Martin chewed on that. When you thought about it, it was a damn good question. Most of what happened in the trenches wasn’t worth remembering. Most of what happened in the trenches, you would have paid anybody anything to forget. Davis right behind him, he turned out of a traverse and into a long firebay, and there found his answer. “When you get down to it, sir,” he said, “the only thing you want to remember is your buddies.”
Here came Paul Andersen, who’d been with him from the start. After so many casualties, that alone was plenty to forge a bond between them. Here came Specs Peterson, who looked as if he ought to be a pharmacist and who was probably the meanest, roughest son of a gun in the whole battalion. Here came Willard Tarrant, Joe Hammerschmitt’s replacement, who carried the name of Packer because he worked at the Armour plant in Chicago.
“Fellas, this here’s Richard Harding Davis,” Martin said, and let them tell the correspondent their own stories.
They had plenty of stories to tell him. If you stayed alive for a week at the front line, even a week where the official reports called the sector quiet, you’d have stories enough to last you the rest of your life-stories of courage and suffering and fear and endurance and everything else you could name. Experience was intense, concentrated, while it lasted…if it lasted.
Davis’ hand raced over the pages of the little notebook, trying valiantly to keep up with the flood of words. At last, after what might have been an hour or so, the tales that came of themselves began to flag. To keep things going, the correspondent pointed east across the rusting barbed wire, across the cratered horror of no-man’s-land, over toward the Confederate line, and asked, “What do you think of the enemy soldiers?”
Now Packer and Specs and the rest of the privates fell silent and looked to Martin and Andersen. It wasn’t, Martin judged, so much because they were sergeant and corporal: more because they’d been there since the beginning, and had seen more of the Rebels than anybody else. Chester paused to gather his thoughts. At last, he said, “Far as I can see, Rebs in the trenches aren’t a hell of a lot different than us. They’re brave sons of bitches, I’ll tell you that. We’ve got more big guns than they do, and there was a good long while there last summer when we had gas and they didn’t, but if you wanted to move ’em back, you had to go in there with more men than they had and shift ’em. No way in hell they were going to run then, and they don’t now, either.”
Paul Andersen nodded. “That’s how it is, all right. They’re just a bunch of ordinary guys, same as we are. Too damn bad they didn’t let us have a real Christmas truce last year, way there was in 1914. Nice to be able to stick your head out of the trench one day a year and know somebody’s not going to try and blow it off. But what the hell can you do?”
“I’ll tell you something, Corporal,” Davis said. “The reason there wasn’t a truce last year is that the powers that be-in Philadelphia and Richmond both, from what I hear-made certain there wouldn’t be, because they watched the whole war almost fall to pieces on Christmas Day, 1914.”
“What? They think we’d have quit fighting?” Packer Tarrant shook his head at the very idea. “Got to lick ’em. Taking longer than anybody figured, but we’ll do it.”
Several men nodded, most of them new to the front. Richard Harding Davis wrote some more, then asked, “If they’re just like you are in the trenches, what keeps you going against them?”
In a different tone of voice, the question would have been subversive. As it was, it produced a few seconds of thoughtful silence. Then Specs Peterson said, “Hell and breakfast, Mr. Davis, we done too much by now to quit, ain’t we? We got to beat those bastards, or all of that don’t mean nothin’.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Chester Martin agreed. “One of my grandfathers, he got shot in the War of Secession-and for what? The USA lost. Everything he did was wasted. Jesus, it’d be awful if that happened to us three times in fifty years.”
Corporal Andersen pointed over to the enemy lines. “And the Rebs, they don’t want to find out what losing is all about, either. That’s why they keep comin’at us, I guess. Been a lot of what the newspapers been calling Battles of the Roanoke, anyway.” As if to underscore his words, a machine gun started rattling away, a couple of hundred yards to the north. Rifles joined in, and, for five or ten minutes, a lively little firefight raged. Gradually, the firing died away. Anything might have started it. Martin wondered if anyone had died in the meaningless exchange of bullets.
“Are the Rebels any different since their Negroes rose in revolt?” Davis asked.
