Authors: Harry Turtledove
Roosevelt sighed. “I do see the necessity, sir, but must it be done on the instant? You have no conception of how I long to strike the British a smart blow, nor of how hard it has been to sit by Helena knowing I had the men at hand for the task but also knowing I was not legally entitled to use them.”
“Patience, Colonel.” Welton chuckled. “I
do
feel like I’m talking to my son. I say again, patience. The British have made no moves against us as yet in this quarter, nor, even if they do in the next two days—which is not likely—can they sweep down on Fort Benton and catch us unawares in that space of time. You shall have your chance, I assure you. Not quite yet, though.”
“Yes, sir.” Suddenly and painfully, Roosevelt realized that
coming under the authority of the United States not only meant he could lead his troops against the English and the Canucks, it also meant he was required to obey orders he did not like. Then he brightened. “Sir, I shall place at your disposal all my regimental records, which should help your clerks do their jobs more quickly.”
“Thank you. I’m sure that will help a great deal.” Colonel Welton cocked his head to one side. “I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if what you’ve got is a good deal more complete than anything I’m required to keep. There are some forms, though, on which we’ll have to get your men’s signatures or witnessed marks. Everyone talks about the exploits of the Army in the field. No one mentions the paperwork that makes those exploits—and the survival of the Army between them—possible, but it’s part of the life, too.”
“I discovered something of this myself, on commencing to recruit the Unauthorized Regiment.” Roosevelt bared his teeth in what was not quite a smile. “I should be lying if I said it was the most welcome discovery I ever made.”
“Yes, I believe that,” Welton said. “This being wartime, you’ll have your chance for action, and soon enough, even if not so soon as you might wish. Had you spent as much time in the Regular Army as I have done, you might by now have concluded that for a commanding officer the duty entails paperwork to the exclusion of nearly everything else.”
Roosevelt tried to imagine himself on garrison duty at some dusty fort out here in the heart of the West, a fort without any hostile Indians nearby to give an excuse for action. He tried to imagine passing year after year at such duty. His conclusion was that, were the fort anywhere close to a high cliff, he would have been likely to throw himself off it.
That must have shown on his face. Colonel Welton said, “Well, it’s not a fate you have to worry about. Now, would you like to order your regiment to pitch their tents here, or shall I?”
“Sir, why don’t you?” Roosevelt answered. “The sooner the men fully understand they are obliged to take orders from any man of rank superior to theirs, the sooner they will become soldiers in every sense of the word.”
“Very well.” Welton nodded. “And well reasoned, too.” Effortlessly, he raised his voice so the entire Unauthorized Regiment
could hear him. He did not seem to be shouting, either—Roosevelt wondered if he could learn the trick.
Having given the orders, Welton watched with interest to see how they were obeyed. He chuckled as the troopers pitched their tents. “A bit of variety in the canvas they’re living under, eh, Colonel?” A moment later, he stopped chuckling and stared. “Good heavens, is that a teepee?”
“Yes, sir. We have several of them in the regiment. They seem to work about as well as anything we white men make.”
“That they do, Colonel. I’ve served enough time on the plains to be convinced of it. They caught me by surprise, is all.” Henry Welton wasn’t only watching the soldiers of the Unauthorized Regiment set up their camp. Every so often, he pulled out his pocket watch to see how fast they were doing it.
Roosevelt wanted to get in there among them, to yell and wave his arms and urge them to greater speed. He made himself quietly sit on his horse and let them do it on their own. If they hadn’t learned what he’d worked so hard to drill into them, his harangues wouldn’t help now.
His gaze flicked from the troopers to Colonel Welton and back again. The men seemed to take forever. But, when the last tent was up, Welton put the watch back in his pocket and nodded pleasantly to him. “Not bad, Colonel. Once again, not bad at all.”
“Thank you very much, sir.” Colonel Theodore Roosevelt beamed.
Colonel Alfred von Schlieffen and Second Lieutenant Archibald Creel strode along what had been the waterfront of Louisville, Kentucky. Instead of his own uniform, Schlieffen wore the light blue trousers, dark blue blouse, and cap of a U.S. infantry private. The waterfront was in U.S. hands, but the Confederates had a way of sneaking snipers forward that made being in any way conspicuous a conspicuously bad idea.
