Men of War Read online

“Still, it showed what could be done. But there’s no sense in having the mass if the poor dumb fools fly straight into enemy fire. After all the work it takes to build one of these, sending it up with a boy who’s got twenty, maybe twenty-five hours of flying time is suicide. Hold these machines back from this fight. Give us time to train more pilots. Twenty more Eagles and Hornets won’t make a difference.”

  “I have my orders.”

  “For flightworthy machines. Listen to me in this, and while you’re at it keep those bastards from Congress and their investigating committees out of my way. I’m tiling you, my friend, after the attack on Capua, these ships might be the deciding factor for this war.”

  “After Capua?”

  “You’ll see, Vincent. You’ll see.”

  Chapter Two

  Pulling aside the blanket that served as a door, Andrew stepped down into the dank confines of the bombproof that doubled as headquarters for the Capua Front.

  A smoky coal oil lamp suspended over the map table by a piece of telegraph wire tied to an overhead beam provided the only illumination. He looked over at the pendulum clock tacked to the broken lid of a caisson and leaned against the opposite wall … 3:10 in the morning.

  The long twilight of dawn was just beginning, and through one of the view slits he could see a tinge of scarlet to the northeast, silhouetting the Bantag earthworks on the opposite bank of the river. The fact that he had managed to get any sleep at all surprised him, but ever since the wounding near this very same spot six months ago, he found that he tired easily and needed far more rest. The ability to get through a sleepless night and then fight a daylong pitched battle was gone for him.

  Going over to a smoking kettle resting atop a leaky woodstove, he poured a cup of tea and sipped the scalding drink. He looked over at Pat, Hans, and Marcus, who were huddled over the map debating some minor detail.

  The fact that the three were thus engaged was a clear indicator that they were nervous. The plan had been laid over two months ago. Everyone was in place; there was no changing it now. All that was left was the one word of command that would set the complex assault into motion. He had learned ages ago that there came a point in an operation where it was best to step back and let those farther down the chain take over. A nervous commander, at such a moment, was much more a burden than a help.

  Andrew put down his cup and moved to join his friends. “Anything new?”

  “There was a skirmish down by the river a half hour ago, a Bantag patrol trying to slip across,” Pat announced.

  “And I think they’re on to it,” Hans replied. “Not just this patrol, the whole thing; they’re on to it, they want us to try this crossing.”

  “And you want me to call it all off?”

  Hans said nothing.

  “Damn it, Hans,” Pat replied, “we’ve been stuck on this line all spring. My God, man, if we don’t break this stalemate, we’ll be here till Judgment Day. We break his back here, today, and we end this standoff and end this damn war.”

  Hans wearily shook his head and looked up at Andrew with bloodshot eyes.

  “Son, you’re making this decision out of political concerns rather than for military objectives.”

  “The president ordered it,” Andrew replied, his gaze fixed on Marcus.

  Marcus stared straight at him and was silent. Andrew knew the Roum vice president was fully committed to this assault. The Bantag were still in possession of some of the most fertile lands of Roum, a million of his people were displaced, and he wanted the land back.

  Marcus’s gaze shifted toward Hans.

  “I remember Andrew once saying that war was an extension of politics.”

  “My God, I’ve got a Roum proconsul quoting Clausewitz to me,” Hans groaned.

  “Who the hell is Clausewitz?” Pat asked. “Does he live here?”

  Andrew could not help but chuckle, then, more soberly, “This war transcends politics.”

  “Maybe externally,” Marcus replied, “as far as the Bantags go. But internally, for the Republic, it has become an ever-present concern: Which one of the two states will abandon the other first?”

  “Not while I’m alive,” Andrew replied, jaw firmly set, his voice gone quiet.

  “Nor I, my friend, you know better than that. But the people of Roum want their land back, and this morning we’re going to get it, and drive those bastards from the field. You, I, all of us here have planned this battle for months, down to the finest detail. I fear the only thing we might be lacking here is the nerve to see it through.”