The soldiers looked at one another. “Not when we’re coming at them, that’s for sure,” Martin said, and everybody nodded. “You think about it, though, they haven’t been coming at us as hard lately. ’Course, it’s been winter, too, so I don’t know just how much that means.”
“Confederates more inclined to stand on the defensive.” Richard Harding Davis said the words aloud, as if tasting them before setting them down on paper. Then he grunted. It sounded more like surprise than approval. He looked at Martin-no, through Martin. His mouth opened, as if he was about to say something else.
Instead, he swayed. The notebook and pencil dropped from his hands into the mud. His knees buckled. He collapsed.
“Jesus!” Martin and the other soldiers crowded round the fallen reporter. Martin grabbed for his wrist. He found no pulse. “He’s dead,” the sergeant said in blank amazement. Davis’ body bore no wound he could see. He knew a shell fragment as tiny as a needle could kill, but no shells had landed anywhere close by.
His shouts and those of his squadmates brought a doctor into the front line within a couple of minutes. The soldiers wouldn’t have rated such an honor, but Davis was important. The doctor stripped the correspondent out of his fancy not-quite-uniform. Try as he would, he couldn’t find a wound, either. “His heart must have given out on him, poor fellow,” he said, and shook his head. “He’s not-he wasn’t-that old, but he’d been working hard, and he wasn’t that young, either.”
“Isn’t that a hell of a thing?” Martin said as a couple of soldiers carried the mortal remains of Richard Harding Davis to the rear.
“Terrible,” Paul Andersen agreed. “You got a cigarette?”
“Makings,” Martin answered, and passed him a tobacco pouch. “Hell of a thing. You ever expect to see man die of what do you call ’em-natural causes-up here? What a fucking waste.” Andersen laughed at that as he rolled coarse tobacco into a scrap of newspaper. After a moment, Martin laughed, too. Yes, graveyard humor came easy at the front. It was the only kind that did.
VI
“There is, there is, there is a God in Israel!” George Armstrong Custer chortled, brandishing a newspaper at his adjutant.
“Sir?” Abner Dowling said. He’d already seen the Army newspaper. He hadn’t noticed anything in it to make him want to do a buck-and-wing. He wondered what the devil General Custer had spotted to bring him out of the bad-tempered depression in which he’d been sunk ever since his wife got to Kentucky.
Custer wasn’t just happy, he was gloating. “Look!” he said, pointing to a story on the second page of the paper. “Richard Harding Davis had the good grace to drop dead on a visit to the front. I wish he would have done it while he was on this front, but damn me to hell if I’ll complain.”
Davis had written about Custer in less than flattering terms: a capital crime if ever there was one, as far as the general commanding First Army was concerned. “Sir, his work is being judged by a more exacting Critic now than any editor he knew here,” Dowling said, which not only smacked of truth (if you were a believing man, as Dowling was) but was noncommittal, letting Custer pick for himself the way in which the late correspondent was likely to be judged.
He picked the way Dowling had been sure he would: “How right you are, Major, which means they’ve got him on a frying pan hotter than the one that does my morning bacon-and he’ll stay there a lot longer and get a lot more burnt, not that that’s
easy these days.” He hadn’t stopped complaining about the ways the meals that were cooked for him had gone downhill since Olivia left. He hadn’t stopped complaining to Dowling, that is. He hadn’t said one word where his wife was liable to hear it. To Dowling’s regret, the old boy had a keenly developed sense of self-preservation.
Still snorting with glee, the illustrious general waddled into the kitchen. Dowling suspected the corporal doing duty at the stove for the time being would hear fewer fulminations than usual. When Custer was in a good mood, everything looked rosy to him. Trouble was, he wasn’t in a good mood very often.
Libbie Custer came downstairs a moment later. She was only a few years younger than her husband, and had the look of a schoolmarm who would sooner crack a ruler over her pupils’ knuckles than teach them the multiplication table. Her eyes were the gray of the sky just before it settles down to rain for a week. When she fixed her gaze on Dowling, he automatically assumed he’d done something wrong. He didn’t know what yet, but he figured Mrs. Custer would tell him.
