Harry Turtledove - Return engagement

"Oh, irrigation with permanganate would cure some of the time," McDougald said. "Of course, most of the guys who went through it would sooner have had the disease."

"It wasn't pleasant," O'Doull agreed. He'd had to administer that treatment a good many times himself. Quebecois civilians were no fonder of it than U.S. soldiers. "A few pills or shots are a lot easier-and they work a lot better, too."

"And what's that going to do, Doc?" McDougald asked. "If we can screw as much as we want without worrying about coming down with VD, don't a lot of the old rules fly right out the window?"

"You come up with the most… interesting questions," O'Doull said admiringly. "I don't think the rules go till women don't have to worry about getting knocked up whenever they sleep with a guy. Rubbers aren't reliable enough for that, and a lot of men don't want to use 'em."

"Makes sense." Granville McDougald started to nod, then caught himself. He pointed a finger at O'Doull. "You're a Catholic, Doc. Won't you get in trouble with the Church for saying stuff like that?"

"In trouble? I doubt it. The Church isn't the Freedom Party, and the Pope isn't Jake Featherston. Nobody's going to come and burn me at the stake for having a mind of my own. The Spanish Inquisition went out of style a long time ago, even in Spain."

"Well, all right." McDougald seemed happy enough to return to the point: "You think we can do that? Make really good contraceptives, I mean?"

"Sure we can," O'Doull said. "It's just a matter of putting our minds to it and doing the research. It'll happen. I don't know when, but it will. And the world will be a different place."

Far above the tent with the Red Cross on each side, shells flew back and forth. O'Doull gauged how the fighting was going by the quality of those sounds. If more came in from the Confederate side of the line than went out at the C.S. forces, he might have to pull back in a hurry. If U.S. gunfire was outdoing the enemy's, he might have to move up quickly, which could be almost as big a nuisance. Right now, things seemed pretty even.

McDougald was listening, too, but in a different way. "Goddamn gurglers," he said. "I hate those goddamn gurglers. They're throwing gas around again. You'd think we had more sense than that. Hell, you'd think the Confederates had more sense than that."

"No such luck," O'Doull said sadly.

"I don't know what the hell good gas is." McDougald sounded bitter. "It kills people and it ruins people, and that's about it. You can't win a battle with it, not when both sides use it. It's only one more torment for the poor damned fools with guns in their hands."

"Every word you say is true," O'Doull answered. "Every single word. But saying it, no matter how true it is, doesn't make anybody on either side change his mind."

"Don't I know it? Haven't we seen it? Christ!" The way McDougald took the name of the Lord in vain wasn't so far removed from the Quebecois habit of swearing by the host and the chalice. He went on, "At least we have an antidote that does some good against nerve gas, as long as the casualties get here before it's too late. But mustard gas? Once you've got mustard gas on you or in your lungs, it will do what it does, and that's that."

A shell landed a couple of hundred yards away: not close enough to be dangerous-though O'Doull wouldn't have believed that when he first put on a uniform again-but plenty close enough to be alarming. "Was that a short round of theirs or a short round of ours?" O'Doull wondered.

"What difference does it make?" McDougald asked. "Whoever it comes down on is screwed either way."

O'Doull sighed. "Well, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, because you're right. How many have we treated where our own guns did the damage?"

"I don't have the slightest idea, and neither do you," McDougald said. "The only thing I can tell you is, it's too goddamn many."

He was right again. Accidents of all sorts were only too common in war. Some of them made O'Doull think God had a nasty sense of humor. Two U.S. companies would attack the same bit of high ground from different directions. Maybe neither would know the other was in the neighborhood. Maybe somebody in one or the other-or both-would see soldiers moving toward him and open up regardless of what uniform they wore. In a split second, dozens of soldiers would be blazing away at one another, trained reflex overriding thought… and adding to the casualty lists.

Artillery wasn't always the infantryman's friend, either. Very often, U.S. and C.S. lines would lie close together. Rounds didn't have to fall short by much to come down on soldiers in green-gray rather than those in butternut. Some of the fault, no doubt, lay in mismanufactured shells and in powder that didn't do everything it was supposed to. And some, just as surely, lay in the calculations artillerymen botched when they were in a hurry-and sometimes when they weren't. All those blunders bloated the butcher's bill.

"One thing," O'Doull said.

"What's that?" Granville McDougald inquired.

"Over on the other side of the line, there are bound to be a couple of Confederate medics bitching about the same thing."

"Oh, yeah." McDougald nodded. "But does that make it better or worse?"

That was another of those… interesting questions. How you answered it depended on how you looked at war. It was better for the USA if the Confederates also killed and maimed their own. It was better for the USA, yes, but much worse for a good-sized group of men who would either die too young or go through life with puckered scars and perhaps without fingers or a foot or their eyesight or testicles.

O'Doull answered with a question of his own: "Are you asking me as an American or as a doctor?"

"That's for you to figure out, wouldn't you say?" McDougald was enormously helpful when dealing with the wounded, much less so when he and O'Doull were making the time pass by.

Another round burst closer than it should have. O'Doull swore in English and in Quebecois French. Somebody on one side of the line or the other didn't know his ass from the end zone. No one set out to shell an aid station, but that was also one of the accidents that happened.

"I think we'd better-" O'Doull began.

Granville McDougald was already doing it. O'Doull followed him out of the tent. Both men jumped into a zigzagging trench not far away. O'Doull was glad they had no wounded lying in the tent right that minute. Getting them out would have been a nightmare. The doctor thought he would sooner have stayed in the tent himself and taken his chances.

"Cigarette?" McDougald held out a pack.

"Thanks." O'Doull took one. They were Niagaras, a U.S. brand, and tasted as if they were made of hay and horseshit. Even bad tobacco, though, was better than no tobacco at all. O'Doull sucked in smoke. "Yeah, thanks, Granny. I needed one there."

Another shell screamed in. A man who listened closely could tell which rounds were long, which short, and which right on the money. O'Doull ducked and threw his hands up over his head. So did McDougald, who'd judged the incoming round the same way he had.

The shell burst between the trench and the aid tent. Shrapnel whined through the air not far enough over their heads; dirt pattered down on them. Some slid down the back of O'Doull's neck. He knew that would drive him crazy later. Nothing he could do about it now.

Cautiously, he stuck his head up above the rim of the trench. The explosion had shredded the green-gray canvas of the aid tent; the Red Cross on the side was ventilated with several rips and tears. And what the fragments would have done to them had they stayed in the tent… "You know something? I'm not what you'd call sorry we vacated the premises."

"Now that you mention it, neither am I." McDougald looked up to survey the damage, too. He whistled mournfully. "No, that wouldn't have been a hell of a lot of fun, would it?"