  Hans stiffened and leaned forward over the table.

  “I can’t believe you would think that of me,” Hans snapped.

  Marcus extended his hand in a conciliatory gesture.

  “I’m not doubting your courage, old friend. We’ve planned our best, now let us trust in the gods and in the courage of our men.”

  Andrew swept the group with his gaze.

  “It goes as planned,” he announced, and without waiting for comment he left the underground room, finding it far too claustophobic.

  Ascending the steps of the bunker, he stepped onto the grassy knoll under which the headquarters was concealed. A faint breeze was stirring from the north, cool air coming down out of the hills and distant forests. Sighing, he sat down, kicking up the scent of sage with his boots. Strange smell; never knew it up in Maine, he thought. Hans had mentioned it, though, saying it reminded him of his days out on the prairie before the Civil War.

  He plucked up a handful of the thick coarse grass, crushing it in his hand, letting the pungent smell fill his lungs. Leaning back, he looked up at the stars, the Great Wheel, wondering as he always did if one of the specks of light might be that of home.

  So strange, home. Maine, the Republic, the memory of peace. Even in the midst of a civil war, everyone knew that there would be a day when it would come to an end, when both sides, North and South, would go home to their farms, villages, towns, and pick up the threads of their lives. Perhaps that was some of the uniqueness of America, the sense that war was an anomaly, an interruption of what was normal, a tragic third act of a play that had to be waded through so there could be the final resolution and running down of the curtain. Then the audience could get up, go home, and resume their lives.

  He knew so much of the old world was not that way. Strange, though he had never been there, this place made him think of Russia. It wasn’t just the Rus, descendants of early medieval Russians, that he had found here and forged a nation out of. No, it was the land itself, the impenetrable northern forests, and out here the vast open steppes, the endless dome of the sky, the scent of sage and dried grass, or the cold driving wind of winter. This is what Russia must be like, he thought. The history, the same as well. A land of ceaseless bloodletting, of vast armies sweeping across the dusty ocean of land. War, when fought, was with implacable fury, no quarter asked or expected! Here it was the norm, the ever-present reality.

  He wondered yet again if his dream of the Republic could ever take root in this land. The necessity of war and survival had united Yankee, Rus, and Roum together, at least for the moment, but would that hold if they ever won and drove the barbarians back? Could the Republic survive peace?

  He heard someone approaching, but didn’t bother to turn. The limping stride and smell of tobacco indicator enough of who it was. Hans settled down by his side with a groaning sigh, reached over, and, like Andrew, plucked up a handful of sage, rubbing it between his hands, inhaling the scent.

  “Long way from Kansas to here,” Hans announced.

  Andrew said nothing, knees drawn up under his chin as he looked off to the east. The light was slowly rising, only a matter of minutes now. He heard the clatter of a rifle dropping, a muffled curse, and looked to his left; down in the ravine below a column of troops waited, more felt than seen, the hissed warning of a sergeant barely audible as he tore into the fumble-fingered soldier. At the head of the ravine engineering troops had positioned bridging po
ntoons and dozens of the flimsy canvas assault rafts. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there; the men of the 9th Corps had rehearsed this assault a score of times along the Tiber over the last two months.

  To the right he heard the hissing of a steam engine, one of the land ironclads, Timokin’s regiment, deployed in the next ravine. He wondered if the sound carried across the river, so still was the air. We should have gone yesterday, he thought. The fog cloaking the river was thicker then. There’s still time to call it off, wait for fog, rain … maybe we should go an hour earlier, in the complete dark.

  “Nervous, son?”

  “Huh?” Andrew looked over at his old friend.

  “I am.”

  Startled, Andrew said nothing. Hans was always the rock, the pillar; not once had he ever expressed fear when battle was nigh. Andrew remembered Antietam, his first fight, waiting in the predawn darkness of the East Woods. He had been so frightened that after trying to choke down a breakfast of hardtack and coffee, he had crept off to vomit. But until five minutes before the assault went in, Hans had made a great display of sitting with his back to an elm tree, fast asleep. The old sergeant latter confided that it had all been an act, he had been wide-awake, heart racing like a trip-hammer, but figured that such studied indifference was a better tonic to the boys than going around whispering nervous encouragements.

