After Patton’s third ferocious lunge failed to wipe out or even shrink the Yankee bridgehead on the south bank of the Tennessee, he called an officers’ meeting in an elementary-school classroom. Sitting at one of those little desks, smelling chalk dust and oilcloths, took Potter back over half a century.
“What are we supposed to do?” Patton rasped. “We’ve got to stop those bastards any way we can. If they get into Chattanooga…If they get past Chattanooga…We’re screwed if that happens. How do we stop ’em?”
Though for all practical purposes only an amateur here, Potter raised his hand. Again, he thought of himself in short pants. He hadn’t been shy then, and he wasn’t shy now. Patton pointed to him. “Let’s make the enemy come to us for a change,” he said. “Let’s pull back into the city and give him the fun of digging us out. That worked up in Pennsylvania. We can make it work for us, too.”
“It means abandoning the river line,” Patton said.
“Are we going to get it back, sir?” Potter asked.
Patton gave him a dirty look. Chances were the general commanding had intended his remark to close off debate, not keep it going. Potter nodded to himself. Yes, Patton had more than a little Jake Featherston in him. Well, too bad. He shouldn’t have called this council if he didn’t want to hear other people’s ideas.
“We will if we can get some more air support,” Patton said.
“From where?” Potter said. “The damnyankees have had more airplanes than we do ever since the Pennsylvania campaign went sour.”
Patton’s expression turned to outright loathing. He’d been in charge of the Pennsylvania campaign, and didn’t like getting reminded it hadn’t worked. Too bad, Potter thought again. He spoke his mind to Jake Featherston. A mere general didn’t intimidate him a bit.
“If the airplanes come-” Patton tried again.
“Where will we get them from?” Potter repeated. “We can’t count on things we don’t have, or we’ll end up in even hotter water than we’re in now.”
“You talk like a damnyankee,” Patton said in a deadly voice. “I bet you think like a damnyankee, too.”
“By God, I hope so,” Potter said, which made Patton’s jaw drop. “About time somebody around here did, don’t you think? They’ve done a better job of thinking like us than we have of thinking like them, and we’re paying for it.”
“You haven’t got the offensive spirit,” Patton complained.
“Not when we don’t have anything but our mouths to be offensive with, no, sir,” Potter said. “The more we keep charging the U.S. lines, the more they slaughter us, the worse off we are. Let them come to us. Let them pay the butcher’s bill. Let them see how well they like that. Maybe we’ll be able to get out of this war with our freedom intact.” He used the word with malice aforethought.
“I’ll report you to the President,” Patton said.
“Go ahead. It’s nothing I haven’t told him, too,” Potter said cheerfully. “Having people who love you is all very well, but you need a few men who are there to tell you the truth, too.” He mocked Featherston’s wireless slogan as wickedly as he took the Freedom Party’s name in vain.
Several officers moved away from him, as if afraid whatever he had might be contagious. He saw a few men nod, though. Some people still had the brains to see that, if what they were doing now wasn’t working, they ought to try something else. He wondered whether Patton would.
No such luck. Potter hadn’t really expected anything different. He thought about going over Patton’s aggressive head and complaining to Jake Featherston himself-thought about it and dismissed it from his mind. Featherston was as fanatic about the offensive as Patton was, or he would have pulled back sooner in Pennsylvania and lost less.
“We open the new counterattack at 0800 tomorrow,” Patton declared. “General Potter, you will be generous enough to include your brigade in the assault?”
Potter didn’t want to. What was the point of throwing it into the meat grinder now that it was rebuilt to the point of becoming useful again? Wasted materiel, wasted lives the Confederacy couldn’t afford to throw away…But he nodded. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I don’t disobey orders.”
“You find other ways to be insubordinate,” Patton jeered.
“I hope so, sir, when insubordination is called for.” Potter was damned if he’d let the other general even seem to put him in the wrong.
He got the brigade as ready as he could. If they were going to attack, he wanted them to do it up brown. He didn’t think they could reach the objectives Patton gave him, but he didn’t let on. Maybe he was wrong. He hoped so. If they succeeded, they really would hurt the U.S. forces on this side of the Tennessee.
It all turned out to be moot.
At 0700, Confederate guns in Chattanooga, on Lookout Mountain, and on Missionary Ridge were banging away at the Yankee bridgehead. Potter looked at his watch. One more hour, and then they would see what they would see.
But then a rumble that wasn’t gunfire filled the sky. Potter peered up with trepidation and then with something approaching awe. What looked like every U.S. transport airplane in the world was overhead. Some flew by themselves, while others towed gliders: they were so low, he could see the lines connecting airplane and glider.
One stream made for Missionary Ridge, while the other flew right over Chattanooga toward Lookout Mountain. “Oh, my God!” Potter said, afraid he knew what he would see next.
And he did. String after string of paratroopers leaped from the transports. Their chutes filled the sky like toadstool tops. Confederate soldiers on the high ground started shooting at them while they were still in the air. Some of them fired back as they descended. By the sound of their weapons, they carried captured C.S. automatic rifles and submachine guns. The damnyankees had seized plenty, and the ammo to go with them, in their drive through Kentucky and Tennessee. Now they were using them to best advantage.
As the paratroopers landed atop Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, a captain near Potter said, “They can’t do that. They can’t get away with it.”
“Why not?” Potter answered. “What happens if they seize the guns up there? What happens if they turn ’em on us?”
The captain thought about it, but not for long. “If they do that, we’re fucked.”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself-or worse, depending on your point of view,” Potter said. The racket of gunfire from the high ground got louder. The USA had dropped a lot of men up there. They weren’t likely to carry anything heavier than mortars-though God only knew what all the gliders held-but they had the advantage of surprise, and probably the advantage of numbers.
They caught Patton with his pants down, Potter thought, and then, Hell, they caught me with my pants down, too. They caught all of us.
“We’re not going to go forward at 0800 now, are we, sir?” the captain asked.
“Sweet Jesus Christ, no!” Potter exclaimed. “We-our side-we’ve got to get those Yankees off the high ground. That comes ahead of this counterattack.” If Patton didn’t like it, too bad.
But no sooner were the words out of his mouth than a wireless operator rushed up to him. “Sir, we’re ordered to hold in place with two regiments, and to bring the third back, fast as we can, to use against Lookout Mountain.”
“Hold with two, move the third back,” Potter echoed. “All right. I’ll issue the orders.” He wondered if he could hold with two-thirds of his brigade. If U.S. forces tried to break out of the bridgehead now, at the same time as they were seizing the high ground and guns in the C.S. flank and rear, couldn’t they just barge into Chattanooga and straight on past it? He hoped they wouldn’t try. Maybe their right hand and left didn’t have even a nodding acquaintance with each other. It had happened before.
Not this time. Twenty minutes later, as his rearmost regiment started south toward Lookout Mountain, U.S. artillery north of the Tennessee awakened with a roar. Green-gray barrels surged forward. It was only August, but winter came to live in Clarence Potter’s heart.