The Grapple

“Not even them. There was one in my outfit-well, a nephew, but close enough,” Armstrong said. “He was a regular joe, Yossel was. Did the same shit everybody else did, took the same chances when the shooting started. He had balls, too-sheenies must be tougher’n I figured.”

Up at the front of the repple-depple, where the principal would have given the students what-for, a perso

A few more soldiers came in and found seats. The perso

Another lieutenant talked with the perso

He got up, too. His leg hurt a little, but he got around all right. He went up and said, “I’m Armstrong Grimes.”

“Hello, Sergeant. I’m Lieutenant Bassler,” the officer said. “I’ve got a squad for you. You’ve led a squad before?”

“I’ve led a platoon, sir,” Armstrong answered.

Lieutenant Bassler took it in stride. “Good. You’ll know what you’re doing, then. Where was that?”

“In Utah, sir, and up in Canada.”

“All right. And you’re in the repple-depple because…?”

Did you foul up? Did they take your platoon away from you? Armstrong could read between the lines. “I got wounded, sir.” He touched his leg. “I can use it pretty well now.”

“Ah. I caught one about there myself last year,” Bassler said. “Gives us something in common, even if we don’t much want it.”

“Hell of a lot better to shoot the other guy,” Armstrong agreed.

“Well, you’ll get your chance. Come on,” Bassler said.

“Hold it.” The perso

When the soldiers got outside, Armstrong said, “Sir, you mind if I load my weapon? Never can tell what’s waiting out here.”

The question wasn’t just practical, though it was that. It would also show him something about how Lieutenant Bassler thought. The officer nodded right away. “You’d all better do that,” he said, and pulled his own.45 from its holster.

Armstrong put a clip in his Springfield and chambered a round. All but one of the other men also had Springfields. The odd man out-his name, Armstrong remembered, was Kurowski-carried a submachine gun: not a Confederate model, but a big, brutal Thompson, made in the USA.

The lieutenant had a couple of command cars waiting to take his new men down to the front. He said, “I’ll handle the machine gun on one of these. Who wants to take the other one?”

“I’ll do it, sir,” Cal Henderson said. “I’ve used a.30-caliber gun before. Haven’t fired one of these big mothers, but they work the same way, right?”

“Near enough,” Lieutenant Bassler said. “A.50-caliber gun shoots farther and flatter and harder, that’s all.”

“Sounds good to me,” Henderson said. It sounded good to Armstrong, too.

But Lieutenant Bassler didn’t put him in with the kid. The officer stuck Armstrong in his own command car, and grilled him as they thumped down the battered road. He got more out of Armstrong about where he’d fought and what he’d done. He probably also learned a bit about how Armstrong thought, but that didn’t occur to Armstrong till later.

When they came into Chattanooga-luckily, without needing to use the machine guns on the way-Bassler said, “Ever see anything this torn up?”

“Sir, this isn’t a patch on Ogden and Salt Lake City,” Armstrong answered. “The Mormons hung on till they couldn’t hang on any more. Then they pulled back a block and did it again.”

An old man picking through ruins with a stick glared at the command cars as they went by. If he had a rifle…But he didn’t-not here, anyway-so he could only hate.

“What do we do with them-what do we do to them-once we lick them?” Bassler said. “How do we keep from fighting another round twenty, twenty-five, thirty years from now? How do we keep them from putting bombs under their shirts and blowing themselves up when they walk into a crowd of our soldiers?”

Armstrong remembered that woman in Utah, when he was heading for R and R. He shivered despite the humid heat. “Sir, I wish to hell I knew,” he said. “I’m just a dumbass sergeant. What do you think? How do we do it?”

“Either we make them like us-”

“Good luck!” Armstrong broke in. “Uh, sir.”

“Yeah. I know.” Bassler wasn’t more than a few years older than Armstrong. When he gri

“That’s what they tried in Utah,” Armstrong said. “It sort of worked, but only sort of. You start shooting hostages and stuff, you just make people hate you worse.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Bassler said sourly. “And the Confederate States are a lot bigger than Utah. We occupy them all, there are bound to be lots of places where we’re too thin on the ground to do it right. And those are the places where trouble starts.”

“I know one thing we could do,” Armstrong said. Bassler raised a questioning eyebrow. Armstrong went on, “We could give what’s left of the nigger’s guns. If half the shit they say about what Featherston’s fuckers are doing to them is true, they’ll want payback like you wouldn’t believe. They may not love us, but they sure as hell have to hate the bastards who’ve been screwing ’em over for so long.”

Lieutenant Bassler stayed quiet for so long, Armstrong wondered if he’d said something dumb. Well, too bad if he had. Bassler shouldn’t have asked him if he didn’t want to know what he thought. Then the young officer said, “You know, Grimes, I’m going to pass that up the line. We don’t think about the Negroes in the CSA as much as we should. I’m sure we’re doing some things to help them, same as the Confederates did what they could to help the Mormons in Utah.”

“Mostly the Mormons used our weapons, sir,” Armstrong said. “That way, they could get ammo from us. Sometimes they took our guns, too. But they already had a lot when we got there, yeah.”

“Uh-huh,” Bassler said. “But that’s not my point. My point is that we ought to be using the Negroes systematically, and we aren’t. Somebody with stars on his shoulder straps needs to think about that. Maybe the President does, too.”

Armstrong was convinced they wouldn’t think about it on the suggestion of a no-account noncom. Then they drove through the gap between Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge, the gap U.S. forces now held. Bare-chested gun bu

“You can sing that in church, Sergeant,” Bassler said. “We got over the Te

“Well, the country looks easier, anyway,” Armstrong said. “If we start banging barrels through the gap, can those butternut bastards stop us?”