Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

Nobody cared about a Medical Corps major's opinion. He looked at McDougald. The Army medic shrugged and said, "Looks like we've got to take care of it. I hear Virginia is really shitty this time of year."

"Wouldn't be surprised," O'Doull agreed. But the other man was right-they had to take care of it.

And they did. It wasn't as if they had no practice moving the aid station; they'd done it whenever the front went forward or back. They weren't doing it under fire this time, and, though it was chilly, it wasn't raining. Things could have been worse. The medics bitched, but O'Doull would have thought something was wrong with them if they hadn't. He bitched, too; he didn't like climbing into a truck at two in the morning any better than anybody else. Like it or not, he did it. The truck jounced off down a road full of potholes. He was leaving the war behind-and heading straight towards it.

George Enos, Jr., slung his duffel bag over his right shoulder. Leaning to the left to balance the weight, he strode up the Boston Navy Yard gangplank to the USS Townsend. He felt good about coming home to Boston to get a ship, and felt even better to have a ship at last.

When he stepped from the gangplank to the destroyer, he saluted the colors and the officer of the deck and said, "Permission to come aboard, sir?"

"Granted," the OOD said, returning the salute. "And you are…?"

"Seaman George Enos, Junior," George said, and rattled off his pay number.

"Enos." The OOD looked down at his clipboard and made a checkmark. "Yeah, you're on the list. Specialty?"

"Antiaircraft gunnery, sir."

The young j.g. wrote something beside his name. "All right. Gather with the other new fish there, and one of our petty officers will take you to your bunk."

"Thank you, sir." About a dozen men stood by the rail. Some were raw kids. Others, like George, had been around the block a few times. Two or three of them had good-conduct hashmarks on their sleeves that spoke of years in the Navy. Part of George felt raw when he saw those. Telling himself he'd been going to sea for years helped some, but only some.

Five or six more men came aboard after him. The OOD stared down at his clipboard and muttered to himself. George didn't need a college degree to figure out what that meant: a few sailors hadn't shown up. They were probably out drunk somewhere. George didn't know just what the Navy did to you for missing your ship. He didn't want to find out, either.

Finally, still muttering, the officer of the deck called, "Fogerty! Let's get this show on the road. If they show up, they show up. If they don't…"-he muttered some more, grimly-"it's their funeral."

"Aye aye, sir." Fogerty was a CPO with a big belly and an impressive array of long-service hashmarks. He glowered at the new men as if they were weevils in the hardtack. "Come on, youse guys. Shake a leg."

The Townsend was larger and bound to be faster than the Lamson, the Great War relic on which George had trained. She was every bit as crowded as the training ship, though: with her bigger displacement, she carried more weapons and more men. They ate up the space.

George's bunk turned out to be a hammock. He did some muttering of his own. What fun-he could sleep on his back or fall on his face. And he lay on his belly when he had a choice. No help for it, though. If he got tired enough, he'd sleep if he had to hang himself by his toes like a bat.

"Youse guys know your way around?" Fogerty asked, and then answered his own question: "Naw, of course youse don't. Come on, if you want to after you all get your bunks, and I'll give youse the tour."

When George accompanied him, he got more than he'd bargained for. Fogerty prowled from bow to stern and from the Y-ranging antenna down to the bilges. George hoped he would remember everything he'd seen.

One thing he made sure he'd remember was the OOD reaming out a hung-over sailor who'd shown up later than ordered. He didn't want that happening to him. And at least one man was still missing, because the officer had spoken of they to Chief Fogerty.

With or without the missing man or men, the Townsend sailed that afternoon. The Lamson's engines had wheezed. These fairly thrummed with power. Asking one of the men who'd been aboard her for a while, George discovered that she was rated at thirty-five knots, and that she could live up to the rating. The training ship had been a tired old mutt. This was a greyhound.

He got assigned to an antiaircraft gun near the Townsend's forward triple five-inch turret. They made him an ammunition passer, of course; men with more experience held the other positions, all of which took more skill. A shell heaver just needed a strong back-and the guts not to run away under attack.

They steamed south. Men not on duty stood at the rail. Some were watching for submersibles. Others were just puking; the Atlantic in December was no place for the faint of stomach. George took the heaving sea in stride. He'd known plenty worse, and in a smaller vessel.

"Not sick, Enos?" asked the twin 40mm's loader, a hulking kraut named Fritz Gustafson.

"Nah." George shook his head. "I was a Boston fisherman since before I had to shave. My stomach takes orders."

"Ah." Gustafson grunted. "So you're a sailor even if you're not a Navy man." He let out another grunt. "Well, it's something."

"Sure as hell is." The gun chief was a petty officer called Fremont Blaine Dalby-he described himself as a Republican out of a Republican family. With most of the USA either Socialist or Democrat, that made him a strange bird, but he knew what he was doing at the gun mount. Now he went on, "There's guys who've been in since the Great War who still lose their breakfast when it gets like this. North Atlantic this time of year ain't no joke."

"That's the truth. I've been on a few Nantucket sleigh rides myself." George had been on more than a few, riding out swells as high as a three-story building. He didn't want to brag in front of men senior to him, though. They were liable to make him pay for it later. That turned out to be smart, as he found out when he asked, "You know where we're headed?"

Dalby and Gustafson both stared at him. "They didn't tell you?" Dalby asked.

"Nope. Just to report aboard."

Fritz Gustafson grunted again. "Sounds like the Navy, all right. We're heading for the Sandwich Islands. We get to go around the Horn. You think the waves up here are bad? The ones down there make this look like a dead calm."

Now it was George's turn to grunt. He'd heard stories about going around the Horn-who hadn't? "Have to see what that's like," he said. "I've been east a ways, but I haven't been south."

"So you're a polliwog, are you?" Gustafson asked with a cynical laugh. Enough fishermen came out of the Navy and had crossed the Equator to let George know what that meant. He nodded. Gustafson laughed again. "Well, you'll get yours."

"Rounding the Horn shouldn't be too bad," Dalby said. "It'll be summer down there, or what passes for it. Going through in winter is worse. Then it's just mountains of water kicking you in the teeth, one after another after another."

"People have been talking about a canal through Central America damn near forever," Gustafson said. "I wish they'd finally get around to building the fucker."

"Yeah, but who'd run it?" George said.

Gustafson and Dalby looked at each other. "He's no dope," Dalby said. No doubt it was possible to build a canal through Colombia's upper neck or through Nicaragua. The USA and the CSA had both examined the project. Each had threatened war if the other went ahead with it. It might have happened after the Great War, when the Confederate States were weak, but the United States had been putting themselves back together then, too. And after the bottom fell out of the economy, nobody'd had the money or the energy for a project like that.