The Grapple

“Well, we aren’t occupied,” his mother said. “It was bad when the Confederates took the town last time around, and it was really bad when the USA took it back. I wasn’t much older than you are now when that happened. But in between there was a long stretch that was pretty quiet, when the front was too far north to let guns reach us. Bombers weren’t so much back then.”

“They are now,” his father said. “The Confederates still come over us two or three nights a week. We’re not far from their fields, so they can really load up. We go to the cellars when the sirens start howling, and we hope for the best. You can’t do much else. It’s almost like being in the line, except you don’t get to shoot back yourself.”

“I guess.” Armstrong had no idea what civilian life in wartime was like. He’d been a conscript when the shooting started. “You have enough to eat and everything?”

“That’s better than it was the last time around,” his mother said.

“I was in the service the last time around, so I can’t compare,” his father said, “but it’s not too bad. Not much meat-there’s this horrible chopped ham that comes in cans.” He and Armstrong’s mother both made faces. He went on, “What we get mostly isn’t exciting, and a lot of the fruits and vegetables are ca

“We always bitch about what we get,” Armstrong said.

His father laughed. “King David’s soldiers probably did the same thing.”

“Yeah, probably,” Armstrong said. “But the biggest thing I don’t like is that you get bored. There aren’t that many different kinds of rations, and some guys won’t like some of them, so that cuts it down more. You’re always happy when you can scrounge some chickens or a pig. Once in Utah, we ate a goat.”

His mother made a disgusted noise. His father just sounded interested as he asked, “How was it?”

“Better than I expected,” Armstrong answered. “Kinda tough and kinda gamy, but we had this Polack in the squad-Eyechart, we called him, ’cause his name looked really weird with all those s’s and z’s and w’s-who stewed it and stewed it, and it ended up so it was better than rations, anyway.”

“Sounds like he had some practice in the old country,” his father said.

“Him or his folks-I think he was born here,” Armstrong said. “But the coffee’s lousy and the cigarettes are worse. That’s the, uh, dirty end of the stick.”

Merle Grimes chuckled at the just-in-time censorship. Then he said, “Close your eyes.” Armstrong did. When his father said he could open them, he found himself looking at three packs of Raleighs. “These are for you.”

“Wow, Dad! Thanks!” Armstrong knew he would have to share them with his wardmates. He didn’t care. They were wonderful anyhow. “Where’d you get ’em?”

“A friend of mine has a son who captured a Confederate truck crammed full of them,” his father answered.

“Wow,” Armstrong said again. Short of nabbing Jake Featherston, he couldn’t think of anything better. “That guy should’ve won the Medal of Honor.” He hadn’t thought a visit from his parents could turn out so well. A truckload of Raleighs! That was almost better to think about than Susan.

Nothing official ever came of Cinci

But there were more kinds of results than official ones. The way he handled himself when the Confederates hit the supply column and the way he stood up to the jerk of a U.S. quartermaster sergeant won him respect from his fellow drivers.

“You’re all right, you know?” Hal Williamson sounded half surprised when he said it as they dug into ration cans somewhere in central Te

“What did you expect?” Cinci

“Not what I meant.” Williamson cast about for a way to say what he did mean. He was about Cinci

“Niggers’re like any other folks.” Cinci

“Maybe.” Williamson lit a cigarette of his own. “It’s like sayin’ all Jews are cheap or all Mexicans’ll pull a knife on you if you look at ’em sideways.”

He probably knew even less about Mexicans than he did about Negroes. There might be a Negro or two in Manchester, but Cinci

Williamson blinked again behind those glasses. Cinci

“Reckon so,” Cinci

“Yeah,” the white man said. “But for me it’s on account of he jumped my country. It’s personal for you, ain’t it?”

“You might say so.” Cinci

They got rolling again a few minutes later, carrying this, that, and the other thing down past Delphi to where the United States were building up for the attack on Chattanooga. Armored cars accompanied the column. So did a couple of half-tracks full of soldiers. The powers that be probably cared very little about the truck drivers’ safety. What they were hauling? That was another story. Here in Te

Even shot-up autos by the side of the road could be deadly dangerous. One of them blew up with an enormous roar as an armored car went by. The vehicle got two flat tires and a dent, but otherwise withstood the blast. Whoever set off the auto bomb would have done better to wait for a soft-ski

U.S. machine guns sprayed the woods, but that was a forlorn hope. They also fired at other roadside wrecks, which turned out to be a good idea. One burnt-out command car exploded while the closest U.S. vehicle was still a quarter of a mile away. Cinci