  “You don’t think it will work?” Andrew asked.

  Hans looked over at him. “We did plan it together, but a frontal assault across a river, Andrew? Risky business. I fear at best it’s an even chance. From what little we’ve figured of Jurak we know he’s damn smart. He must have figured this one out as well, knew we’d finally have to come in frontally.”

  “And you have another suggestion,” Andrew asked, trying to mask the note of testiness in his voice.

  Hans put his hand out, letting it rest on Andrew’s shoulder.

  “Responsibility of command, Andrew. At Gettysburg you held when I would have pulled out. It shattered the regiment but saved the old First Corps. You led the assault at Cold Harbor when I would have told Grant to go to hell and ordered the boys to lie down. Maybe you’ve got more nerve than me.”

  Startled, Andrew said nothing.

  “I’m getting far too old for this.” Hans sighed, taking off his hat to run his fingers through his sweat-soaked wisps of gray. “There always seems to be one more campaign, though, always another campaign.”

  “But there are times we do love it,” Andrew whispered. “Not the killing, not the moments like this one with the doubt and fear. But there are moments, the quiet nights, the army encamped around you, the moment of relief when you know you’ve won, the pride in the eyes of those around you.”

  Surprised Hans looked over at him and nodded. “If this is the last campaign, what becomes of us then?”

  Andrew chuckled softly. “I wish.”

  “Your instinct is telling you don’t attack this morning, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then listen to it.”

  Andrew sighed, “We’ve been over it before, Hans. We can’t flank, we can’t break out from the southern pocket, they won’t attack. We have to end the stalemate. The president ordered this assault. And remember, we planned this one, and all the time we planned it we figured we could pull it off.”

  “So why the cold feet at this last minute?” Hans asked. Andrew looked at his friend.

  “You first. Why you?”

  Hans sighed. “Gut feeling that they’re on to us over there. That this is what they want us to do and fully expect us to do.”

  Andrew plucked up another twist of grass, taking pleasure in the scent of sage.

  “There are no alternatives now,” Andrew said.

  “What Vincent suggested, it is a thought.”

  Andrew shook his head.

  “Maybe six months from now, with four times the amount of equipment to even hope that it’d work. Right now it would be nothing more than a mad suicidal gesture. Vincent’s dreaming if he thinks we could deliver the killing blow that way. There simply isn’t enough to do it.”

  “It’s because you know I would do it—that I’d have to go. That’s what’s stopping you from considering it.” Andrew looked over at his friend in the shadows. “Hans,” and he hesitated for a moment, “if I thought that sacrificing you would end this war, would save your child, my children, I’d have to order it.”

  Hans laughed softly.

  “I’m not sure if you’re just a damn good liar or you really mean that. Strange though, I do hope you’re not lying. We’re soldiers, Andrew, we all know what the job means, and I hope that from the beginning I taught you the sacrifice required of command, even when it comes to your closest friend.”

  “I sacrificed my brother, didn’t I?”

  Hans said nothing in reply.

  Andrew dropped the fistful of grass, reached out, and let his hand rest on Hans’s shoulder for a moment, then shyly let it fall away.

  “So why the butterflies in your stomach now?” Hans asked, shifting the subject.

  “I’m not sure, and that’s what troubles me. At Cold Harbor I knew it was suicide but I went in because it was an order. I knew if I refused they’d take the Thirty-Fifth from me and the boys would have to go anyhow. I saw Chamberlain do the same damn thing two weeks later at Petersburg. He knew it was senseless, but he led his brigade in anyhow.”

  “And he damn near got killed doing it if I remember correct.”

