Half an hour after that, a captain and a second lieutenant and six or eight enlisted men showed up: a new company CO, a platoon commander, and some real live (for the moment, anyhow) reinforcements. Would wonders never cease? The captain, whose name was Richmond Sellars, walked with a limp and wore a Purple Heart ribbon with two tiny oak-leaf clusters pinned to it.
"I told 'em I was ready to get back to duty," he said, "so they sent my ass here." He pointed to the lieutenant, who had to be at least forty and looked to have come up through the ranks. "This is Grover Burch. Who's in charge now?"
"I am, sir. Sergeant Hugo Blackledge." Blackledge likely wasn't happy to see company command go glimmering. Jorge wasn't thrilled about losing his platoon. The good news was that he wouldn't have to listen to complaints like Ray's so much. They'd be Burch's worry, and Sergeant Blackledge's, too.
"Well, Blackledge, why don't you fill me in?" Sellars said. He'd seen enough to know he'd be smart to walk soft for a while.
The sergeant did, quickly and competently. He said a couple of nice things about Jorge, which surprised and pleased the new corporal. Then Blackledge pointed northwest. "Not really up to us what happens next, sir," he said. "The damnyankees'll do whatever the hell they do, and we've got to try and stop 'em. I just hope to God we can."
F orward to Richmond! That had been the U.S. battle cry in the War of Secession. It would have been the battle cry during the Great War, except the Confederates struck north before the USA could even try to push south. And in this fight…
In this fight, the CSA had held the USA in northern Virginia. The Confederate States had held, yes, but they weren't holding any more. Abner Dowling noted each new U.S. advance with growing amazement and growing delight. After U.S. soldiers broke out of the nasty second-growth country called the Wilderness, the enemy just didn't have the men and machines to stop them. The Confederates could slow them down, but the U.S. troops pushed forward day after day.
A command car took Dowling and his adjutant past burnt-out C.S. barrels. Even in this chilly winter weather, the stink of death filled the air. "I didn't believe I'd ever say it," Dowling remarked, "but I think we've got 'em on the run here."
"Yes, sir. Same here." Major Angelo Toricelli nodded. "They just can't hold us any more. They'll have a devil of a time keeping us out of Richmond."
"I hope we don't just barge into the place," Dowling said.
He glanced over at the driver. He didn't want to say much more than that, not with a man he didn't know well listening. His lack of faith in Daniel MacArthur was almost limitless. He'd served with MacArthur since the Great War, and admired his courage without admiring his common sense or strategic sense. He doubted whether MacArthur had any strategic sense, as a matter of fact.
"I've heard we're trying to work out how to get over the James," Major Toricelli said.
"I've heard the same thing," Dowling replied. "Hearing is only hearing, though. Seeing is believing."
A rifle shot rang out, not nearly far enough away. The driver sped up. Toricelli swung the command car's heavy machine gun toward the sound of the gunshot. He didn't know what was going on. He couldn't know who'd fired, either. The shot sounded to Dowling as if it had come from a C.S. automatic rifle, but about every fourth soldier in green-gray carried one of those nowadays-and the other three wanted one.
Toricelli relaxed-a little-as no target presented itself. "Back in the War of Secession, they would have had a devil of a time taking the straight route we're using," he remarked. "The lay of the land doesn't make it easy."
"Around here, the lay of the land's got the clap," Dowling said. His adjutant snorted. So did the driver. An adjutant was almost obligated to find a general's jokes funny. A lowly driver wasn't, so Dowling felt doubly pleased with himself.
He'd been exaggerating, but only a little. The rivers in central Virginia all seemed to run from northwest to southeast. Major Toricelli was right. Those rivers and their bottomlands would have forced men marching on foot to veer toward the southeast, too: toward the southeast and away from the Confederate capital.
But barrels and halftracks could go where marching men couldn't. And U.S. forces were pushing straight toward Richmond whether Jake Featherston's men liked it or not.
So Dowling thought, at any rate, till C.S. fighter-bombers appeared. The driver jammed on the brakes. Everybody bailed out of the command car. The roadside ditch Dowling dove into was muddy, but what could you do? Bullets spanged off asphalt and thudded into dirt. Dowling didn't hear any of the wet slaps that meant bullets striking flesh, for which he was duly grateful.
A moment later, he did hear several metallic clang!s and then a soft whump! That was the command car catching fire. He swore under his breath. He wouldn't be going forward to Richmond as fast as he wanted to.
He stuck his head up out of the ditch, then ducked again as machine-gun ammo in the command car started cooking off. Embarrassing as hell to get killed by your own ordnance. Embarrassing as hell to get killed by anybody's ordnance, when you came right down to it.
After the.50-caliber rounds stopped going off, Dowling cautiously got to his feet. So did the driver. Dowling looked across the road. Major Toricelli emerged from a ditch there. He wasn't just muddy-he was dripping. His grin looked distinctly forced. "Some fun, huh, sir?"
"Now that you mention it," Dowling said, "no."
"We'd better flag down another auto, or a truck, or whatever we can find," Toricelli said. "We need to be in place."
He was young and serious, even earnest. Dowling had been through much more. With a crooked grin, he replied, "You're right, of course. The whole war will grind to a halt if I'm not there to give orders at just the right instant."
Who was the Russian novelist who'd tried to show that generals and what they said and did was utterly irrelevant to the way battles turned out? Dowling couldn't remember his name; he cared for Russian novels no more than he cared for Brussels sprouts. With the bias that sprang from his professional rank, he thought the Russian's conclusions absurd. He remembered the claim, though, and enjoyed hauling it out to bedevil his adjutant.
"They do need you, sir," Major Toricelli said. "If they didn't, they would have left you in Texas."
"And if that's not a fate worse, or at least more boring, than death, I don't know what would be," Dowling said.
While he and Toricelli sparred, the driver, a practical man, looked down the road in the direction from which they'd come. "Here's a truck," he said, and waved for it to stop.
Maybe he was persuasive. Maybe the burning command car was. Either way, the deuce-and-a-half shuddered to a halt, brakes squealing. Over the rumble of the engine, the driver said, "You guys look like you could use a lift."
"You mean you're not selling sandwiches?" Dowling said. "Damn!"
The driver eyed his rotund form. "You look like you've had plenty already…" As his eyes found the stars on Dowling's shoulder straps, his voice trailed off. Too late, of course, and the glum look on his face said he knew it. "Uh, sir," he added with the air of a man certain it wouldn't help.
"Just get me to Army HQ in a hurry, and I won't ask who the hell you are," Dowling said.
"Pile in. You got yourself a deal." Now the driver sounded like somebody'd who'd just won a reprieve from the governor.
Before long, Dowling repented of the bargain. The trucker drove as if he smelled victory at the Omaha 400. He took corners on two wheels and speedshifted so that Dowling marveled when his transmission didn't start spitting teeth from the gears. Other traffic on the road seemed nothing but obstructions to be dodged.
"What are you carrying?" the general shouted. The engine wasn't rumbling any more-it was roaring.