The Mitteleuropan commanders rode among the men on horses, trying to rally their troops; but it was soon clear that the Dutch middle had collapsed, creating an opening for an American advance.
Julian ordered the attack at once. Moments later an entire regiment of American infantry, wearing black silken hoods over their heads, stormed out of our trenches and lunettes, hooting ferociously and wielding Pittsburgh rifles and a few invaluable Trench Sweepers.
The Dutch commander panicked and threw all his forces against us in an attempt to hold the center. Julian had anticipated this, and quickly directed our cavalry to ride against the Dutch flanks. The American cavalry were hungry men on hungry horses, but their charge was effective. More Trench Sweepers were brought to bear. The watery sun, when it finally broached the horizon, peered down on bloody carnage.
Our entire army was poised to break out, the infantry and cavalry in front, supply wagons and the portable wounded behind them, more infantry and cavalry at the rear for protection. “Ride with me, Adam!” Julian cried; and two slat-ribbed stallions were brought up, with saddles and provisions and ammunition bags; and we galloped eastward behind a brave flourish of regimental flags.
I had seen desperate battles before, of course, but there was something especially gaudy and terrible about this one.
We came down behind the advance regiments into a tumbled and ravaged land. The Dutch emplacements, now abandoned, were a hazard to us, and many horses stumbled into trenches or craters and died of their injuries. The aftermath of that first advance, along with the residue of Julian’s Black Kites, had created a charnel-ground abandoned by all but the dead. Dutch troops cut down by Trench Sweepers lay in place, their bodies contorted by their dying exertions. The colored-powder canister barrage had painted the trampled snow with scarlet plumes, and the stink of the various aerial emoluments combined into one acrid, excremental, chemical vapor which even in its dissipated state caused our own eyes to water freely.
Julian rode past companies of foot-soldiers toward the front, pausing at one point to take up the Battle Flag of the Goose Bay Campaign. This was an ennobling sight, in spite of (or because of) the tattered condition of the flag.
WE HAVE WALKED UPON THE MOON, the banner declared, and we might have been marching on the Moon right now for all the desolation around us; though the Moon, I suppose, is not pockmarked with crude abattises and open latrines. Every infantry company we passed took pleasure in the sight of the banner, and cries of “Julian Conqueror!” were commonplace.
We came into a lightly forested, complex terrain. The wind, for which we had prayed so fervently and which we had so eagerly welcomed, became a nuisance as the day progressed. Low clouds raced across the sky in gusts and gales, scouring old snow into the air and bringing fresh squalls. The Dutch army had fled before us, but we didn’t pursue them; our objective was escape, not confrontation, and for a time the only fighting was sporadic, as we encountered straggling Mitteleuropan infantrymen and overwhelmed them.
But the Mitteleuropan commander was no fool, and as the snow impeded our progress he was busy rallying his troops in their fall-back positions. Our first hint of this was the sound of gunfire in the snowy haze to the east of us—I took it for just another skirmish, though Julian frowned and pressed his mount to greater speed.
In our eagerness to escape Striver we had allowed our forces to disperse somewhat, and now it seemed our vanguard had fallen into a trap. The sound of rifle fire swelled rapidly, and as we galloped toward it we began to see casualties flowing back on us in limping lines. Full battle ahead, one soldier warned us, “and the Dutch aren’t running anymore, sir—they’re standing fast!”
Julian established a rough command headquarters near the fighting and quickly organized his staff. Scouts reported that the American vanguard had marched into a declivity on the road and come under sustained fire from protected positions; before they could entrench or retreat, shells exploded in their midst. They were falling back by companies, in a state of confusion.
Julian did what he could. He ordered his artillery up. He consulted his maps, and tried to anchor his lines securely, though the terrain was flat and unsuitable. Before long one of his adjutants announced that the sparse American right wing had entirely collapsed and the Mitteleuropans were rolling it up.
I could hear the artillery and the rifle fire—it was noticeably closer now. Dutch shells began to fall perilously near to us. We were in danger of being overrun by our own troops, should the battle become a rout.
Julian barked ferociously at the Lieutenant who first counseled retreat. It was not at all certain that we could return to Striver safely—and then we would only be under siege again, with our numbers depleted and our provisions exhausted. Striver was a prison, and our whole purpose had been to break out of it. But more messengers arrived with increasingly bad news, and when a shell knocked down the crude shelter around us Julian finally admitted the impossibility of sustaining the advance. The Dutch had regained all their courage, and had checked us effectively, and there were no more pantomime weapons to throw at them.
The realization that his plan had failed drove Julian to his lowest ebb. He had been fed no more generously than the rest of us, and several times I had to stand beside him as he consulted with his adjutants, and take his arm to support him when his physical weakness crested. There was in Julian a fierce, almost supernatural strength; I had seen it sustain him through terrible battles before this one; but even that strength had its limit, which he seemed to have just about reached. “I’m cold, Adam,” he whispered to me as the day advanced, “and the dead are all around—so many dead!”
“We have to extract all the survivors we can,” I told him.
“So they can have the privilege of dying later rather than sooner,” he muttered; but the admonition worked to brace him. He reached down into the deepest part of himself, as it seemed, and discovered there a last reserve of courage.
“Bring me the campaign flag,” he told the nearest adjutant, “and my horse, and sound a general retreat.”
I wish I could paint a word-picture vivid enough to convey the nightmare of our Retreat to Striver. I have neither the skill or the stomach for it, however. It isn’t that these images are lost to me, for they return, on a regular basis in my sleep, and I often awake sweating or shouting from their thrall. But I cannot bear to set them down on the page with minute fidelity.
Suffice to say that we rode through Tartarus with the Devil at our backs, fighting all the way.
Days were short in Labrador at that time of year. The light we had greeted so optimistically at dawn grew thin and watery. Julian, still drawing on his deepest wells of strength, carried the battle pennon high and fought alongside the rear-guard. I fought beside him, on horseback, as we gave up land that hours earlier we had won and watered with American blood. Dutch bullets flew around us like lethal insects, and—as at the Battle of Mascouche, so long ago—Julian seemed, at first, invulnerable to them.
But only at first. He could not remain wholly unperforated, in a flurry of lead that made his campaign banner a tattered and illegible rag.
I was next to him when a bullet pierced the cloth of his uniform coat about the shoulder. The wound was not grave, but it numbed the arm; and the banner with its proud boast slipped from his grasp. The faded image of the Moon was trodden on by his horse’s hooves as he slumped in the saddle.