Breakthroughs

Well, I might have guessed, Dowling thought. The tracked, armored, motorized forts called barrels were the best thing anyone had yet found for breaking the deadly stalemate of trench warfare. They could smash barbed wire, clearing paths for infantry, and they could bring machine-gun and ca

The adjutant chose his words with care: “Sir, doctrine specifically orders that barrels be spread out evenly along the front, to assist infantry attacks wherever they may be carried out.”

“And what a lot of poppycock that is, too,” Custer declared, as if he were the Pope speaking ex cathedra. “The right way to use them is to build a whole great whacking column of them, smash a hole in the Rebs’ line you could throw a cow through, and send in the infantry on their heels-a breakthrough. Q.E.D.”

“When Brigadier General MacArthur came up with a similar plan, sir, you cited doctrine,” Dowling reminded him. “You wouldn’t let him do as he’d pla

“Daniel MacArthur cares for nothing but his own glory,” Custer said, which was true but which applied in even greater measure to Custer himself. “He knew the attack was weaker than it should have been, but went ahead anyhow. He deserved to fail, and he did.”

“Yes, sir,” Dowling said resignedly. Custer had done more than his share to weaken MacArthur’s attack because he did not want the youngest division commander in the whole Army getting credit for the victory he might have won.

“Besides,” Custer went on, “I aim to launch an army-scale assault, not one on the scale of a division. I intend to concentrate all the barrels in First Army and hurl them like a spear at the Confederate line. It will break, by God.”

“Sir, the War Department will never let you get away with flouting doctrine like that,” Dowling said. “If you try, they’ll confiscate your barrels and ship ’em to other fronts where the commanders are more cooperative.”

“I know.” The sly look returned to Custer’s face. “That’s where you come in.”

“Me?” Whatever was coming next, Dowling didn’t think he’d like it.

He was right. “In the reports First Army sends to Philadelphia,” Custer said, “all the barrels will be lined up exactly as the idiots with the high foreheads say they should be. You’ll vet corps and divisional reports, too-‘in the interest of greater efficiency,’ you know. Meanwhile, we shall be readying the blow that will wreck the Confederate position in Te

Abner Dowling stared at him in dismay. “My God, sir, they’ll courtmartial us both.”

“Nonsense, my boy,” Custer told him. “You’re safe as houses any which way, because you’re acting under my direct orders. But even I need fear only if we lose. If we win, I shall be forgiven no matter what I do. Victory redeems everything. And we shall win, Major.”

“My God, sir,” Dowling said again. But then he paused. He’d dreamt for years of seeing Custer ousted from the command of First Army and replaced by someone competent. Now Custer was greasing the skids of his own downfall. And the general was right-his adjutant would only be obeying orders. Slowly, thoughtfully, Dowling nodded. “All right, sir, let’s see what we can do.”

“Stout fellow!” Custer exclaimed. He winked at Dowling. “Stout fellow indeed.” Dowling forced a smile.

The big White truck rumbled through the streets of Covington, Kentucky, toward the loading area by the Ohio River wharves. Cinci

One symbol of the change was the flag flying from the city hall as the Negro drove past it. For the past two and a half years, the Stars and Stripes had fluttered there, not the Stars and Bars. If the USA won the war, the Stars and Stripes would fly there forever. Kentucky-less a few small chunks in the south and southeast still in Confederate hands-had been readmitted to the United States after more than half a century out of the Union.

Guards in green-gray stood guard in sandbagged machine-gun positions in front of the city hall. Not everyone in Kentucky was happy with its separation from the Confederate States. Not even close to everyone in Kentucky was happy with that separation. Cinci

“Damn, I wish I never would’ve got sucked into all this crazy shit,” he muttered as the truck jounced over a pothole and his teeth clicked together. Confederate diehards, black Reds-were Kentucky still in the CSA, they would have been at each other’s throats. As things were, they both hated the occupier worse than they hated each other. Cinci

A soldier playing traffic cop held up a hand. Cinci

Cinci

More trucks rolled south on the bridge over the Ohio between Covington and Cinci

He’d been one of those laborers till the head of the transport unit discovered he could drive. Since then, he’d made more money for less physical labor, but his hours were longer and more erratic than they had been. Now that the front reached down into Te

“Come on!” Lieutenant Straubing shouted. “Get yourselves checked off. You don’t get checked off, you don’t get paid.”

That blunt warning from their boss got the drivers moving into the shed to make sure the payroll sergeant put a tick by their names on his sheet. About half the drivers were white, the other half colored. If a man could do the job, Straubing didn’t give a damn what color he was. For a while, Cinci

Even that attitude was an improvement on what most whites in the USA and the CSA thought about blacks.

The line in front of the payroll sergeant formed solely on the basis of who got there first. Cinci

“God only knows when poor Smitty go

“He ain’t lucky, and that’s a fact,” Herk said.

“He’d be a hell of a lot luckier if the damn Rebs didn’t keep throwin’ nails in the road,” Burrhead added. “’Course, we’d all be a hell of a lot luckier if the damn Rebs didn’t keep throwin’ nails in the road.”