She, however, chose an indirect approach: “Did I hear the general laughing just now?” She often spoke of her husband in that old-fashioned way.
“Uh, yes, ma’am,” Dowling answered. He had not taken long to decide that at least two thirds of the brains in the Custer family resided in the female of the species.
Libbie Custer did her best to prove herself more deadly than the male, too. “Where is she?” she hissed. “I’ll send her packing in a hurry, I promise you that, and afterwards I’ll deal with the general, too.” She sounded as if she looked forward to it. More-she sounded as if she’d had practice at it, too.
But Dowling said, truthfully if not completely, “There’s no woman here, ma’am. It was only-”
“Don’t give me that.” Mrs. Custer cut him off so abruptly, he was glad she didn’t have a knife in her hand. “He’s been doing this for forty years, the philandering skunk, ever since he found that pretty little Cheyenne girl, Mo-nah-see-tah-did you ever think you’d learn how to say ‘stinking whore’ in Cheyenne, Major Dowling? When he laughs that way, he’s done it again. I know him. I ought to, by now, don’t you think?”
“Ma’am, you’re wrong.” That was truthful, too, if only technically. Dowling had enough troubles serving as intermediary between Custer and the rest of First Army; serving as intermediary between Custer and Mrs. Custer struck him as conduct above and beyond the call of duty-far above. Rather desperately, he explained.
For a wonder, Libbie Custer heard him out. For another wonder, she didn’t call him a liar when he was done. Instead, she nodded and said, “Oh, that explains it. Mr. Richard Harding Davis.” George Armstrong Custer had sworn at Davis. He’d said he would use Davis’ reportage in the outhouse. Nothing he had said, though, packed the concentrated menace of those four words. Mrs. Custer went on, “Yes, that would explain it. Thank you, Major.”
She swept into the kitchen, her long, gray dress almost brushing the ground as she walked. She clung to the bustle, which had gone out of style for younger women a few years before. As far as Dowling was concerned, it made her look more like a cruising man-of-war than a stately lady, but no one had sought his opinion. No one was much in the habit of seeking his opinion.
From inside the kitchen came the sounds of mirth and gaiety-Dowling couldn’t hear the words, but the tone was unmistakable. The general and his wife were happy as a couple of larks. Dowling scratched his head. A moment before, Mrs. Custer had been ready to scalp her husband. Now the two of them seemed thick as thieves. It didn’t figure.
And then, after a bit, it did. Libbie Custer would come down on George like a dynamited building for any of his personal shortcomings. Given the scope of those, she had plenty of room for action. But Mrs. General Custer protected General Custer’s career like a tigress. Bad press jeopardized the general, not the man.
“I couldn’t live like that,” Dowling muttered. And yet the Custers had been wed since the War of Secession. Marital bliss? Dowling had his doubts. He shook his head. He didn’t have doubts, he damn well knew better. Whether they were what any outsider would call happy or not, though, they’d grown together. He doubted one of them would live more than a year or two if the other died. Libbie Custer looked ready to last another twenty years. Dowling wasn’t so sure about the general. But he’d have bet Custer would have keeled over from a heart attack or a stroke, not Richard Harding Davis. You never could tell.
The two Custers came out of the kitchen arm in arm. For the moment, they presented a united front against the world, and would probably go right on doing so till Libbie found out for sure about Olivia. To his wife, the general said, “I do have to fight the war now. I’ll see you in a while.” She nodded and went upstairs. Custer turned to Dowling. “Major, I’ll want to consult with you about the artillery preparation for the attack on Bowling Green. Give me ten minutes to study the maps, then come into my office.”
“Yes, sir,” Dowling said. Custer was acting more like a proper general these days. That was likely to be Libbie’s influence, too. The brains of the outfit, Dowling thought again.
While he was waiting for Custer to finish studying (an unlikely notion in and of itself), the kitchen door opened again. “Uh, sir?” It was the corporal who’d been frying everything in sight since Olivia made herself scarce.
“What is it, Renick?” Dowling asked.