  Andrew nodded. “It’s just that this battle is different. Most all of them were either meeting engagements like Rocky Hill, or we were on the defensive and well dug in, like Hispania or Suzdal. Now they’re the ones dug in, and you’re right, I have to assume that Jurak has this one figured.

  “It’s more than that though. We both know we’re all but finished. Its becoming evident that Jurak is outproducing us. You saw those reports Bill Webster sent us from the Treasury and Vincent from the Ordnance Department.”

  Hans spat a stream of tobacco juice and grunted.

  “They’d change their song if the Bantag were at the gate.”

  Andrew shook his head.

  “We’re running out, Hans. The pace of production, it’s exhausted the nation. The same thing we saw with the rebs by the autumn of ’64. There are too many supply bottlenecks, too many men in the army, too many people making weapons, not enough making the basics for living, and a millton people from Roum driven off the land. In short, we’re collapsing. ”

  “And that’s your reason for attacking here and now?”

  Andrew leaned forward, resting his chin on his drawn-up knees.

  “No, Hans. I think I’d have enough sense to stop it if I understood that was the only reason for attacking. But Marcus is right, we have to do something. The people of Roum have to know that the Rus will fight to help them take back their land. So there is the politics. We have to find a way, as well, to end this war before we either collapse or Kal succumbs to the pressure that’s growing in the Senate to accept Jurak’s offer for a negotiated settlement.”

  “If Kal accepts that, he deserves to be shot,” Hans snapped.

  “He’s the president,” Andrew replied, a sharp edge to his voice.

  “And you wrote the bloody Constitution. So change it. I tell you I smell something in this.”

  “Are you accusing Kal?”

  “No, damn it, of course not. If anything he’s a rotten president because he’s too damned honest and simple.”

  “We used to say that about Lincoln, but under that prairie-lawyer exterior there was a damn shrewd politician.”

  Hans nodded, spitting a stream of tobacco juice and wiping the bottom of his chin with the back of his hand.

  “We have to end this war now,” Andrew announced, shifting the topic away from matters that he felt bordered on treason. Hans was right; he had indeed written the Constitution for the Republic. But once that Constitution had been accepted by the people of Rus and Roum, it
had gone out of his grasp, and it now must bind him as it bound any other citizen who swore his allegiance to it, and thereby accepted its protection.

  He stood up. Raising the field glasses that hung from his neck, he turned his attention to the opposite shore. The eastern bank was lower than the western, the terrain flat, not cut by the ravines of the western bank. Jurak should have drawn his line farther back, not here. It was almost as if he chose a weaker position to tempt them in. Andrew could see the outlines of the fortifications lining the opposite bank.

  Wisps of smoke, morning cook fires, rose straight up in the still air. Again the shiver of a thought. The monthly moon feast had been two days ago, the cries of the victims echoing across the river throughout the night. He wondered if what was left was now roasting on those fires.

  Originally he had planned the attack to go in then, but it was too obvious a night for them to strike, and, besides, the bastards usually stayed awake throughout the feast night and might sense something.

  There’s still time to stop, the inner voice whispered. The battlements along the eastern bank were clearly silhouetted. This was the precious moment, the west bank draped in darkness, the east bank highlighted. He heard footsteps behind him … it was Pat, followed by Marcus.

  “Andrew, it’s three-thirty.”

  Andrew looked at Hans, almost wishing he could defer the decision. Hans was staring at him.

  Andrew lowered his head, whispering a silent prayer. Finally he raised his gaze again.

  “Do it.”

  * * *

  Jack Petracci, circling five miles back from the front, took a deep breath, not sure if he was glad that the moment had finally come, or dreaded the fact that the show was really on.

  “There’s the signal flare,” he announced to Theodor, his copilot. “Make sure the others follow.”

  Banking his aerosteamer over to a due easterly heading, he scanned to port and starboard. The formation appeared to be following. Leaning over, he blew into the speaker tubes.

  “Romulus, Boris, report.”

  “One airship, turning back,” Romulus announced, “think it’s number twenty-two. Rest are forming up.”