The Grapple

“We ought to bring the whole town through here, sir,” Major Toricelli said on the way back to Snyder.

“By God, I’m tempted,” Dowling said. “Maybe I will.”

His own headquarters were well upwind from the mass grave. He bathed and bathed that night, and still smelled, or thought he smelled, the stench of death clinging to him.

His telephone rang early the next morning. The accountant in Snyder had shot his wife and three children, then turned the pistol on himself. Another call came in a few minutes later: the banker’s wife had swallowed rat poison. Then the telephone rang again: Mayor Gwy

“Maybe they’ve got consciences after all, if you kick ’em hard enough,” Dowling said, not altogether without satisfaction. “Who would have imagined that?”

Sergeant Armstrong Grimes hadn’t been in the big fight since the Confederates came north into Ohio. He liked fighting on enemy turf much better. He liked facing the real enemy much better, too. Utah, Canada…It wasn’t that they weren’t dangerous places. His leg still pained him in wet weather like they were having now. No, the point was that he’d got shot in a fight that didn’t matter, a fight that said nothing about who would win the war.

Lieutenant Bassler pointed to a wooded hill in front of Hollysprings, Georgia: a nowhere town that never would have mattered to anyone more than five miles away if it didn’t lie on a road leading south toward Atlanta. “The Confederates are dug in there,” he said. “We’re going to be part of the force that takes the high ground away from them.”

“Yes, sir,” Armstrong said. Cautiously-Confederate snipers were loose in front of the hill-he peered forward. After ducking down again, he added, “Don’t hardly see ’em. They’re probably just waiting for us there under the trees.”

“Afraid you’re right,” the company commander said. “Nothing we can do about it, though.”

“I hope they pound the crap out of the place before they send us in,” Armstrong said. “Will we have a lot of armor support?” He assumed they’d have some, which wouldn’t have been a sure bet in the sideshows where he’d fought before.

“They say we will,” Bassler told him. “Maybe they’re blowing smoke up my ass, but I don’t think so. Softening-up is supposed to start tomorrow at 0500. We go in two hours later.”

“Yes, sir,” Armstrong repeated. He probably wouldn’t have slept late tomorrow anyhow, but now he knew damn well he wouldn’t.

He took the news back to his squad. The men greeted it with the enthusiasm he’d expected. “Hot shit,” Squidface said. “Featherston’s fuckers get another chance to blow my dick off. Just what I’ve been waiting for-yeah, you bet.”

“I wish one of these Confederate broads would blow my dick off,” Woody said. The other soldiers laughed. Then they went back to studying the hill. They might not be strategists, but they’d learned tactics the hard way.

Cal Henderson summed it up: “Taking that place out is liable to be expensive as shit if they’re laying for us under those pines.”

“Air bursts. Lots of air bursts,” Squidface said. Armstrong found himself nodding. You could fuse a shell so it went off as soon as it touched anything at all-a branch, for instance. Air bursts like that slashed the ground below with fragments. Unless you were in a bunker dug into a trench wall, you’d catch hell.

“Grab as many Z’s as you can now,” Armstrong said. “Artillery opens the show at five tomorrow morning. We go in a couple of hours later.”

No, he didn’t get much sleep himself. Having nerves was silly-he couldn’t do anything about whatever would happen soon-but he did all the same. Because he was awake at least as much as he was asleep through the night, he heard barrels rattling up to the start line under cover of darkness. Lieutenant Bassler had got that right, anyhow.

The bombardment started at five on the dot. Star shells lit up the hill bright as day. High-altitude bombers droned overhead, dropped loads of death, and kept on going. They’d blast Atlanta or some other C.S. town, then fly north and land, after dawn let them see what they were doing.

Confederate artillery woke up in a hurry. Quite a few shells fell on the U.S. front line, but none dangerously close to Armstrong’s squad. The men huddled in their foxholes and waited for the brass whistles and the shouts that would send them forward.

It was getting light when U.S. fighter-bombers zoomed in to put the finishing touches on the preliminaries. Armstrong was glad to see them. They could hit targets the high-altitude airplanes were too likely to miss.

“Boy!” Whitey yelled. “They’re beating the holy bejesus out of that place, aren’t they?”

“Here’s hoping,” Armstrong said.

Several soldiers nodded at that. They were like the guys he’d fought beside in Utah: they’d been through the mill, they knew it was no damn good and wouldn’t get any better, and they kept going anyway. He didn’t have anybody just out of the repple-depple in his squad, though the company carried several replacements. He took another look at that hill. By the time they got to the top of it, he feared the squad would need some new men. He hoped to hell it wouldn’t need a new sergeant.

Engines roaring, U.S. barrels clattered forward. Lieutenant Bassler’s whistle shrilled. “Let’s go!” the company commander shouted. “Keep your heads down, don’t bunch up, and I’ll see you when we get there!”

He made a good leader for a front-line outfit. He always sounded confident, and he didn’t send his men anywhere he wouldn’t go himself. Armstrong feared they were going into a meat grinder now. Sometimes that came with the job. He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t help it.

Mortar bombs started falling as soon as the U.S. barrels and soldiers began to advance. Screams followed some of the bursts. Medics scooped up the wounded and carried them back to the rear. Other bursts sounded curiously subdued. They didn’t throw many fragments. Armstrong knew what that meant. Swearing, he shouted, “They’re heaving gas at us!” and put on his mask. One more a

A bullet cracked past him, about belly-button high. He was flat on his belly in the muddy grass before he knew how he’d got there-reflexes really did take over in time of danger. A moment later, he got up and started ru

Another bullet missed him by not nearly enough. He hit the dirt again. This time, he spotted the muzzle flash. “There!” he yelled, pointing toward a foxhole just in front of the edge of the trees.

With several U.S. soldiers shooting in his direction, the Confederate took his life in his hands whenever he popped up to fire. The men in green-gray worked their way closer to the foxhole. One of them shouted for him to give up. He answered with a burst from his automatic rifle. A shriek said he wounded someone. But two grenades flew into the hole. After that, he didn’t fire any more.

Other Confederates farther back did. Armstrong was glad when he got in among the trees himself. He had plenty of cover then, from upright trunks and from those the U.S. bombardment had knocked over. Not least because of all the havoc the shells and bombs had wreaked, the woods smelled powerfully of pine. The fresh, clean, spicy scent made an odd backdrop for the brutal firefight that went on under the trees.

Armstrong ran past a young Confederate he thought was surely dead-the man had stopped a couple of fragments with his belly and another with his chest. But the soldier in butternut groaned and moved, and almost scared Armstrong out of a year’s growth.

Crouching beside him, Armstrong asked, “How bad is it?”

“I’m done, Yankee,” the enemy soldier answered, gasping against the pain. Blood ran from his mouth and nose.