By then, Chester and the rest of the soldiers around the fire had their weapons in their hands, ready to hurry to help the machine-gun position if they had to. The Confederates in front of Hillsboro defended aggressively, probing as if they intended to go over to the attack any minute now. Martin didn’t think they would, but you never could tell.
“Gotta hand it to those bastards,” said one of the privates by the fire. “They still have their peckers up.” That wasn’t far from what Chester was thinking.
But brash Private Rohe said, “Yeah, well, I wish I did.”
That got a laugh. One of the other men said, “Hey, you can’t get laid around here, you ain’t tryin’. These Ohio broads are mighty glad-I mean mighty glad-we ran off those butternut bastards.”
Several men nodded. From what Chester had seen, the private wasn’t wrong. Some of the local women seemed convinced they had a patriotic duty to celebrate the return of the Stars and Stripes. “Do your prophylaxis, just like they’re whores,” he said: a sergeantly growl.
“They aren’t, though, Sarge. That’s what makes ’em so much fun-they’re nice gals,” Rohe said. More nods.
“You think you can’t come down venereal from laying a nice gal, you better think twice,” Chester said. “Remember, some of those ‘nice’ gals were probably screwing Featherston’s boys while they were here. They’re laying you to take the whammy off.”
“They wouldn’t do that!” Two young men spoke in identical dismay.
Chester laughed. “Hell they wouldn’t. There are collaborators on both sides. Always have been. Always will be.” He looked at his men. “You may be handsomer than the bastards in butternut-but if you are, the Confederacy’s got more trouble than it knows what to do with.”
The infantrymen jeered at him. He sassed them back. If they were laughing and loose, they’d fight better. They didn’t worry about anything like that, but he did. That was why he had those stripes, and the rockers under them.
Airplanes droned by overhead. Chester and the rest of the men looked for the nearest hole, in case those airplanes carried the Confederate battle flag. But they unloaded their ordnance on Hillsboro. Great clouds of smoke and dust rose above the town.
“Hope our people got out of there,” Rohe said, eyeing the devastation a couple of miles away.
Some of the locals probably-no, certainly-hadn’t. War worked that way. U.S. soldiers and armored vehicles started moving toward Hillsboro. Chester Martin sighed. He knew what would happen next. And it did. Lieutenant Wheat called, “Come on, men! Now that we’ve got the Confederates softened up, it’s time to drive them out of there once and for all!”
Chester heaved himself to his feet. “You heard the man,” he said. “Let’s get moving. Stay on your toes as we move forward. The Confederates may not be as beat up as we hope they are.”
He feared they wouldn’t be. He’d seen too many massive bombardments in the Great War yield little or nothing. He wouldn’t be surprised to see the same thing all over again here.
Rohe took point as the platoon moved up. He was small and skinny and sly, a good man to spot trouble before he tripped over it. The guys Chester had lugging the platoon’s machine guns were the ones who would have played the line in a football game. He would have been the sort to lug one himself in the last war.
He also had four or five men carrying captured C.S. automatic rifles. He blessed the extra firepower they gave. The whole platoon kept its eyes open for dead Confederates. Scrounging ammo never ceased-they didn’t want to run dry just when they needed it most.
They’d got about halfway to Hillsboro when mortar rounds started falling out of the sky. “Down!” Chester yelled. “Dig in!” There were plenty of shell holes that needed only minimal improvement to become foxholes. Some of them were already pretty good. Chester dove into one of those. Dirt flew as if he were part mole. Pretty good wasn’t good enough. He wanted outstanding.
The veterans in the platoon all dug in as fast as he did. New replacements stood around gaping and wondering what the hell was going on. Nobody’d had time to show them the ropes, and they didn’t own enough combat experience to do what needed doing without having to think about it. The extra few seconds they stayed upright cost them.
One was gruesomely killed. Two more went down wounded, both screaming their heads off. “Corpsman!” other soldiers shouted. “Over here, corpsman!” A veteran scrambled out of his hole to help a wounded rookie, and another fragment bit him. He howled in pain and howled curses at the same time.
In due course, U.S. artillery thundered. The mortars fell silent. Biding their time, Martin thought gloomily. But he was one of the first ones out of those newly enlarged and improved holes. “Come on!” he called to the rest of the men. “We’ve got a job to do.”
It was a nasty, unpleasant job. The ground over which they advanced offered little cover. To the Confederates in Hillsboro, they had to look like bugs walking across a plate. Smoke rounds helped, but only so much. If Featherston’s boys had one of those rocket launchers up there, they could put a hell of a crimp in anybody’s morning.
U.S. barrels rattled forward. Chester always liked to see them. They could do things infantry simply couldn’t. And they always drew enemy fire away from foot soldiers. He wasn’t the only one who knew they were dangerous-the Confederates did, too.
One of the things the barrels could do was lay down more smoke. That helped shield the advancing men in green-gray from the Confederates on the high ground. The Confederates kept shooting, but now they had trouble finding good targets. Chester trotted on, ducking and throwing himself into shell holes whenever he thought he had to.
Out of the smoke loomed a man in the wrong uniform: dirty butternut instead of dirty green-gray, a helmet of not quite the right shape. Chester’s Springfield swung toward the Confederate’s chest. The enemy soldier dropped-in fact, violently cast away-his submachine gun and threw up his hands. “Don’t shoot, Yankee!” he moaned. “You got me!”
“What do we do with him, Sarge?” one of Martin’s men asked.
Chester thought, but not for long. They didn’t really have time to deal with POWs… “Take him on up the road,” he said.
“Right,” the U.S. soldier said. He gestured with his Springfield. “Come on, you.” Pathetically eager, the prisoner came. Martin went on advancing. A shot rang out behind him, and then another one. He swore softly. It was too bad, but they just didn’t have the time. If he’d told his men to take the Confederate to the rear, that would have removed at least one of them from the fight. And so he used the other phrase, and the man was dead. At least he wouldn’t have known he was about to die till it happened. That was something, though not much.
Martin was sure the Confederates played the game the same way. It was too bad, but what could you do? If taking a prisoner didn’t inconvenience or endanger you, you’d do it. Why not? But if it did…It was a tough war, and it didn’t get any easier.
Shame he didn’t have one of their automatic rifles-submachine-gun cartridges don’t matter so much, Martin thought. Well, the guy who plugged him will get his cigarettes and whatever else he has that’s worth taking. And that was what a man’s life boiled down to: cartridges and cigarettes. Yeah, it sure was a tough war.
Artillery and the barrels pounded the Confederates ahead. The gun bunnies were in good form; hardly any rounds fell short. More soldiers in butternut came out of their holes with hands high. Chester did let them surrender. When men gave up in a group, it was too easy to have something go wrong if you tried to get rid of all of them at once.
Hillsboro fell that afternoon. The enemy pulled back when U.S. barrels threatened to cut off his line of retreat to the Ohio. He did a professional job of it, moving his guns out hitched to trucks and commandeered motorcars. He even paused to fire a few Parthian shots as he went south.
“We licked him here,” Private Rohe said, inspecting what was left of Hillsboro. “We licked him, yeah, but he ain’t licked yet.”