The Great War: Breakthroughs

by Harry Turtledove

  Captain Cremony strode along the trench. “All right, boys,” he said. “Now we’re driving nails in their coffin. We’ve cleared ’em out of Washington. We need a buffer, so they can’t shell it whenever they choose. Our granddads fought on this ground. They won some fights in Virginia, too, even if they didn’t win the war. We get to make up for what they couldn’t quite manage.”

  “My grandfather didn’t fight here,” David Hamburger said after Cremony was out of earshot, which didn’t take long. “He was still on the other side of the Atlantic, wondering if the Czar would put him in the Russian Army for twenty-five or thirty years. When the Czar said go, he went—here.”

  “Conscription-dodger, eh?” Martin grinned. “Somewhere down at the roots of my family tree is a poacher who got out of England a short hop ahead of the sheriff. That’s what my old man says, anyway. How about you, Bob?”

  “Me?” Reinholdt seemed surprised at the question. “I’m a son of a bitch from a long line of sons of bitches. You don’t believe me, ask anybody.”

  Martin wouldn’t have argued with him for the world. He didn’t get the chance, anyhow. When the barrels’ engines went from low power to high, not all the machine-gun fire and artillery in the world could have concealed the racket. The traveling fortresses clanked and rumbled toward the Confederate line, their own machine guns blazing away at the enemy positions ahead.

  All along the front lines of the U.S. works, officers blew whistles to urge their men over the top. Cremony tweeted away till his face turned red. U.S. soldiers scrambled up ladders and sandbag stairways and followed the barrels toward the Confederate trenches.

  “Stay close!” Captain Cremony shouted.

  “Stay close!” Martin echoed. “Those big iron critters may be ugly, but they’re our best friends.” Even as he spoke, the barrel behind which he advanced began smashing its way over and through the wire the Rebels had strung to protect their position. Between the last wire belt and their forwardmost trenches, the Confederates’ Negro laborers had dug a great ditch, too wide for the barrels to cross and deep enough to be sure to bog them down.

  But U.S. observation aeroplanes or balloonists must have spotted the digging, for some of the barrels bore on their forward decks great bundles of sticks and logs bound with chains and ropes. They dumped them into the ditch, then ground their way across over them.

  Captain Cremony, who was fond of Shakespeare, shouted out in high glee: “Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane!”

  Martin didn’t know about that. He did know the bundles of wood made it easier for him and his men to cross the ditch, too, though some of them used bites the artillery had taken out of its front and rear walls to scramble down and then up. “Stay close to your barrel!” Martin yelled again. “Stay close!”

  The barrels were bludgeoning the Army of Northern Virginia into submission. These were new positions for the Rebs, hastily run up after the retreat from Aldie. They lacked much of the reinforced concrete of lines built more slowly and held longer. Machine-gun nests of sandbags could not stand up to the barrels’ nose cannons. One after another, the barrels cleared them out.

  Tilden Russell shouted something into Martin’s ear. Martin had trouble making out what he said amidst the rattle of gunfire, the thunder of artillery, and the dyspeptic roar of the barrels. Obligingly, the private shouted it again: “Breakthrough!” He stuffed a cigar into his mouth, got it going with a bronze-cased flint-and-steel lighter, and puffed out happy clouds of smoke.

  Was it a breakthrough? Martin wasn’t sure, not here, not now, though on the Roanoke front he would have been ecstatic at the ground he and his comrades were gaining. A day’s advance here could be measured in miles, not yards. If that wasn’t a breakthrough, what was it?

  But, if a breakthrough required the Rebs to throw down their rifles and quit in carload lots, that didn’t happen. Soldiers in butternut, white and colored, kept fighting till the barrels and the U.S. infantry rolled over them. If anything, the colored Confederate soldiers fought harder than they had when the U.S. troops broke out of their bridgeheads south of the Potomac. Maybe that was because the whites had given them dire warnings about what would happen to them if they didn’t fight. Maybe, too, and more likely, the Negro soldiers were steadier now simply because they’d seen some action.

  East of the infantry trenches and the village of Centreville, the ground rose. The Rebel batteries on those hills—maps called them mountains—hadn’t given up and gone home, either. Shells from U.S. guns kept falling among them, but they went right on giving the advancing men in green-gray a hell of a hard time. They reserved their chiefest fury for the barrels. The traveling forts were not easy targets, principally because they could travel, but every so often a shell would slam home with the noise of a man beating an iron pot with a pick handle.

