If you wanted something and the fellow who had it didn’t feel like handing it over, one way to get it was to put a big rock in your fist and then slug him. The USA wanted Chattanooga. The Confederates didn’t feel like giving it up. Lieutenant Michael Pound knew a certain amount of pride at being on the pointy end of the rock.
As soon as the U.S. bombardment let up, he got on the wireless circuit to the other barrels in his platoon: “Let’s go get ’em! They think they can stop us. I say they’re wrong, and I say we’ll prove it.”
In war, proving the other guy was wrong often meant proving he had no business breathing. Pound was ready to use that kind of logic against Jake Featherston’s men. Why not? Featherston had tried using it against the United States.
As his barrel rumbled forward, Pound wondered if he would spot General Morrell. This was Morrell’s operation, and Pound knew how Morrell thought, how he fought, better than anyone else except possibly George Patton. One thing Morrell did was lead from the front. He’d be here somewhere.
“Old home week,” Pound muttered.
“What was that, sir?” Sergeant Scullard asked.
“Nothing. Woolgathering,” Pound said, embarrassed the gunner had overheard him. He still wasn’t used to getting called sir, either.
The bow machine gun chattered, knocking over a couple of soldiers in butternut unlucky enough to get caught away from cover. Another Confederate dropped his submachine gun and raised his hands over his head. “What do I do, sir?” The question came back to Pound over the intercom.
“Let him live,” Pound answered. “We’ve got infantry along to scoop up prisoners, and he doesn’t look like he’ll do any more fighting. We’ll play fair when we can.” And when they couldn’t-and there would be times like that-he would do whatever needed doing, and he wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
He stood up in the turret, riding with head and shoulders out so he could see more. Only a little small-arms fire was coming back at the barrels; the barrage had left the Confederates more discombobulated than usual. Maybe they were finally starting to crack. He could hope so, anyhow.
More soldiers in butternut threw away their weapons and surrendered-or tried to, anyway. A machine gun behind them opened up and cut down several of them. Even the enemy’s machine guns packed more firepower than their U.S. equivalents. C.S. machine guns fired too fast to let you hear individual rounds going off; the noise sounded like the Devil tearing a sail in half.
It was enough to make Pound duck down into the turret and slam the cupola lid shut behind him. He didn’t mind taking chances, but he didn’t like taking dumb ones, and you couldn’t get much dumber than to offer that gun a clean shot at you. “Can you spot the son of a bitch?” he asked Scullard.
“Haven’t yet, sir,” the gunner answered. “Shall I give him a round or two of HE if I do?”
“Damn straight,” Pound said. “They’re starting to shoot their own people now. They might as well be Russians or Japs.”
They rolled past wherever the machine gun was concealed without spotting it. Pound wasn’t too worried about that. Another barrel or the infantry would take care of it. He just hoped it wouldn’t cause many casualties before that happened. Any which way, the machine gunners were in more trouble than they knew what to do with. Somehow or other, soldiers who served machine guns-especially soldiers who served them right up to the last minute-had a lot of trouble surrendering.
Pound peered through the periscopes set into the cupola. It wasn’t as good as riding with his head out, but it would have to do. He wondered where the Confederate barrels were. They couldn’t stay very far behind the line, not unless they didn’t intend to fight this side of the Chattanooga city limits. So…where?
“Front!” The gunner spotted the first enemy machine before Pound did. It squatted hull-down behind the rubble of what had been a roadside diner. And its crew had seen this barrel before anyone spotted it. Even as the gunner yelled for an armor-piercing round, the enemy cannon swung toward the barrel and spat fire.
Clang! Less than a second later, the enemy AP round hit the turret. It was like having your head stuck in God’s cymbals when He clashed them together. But the thick, well-sloped armor kept the round from penetrating.
“Thank you, Jesus!” Scullard said.
“Amen!” Michael Pound laughed from sheer relief at being alive. By the shape of its turret, the enemy barrel was an old model, one that carried only a two-inch gun. That cannon was better than good enough when the war started, but not any more. “Give him some of his own medicine, if you please.”
“Yes, sir!” The gunner’s enthusiasm surely also sprang from relief. He fiddled with the gun-laying controls-but not for long, because they’d be reloading with frantic haste in that other barrel, and they might get lucky the second time around.
The U.S. barrel’s gun spoke before the enemy got off his second shot. It wasn’t an easy target, not with only the Confederate machine’s turret showing. Pound wished he were making it himself. Not that Scullard wasn’t a damn good gunner-he was. But Pound knew he was better than a damn good gunner himself. He commanded the barrel, though. He couldn’t hop into the seat on the other side of the turret. Sometimes you had to trust the men under you, no matter how hard that was. Times like this, he wished he had his stripes back. Being an officer was no fun at all.
And then, suddenly, it was. The 3?-inch AP round punched through that old-fashioned turret as if its steel armor were so much cardboard. It knocked the turret half off the ring, knocked the enemy gun all askew. Then the ammunition stored inside the turret started cooking off. Better not to think about what happened to the Confederate barrelmen when a tungsten-pointed projectile started ricocheting around inside that crowded space. Much better not to think about it, because it had almost happened here instead.
“Good shot, Scullard!” Pound said. “Hell of a shot!” You could talk about the shot as if it were part of a game. You could talk about the enemy barrel as if it fought by itself, as if it had no crew inside. That way, you didn’t have to think about what happened to the men in there, what you’d just done to them.
“Thank you, sir.” The gunner laid an affectionate hand on the cannon’s breech. “If our turtle didn’t have a thick shell, those fuckers would’ve done unto us before we could do unto them.”
“First shot is better, but we made-you made-the second one count.” Pound gave credit where it was due.
Scullard sent him a sly grin. “Bet you wished you were doing the shooting yourself.” He knew Pound had been shifting in his seat.
“Well, maybe a little,” the barrel commander admitted-he couldn’t very well deny it. But he went on, “Probably just as well I wasn’t. You know the controls for this weapon better than I do.” That was not only polite but true. He’d fired a few rounds to familiarize himself with the cannon in case something happened to the gunner, but it was Scullard’s baby. Pound always thought he could do anything. Maybe getting reminded every once in a while that that might not be true was good for him.
“You’re a gent, sir,” Scullard said.
Pound laughed. “Only shows you don’t know me as well as you think you do, Sergeant.” He called the driver on the intercom: “Let’s get moving again. We keep sitting around, we give those bastards too good a shot at us.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver said. The barrel lurched forward.
A couple of minutes later, machine-gun fire started clattering off the machine’s armored side and the turret. It sounded like hail on a corrugated-iron roof. Pound traversed the turret to the left. There was the machine gun, sure as hell, muzzle flash winking like a lightning bug. It had a damn fool running it-he couldn’t hurt a barrel with all the ammo in the world. “Front!” Pound sang out.
“Identified, sir,” Scullard replied. He spoke to the loader: “HE!”
“You got it.” The high-explosive shell went into the breech.
“Fire!” Pound yelled, and the gunner did. The shell casing leaped from the gun and clattered off the turret floor. Dirt and smoke fountained up a few yards in front of the machine-gun nest. “Short!” Pound said. “Give ’em another round or two. We’ll shut the bugger down, by God.”