“Wasn’t that a helluva battle, General Lejuene, sir, and respects to you too, General Tovey. I would say we kicked the Mexicans’ asses right up between their ears.”
Trains, trains, and more trains. However, there was no more riding across the country in reasonably comfortable passenger cars that had seats and windows and johns.
At Corpus Christi, Tim Randall’s unit had disembarked and switched over to a freight train. Twenty men and all their supplies were jammed into a freight car and the train seemed to have scores of freight cars. And it was headed west, not south.
It could have been worse, Tim reminded himself. He’d seen some flatcars with soldiers sprawled on them. At least the boxcar kept them out of most of the weather and there wasn’t much danger of falling off.
His platoon leader, Second Lieutenant Alfred Taylor, was with him in the car, a mixed blessing at best. The men didn’t feel they could relax with an officer so close and the lieutenant was not the type to let down his hair or get familiar with the men.
Tim thought the lieutenant was all right. Maybe twenty-two, but looking fourteen, and with a degree in philosophy from Harvard, which made him officer material as far as the Army’s standards were concerned. So far he hadn’t done anything stupid, nor had he done anything to endear him to his men or make them want to follow him in battle. Tim sighed. He wondered if his squad would follow him when the time came.
Tim knew his men’s names, but that was about it. Sergeant Smith had given him one last piece of advice before Tim had departed from Dix. He said don’t ever get too close to men you might have to send out to die. Learn their names so you can yell at them, but don’t learn about their families, their sweethearts, their kids, their old widowed mothers, or their ambitions. You do that, Smith said, and it’ll tear you apart when they die, or worse, you’ll sit back and play God when it comes time to send men out to do something dangerous. For instance, Smith said, you might be tempted to send a bachelor out on patrol and keep the man with two kids safe.
First, Smith continued, it wasn’t fair to the single guy, and, second, maybe the married guy is the best man for the job, or it’s just his turn and the men will hate you for showing favoritism. Either way, keep the men’s personal lives at arm’s length. After losing Wally, Tim thought he understood.
Soon enough they would find out how good they were. While the Fifth and Sixth Marine Regiments, added to the original Texas garrison, held on to a perimeter in San Antonio. The rest of the division, along with two others, was racing along the rail lines to the east of San Antonio. Racing was a relative term. With so many trains lined up, speed was not possible.
But they did not go all the way to San Antonio. The trains stopped in the middle of the night and soldiers poured out, confused and lost. Officers checked all their weapons and the empty trains moved again towards the west while the men formed up and began marching south. A lucky few rode in trucks or Ford cars, but those were senior officers and the vast majority walked. A half-dozen armored trucks accompanied them. Machine guns poked reassuringly from the sides and front of the strange, sinister-looking vehicles.
Tim thought he saw Pershing in a staff car but wasn’t certain. Some soldiers bitched, but Tim thought it felt good to be walking. It wasn’t very hot yet and someone had used his head in planning the march. There were stations with food and water along the way. There weren’t many towns, but in what little ones there were, people came out with more food and water. At the very least they waved. Some had American flags and one confused old man waved the Confederate flag and loudly thanked Jesus that Lee had finally arrived.
“Where we at?” he asked an older woman who was maybe fifty.
“You’re close on to Pleasanton,” she said and Tim grinned. She had no teeth.
“Sir, where and what the hell is Pleasanton?” Tim asked the lieutenant who just shrugged. He wasn’t going to admit he didn’t know squat either. Officers didn’t admit ignorance.
In the distance and to their right, lights flickered and they could hear thunder. It was an artillery duel and the dramatic sights and sounds sobered them. They were going into battle.
Suddenly, rifle fire erupted in front of them. They all dropped to the ground until the lieutenants and sergeants told them to get their asses up and form skirmish lines.
More rifle fire, but it was sporadic and they began to feel foolish about hitting the ground until a soldier screamed and fell over, clutching his leg. He was followed by another and another. My God, Tim thought in disbelief, someone’s shooting at me.
“Forward! Faster!” Lieutenant Taylor yelled and, all along the line, men began to run. The armored trucks fanned out with them and machine guns started blazing away.
There was a cluster of buildings to their front and Tim saw people running around. Christ, they were Mexican soldiers. Lieutenant Taylor ordered a halt and his men loosed a ragged volley at the enemy. Now it was the Mexicans turn to drop and writhe and scream.
Without further orders, the Americans rushed forward, the armored trucks first and then the infantry. In seconds, they were in between the buildings and the Mexicans were running for their lives. There hadn’t been very many of them in the first place, and some were trying to surrender, while others lay on the ground, dead or wounded. Tim looked at a man who had half his head blown away. He wanted to puke, but held it down. Some of his men didn’t.
They pushed through to what had been a clearing. It was piled high with wooden cases and barrels. They’d just grabbed a Mexican supply dump.
“Burn everything,” came the order and, like little kids, the Yanks complied until the field was an inferno with flames soaring hundreds of feet in the air. Some idiot set fire to ammo which exploded in a massive fireworks display. A couple of Americans got hurt, but not seriously.
Taylor grabbed Tim’s arm. “Get your men organized. The whole company’s heading north, to San Antonio.”
“Just the company, Lieutenant?” Tim asked, not fully comprehending.
Taylor laughed and Tim began to think that the boy lieutenant was okay. “The company, the battalion, the regiment, the division. The whole fucking army’s heading north to San Antonio.”
The men nearby roared their approval and Tim wondered just when, where and why Harvard philosophy majors learned to use the word “fuck” in their philosophical conversations.
“Christ, it stinks,” Tovey said. No one argued. The recent additions to the piles of dead had joined the earlier piles of bloated, maggot-filled corpses. Vast clouds of flies periodically erupted for unknown reasons and then landed to continue their obscene dinner. Crows were having a feast.
“Now somebody tell me what all that smoke is?” Tovey asked casually. Nobody answered. His men knew their general was talking to himself again. It looked like the pillars of smoke were at least five miles away and, whatever it was, the Mexicans were strangely quiet.
General Lejeune ran up, grinning. “Get your men up and moving, General Tovey. We got a linkup to make.”
The survivors of the battles for San Antonio moved forward slowly and tentatively. Crossing the killing field was difficult. First they weren’t certain they wouldn’t be shot at, and second, there was so much human debris that it was almost impossible not to step on something soft that squished horribly when a boot landed on it. Worst were the severed limbs and disconnected skulls that stared up at them. Tovey gagged. He’d killed men before, but this was murder on a massive scale.