  Worse noises commonly followed—ammunition cooking off, engines and gas tanks going up in flames, men screaming as they cooked. Barrels’ armor plate held out machine-gun bullets, but three-inch shells, when they hit, pierced it like so much pasteboard.

  And the CSA had barrels of their own in the field. They were fewer and more widely scattered than those of the USA, but they were there, and some of them gave a good account of themselves. When not fighting for his own life, Martin watched in fascination as barrel battled barrel. The fights put him in mind of the dinosaurs struggling in swamps he’d read about in the Sunday supplements.

  One particular Confederate barrel—tanks, the Rebs called them, aping the British as they so often did—was altogether too good at making its U.S. opponents extinct. It set two green-gray barrels afire in quick succession. The second victory let it bear down on Martin and his section.

  “Hit the dirt!” he shouted, and dove behind a pile of rubble that had been a Rebel’s chimney once upon a time. Machine-gun bullets from the Confederate barrel chewed up the dirt around him and snarled off the bricks in front of him. If the barrel kept coming straight ahead, it would squash him into a redder smear in the red-brown dirt. Shouts and screams from around him said only too plainly that some of his men hadn’t been so lucky in finding cover as he had.

  Clang! The machine-gun fire from the Confederate barrel abruptly stopped. Wary as a wild animal, Chester Martin raised his head. The barrel was burning. Hatches flew open as crewmen tried to escape. With a fierce glee, Martin and his comrades shot them down. Out of their steel snail shell, they were easy meat.

  Martin looked around and grimaced. “Stretcher-bearers!” he shouted, his voice cracking with urgency. “Stretcher-bearers!”

  He ran over to David Hamburger, the closest wounded soldier. The kid was clutching his left thigh and howling like a wolf. Martin didn’t think he knew he was doing it. Bright red blood trickled out between his fingers. When he saw Martin, he stopped howling and said, “I’m going to write my congresswoman about this.” His voice was amazingly calm.

  “Yeah, you do that,” Martin said. “Let’s have a look at what you caught there.” Reluctantly, Hamburger took his hands away. The wound was in the middle of the thigh. Martin whistled in a minor key. A bullet to the inside, and the kid would have bled out in short order. This was better news, but it wasn’t what you’d call good.

  “Here, we’ll take him, Sarge.” A couple of stretcher-bearers paused beside the wounded man.

  “Do your best. He’s a good fellow, and his sister’s in Congress.” With the stretcher-bearers there, Martin couldn’t wait around. He awkwardly patted David Hamburger on the shoulder, then hurried past the blazing hulk of the Confederate barrel and on through Centreville.

  Confederate artillerymen were made to quit the high ground east of the little Virginia town only with the greatest reluctance. Some of the gun crews stayed till they could fire at the advancing barrels over open sights. They took heavy casualties, though; splinter shields were no match for the firepower bearing down on them.

  A Rebel gunner, one of the last on the field, shook his fist at the oncoming U.S. soldiers as his cr
ew limbered up their field piece. He shook it again as they galloped away. Martin shot at him, but missed. He shrugged. One man didn’t much matter. The high ground belonged to the USA.

  Joe Conroy was about the last man in the world Cincinnatus wanted to see. By the look on the fat, white storekeeper’s face, Cincinnatus was about the last man in the world he wanted to see, too. “Come to gloat, I reckon,” Conroy said, shifting a plug of tobacco from one cheek to the other.

  “Got nothin’ to gloat about, suh,” Cincinnatus answered. With Kentucky a state in the USA these days, he didn’t have to be so deferential to a white man as he would have before the war, when the state still belonged to the CSA. But Conroy was a Confederate diehard. Cincinnatus figured using the old ways was a good idea if he hoped to learn anything.

  He might not learn anything anyhow. Conroy sneered at him. “Yeah, a likely story. You go on and tell me you don’t know what the hell happened to my store after me and Tom Kennedy, God rest his soul, taught you how to make those little firebombs that ain’t no bigger’n cigars.”

