American Front

A rifle barked, up ahead. A bullet kicked up dirt, maybe fifty yards from Morrell's feet. As if that first one had been a test, a fusillade of rifle shots rang out. Morrell threw himself flat on his belly. Somewhere behind him, a wounded man let out a breathless, angry curse.

From the volume of fire, the Confederates were there in about platoon strength. Morrell didn't hear the deadly chatter of a machine gun, for which he thanked God. Even after the bombardment of New Montgomery, machine guns in the ruins had chewed holes in the U.S. forces.

"We'll flank 'em out!" he shouted. "Hoyland, your platoon to the left; Koenig, yours to the right. Foulkes, I'll stay with your boys here in the center. We'll advance by squads. Let's go."

The Confederates had had time to dig themselves holes, and their dun-colored uniforms weren't easy to spot against the gray-brown dirt: here, at least, they matched the terrain better than the U.S. troops did. They could not let themselves be taken from the sides, though, and began falling back toward the ranch house and other buildings as their foes moved forward. Here and there, a brave man or two would stay in a hole and die in place, buying his comrades time to retreat.

One of those diehards popped up not ten feet from Morrell. The U.S. captain shot first. With a cry of pain, the Confederate fell back. He wasn't through, though; he tried to bring his rifle to bear once more. Morrell sprang down into the hole and finished him with the bayonet.

He got out and resumed the advance. "We can't let 'em get set," he said. "Press 'em hard, every one of you."

A U.S. soldier was already sprawled behind a woodpile near the house, firing at the Rebels inside. A body sprawled out through a window and poured blood down onto the flowers below.

With better cover, though, the Confederates were taking a heavy toll on the U.S. troopers. Firing came not only from the ranch house but also from the barn, the chicken coop, and what looked like a little separate smithy. Then three of Morrell's men rushed into the smithy. After a sharp, short volley, it became a U.S. strongpoint rather than a Confederate one.

But heavy firing still came from both the ranch house and the barn. Several men in butternut burst out of the barn and ran toward the house, which was closer to the advancing U.S. soldiers.

"Come on!" Morrell shouted to his own men. He burst from the cover of a scraggly bush and sprinted toward the Confederates, firing as he ran. They fired, too; a couple of bullets cracked past him.

He didn't have time to be afraid. He fired again, saw one man fall, worked the bolt on his Springfield, and pulled the trigger. His only reward was a dry click; he'd just spent the last round in the magazine. No chance to fumble for a fresh one. The Rebels couldn't have been more than twenty or thirty feet away. He'd always been pretty good with the bayonet. If he stuck one Confederate, maybe the rest would run. Shouting once more for his men to follow him, he rushed at the enemy.

The bullet caught him in the right thigh. The rifle flew out of his hands and crashed to the ground. So did he. Looking down at himself, he saw in mild surprise that a chunk of meat about the size of a clenched fist was missing from the side of his leg. Blood spilled out onto the hot, dry, thirsty ground.

He didn't hurt-and then he did. His groans were lost in the racket of gunfire. Nobody could come to retrieve him, not when he lay right between the two battling forces. Nobody fired at him to finish him off, either. He was not altogether sure that was a mercy. The fierce sun beat down on him.

Next thing he remembered, the sun was in a different part of the sky. Somebody was rolling him over onto his back. Did they think him dead? The very idea made him indignant. But no-Private Altrock was wrapping something around his leg.

"Get that belt good and tight," Lieutenant Hoyland said. "He's already lost a hell of a lot of blood."

"Yes, sir," Altrock said, and grunted as he pulled the makeshift tourniquet tighter.

"Did we-take the position?" Morrell asked, each word a separate effort.

"Yes, sir," Hoyland told him. "You take it easy now. We'll get you out of here." Off to one side, a couple of men were improvising a stretcher from two poles and a shelter half. When they were done, Altrock and Hoyland got Morrell onto it, lifting him like a sack of grain. He remembered the stretcher coming off the ground, but blacked out again after that.

He woke up out of the direct sun, looking up at green-gray cloth. A hospital tent, he thought dimly. A man in a gauze mask bent over him with an ether-soaked rag. "Wait," Morrell croaked. "If you go into close combat, make sure you've got the last bullet." The rag came down, and with it blackness.

III

T he Dakota slowed to a crawl to let the fuel ship Vulcan come alongside. Sailors cursed and grunted as they wrestled with the hose from the Vulcan and started pumping heavy fuel oil into the battleship.

Seaman First Class Sam Carsten looked on the refueling process with something less than approval: he was swabbing the deck nearby, and saw more work piling up for him every moment. "Can't you lugs be careful?" he demanded. "Bunch of filthy slobs, is what you are."

"Sorry, mother dearest," one of the men on the refueling party said in a high, scratchy falsetto. His comrades laughed. So did Carsten, who leaned on his mop to watch the work go on. He laughed easily, even at himself. He was a big, slow-moving blue-eyed blond, his skin ever more sunburned these days.

"Wish we were back in San Francisco," he said wistfully. "It was right nice there-good weather for a paleface like me. Another couple days of this and you can spread me with butter and marmalade, because I'll be a piece of toast."

"It's hot, sure as hell," the other sailor agreed. Black oil stains spotted his dungarees. "It ain't near as hot as we're go

"That's right," another hose-handler agreed. He eyed Carsten. "You're go

"Pretty fu

"Cornhole 'em, hey?" one of the hose jockeys said. "I like that, damned if I don't. We're sure comin' up at 'em the wrong way."

"Yeah." Carsten plied the mop again. If you looked busy, people would figure you were. If you didn't, they'd find something for you to do, probably something you'd like less than what you were doing now.

As he worked, he thought again about cornholing the Royal Navy. The more he thought about it, the better he liked it. The U.S. Pacific Fleet had put to sea days before war was declared, sailing out of San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles and San Diego. The Seattle squadron was still up there, to face the British and Canadian ships based in Vancouver and Victoria. But the main fleet had swung west and south in a long loop around the western end of the Sandwich Island chain, and now "Wish we'd have beaten the British to a

"Or maybe for the Philippines," Carsten said. "The Japs, they're England 's good pals. One of these days, we kick them in the slats, too."