American Front

by Harry Turtledove

  There was a knot of them, running for the shelter of rubble that might once have been a row of shops. As long as he didn't shoot himself down, he held the whip hand. He fired another long burst and saw some of the men in khaki fall before he zoomed by.

  Those are people, he thought with a small part of his mind as he gained altitude for another firing run. He had no trouble ignoring that small part. Those fleeing shapes in uniforms of the wrong color? They were just targets. And if they weren't targets, they were the enemy. He'd just been thinking about what they'd do if they caught him. They hadn't caught him. He'd caught them instead.

  He turned and shot them up again. They put a lot of lead in the air, trying to shoot down his aeroplane and those of his flightmates. After the second pass, Dud Dudley waved for the flight to pull up and head back toward the American lines. Moss had no trouble obeying the flight leader. Neither did Tom Innis. But smoke was pouring out of Luther Carlsen's engine. The careful pilot hadn't been careful enough.

  After the smoke came fire. It caught on the fabric of the one-decker's fuselage and licked backwards with hideous speed; the doping that made the fabric resist the wind was highly inflammable, and the slipstream pushed the flames along ahead of it.

  Carlsen did everything he could. He beat at the flames with the hand he didn't keep on the controls. He brought the aeroplane's nose up into a stall, to reduce the force of the wind. But when he recovered from the stall—and he did that as precisely and capably as he did everything else—the fire engulfed the aeroplane. He crashed into what might once have been a pleasant block of houses in Guelph.

  Numbly, Moss, Innis, and Dudley flew back to their aerodrome, which, with the forward movement of the front, had advanced to near the city of Woodstock. Woodstock, before the war, had been famous for its tree-lined avenues. When the front passed through it, the famous trees were reduced to kindling, in which sad state they remained. Woodstock had also been prominent for its munitions plants. Nothing was left of them but enormous craters: the retreating Canadians had exploded them to deny them to the USA.

  The three survivors landed without any trouble. Groundcrew men asked what had happened to Carlsen. The pilots explained, in a couple of short sentences. The mechanics didn't push them. Those things had happened before. They would happen again, all too often.

  Captain Shelby Pruitt took their report. "Nothing to be done," he said when they were through. "Go where there are bullets and they're liable to hit you." He shook his head. "It's too damn bad. He knew what he was doing up there." Pointing to a big tent not far from the one in which he made his office, he added, "Go on over to the officers' club. I'm not going to send you up tomorrow." That was the polite way of saying, Go get drunk and then sleep it off. The pilots gratefully took him up on it. Staring down into a glass of whiskey, Tom Innis said, "I always figured I would be the one to go. Luther did everything right all the time. Now he's dead. God damn it to hell, anyway." He knocked back the drink and sig­naled for another.

  "Don't talk about who's going to go," Moss said, earnestly if a little blurrily—the tip of his nose was getting numb, and so was his tongue. "Bad luck."

  "Bad luck," Innis repeated. He gulped down the new drink, too. "How many pilots who started the war will still be alive at the end of it, do you think?"

  Moss didn't answer that. He didn't want to think about it, not at all. To keep from thinking about it, he got as drunk as he could as fast as he could. He and Innis and Dud Dudley were all staggering when they made their way back to their tent. By the time they got there, somebody had cleaned out Luther Carlsen's personal effects, to send back to his next of kin. Seeing the bare, neat, empty cot made Moss shiver. He'd taken over a cot like that. Who, one of these days, would take over the one over which he now sprawled at an angle no sober man would have chosen?

  He was lucky. He fell asleep—or passed out—before he could dwell on that one for long. When he woke up the next morning, the whiskey had taken its revenge, and he hurt too bad to dwell on anything.

  But that afternoon, after gallons of coffee and the hair of the dog that bit him, he felt almost human, in an elderly, melancholy way. He was writing a letter to a cousin in Cleveland when the tent flap opened. Captain Pruitt led in a gawky young man with a green-gray duffel slung over his shoulder. "Gentlemen," he said, "this is Zach Whitby. Lieutenant Whitby, we have here Dan Dudley, Tom Innis, and Jonathan Moss."

