handed it to the stately older man.

“This is my resignation. Have another one of your has-been hacks to spin a tale of fiction befitting a legend. I resign.”

“Not a problem,” the publisher replied.

“There are plenty more where you came from. Get out of here, and remember, men like me control the press. The facts are what we see fit to print.”

“The facts are fiction,” Clemens replied.

Bennett laughed, and chided the departing author, “Still sells better than anything you’ve ever written.”

Clemens left the exclusive club, and sought out a bar to try to wash away the image of the bloodstained ground and the innocent lives that were lost on the ridges above the Little Big Horn in order to assure the election of a Democrat to the office of the President of the United States of America.

He reckoned it would take him more than a few bottles of Kentucky’s best. He hoped that in a few hours he would know exactly how many.

November 1941 Werner Moelders climbed out of the Horch staff car to face the Air Ministry. A massive building, it was designed to impose, intimidate. It did.

It would not have affected him were he not here without orders.

He had been too angry and desperate to wait, stuck in the frozen Crimea without fuel, without ammo, without airplane parts, without support. He had to make the Reichsmarschall listen to him. Face to face was the only way.