The corporal, who looked more like a light-heavyweight prizefighter than a cook, opened his left hand to display a small gold coin. “Look, sir, the general gave me a quarter eagle. Said I was the best cook anybody could ask for. Said he’d write me a letter of commendation any time I wanted.”
“Good for you, Renick,” Dowling said. “I’ll make sure he does that today.” Davis’ death was doing the cook some good, anyhow-but if Custer didn’t sign that letter while still in the warm glow of euphoria, Renick didn’t stand a Chinaman’s chance of getting it added to his record, not on skill alone he didn’t.
Dowling hurried to the tiny downstairs room he used as his own office, ran a sheet of Army stationery into his typewriter, and banged out the letter. Eventually, Mrs. Custer would go back to Michigan and Olivia would replace Corporal Renick. If he had that letter in his file, he might end up cooking for some other officer, not in the trenches. He seemed a good kid-why not give him a better chance to come out of the war in one piece?
And, sure enough, General Custer did sign the letter. “Fine lad,” he said, “that young-whatever his name is.”
“Renick, sir.” Dowling put the letter back in the manila folder from which he’d produced it.
“Ah, yes, of course,” Custer said, which meant he hadn’t heard the answer but was too vain to ask his adjutant to say it over again louder. He picked up a pointer and aimed it at the situation map of Kentucky. “I am of the opinion, Major, that Bowling Green falls at the next onslaught.”
“Seeing as we’re approaching from the west and the north, the Confederates will have a hard time keeping us out, yes, sir,” Dowling agreed. “But fighting in built-up country can be expensive as the devil. As you said before, we need to use our superiority in artillery to the best advantage.”
Custer hadn’t actually said anything quite like that, but had talked about the artillery preparation, which, as far as his adjutant was concerned, came close enough. He scratched at his mustache. “We’ll give the Rebs enough artillery preparation to blow them right back to the War of Secession,” he growled. “And then we’ll follow it with infantry, and then with cavalry-”
“I think the ground troops may well be able to capture the city without the cavalry, sir,” Dowling said. Custer would probably remain sure to his dying day that cavalry could exploit any breakthrough the infantry made. Try as Dowling would, he hadn’t been able to convince the general otherwise. Breakthroughs of any sort looked to be illusory in this war, and, if they came, the cavalry wasn’t going to exploit them, not till somebody bred an armor-plated horse it wasn’t.
&
nbsp; “Ground troops,” Custer grumbled. “Artillery.” He let out a long, wheezy sigh. “The spirit has gone out of warfare, Major. It’s not as it was when I was a young man.”
“No, sir.” Dowling wondered if he would be saying the same thing if he lived till 1950 or so. Maybe he would, but Dowling hoped he wouldn’t try to turn an entire army on its head because he didn’t care to adjust to a new reality.
Custer whacked the map with the stick. “And after Bowling Green falls, Major, we advance on Nashville! We took it in the War of Secession, and we held it, too, till the stinking limeys and frogs made us give it back. When we take it this time, we’ll keep it.”
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for? The words from Browning ran through Dowling’s head. They’d needed a year and a half to get to-not yet into, but to-Bowling Green. At that rate, another year might, with luck, see them on the Cumberland. By the way Custer talked, he expected to be there week after next. As grand strategy, what he said made a certain amount of sense. Turning it from grand strategy to tactical maneuvering, though…was liable to fall squarely on Abner Dowling’s broad shoulders.
“We’ll need help from the Navy,” he warned. “And up till now, their monitors haven’t been able to get anywhere near Nashville.”
“Well then, seems to me that they’ll need help from us, too,” Custer observed. The comment was so much to the point that Dowling frankly stared at the general commanding First Army. He’d been glad to have Libbie Custer come visit for no better reason than to see her husband dismayed. But if her presence meant Custer turned into something close to the general First Army needed, Dowling hoped she’d never leave.
And if that meant Custer didn’t get to jump on Olivia’s sleek brown body any more, everyone had to make sacrifices to win the war. Hell, Dowling thought, I’ll even put up with Renick’s godawful cremated bacon.
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