  Whitby threw the duffel down on the cot that had been Luther Carlsen's. He stuck out his hand. "Pleased to meet you all."

  "You all?" Moss ran the words together. "Look out, boys, we've got a Reb flying with us." If you laughed, you didn't have to think about it... not so much, anyhow.

  "Why, Major, why did you pick my farm?" Lucien Galtier de­manded. As he knew perfectly well what the answer to that ques­tion was, he was not so much seeking information as plumbing the depths of Major Jedediah Quigley's hypocrisy.

  "I have several excellent reasons, Monsieur Galtier," Quigley answered. As he spoke, he ticked them off on his fingers, which, with his elegant Parisian accent and his incisive logic, made him seem more a lawyer than a soldier to Galtier: an invidious com­parison if ever there was one. "First, monsieur, your farm is suffi­ciently far back from the banks of the St. Lawrence as to be beyond artillery range even from the gunboats that try to harass our opera­tions on the river and our crossings. This is an important matter in the placement of a hospital, as I am sure you must agree." Without waiting to learn whether Galtier agreed or not, he went on, "Second, the road is already paved to within a couple of miles of your farm. Extending it this much farther is a work of no great trouble."

  "I would not put you to any trouble whatever," Galtier said, knowing he was fighting a losing battle.

  "As I say, it is a small matter," Quigley replied. "It will even work to your advantage: an all-weather road passing by your farm will enable you to sell your produce ever so much more readily than you do now."

  "I shall have ever so much less produce to sell, however, as you are taking so much of my patrimony for the purpose of building this hospital," Lucien told him. "And you appear to be taking the best land I have, that given over to wheat."

  "Only the most convenient," Major Quigley assured him. "And you will be compensated for the use."

  "Compensated as I was for my produce last winter?" Galtier shot back. Quigley shrugged, a fine French gesture to go with his fine French tongue. Yes, his hypocrisy was deep indeed. He never once mentioned Lucien's refusal to give names to Father Pascal or to collaborate with the Americans in any other way. But the farmer was as sure as he was of his own name that, had he chosen to col­laborate, the hospital would have gone up on someone else's land.

  Quigley said, "Do not think of this hospital as a permanent structure, Monsieur Galtier. It will serve its purpose for the time being and then pass away and be forgotten. As we establish and enlarge our foothold north of the St. Lawrence, no doubt it will become practical for us to build hospitals in secure areas there."

  "No doubt," Lucien agreed tonelessly. Thinking he ought to learn all he could about the American incursion on the far side of the river, he asked, "And how is the war faring for you there?"

  Major Quigley spread his hands. Though not a real Frenchman, he played the role well enough to take it on the stage. "Not so well as we would like, not so poorly that the enemy will be able to throw us back into the river."

  By the enemy, of course, he meant the forces of Galtier's rightful government and those of Great Britain, which was proving a loyal ally to France. Lucien did not reply. What could he say? He was just an ordinary farmer. He supposed he should have been grateful that the American's revenge was no worse than this. From what he had heard, people who crossed the U.S. military government some­times disappeared off the face of the earth. He had a wife and half a dozen children who needed him. He could not afford to let his tongue run as free as he might have liked.

  When he didn't say anything, Jedediah Quig
ley shrugged again. 'There you are, Monsieur Galtier. We should start construction in the next few days. If you have any objections to the plan as cur­rently constituted, you can offer them to the occupation authorities in Riviere-du-Loup."

  'Thank you so much, Major Quigley," Galtier said, so smoothly that the American did not notice he was being sardonic. Oh, yes, you could make a trip up to Riviere-du-Loup for the privilege of complaining to the authorities about what they were doing to you. But, since they'd already decided to do it, how much was that likely to accomplish? The short answer was, not much. The longer answer was that it might do harm, because daring to complain would get his name underlined on the list the occupation authorities surely kept of those they did not trust.

  "Now that I have given you the news, Monsieur, I must return to town," Quigley said. He climbed onto an utterly prosaic bicycle and pedaled away.