  “Mr. Conroy, suh, I don’t know what the hell happened to your store,” Cincinnatus said evenly. “I didn’t have nothin’ to do with burnin’ it down. That there is the truth, and you can take it to the bank.”

  That there was a lie, and his mother would have boxed his ears for telling a lie had she been here to listen to it. But his mother wasn’t anywhere around, and he told the lie with great aplomb. “Huh,” Conroy grunted, as if to say he didn’t believe it for a minute. But then he went on, “If you don’t know about it, who the hell does?”

  Cincinnatus shrugged. “Who the hell knows about how Tom Kennedy got hisself killed, suh?”

  He didn’t think he’d made the question too obvious. Conroy had offered him another question on which to hang it, so he didn’t seem to be pulling it in from out of the blue. The storekeeper looked down at the park bench on which they sat at opposite ends before giving an answer more oblique than useful: “Never could figure out what the hell Tom saw in you.”

  “Swear to Jesus, suh, never did figure out what he was doin’ there outside my door,” Cincinnatus said.

  Conroy’s eyes were narrow slits, almost hidden in folds of fat. Cincinnatus still couldn’t decide whether he was clever or just sly. Now he said, “They were after him—what do you think?”

  Only a lifetime of disguising his feelings toward whites and the stupid things that came out of their mouths let Cincinnatus keep from barking scornful laughter at that. Had nobody been after Kennedy, nobody would have shot him. “Who’s ‘they,’ Mr. Conroy?” he asked. “That’s what I’m tryin’ to find out.”

  “Well, now,” the storekeeper said slowly, “I don’t rightly know. Could have been a whole bunch of different folks.”

  Cincinnatus wanted to grab him by the neck and shake him till his narrow eyes popped. “You got any notion who?” he asked, as gently as he could. “Been a lot o’ different folks comin’ round askin’ me questions I ain’t got no good answers for, ’less I talk way too much.”

  Unless I tell them who Tom Kennedy’s friends are, was what he meant. Would Conroy be bright enough to figure that out, or would he need a more direct hint? The only more direct hint Cincinnatus could think of was a whack in the teeth. That would be satisfying, but…

  Conroy got what he was talking about. The white man’s absurd little rosebud mouth puckered up as if he’d bitten into the world’s sourest pickled tomato. “Who?” he repeated, sounding like an unhappy owl. “Could have been one of those Kentucky State Police bastards. Could have been some of the Red niggers, too. You’d know more about that than I would, I reckon.”

  He gave Cincinnatus a stare that meant, I can talk, too. Cincinnatus hid a grimace. Everybody could talk about him to somebody. He said, “From what I seen, Mr. Kennedy and the Reds didn’t get on too bad.”

  “I told him to watch out for ’em just the same,” Conroy said. “Can’t trust a Red. He’ll yell ‘Popular Front!’ today and kick you in the nuts tomorrow. Tom thought he could handle it. He always thought he could handle everything.”

  That did sound like the Kennedy Cincinnatus had known. Conroy’s characterization of the Reds wasn’t far wrong, either, though Cincinnatus wouldn’t have admitted it to the storekeeper.

  And Conroy wasn’t through, either. He continued, “Could even have been some of our own boys. I’ve heard this one and that one go on about how Tom was selling us all down the river.”

  “That a fact?” Cincinnatus pricked up his ears. “You got names for any o’ those fellows?”

  Conroy looked down at his shoes, which were every bit as scuffed and battered as Cincinnatus’. He didn’t say anything. After a while, Cincinnatus realized he wasn’t going to say anything. Everybody played his cards close to his vest in this game. Kennedy and Conroy were the only two Confederate holdouts Cincinnatus had ever met. Conroy didn’t care to give him the key to more.

  In casual tones, Cincinnatus said, “Luther Bliss’d ask a lot more questions than I do, and he’d ask ’em a lot harder, too. I been down to the Covington city hall. I know what I’m talkin’ about.”

  “Yeah, and he gave you money out of his own pocket, the cold-blooded son of a bitch,” Conroy snapped.

  Cincinnatus sighed. Teddy Roosevelt had done him a good turn, but Bliss had put barbs in it. Still casually, Cincinnatus said, “Maybe he’d listen if I was to tell him somethin’, then.”

