Lang followed them from company to company. When he came to the Castalia Invincibles, he picked Caudell out by his chevrons, handed him a length of iron with a curved and flattened end. “Here you are, First Sergeant—a ripping bar to get the crates open. We found some of your units had a spot of trouble with that.”
“You think of everything,” Caudell said admiringly.
“We do try. You’ll have two magazines per weapon there, more or less—enough ammunition to get a start at practicing. Your ordnance sergeant needn’t fret. We’ll get you plenty more as you need it.” With a nod, Lang was off to Company E.
Caudell watched him go. After yesterday and this morning, he believed Lang’s promise. This was a man who delivered, But then, the Army of Northern Virginia always got the ammunition it needed, one way or another. Caudell wished Benny Lang or someone like him would take over the Confederate commissary department.
The soldiers gathered round the stacked crates. “Those the repeaters the bad-tempered feller was showin’ off to y’all yesterday?” asked Melvin Bean, a smooth-faced private with a light, clear voice.
“Yup.” Caudell attacked a crate with the bar. The lid came up with a groan of nails leaving wood. Sure enough, an AK-47 lay inside. Caudell said,” Anybody with the tools to give me a hand, run and fetch ‘em. We’ll get the job done that much quicker.” Tom Short, who worked as a saddler, left and returned shortly with a claw hammer. He fell to work beside Caudell. Before too long, all the Castalia Invincibles held new repeaters.
A heavyset private named Ruffin Biggs gave his weapon a dubious look. “We’re supposed to whup the Yankees with these little things?”
“It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, Ruffin,” Dempsey Eure drawled, “it’s the size of the fight in the dog. These here puppies got plenty of fight in ‘em, believe you me.”
Captain Lewis said, “Break into groups of six or seven men each. That way, everyone who learned about these repeaters yesterday will have one group to teach.”
The division, into groups smaller than squads, went rather awkwardly. Eyeing the soldiers in his group, Caudell suspected that the sergeants and corporals—the company’s regular squad leaders—had stuck him and the officers with the men they wanted least.
He shrugged. Everyone would have to learn. He held up his rifle, pointed to the lever below the charging handle. “This is the change lever. See, it has three positions. For now, I want you to make sure you have it in the topmost one.”
“Why’s that, First Sergeant?” Melvin Bean asked.
“Because if you don’t, you’re liable to end up shooting yourself before you find out how not to,” Caudell answered drily. That made everyone sit up and take notice.
He went through the lesson Lang had given him. The soldiers practiced attaching and removing a magazine. He showed them how rounds were arranged inside the clip and had them practice putting rounds into it.
A rifle cracked, over in another company. Shouts of alarm rose after the gunshot. “That’s why I want that change lever up top,” Caudell said. “As long as it’s there, the repeater can’t go off by accident. It’s called the safety.”
Paschall Page, the regimental sergeant major, came up to Captain Lewis and saluted. “The colonel’s compliments, sir, and the companies will practice shooting at our targets one by one, in order.”
“Very good, Sergeant Major. Thank you,” Lewis said. Page saluted again and marched off, every inch a gentleman. His blue sergeant’s stripes were joined above by an arc that showed he was the most exalted of all the regiment’s noncommissioned officers.
The lessons went more smoothly than Caudell dared hope. For one thing, Benny Lang had done a good job with his instructions the day before, and Caudell had paid careful attention. For another, despite being different from a rifle-musket, the AK-47 was an easy gun to use. Even Ruffin Biggs and Alsie Hopkins, who had not a letter between them, soon got the hang of the repeater. Caudell wondered how they would do when time to clean the weapon came around. He intended to hold off on that till his pupils had fired.
The soldiers were learning how to chamber the first round in the banana clip when a volley of shots came from the parade ground. Company A was shooting for the first time. Almost at once, the gunfire rang so thick and fast as to remind Caudell of a whole regiment on the line, not just one understrength company.
“The Chicora Guards got new guns! Run for your lives!” Henry Joyner yelled out toward the practicing graycoats. Like the Castalia Invincibles, the Chicora Guards were mostly recruited from Nash County; which made the rivalry between them all the fiercer. For that matter, each company currently boasted three Joyners. The relationships between them were too complicated for Caudell to keep straight.
One of the soldiers of Company A—maybe one of the Joyners—yelled back, “Shame we ain’t got the bullets to waste to turn these here fine new repeaters on you all!”
“Couldn’t hit us if’n you did,” Henry jeered. He thumbed his nose.
“Enough,” Caudell said. Horseplay was fun, but horseplay between men who carried rifles had to be controlled before it got out of hand.
Companies B and C—neither of which had a name—took their first turns practicing with the AK-47. The men came away from the firing line exclaiming and shaking their heads in wonder. Some of them slung the new repeaters on their backs. Others carried the carbines in both hands, as if they could not bear to let them go. Three or four men from Company C started a chant: “Enfield, Springfield, throw ‘em in the cornfield!” Before long the whole company, officers and all, was singing it.
Captain Lewis said, “Form column of fours…to the parade ground, march.” A couple of new men just up from North Carolina started off on the wrong foot, but growls from the sergeants soon had them in step with everyone else. “Shift to the left from column to line…move,” Lewis said.
The company performed the evolution with mindless precision born of unending practice. Caudell remembered the first day of marching down at Camp Mangum, when an irate drill sergeant had compared their ragged line to a drunken centipede in an ass-kicking contest. Even that drill sergeant, assuming he was still alive, would have been satisfied to see them now.
“Load your rifles,” Captain Lewis said. In one motion the men drew back their charging handles, and each chambered a round. “Fire!”
Not every repeater spat flame. “Check your change lever!” Caudell shouted, along with everyone else who had had instruction the day before. Soldiers checked. Some of them swore at themselves. The next volley was fuller; in a moment, a fusillade of shots made separate volleys impossible to distinguish.
The company’s privates shouted in wonder and delight at how rapidly their repeaters fired and how easy they were to shoot, Caudell knew how they felt. The AK-47 was so different from any other rifle that hearing about it wasn’t enough. Even after you shot with it, it was hard to believe.
“What happens if you put this here change lever thing on the middle notch?” Henry Joyner asked. “If it’s as much different from the bottom one as that there one is from the top, reckon this gun’ll march out and shoot Yankees an by its lonesome. I’m for it, I tell you that.”
“Sorry, Henry.” Caudell explained about full automatic fire. He also explained about how much ammunition it chewed up, finishing, “Shooting fast can be bad if you run out of cartridges before the battle’s over. That’s not easy to do with a rifle musket. With one of these repeaters, especially on full automatic, it’s easy as pie. You’ll want to be careful about that.”