  Off to the north, across the river, artillery rumbled. Galtier won­dered whether it belonged to the American invaders or to those who tried to defend Quebec against them. The defenders, he hoped. He glanced up to the sky. The weather was still fine and mild. How much longer it would remain fine and mild, with September heading toward October, remained to be seen. Long enough for him to finish getting in the harvest—that long, certainly, if God was merciful even to the least degree. But the day after the harvest was done...

  "Let the snow come then," he said, half prayer, half threat. The Americans would not have an easy time keeping an army on the far side of the wide river supplied if the winter was harsh. The defenders would not have an easy time, either, but they would not be cut off from their heartland as the invaders would. How well did Americans, used to warm weather, deal with weather that was any­thing but? Before long, the world would find out.

  Marie came out of the farmhouse and looked down the road toward Riviere-du-Loup. Major Quigley, a rapidly disappearing speck, was still visible. Lucien wished Quigley would disappear for good. His wife asked, "What did the Boche americain want of you?"

  "He was generous enough to inform me"—Lucien rolled his eyes—"the Americans are taking some of our land for the purpose of building a hospital on it. It is a safe place to do so, Major Quigley says."

  Marie stamped her foot. "If he wants to build it in a safe place, why does he not put it in Father Pascal's church? No one would bring war to holy ground, is it not so?"

  "That is an excellent thought," Galtier said. "Even the pious father could not disagree with it, good and Christian man that he is." He shook his head. The war was making him more cynical than he'd ever dreamt of being before it began.

  "But no," Marie went on. "It must be on our good cropland. Well, I have a hope for this hospital of theirs."

  "I have the same hope, I think," Lucien said. His wife looked a question his way. "I hope it is very full of Americans," he told her. She nodded, satisfied. They'd been married a long time, and thought a lot alike.

  Stephen Ramsay used a makeshift periscope to look up over the parapet at the Yankee lines between Nuyaka and Beggs. If he'd stuck his head up to have a look around, some damnyankee sniper would have blown off the top of it. The Creek regiment in which Ramsay was a captain had pushed U.S. troops a few miles back from Nuyaka, but then the lines had set like concrete.

  He turned the periscope this way and that. What he saw remained pretty much the same, regardless of the angle: barbed wire, some shiny and new, some rusting; firing pits for Yankee scouts; and then another trench line just like his.

  Lowering the periscope—a couple of little hand mirrors mounted at the proper angles on a board—he turned to Moty Tiger and said, "Far as I can see, those damnyankee sons of bitches are here to stay."

  "That's not good, sir," the Creek sergeant answered seriously. 'This is our land, Creek land. If we can, we have to throw them off here. You Confederates have the right to be here. You are our friends. You are our allies. But we have been enemies of the United States for many generations. The Yankees do not belong here."

  "I'm not going to argue with you, Sergeant," Ramsay said. "All I'm going to do is give you this here periscope and let you take a look for yourself. If that looks like a position we can rush, you tell me straight out. Go on—take a look."

  Moty Tiger looked. He looked carefully—or as carefully as he could, given the limitations of the instrument. As Ramsay had before him, he lowered it. His coppery face was glum. "Doesn't look easy, Captain," he admitted.

  "I didn't think so, either," Ramsay said, with more than a little relief. He'd been afraid Moty Tiger would think like a Creek before he thought like a soldier, and would feel duty-bound to try to recover every scrap of Creek territory regardless of the cost. He outranked his sergeant, of course, but Moty Tiger was a Creek and he wasn't. In a contest for the hearts and minds of the soldiers in the Creek Nation Army, that counted more than rank did. For that matter, Moty Tiger didn't just influence the opinions of his fellow Indians: he also reflected those opinions.

  There the matter rested till late that afternoon, when Colonel Lincoln came up to the front-line trench. When Ramsay saw the regimental C.O.'s face, his heart sank. Lincoln looked thoroughly grim. He didn't say anything. Ramsay got the idea that wasn't because he didn't know anything—more likely because he knew too much, and didn't like any of it.

  When Lincoln stayed quiet for more than five minutes, Ramsay, who favored the direct approach, asked him, "What's gone wrong now, sir?"