  “Maybe he would. And if you was to tell him somethin’, maybe some smart nigger who wasn’t quite as smart as he reckoned he was would get a bullet through the ear one day when he’s drivin’ that big ugly old White truck o’ his that’s plumb full o’ shit the damnyankees’re shootin’ at his countrymen. Or maybe his wife’d have a little accident. Or maybe his kid.”

  “I ain’t the only one accidents can happen to, Conroy.” Cincinnatus had to work to hold his voice steady. Plenty of people had threatened him. Threatening his family was an alarming departure.

  Conroy leaned back against the park bench, looking like a fat cat with canary feathers on his whiskers. “Reckon I know a bluff when I hear one.”

  “Reckon you don’t,” Cincinnatus said. “Got me a little Gray Eagle notebook. I been writin’ things in it for a long time. Anything happen to me or mine, it’ll get to the right place. I’ve made sure o’ that.”

  The storekeeper stared at him in undisguised loathing. He was running a bluff, but he wouldn’t be for long; the idea of having such protection was irresistibly appealing. Conroy said, “We was a pack o’ damn fools to ever let any niggers learn their letters.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not,” Cincinnatus answered with a shrug. “Too late to worry about it now, one way or the other.” The USA had fewer laws against educating Negroes than did the CSA; he hoped Achilles would get more in the way of learning than he’d ever been able to acquire. But it was too early to worry about that now. He fixed Conroy with a stare that had flint in it. “Which of your pals didn’t take to Kennedy dealin’ with the Reds?”

  “None o’ your damn business,” Conroy ground out. He glared back at Cincinnatus. “You want to talk to Luther Bliss, go talk to Luther goddamn Bliss. We’ll see which one of us ends up happier afterwards.”

  Cincinnatus didn’t want to talk to Luther Bliss. He never wanted anything to do with the chief of the Kentucky State Police for the rest of his life. Getting his wish there, though, struck him as unlikely. He and Conroy had reached an impasse.

  He could, he supposed, ask Apicius if he knew the names of some of the other Confederate diehards. But Apicius’ Reds were as likely to have killed Tom Kennedy as anyone else. And Apicius would not take kindly to questions from Cincinnatus any which way. The cook would wonder for whom he was asking them, and would never believe he was asking them for himself alone.

  Conroy heaved himself to his feet. “I reckon we’re done,” he said, and Cincinnatus did not disagree. The storekeeper shook his finger in Cincinnatus’ face. “Don
’t you come around there askin’ after me no more, neither. I ain’t got nothin’ more to say to you, and I ain’t gonna be—” He shook his head. His jowls wobbled like gelatin. Off he stomped.

  I ain’t gonna be—what? Cincinnatus wondered. I ain’t gonna be there, was the likeliest guess. Cincinnatus wouldn’t have wanted to live in the dingy roominghouse where Conroy made his home, but didn’t expect the storekeeper to head on to much better lodgings. Cincinnatus sighed. He’d got something to think about, but where could he go with it? Nowhere he could see.

  With another sigh, he got up and headed toward the nearest trolley stop. Elizabeth would have something sharp to say about his wasting so much of a Sunday afternoon, and she’d be right. But he hadn’t known it would be a waste till he’d gone and done it, which was too late.

  The trolley stop was across the street from a saloon with a plate-glass window. As Cincinnatus came to the stop and dug in his pocket for a nickel, a man in a black homburg came out of the saloon and strode across the street to the stop. He seemed as certain the motorcars would stop for him as Moses had been that the Red Sea would part for him. The sea had parted; the motorcars did stop.

  “Afternoon, Cincinnatus.” Luther Bliss’ pale brown eyes looked at Cincinnatus and, the Negro would have sworn, through him as well. “That damn diehard know who parted Tom Kennedy’s hair with a .30 caliber slug?”

  Cincinnatus was glad he was black. Had he been white, Bliss could have watched him turn pale. “How the devil did you know what we was talking about?” he demanded with almost superstitious awe.

  Bliss’ laugh didn’t quite reach those hunting-hound eyes. “You could have been talking about a lot of things,” he answered. “All the others are worse. Let’s just hope that was the only one.”

  “If you know all the people you don’t fancy in this here town, Mr. Bliss,” Cincinnatus said, “why don’t you throw ’em all in jail so you don’t have to worry about ’em no more, ’stead of leavin’ ’em run loose and raise trouble?”