Harry Turtledove - Drive to the East

More Spanish. The POW didn’t have to answer that. Did he know he didn’t have to? Morrell wasn’t about to tell him. And he answered willingly enough. “He says he’s with the Veracruz Division, sir,” the interpreter reported. “He says that’s the best one Mexico has. Their orders are to take places the Confederates haven’t been able to capture.”

“Are they?” Morrell carefully didn’t smile at that. He suspected any number of Confederate officers would have had apoplexy if they heard the Mexican prisoner. If the Veracruz Division was the best one Francisco Jose had, the Emperor of Mexico would have been well advised not to take on anything tougher than a belligerent chipmunk. The men all had rifles, but they were woefully short on machine guns, artillery, barrels, and motorized transport. The soldiers seemed brave enough, but sending them up against a modern army wouldn’t have been far from murder-if that modern army hadn’t been so busy in so many other places.

The prisoner spoke without being asked anything. He sounded anxious. He sounded, frankly, scared out of his wits. Morrell had a hard time blaming him. Surrender was a chancy enough business even when two sides used the same language, as U.S. and C.S. soldiers did. Would-be POWs sometimes turned into casualties when their captors either wanted revenge for something that had happened to them or just lacked the time to deal with prisoners. If a captive knew no English… He likely thinks we’ll eat him for supper, Morrell thought, not without sympathy.

Sure enough, the interpreter said, “He wants to know what we’re going to do with him, sir.”

“Tell him nobody’s going to hurt him,” Morrell said. The interpreter did. Jose Castillo crossed himself and gabbled out what had to be thanks. Every once in a while, war made Morrell remember what a filthy business it was. That a man should be grateful for not getting killed out of hand… Roughly, Morrell went on, “Tell him he’ll be taken away from the fighting. Tell him he’ll be fed. If he needs a doctor, he’ll get one. Tell him we follow Geneva Convention rules, if that means anything to him.”

The prisoner seized his hand and kissed it. That horrified him. Getting captured had, in essence, turned a man into a dog. He gestured. The interpreter led Jose Castillo away. Morrell wiped his hand on his trouser leg.

“Don’t blame you, sir,” one of his guards said. “God only knows what kind of germs that damn spic’s got.”

Germs were the last thing on Morrell’s mind. He just wanted to wipe away the touch of the desperate man’s lips. If he couldn’t feel them anymore, maybe he could forget them. He needed to forget them if he was going to do his job. “He’s out of the fighting now,” he said. “He’s luckier than a lot of people I can think of.”

“Well, yeah, sir, since you put it that way,” the guard said. “He’s luckier’n me, for instance.” He grinned to show Morrell not to take him too seriously, but Morrell knew he was kidding on the square. Only a few hard cases really liked war; most men endured it and tried to come through in one piece.

From everything Morrell had heard, Jake Featherston was part of the small minority who’d enjoyed himself in the field. Morrell couldn’t have sworn that was so, but he wouldn’t have been surprised. Who but a man who enjoyed war would have loosed another one on a country-two countries-that didn’t?

That guard shifted his feet, trying to draw Morrell’s attention. Morrell nodded to him. The soldier asked, “Sir, is it true that the Confederates are inside Pittsburgh?”

“I think so, Wally,” Morrell answered. “That’s what it sounds like from the situation reports I’ve been getting, anyhow.”

“Son of a bitch,” Wally said.

“It isn’t what we had in mind when this whole mess started,” Morrell allowed. What the USA had had in mind was a victory parade through the ruined streets of Richmond, preferably with Jake Featherston’s head on a platter carried along at the front. Richmond was close to the border, which didn’t mean the United States had got there. They hadn’t in the War of Secession or the Great War, either.

“So what are we gonna do?” Wally asked-a thoroughly reasonable question. “How come we don’t just pitch into ’em?”

“Because if we do, we’d probably lose right now,” Morrell said unhappily. “We don’t have enough men or materiel yet. We’re getting there, though.” I hope.

As a matter of fact, things could have been worse. The Confederates had been planning to surround Pittsburgh instead of swarming into it, but U.S. counterattacks hadn’t let them do that. Now they had to clear the Americans from a big city house by house and factory by factory. That wouldn’t come easy or cheap. Again, Morrell hoped it wouldn’t, anyhow.

He’d been screaming at every superior in Pennsylvania to let him concentrate before he counterattacked. He’d been screaming at Philadelphia to get him enough barrels so he’d have a legitimate chance of getting somewhere when he finally did. He was sure he’d made himself vastly unpopular. He couldn’t have cared less. What could they do to him? Dismiss him from the Army? If they did, he would thank them, take off the uniform, and go back to Agnes and Mildred outside of Fort Leavenworth. Whatever happened to the country after that… happened. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be his fault.

Before long, he discovered they could do something worse than dismissing him. They could ignore him. They could, and they did. His requests for more barrels and more artillery fell on deaf ears. Since they wouldn’t dismiss him, he sent a telegram of resignation to the War Department and waited to see what came of that.

He didn’t want them to accept it. He thought he could hit the Confederates harder than anyone they could put in his slot. But if they thought otherwise, he wasn’t going to beg them to let him stay. Maybe they would give his replacement the tools they were denying him. If someone else got the weapons he wasn’t getting, that made him less indispensable than he thought himself now.

No answering telegram came back. Instead, less than twenty-four hours later, Colonel John Abell showed up on his doorstep. No, Brigadier General Abell: he had stars on his shoulder straps now. “Congratulations,” Morrell told the General Staff officer, more or less sincerely.

“Thank you,” Abell answered. “For some reason, I’m considered an expert on the care and feeding of one Irving Morrell. And so-here I am.”

“Here you are,” Morrell agreed in friendly tones. “Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

“As a matter of fact, it looks like rain,” Abell said-and it did. He gave Morrell a severe look. It was like being haunted by the ghost of an overstrict schoolteacher. “See here, General-how dare you threaten to resign when the country is in crisis?”

“After all these years we’ve been banging heads, you still don’t know how I work.” Morrell wasn’t friendly anymore. “How can you care for me and feed me if you don’t know where I live or what I eat? I wasn’t threatening anything or anybody. I’ve just had enough of being asked to do the impossible. If you put someone else here, maybe you’ll support him the way you should.”

“You are the recognized expert on barrel tactics-recognized by the Confederates as well as your own side.” Abell spoke the words as if they tasted bad. To him, they probably did. He said them anyhow. He did have a certain chilly integrity.

“Confederate recognition I could do without,” Morrell said. As if in sympathy, his shoulder twinged. The enemy wanted him dead-him personally. That was why he tolerated Wally and the other bodyguards he didn’t want. He knew too well the Confederates might try again. Anger rising in his voice, he went on, “And if the War Department thinks I’m so goddamn wonderful and brilliant and all that, why do I have to send a letter of resignation to get it to remember I’m alive?”