"That'll shift them!" Custer said jubilantly. He got up on the firing step to watch the progress of the gas. Davis got up beside him. If he didn't watch the progress of the gas, he didn't have much of a story. And Dowling got up there, too. As long as he was Custer's adjutant, this was as close to real combat as he was likely to come.
Every now and then, little bits of high ground between the U.S. and C.S. lines would remain visible above the chlorine cloud, which, being heavier than air, stuck close to the ground except when the wind blew it up into little puffs and wisps. Despite that steady wind, the harsh, bleachlike odor of the gas made Dowling's throat raw, his nose sore, and his eyes even more watery than Custer's vicious onions had done.
As soon as the chlorine cloud rolled over and into the Confederate trenches, observers telephoned word back to the U.S. artillery emplacements. They opened up with a savage bombardment. Explosions sent dirt flying and made the gas jump and writhe like a plateful of gelatin.
Before long, the cylinders of chlorine gas were empty. The artillery stopped pounding the Confederates' forward most trenches and moved back to the support trenches to keep reinforcements from moving up. All along the U.S. line, officers' whistles blew. Cries of "Let's go!" and "Get moving!" rang out. One nearby officer added, "Come on, the closer we stay to the hind end of that gas cloud, the worse shape the Rebs'll be in when we hit 'em." Over the top the troops went.
That would have been plenty to inspire Abner Dowling to follow close behind the chlorine. Only in books by writers who'd never smelled powder (more to the point, who'd never smelled the shit from spilled guts) did soldiers want a fair fight. What soldiers wanted was a walkover, with none of them getting hurt. They didn't get what they wanted very often. Maybe today…
"Brave men," Richard Harding Davis said quietly, watching the soldiers in green-gray, their uniforms fading almost to invisibility when seen against the chlorine, swarming out of the U.S. trenches and toward those of the Confederates. "Very brave men."
Here and there, rifle and machine-gun fire greeted the Americans. Not all of the Rebels had been overcome by the poisonous gas. Men caught between the trench lines fell, sometimes one by one, sometimes in rows. But most of the U.S. soldiers moved forward. One after another, the weapons aimed at them fell silent.
"Do the Rebels know how to block the chlorine's effect?" Davis asked.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Dowling said, at the same time as General Custer was snapping, "I doubt it."
Custer glared at his adjutant. Dowling hung his head and muttered an apology. Reports from Europe, though, showed how chlorine could be countered. Even something as simple as pissing in a rag and holding it over your mouth and nose could keep most of the gas out of your lungs, though it would still burn your eyes. And the limeys and the frogs were supposed to be using the same sort of masks German and now U.S. troops had, too.
"I shan't give any details," Davis said, "though I doubt the Confederate States need to read my columns to garner military intelligence." That was sure to be true; where the USA had German reports on the effects of chlorine, the CSA would have got details from Paris and London.
Whatever the reports had said, though, the Rebs hadn't paid much attention to it. U.S. soldiers still flooded forward, and, now, Confederate prisoners, herded along by jubilant Americans-some wearing their masks, some with them hung around their necks-came stumbling back to the U.S. lines.
Some of the Rebs were ordinary captives, either men who'd surrendered in the fighting or were taken after being wounded. But others showed the effects of the poisonous gas. Some had blood running from their mouths or bubbling out of their noses. Others seemed to be doing their best not to breathe at all. From the tiny taste of chlorine Dowling had got, he tried to imagine what their throats and chests felt like. He was glad he failed. A couple of Confederates tried to scream at every breath they took, but emitted only little gasping sounds of agony.
"Not much glory here," Dowling observed, watching the wretched prisoners.
"Defeating the enemies of my country is glory aplenty for me," Custer declared. In his own way, he meant it, but his own way included seeing his name in the newspapers, preferably in letters several inches high.
And, by the way the attack was developing, he might get glory on his own terms. A big victory here, and Roosevelt would be hard pressed to keep from giving him the command in Canada he so desperately craved. A runner came up and said, in tones of high excitement, "Sir, we just captured a whole battery of those damn fast-firing three-inch guns the Rebs have. Not a man at 'em: most of the gunners ran, and the gas got the rest."
"That's first-rate," Custer said. "Positively first-rate. We have to keep throwing men at them till they crack. Pour it on, by God! Pour it on!"
"Have you got more chlorine ready, to make another breach in their lines after they manage to plug this gap?" Davis asked.
Dowling nodded. Again, the reporter had found the right question to ask. The right answer, unfortunately, was no. The USA didn't turn out-or hadn't turned out-chlorine in the quantity Germany, a chemical powerhouse, did. If the thought of not having more bothered Custer, he didn't let on. "We won't need more," he said grandly. "Now that we've got them on the run, we'll make sure they keep running. I'll send in the cavalry to complete their demoralization. The stalemate on this front, Mr. Davis, is over, and you can quote me."
Davis wrote the words down. He didn't ask any more questions. Maybe that meant Custer had convinced him. Maybe, on the other hand, it meant the reporter had seen enough war on his own to know the general commanding First Army was talking through his hat. Abner Dowling was glumly certain about which way he would have bet.
Retreat. It was an ugly word. Jake Featherston hated the sound of it. But he hated the sound of annihilation a lot more. If the First Richmond Howitzers hadn't pulled back from the Susquehanna when they did, they would have been in no position to do it later.
"I knew we were in trouble when we didn't make it to the Delaware," he muttered as he trudged along a dirt road that coated him, the horses, the guns, and everything else nearby with a red-brown haze of dust.
He hadn't expected to be overheard, not through the clopping of the horses' hooves and the rattle and squeak of the gun carriage. But the new loader for the piece, a youngster named Michael Scott, said, "Why's that, Sarge?"
Featherston scowled. He almost didn't answer. As far as he was concerned, Nero and Perseus had manned the gun better than the kind of replacements you got nowadays. What they'd learned when they were serving their time as conscripts, God only knew. Featherston wasn't convinced they'd learned anything. But he replied, as patiently as he could, "When we didn't finish the big wheel to the Delaware, that let the damnyankees keep shipping supplies into Baltimore. And that let the bastards break out of Baltimore, too. If they cut us off, we're still liable to be in a lot of trouble."
"Never happen," Scott declared. "Not in a million years. We'll whip 'em, same as we've done twice running."
"I figured the same thing when the fighting started," Featherston answered. "It's already gone on a hell of a lot longer than I figured it would. The Yankees this time, feels like they mean business, same as us."
They crossed Codorus Creek, the gun-carriage wheels rumbling over the planks of the bridge. On the south-western side of the creek, Negro labourers and Confederate infantry were digging in, aiming to hold back the advancing U.S. troops, at least for a while, and to hold on to the town of Hanover, a couple of miles to the west.