  Colonel Lincoln gestured for Ramsay to walk with him. Once they got out of earshot of the men, Lincoln said, "I'll tell you what's gone wrong. Charlie Fixico's up and decided he's a goddamn gen­eral, that's what."

  "Uh-oh," Ramsay said, without any great eloquence but most sincerely. "What sort of stupid, impossible thing does he have in mind for us to do?" He still thought like a sergeant, not an officer: what were generals for but ordering troops to try to do stupid, impossible things?

  Lincoln was a longtime officer, but he looked to feel the same way. Pointing northeast, he answered, "He wants us to break through that Yankee line and retake Beggs."

  "Jesus," Ramsay said. He'd talked Moty Tiger out of that. Talking the chief of the Creek Nation out of it wasn't going to be easy. "Why does he want to do that? Isn't he grateful we saved Okmulgee for him?"

  "Not any more, he's not. That was a while ago, and politicians aren't what you'd call good at remembering," Lincoln answered. "Why? Two reasons, far as I can make out. First one is, he wants to get back the oil fields around Beggs. Second one is, it's Creek ter­ritory, it's got damnyankees on it, and he wants 'em gone. That's about what it boils down to."

  "Jesus," Ramsay said again. "Doesn't he know that if we try to take those Yankee positions, we're gonna get ourselves slaugh­tered, nothing else but?"

  "If he doesn't, it's not because I didn't tell him till I was blue in the face," Lincoln answered. "He ordered the attack to go in anyhow."

  "I hope you got the Confederate corps commander to overrule him, sir," Ramsay said. "It'd be suicide, like I said."

  "I went to corps headquarters, yes," Lincoln said. "They told me that if Chief Fixico wants an attack, Chief Fixico gets an attack. Two reasons, again. One is, his own men—us—are in it, so he's not asking the CSA to do all his work for him. Two is, near as I can tell, they don't want to make the Indians angry, so they go along with any requests they get. Bombardment begins tomorrow morning at 0300—supposed to chew up the barbed wire between us and them and make reaching their trenches easier. We go over the top at 0600."

  "Yes, sir," Ramsay said. He couldn't think of anything else to say. He knew what was liable to happen shortly after 0600. He wasn't afraid—or not very much afraid, at any rate. What he felt was more like numbness, as if he'd been told out of the blue he'd need a surgical operation.

  He went up and down the trench line, letting the men know what they'd be doing at dawn tomorrow. Some of the Creeks, especially the younger ones and the replacements who hadn't seen much action, looked excited. A couple of t
hem let out happy yowls: war cries. Moty Tiger just glanced up at Ramsay and nodded. What was going on behind those black eyes, that impassive face? Ramsay couldn't tell.

  He made sure his rifle was clean and that he had plenty of ammunition, then wrapped himself in his blanket and tried to sleep. He didn't think he would, but he did. The beginning of the barrage at 0300 woke him. He got up and made sure the men would be ready to move forward when the shelling stopped. "With luck," he said, "the damnyankees'll be too battered to do any shooting back till we're in amongst 'em. Good luck, boys."

  At 0600 on the dot, the bombardment ended. Colonel Lincoln blew a whistle. "Let's go!" he shouted.

  Out of the trenches swarmed the Creek Nation Army, along with Confederate troops proper to either side of them. They went forward as fast as they could, knowing their best hope for safety was getting to the enemy front line before U.S. troopers could recover from the barrage they'd taken and reach the firing steps— and the machine guns they surely had all along the line.

  The shelling had knocked aside or wrecked some of the barbed wire, but not all, or even most. First one Creek, then another, then another, got hung up in it. "Don't try and cut 'em loose," Ramsay called. "Keep moving. That's the best thing we can do." It wasn't easy. The stuff grabbed and clung and bit, so you felt as if you were moving underwater with sharks nipping you, or through a night­mare, trying without much luck to run from a monster you dared not turn around and see.

  But the monster was in front. Here and there along the Yankee line, muzzle flashes showed men who, despite the artillery barrage, knew they had to kill the attackers now or die themselves in moments. Then a couple of machine guns, one right in front of Ramsay, came to hammering life.