“Not that way, anyhow,” the general answered.
“I didn’t think so, either,” Jake said. If they can, we’re in even worse shape than I figured. “So your job now is to hold ’em where they’re at, not let ’em break loose into Georgia.”
“I understand the need, sir,” Patton said. “I know how important Atlanta’s industry and rail junctions are. I’ll do everything I know how to do with the men I’ve got. I wish I had more.”
“You’ve got everything we can give you. Tell you the truth, you’ve got more than I can afford to give you,” Featherston said. “Manpower…Well, we’re moving more women into factories and onto farms. That frees up some new soldiers, anyhow. And we’ve got some new weapons we’ll be trying out here.”
“New barrels?” Patton asked eagerly. “You have no idea how galling it is to see the Yankees outgunning and outarmoring us. Barrels are supposed to be our strength, not theirs.”
“The new ones are on the drawing boards,” Jake said. “They’ll go into production as soon as we iron out the kinks. It would’ve happened sooner, but U.S. bombers pounded the crap out of the factories in Birmingham, and that set us back.” If the United States weren’t able to base bombers in Kentucky and Tennessee, they would have had a much harder time bombing a town in Alabama. Featherston couldn’t growl too loud about that, not when Patton had offered his head and he’d declined to take it.
“Well, all right, Mr. President.” By the way Patton said it, it wasn’t. It didn’t come close. Gathering himself, the general asked, “What have you got for us, then?”
“New rockets. These babies can reach way the hell up into Tennessee from here, maybe even into Kentucky,” Jake said. “They aren’t real accurate yet, but they’ll let us shoot at things we haven’t been able to touch for a while. They’re better than bombers, that’s for sure-we don’t lose a whole crew of trained men whenever one fails.”
“I hope they help.” Patton sounded less delighted than Featherston hoped he would. Most generals-most officers, come to that-were stick-in-the-muds. Jake had seen as much during the Great War. After he took over, he’d tried to get rid of as much dead wood as he could. But he couldn’t retire or shoot the whole Confederate officer corps, no matter how tempting the idea was.
He could put Patton in his place, though. “What’s this I hear about you slapping an enlisted man around?”
“Yes, sir, I did that, and I’d damn well do it again.” Patton had the courage of his convictions, anyhow. “The yellow coward wouldn’t go forward after a direct order. He blathered about combat fatigue. What nonsense!” He spat with magnificent contempt. “I would have got him moving, too-hell with me if I wouldn’t-if not for some near-mutineers. I hope the Yankees killed the lot of them when they overran Chattanooga. Some good would come from the loss in that case.”
“General, I don’t like slackers. Nobody does. But I’ve seen shellshock. Some men do break,” Jake said. “When I took the oath in 1934, I promised that soldiers would get a square deal from their officers. Christ knows I didn’t last time around. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt-once. But if I hear about anything like this again, you’ll have dug yourself one goddamn deep hole. You got that?”
“You always make yourself very plain, Mr. President.” Patton plainly didn’t like it.
Too bad, Jake thought. Had they promoted him to lieutenant for scenting the Negro uprising of 1915, he probably never would have become President of the CSA. The boiling resentment he still felt at being passed over fueled his rise to power.
A young officer came up to the President and the general. Saluting nervously, the kid said, “Sir-uh, sirs-Y-ranging reports Yankee airplanes on the way. You might want to think about getting under cover, in case they decide to unload on us up here near the front.”
“Y-ranging,” Jake muttered. That was one more place where the USA had the jump on the CSA. If not for some quiet help from Britain, the Confederacy might still be without it. But he nodded to the kid and to Patton. “Come on, General. No phony heroics today. The country needs us, and we’d better stay alive.”
“What do you mean, ‘phony heroics’?” Patton asked as the junior officer led them to a well-reinforced bombproof. “Some men even of high rank are fond of fighting at the front. In my opinion, that is as it should be.”
“Not if they throw their lives away to do it,” Jake said. “We can’t afford gestures like that, not in the spot we’re in. You don’t see me going right up to the front any more, do you? You reckon I don’t want to?”
Patton might have wanted to make a comment or two along those lines. Whatever he wanted, he didn’t do it. Featherston’s record for fighting up near the front all through the Great War spoke for itself. And, when things were going better, he’d already served the guns this time around. You could say a lot of things about him-he knew the things his enemies did say. But the only way you could call him yellow was to lie through your teeth.
Bombs started thudding home a few minutes after Jake and Patton went to the shelter. Dirt pattered down between the planks that shored up the ceiling. Kerosene lamps lit the bombproof. Their flames wavered and jerked when bombs hit close. Once, the junior officer moved one of them back from the edge of the table on which it sat. Jake didn’t get the feeling he was in any great danger, not down here.
“How long you think this’ll go on?” he asked the kid.
“Twenty minutes to a half hour, sir, if it’s the usual kind of raid.”
“They’re trying to wear us down,” Patton said.
They were doing a pretty damn good job of it, too. Jake held that thought to himself. If Patton couldn’t see it for himself, he didn’t need to hear it. “What will the Yankees be doing up top?” Featherston asked the youngster.
“Maybe some raids to grab prisoners and squeeze them.” The officer looked unhappy. “We lost a machine-gun nest like that last week. But they may just sit tight and let the airplanes pound on us.”
“How many do we usually shoot down when they come over like this?”
“A few. Not enough. The antiaircraft guns do what they can, but we really need fighters to make the enemy pay.”
“We need more fighter pilots, too,” Patton said. “Some of the kids who get into Hound Dogs these days…don’t have enough practice before they do. Let’s put it that way. If they live through their first few missions, they learn enough to do all right. But a lot of them don’t, and that costs a man and a machine.”
“I know. Ciphering out what to do about it’s not so easy, though,” Jake said. “If we slow down the training program, the pilots pick up more experience, but we don’t get ’em soon enough to do us much good. If we rush ’em, they’re still green when they come out. Like you say, General, the ones who live do learn.”
“Sometimes they get killed anyway, uh, sir,” the junior officer said. “The damnyankees just have too many airplanes.”
Featherston glared at him. He didn’t like being reminded of that. And, since the front had moved south, Confederate bombers weren’t hitting U.S. factories so hard. The ones out in California and the Pacific Northwest, which the CSA could hardly hit at all, were also making their weight felt. In a war of production, the United States had the edge-and they were using it.
After a little more than half an hour, the bombs stopped falling. “Let’s get up there and see what the hell they did to us this time,” Jake said.
They’d turned the area into one of the less pleasant suburbs of hell, that was what. Craters pocked the red earth. Smoke rose here and there from fires the bombs had set. Several motorcars lay flipped over onto one side or on their roofs. Stretcher bearers and ambulances took casualties back to aid stations. The wounded men groaned or screamed, depending on how badly hurt they were. Nobody shouted, “Freedom!”
Biting his lip, Featherston said, “It’s a bastard, isn’t it?”
“Can’t fight a war without casualties, sir,” Patton said.