Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

Antiaircraft guns were everywhere, their snouts poking up from vacant lots and street corners and roofs. Searchlight batteries would do what they could to find the guns’ targets. Signs pointed the way to air-raid shelters.

The War Department was one of the buildings under repair. That didn’t surprise Morrell. It was a big target, and the Confederates knew where it was. Even bombing by night, they were bound to score some hits.

“Here we go, sir.” The sergeant jumped out of the auto and held the heavy bronze doors that led inside for Morrell. The barrel officer was gladder of that than he cared to admit. He wasn’t sure he could have opened them with his right hand, though his left would have done the job.

Even in the War Department, brigadier generals were uncommon birds. Morrell got whisked to the offices of the assistant to the chief of the General Staff, a much more senior one-star general named Edward McCleave. “How are you feeling?” McCleave asked.

“Sir, I’ll do,” Morrell answered. “That’s why I wanted to get out of the damn hospital. I wasn’t doing anybody any good there.”

“Except yourself,” McCleave pointed out.

Morrell shrugged. It didn’t hurt-too much. “Sitting on the shelf was worse than getting shot. Can you send me to Virginia, sir? If we’re going to make a real run at Richmond, I want to be part of it.”

“Your attitude does you credit,” the older man said. “Although General MacArthur has forced a crossing of the Rappahannock, he does not anticipate an immediate armored assault on the Confederates. The terrain is not conducive to such movements.”

“You’re telling me he’s stuck,” Morrell said.

“That’s not what I said.” Brigadier General McCleave sounded prim.

“It’s what you meant, though,” Morrell said, and McCleave didn’t deny it. Morrell went on, “Do you want me to take over the barrels down there and see what I can shake loose?”

“MacArthur has not requested your presence,” McCleave said. “If, however, the War Department were to order you to the Virginia front…” He waited. Morrell nodded. The two men exchanged smiles that were downright conspiratorial. And so much for staying behind the lines, Morrell thought.

Lieutenant-Colonel Tom Colleton knew his regiment helped hold an important position. His soldiers defended Confederate positions east of Sandusky, Ohio, on the southern shore of Lake Erie. As long as the Confederate States held a corridor from the Ohio River to the lake, they cut the United States in half. The damnyankees couldn’t ship anything or anybody by rail or road from east to west or west to east within their own territory. They had to take the long way around, through occupied Canada-and Canada didn’t have nearly so many lines or roads as the USA did.

No matter how true that was, though, Tom Colleton wasn’t happy. He didn’t like standing on the defensive. He’d reveled in the push north from the border. That was what war was supposed to be about. He’d fought in Virginia the last time, and hated stalemates with the grim and bitter passion of a man who’d seen too many of them. Barrels meant soldiers didn’t have to huddle in trenches this time around. They didn’t have to, no-but too often they did anyway.

Fortunately, the Yankees were as preoccupied with Virginia these days as the Confederates had been with Ohio and Indiana at the start of the war. Even more fortunately, U.S. forces weren’t doing as well in Virginia as the Confederates had here farther west. In Sandusky, Tom couldn’t help hearing both C.S. and U.S. wireless reports. When both sides told the same story, it was probably true. When they diverged, he had to try to figure out who was lying and who wasn’t.

No matter what his sister had thought about Jake Featherston, Tom had no great love or admiration for him. His mouth tightened. Anne had died in the opening days of the war. If she hadn’t been down in Charleston when that damnyankee carrier raid hit the town… But she had, and nobody could do anything about it now.

His own wife and boys were safe in St. Matthews, not far from Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. The last of the Colletons, he thought. He’d never felt that way while Anne was alive, even though she’d been childless. She’d bossed the family ever since their parents died. Now everything rode on his shoulders.

He laughed as he looked east toward the damnyankees’ lines. The Colletons were a family with a fine future behind them. Before the Great War, Marshlands was one of the leading plantations in South Carolina, with hundreds of colored hands working in the cotton fields. The mansion went up in flames in the Negro uprising in 1915, and not even Anne could make a go of cotton after the war.

Up ahead, the Yankees and some of Tom’s men started banging away at one another. Telling which side was which by ear was easy. The U.S. soldiers used bolt-action Springfields, rifles much like the Tredegars C.S. troops had carried in the last war. In this fight, soldiers in butternut had either automatic rifles or submachine guns. The damnyankees were always going to outnumber them, so each Confederate soldier needed to have more firepower than his U.S. counterpart.

The only trouble was, rifles and submachine guns weren’t the sole weapons involved. U.S. and C.S. machine guns were as near identical as made no difference. So were the two sides’ artillery, barrels, and aircraft. Add all that in and what had been a good-sized edge for the Confederate foot soldier shrank considerably.

Sure as hell, machine guns from both sides joined the conversation within a couple of minutes. Mortar rounds didn’t make much noise leaving their tubes-soldiers on both sides called them stove pipes-but the harsh, flat crump! of the bursting bombs was unmistakable.

Colleton shouted for his wireless man. When the small soldier with the large pack on his back came up, Tom said, “What the hell’s going on there? This was a pretty quiet sector up until a few minutes ago. Get me one of the forward company command posts.”

“Yes, sir.” The wireless man did his job without fuss or feathers. “Here’s Captain Dinwiddie, sir-A Company, First Battalion.”

“Dinwiddie!” Tom called into the mouthpiece. “Who went and pulled on the damnyankees’ tails?”

“Other way round, sir,” the captain answered. “Yankee sniper potted Lieutenant Jenks. He’s not dead, but he’s hurt pretty bad. Some of our boys spotted the muzzle flash up in a tree. They started shooting at him, and some of those green-gray fuckers shot back, and now it’s hell’s half acre up here.”

“You want artillery? You want gas?” Tom asked. He hated gas, as every Great War veteran did, which didn’t mean he wouldn’t use it in a red-hot minute. God only knew the damnyankees weren’t shy about throwing it around.

“Not right now, sir,” Dinwiddie said. “They’re just shooting. There’s no real attack coming in. If we stir ’em up, though, Lord only knows what they might try.”

“All right.” Colleton wasn’t particularly sorry about the response. His job now was to keep the USA out of Sandusky, no matter what. If that meant not stirring up the enemy, he didn’t mind. He didn’t much feel like getting stirred up himself. It was a cold, miserable day, and he would sooner have stayed inside by a nice, hot fire.

The firefight lasted about half an hour. Well before then, Confederate medics with Red Cross armbands and Red Crosses on their helmets went up to the front to bring back the wounded. A couple of medics came back on stretchers themselves. Tom swore, but without particular fury. He’d never yet seen the Yankees make a habit of picking off medics, any more than the Confederates did. But neither machine-gun bursts nor mortar bombs were fussy about whom they maimed.