In his trouser pocket, Schlieffen had one telegram from General Rosecrans authorizing General Willcox to allow him to cross the Ohio to observe the battle at close quarters and another telegram from Minister Schlözer assuring Willcox the Fatherland would not hold him responsible if, while Schlieffen was performing his military duty, he was wounded or killed. The military attaché had needed both wires to get Willcox to let him cross.
Lieutenant Creel kept staring around in disbelief. “I’ve never
seen anything like this in my life,” he would say. A few minutes later, he would say it again, apparently forgetting his earlier words. After a bit, he rounded on Schlieffen. “Have you ever seen anything like this, Colonel?”
And Schlieffen had to shake his head. “No, I do not think I have.”
Wherever war went, it left a trail of devastation. That Schlieffen knew. That he had seen for himself. But he had never seen war visit a good-sized city, decide it liked the place, and settle in for a long stay, as if it were a good-for-nothing brother-in-law. Never till now.
Stonewall Jackson had chosen to make his stand inside Louisville, to make the United States, if they wanted the city so badly, pay the greatest possible price for it, and to make sure that, if they ended up taking it, what they took would amount to nothing. The Confederates had fought in every building. They had forced the U.S. to shell whole blocks into rubble, and then fought in the rubble until cleared out by rifle and bayonet. They had taken horrible casualties, but those they’d inflicted were worse.
Schlieffen shook his head as he looked south toward the fighting front, which was still only a few hundred yards away. He could not see a single untouched building, not anywhere. Every single structure had big chunks bitten out of it from artillery, whether U.S. or C.S. Fire had licked through every building, too, leaving streaks of soot along what battered brickwork remained standing.
Off to Schlieffen’s left, a battery of U.S. field guns started barking. When the battle for Louisville began, General Willcox hadn’t worried overmuch about getting cannon onto the southern bank of the Ohio. He’d realized soon enough, though—probably as fast as any German general would have—that infantry couldn’t do this job by itself. The shells would blast some new part of Louisville into ruins. If they went where they were supposed to go, they might help the infantrymen advance a few more yards.
The air stank of smoke and death. How many men lay entombed in the wreckage both sides had created? Whatever the number, it was not small. Schlieffen had never smelled the battlefield stench so thick. Some of that was due to the intolerable weather, which hastened corruption. More sprang from the battle’s having gone on so long without moving to speak of.
Several pairs of litter-bearers came by, carrying wounded U.S. soldiers out of the fight. A couple of the hurt men lay limp; scarlet soaked through bandages on heads and torsos. Others screamed and thrashed. Those were the ones who felt worse torment now, but they were also liable to be the ones with the better chance of recovering.
Confederate shells screamed in. Lieutenant Creel threw himself to the ground before they burst, huddling behind a heap of bricks that had once been part of some fine riverfront office or shop or hotel. So did Schlieffen. No hint of cowardice accrued to sheltering from splinters that killed without the courage of a proper human foe. This wasn’t his war, either.
He thought the C.S. gunners were aiming for their U.S. counterparts. As happened in war, their aim went awry. The shells fell closer to the litter-bearers. Fresh screams rose from them, some from already injured men crying out as they were dropped, others from bearers crying out as they were wounded.
“Bastards,” Lieutenant Creel said. Mud streaked his uniform. More streaked his face.
“I do not believe this was their purpose, to hurt these men,” Schlieffen said.
“Bastards anyhow,” Creel answered. He did not seem so young now as he had when Schlieffen first made his acquaintance not long before. He went on, “I’d like to see every one of those Rebel sons of bitches dead.”
His fury gave Schlieffen an opportunity he had not been sure he would have. The German military attaché, a General Staff officer to the core, had long since planned what to do if that opportunity arose. He did not hesitate to put the plan into effect, saying, “Let us forward go, then, to the very front, so we have the best chance of seeing the enemy fall.”
