Brigadier General Wade smiled. He was somewhere close to Pound’s age, with a chestful of medals and service ribbons-and with a scar on his face and a finger missing from his left hand that said he’d really and truly earned his decorations. “I know enthusiasm when I hear it, Lieutenant,” he said. “Why don’t you come with me?”
“Sir, I’d follow you anywhere,” Pound said, and John Wade laughed.
Hamilton, Ohio, was an industrial town of about 50,000 people, maybe a third of the way from Cincinnati up to Dayton. It sat in a bowl of hills on both sides of the Great Miami River. The west side of town was the nice side, or had been before the Confederates made a stand there. Wade had formally commissioned Pound in the Soldiers, Sailors, and Pioneers Memorial Building, a two-story structure of limestone blocks that housed a museum dedicated to U.S. wars. Two cannon from old Fort Hamilton stood in front of the building; the names of the men from Hamilton who’d served in the Mexican War, the War of Secession, the Second Mexican War, and the Great War were carved into the walls.
Now some new military hardware had joined those late-eighteenth-century guns. Michael Pound eyed the sleek lines of the new barrels with as much admiration as he would have given those of Daisy June Lee, even if of a slightly different sort. The armor on the green-gray machines-splotched here and there with darker green to help break up their outlines-was as well sloped as anything the Confederates had ever built. And that long 3?-inch gun would make any C.S. barrel, including the enemy’s latest and greatest, say uncle.
Brigadier General Wade looked as proud of the new barrels as if he’d designed them himself. “Well, Lieutenant,” he said genially, “what do you think?”
Pound knew what he was supposed to say. He was supposed to burble on about how wonderful the new barrels were and what a howling wilderness they would make of the Confederate States. If John Wade expected him to say things like that, it only went to show the general didn’t know his newest and most junior officer very well.
“Sir, they’re fine machines,” Pound said, and General Wade beamed-his new lieutenant was on the right track. Pound promptly proceeded to drive off it: “I’d like them a lot better if we had them at the beginning of the war. And we could have, you know.”
General Wade’s smile faded. “That wouldn’t have been easy,” he said, the geniality leaking out of his voice word by word. “In fact, I doubt it would have been possible.”
“Oh, yes, it would, sir.” Pound didn’t mind correcting an officer with a star on each shoulder strap-Wade was wrong, and anybody who was wrong needed correcting. (No wonder he went gray before making officer’s rank himself.) He went on, “We had everything we needed in place to build machines like this twenty years ago-and then we turned our backs on barrels, because they were too expensive and we probably wouldn’t need them any more. If we’d just followed up, this is where we would have been going into the war, this or better.”
“And what makes you so sure of that, Lieutenant?” Brigadier General Wade asked unwisely.
“Sir, I was General Morrell’s gunner at the Barrel Works in Fort Leavenworth-he was only a bird colonel back then, of course,” Pound answered. “I remember the prototype he designed. It was just a one-off, in mild steel, but it pointed straight ahead to those machines. About the only thing missing was the sloped armor, and that would have come. Or if it didn’t, we would have built thicker instead and used a stronger engine to haul around the extra weight.”
“I…see,” Wade said in slightly strangled tones. Officers often used those tones when talking to or about Michael Pound. Wade aimed a forefinger at him. “If you were there then, Lieutenant, why in God’s name aren’t you a major or a colonel by now?”
“I liked being a noncom.” Pound spread his hands, as if to say, There! Isn’t that simple? “I’ve turned down more promotions than you can shake a stick at. If you gave me any chance to do it, I would have turned this one down, too.”
“My God,” John Wade muttered. He’d never even dreamt of turning down a promotion. No one who aspired to high rank ever did. “Didn’t you ever want to use your expertise on a wider scale?”
“My expertise is barrel gunnery, sir-and everything that has to do with keeping a barrel running, too, but anybody who’s been in barrels a while gets good at that,” Pound said. “But I can only shoot one cannon at a time, and the gun doesn’t care whether I’m a sergeant or an officer. Besides, now that I’m going to be commanding a platoon, I won’t get the chance to do my own shooting any more.”
“My God,” Wade said again. “You’re an unusual man, Lieutenant. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”
“I’ll shoot the next so-and-so who tries,” Pound agreed, which only seemed to fluster the division commander more. He went on, “When do we go into Kentucky and start chewing up the Confederates? Soon, I hope, so they don’t have much time to strengthen their defenses. We push southeast, maybe we can cut them in half.”
If General Wade gaped before, he downright goggled now. Pound had seen that expression on officers’ faces before. They often didn’t believe men in the ranks-or, in his case, just up from the ranks-could think on their own. Wade managed a ragged laugh. “I put bars on your shoulders, and you think you’re ready for the General Staff.”
“Oh, no, sir.” That might have sounded suitably modest had Pound left it there. But he didn’t: “I was wondering about this when I was still a sergeant. As long as we’ve got the initiative, we need to use it. Jake Featherston is the world’s biggest son of a bitch, but he understands that. Do we?”
John Wade gave him a wry grin. “If I tell you that, I tell you things I haven’t told some members of my own staff. You tend to your knitting there, and I’ll tend to mine. I don’t think you’ll end up disappointed.”
Michael Pound ended up disappointed with most of what his superiors did. Even he could see that saying so wouldn’t win him any points. And he did have new knitting to tend to. He saluted and said, “Yes, sir.” This time, Wade’s smile wasn’t wry. Pound smiled, too, if only to himself. Yes, they always liked that.
But the general wasn’t wrong. Without waiting for permission, Pound started crawling all over the new barrel. He eyed the driver’s seat and the bow gunner’s spot next to it. Then he went into the turret. He sat in the gunner’s seat, then got up from it with a sigh of real regret. Up till now, U.S. barrels were always outgunned. A U.S. machine’s main armament could defeat a C.S. barrel most of the time (though taking on a new-model C.S. barrel’s frontal armor with the 1?-inch gun on the oldest U.S. barrels was an invitation to suicide-you had to hit them from the flank to have any kind of chance). Now, though, he would have the advantage. This gun would penetrate enemy armor at ranges from which the Confederates couldn’t hope to reply.
He shook his head. He wouldn’t have the advantage. His gunner would. He’d be stuck telling other people what to do.
With another sigh, he sat down in the commander’s seat. He stood up so he could look out of the cupola. Seeing what was going on mattered more than maybe anything else on the battlefield. Sometimes, though, you would get killed if you tried to look out. He closed the cupola’s lid and peered through the built-in periscopes. The view wasn’t nearly so good, but it wasn’t hopeless, either.
This barrel happened to have a platoon commander’s wireless set like the one he’d be using. He studied that with extra care. He would have to keep track of four machines besides his own. They would have to become extensions of his will, all working together to give the bastards in butternut a good kick in the teeth.
He frowned thoughtfully. He’d never tried anything like this before. Maybe officers earned their money after all.
He climbed out of the turret with a certain sense of relief. Brigadier General Wade eyed him with amusement. “You’re thorough,” Wade said.