Creel had courage. Schlieffen had already seen that. Now his blood was up, too. He nodded. “All right, Colonel, we’ll do that. I wish I were carrying a Springfield, not this blamed revolver on my hip. I’d have a better chance of potting some of them myself.”
Being a neutral, Schlieffen bore no weapon of any sort. He did not acutely feel the lack. He knew a certain sympathy for the USA over the CSA because he was attached to the U.S. forces, and another certain sympathy for the United States because the Confederate States were allied with France. None of that, however,
was enough to make him anxious to go potting Confederates himself.
Together, he and Second Lieutenant Creel picked their way forward through the cratered, rubble-strewn streets. Shirtsleeved soldiers with picks and shovels labored to clear the paths so fresh troops and munitions could go forward and wounded men come back.
Craack!
Before Schlieffen could react, a bullet slapped past his head and buried itself with a slap in some charred timbers. Archibald Creel turned back to him with a wry grin. “You were the one who wanted to do this, remember.”
“I remember, yes,” Schlieffen said calmly, and kept on.
Trenches started well before the front line. Schlieffen and Creel had been passing trench lines ever since they entered Louisville, in fact, but the ones close by the Ohio were hard to recognize because shellfire had all but obliterated them. Shells were falling on these trenches, too, but they still retained their shape.
“You fellers want to watch yourselves,” a grimy, unshaven soldier said as Creel and Schlieffen went by. “The Rebs got a sniper in one o’ them buildings up ahead who’s a hell of a shot. Ain’t nobody been able to cipher out just where he’s at, but he done blew the heads off three of our boys already today.”
The closer to the front Schlieffen got, the deeper the trenches grew. That hadn’t helped the luckless three the soldier had mentioned, but it did offer their comrades some protection. The German military attaché pondered as he lifted his feet over broken bricks. The French could fight for a town tooth and nail in the same way the Confederates were doing here. If they fought in several towns in a row with this bulldog tenacity, how could an army hope to defeat them without tearing itself to ribbons in the process?
Posing the question, unfortunately, looked easier than answering it.
“I think we’re here,” Lieutenant Creel remarked. The only way Schlieffen could judge whether the U.S. officer was right was by how alert the riflemen here looked, and by the fact that no trenches ran forward from this transverse one.
“Where are the Confederates?” Schlieffen asked.
“If you stick your head up, you can see their line plain as day maybe fifty yards thataway,” answered another soldier who
looked as if he’d been here for months, not days. “‘Course, if you stick your head up, they can see you, too, and a couple of our fellows here’ll have to lug you back to the Ohio feet first.” He studied Schlieffen. “You’re the oldest damn private I ever did see.”
“I am the German military attaché, here to learn what I can of how you are fighting this war,” Schlieffen explained.
“Ah. I got you.” The soldier nodded knowingly. “That’s why this here baby lieutenant is taking care of you ‘stead of the other way round.”
No German officer would for an instant have tolerated such insolence, even if offered only indirectly. All Creel did was grin and shrug and look sheepish. Schlieffen had already seen that standards of discipline were lax in America. He had heard that was even more true in the CSA than in the USA. If that was so, he wondered how the Confederates could have any standards of discipline whatever.
He shrugged. Except as data, standards of discipline in American troops, U.S. or C.S., were not his problem—unless, of course, they made the men fight less well. For reasons he did not fully grasp, that was not the case. Had it been so, the soldiers here would not have performed so steadily and so bravely in a battle waged under conditions more appalling than any he had known in Europe.
And now that he was here at the front to see them fight, he discovered that, like a man who had wandered down to sit in the first row of seats at a theater, he was too close to the action to get a good view of it. Off to his right, the rifle fire, which had been intermittent, suddenly picked up. He couldn’t look to see what was going on there, not unless he wanted to get killed. All he could do was listen.
“I think they drove us back a bit,” said the soldier who’d spoken before. “Hope they paid high for it.”
“I think perhaps you are right,” Schlieffen said: his ears had given him the same impression. But, had he wanted to follow the battle with his ears alone, he could as well have stayed on the Indiana side of the Ohio River. He turned to Lieutenant Creel. “Have you any idea how many killed and wounded the Confederates have suffered, compared to your own?”