As he neared the tent, the flap opened and an officer came out: a medium-tall, wide-shouldered fellow with a graying Kaiser Bill mustache and, Morrell saw, eagles on his shoulder straps. “Colonel Sherrard, sir?” he asked.
“That’s right,” the other officer answered. “And you’d be Lieutenant Colonel Morrell, eh?”
“Yes, sir.” Morrell saluted. “Reporting as ordered, sir.” Among the other service ribbons above Sherrard’s left breast pocket, he noticed a black-and-gold one showing the colonel had been on the General Staff. Morrell had that same ribbon on his tunic. Sherrard’s service badge, though, was not the General Staff’s eagle on a star. Instead, he wore a barrel pierced by a lightning bolt.
He was scanning the fruit salad on Morrell’s chest as Morrell looked over his. Morrell got the idea that what he saw didn’t altogether please him, and had trouble figuring out why. Without false modesty, he knew he had a good record. Along with General Staff service, he’d fought in Sonora (where he was wounded), in eastern Kentucky, and in the Canadian Rockies. He’d distinguished himself in each of the latter two theaters, too. So why did Sherrard look as if he smelled sour milk?
With what looked like a deliberate effort of will, Sherrard made his face altogether blank. “Come inside, Lieutenant Colonel,” he said. “Let’s get you settled in and see how we can best use you.”
“Yes, sir.” Morrell ducked through the tent flap ahead of Colonel Sherrard, who introduced him to his adjutant, Captain Wallace, and his clerk typist, Corporal Norton. Either one of them might have been a power behind the throne. Off his first impression of Sherrard, Morrell was inclined to doubt that. The colonel to whom he’d been ordered to report seemed to need no one to prop him up.
Morrell accepted a tin cup full of muddy coffee, then sat down with Colonel Sherrard to drink it. Sipping from his own cup, Sherrard asked, “So how did you happen to come down from General Staff headquarters just now?”
The question was so elaborately casual, Morrell knew it held more than met the eye. For the life of him, though, he couldn’t figure out what. As he would have anyway, he answered with the simple truth: “The more I’ve looked at things, sir, the more important barrels have looked to me. I thought I ought to see some action with them. Besides”-his grin made him look even younger than he was-“running down the enemy in something as big as a house sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.”
That got him the first smile he’d seen from Sherrard. “As a matter of fact, it is, when the damn things feel like running and when the Rebs don’t have a cannon handy and don’t chuck a grenade or a whiskey bottle full of burning gasoline through one of your hatches.”
“If you knew beforehand who’d win, you wouldn’t have to fight the war,” Morrell replied with a shrug. “Since you don’t, you take your chances.”
That got him another smile, a wider one. “You’ll have studied barrels some, then, I take it, even if you haven’t served in them?” Sherrard said. After Morrell nodded, the older officer asked, “What’s your opinion of our current doctrine on barrel deployment?”
“Spreading them out widely along the line, do you mean, sir?” Morrell said. Now he waited for Sherrard to nod. When the colonel did, Morrell went on, “Sir, I don’t like it for beans. The barrels give us a big stick. As long as we’ve got it, we ought to shellack the Rebels with it.”
Ned Sherrard set down his cup and folded his arms across his chest. “Lieutenant Colonel, I will have you know that I was one of the people involved in designing barrels, and that I am also one of the people responsible for formulating the doctrine in use for most of the past year. If I ask you that question again, will you give me a different answer?”
“No, sir,” Morrell said with a small sigh. “You asked my opinion, and I gave it to you. If you want to transfer me out of this unit, though…well, I won’t be happy, but I’ll certainly understand.” Sometimes he wished he didn’t have the habit of saying just what he thought.
Sherrard kept his arms folded, as if he’d forgotten they were. “Isn’t that interesting?” he said, more to himself than to Morrell. “Maybe I was wrong.”
“Sir?” Morrell said.
“Never mind,” Colonel Sherrard told him. “If you don’t get it, you don’t need to know; if you do get it, you already know and you’re sandbagging.”
“Sir?” Morrell said again. Now, though, he didn’t really expect to get an answer. He had a notion of what he’d stumbled over: an argument among the brass about how best to use barrels. But doctrine was doctrine, and the Army clung to it as tightly as the Catholic Church did.
Sherrard, though, turned out to be more forthcoming than Morrell had thought he would. “You may be interested to learn that you and General Custer have similar views about how barrels should be employed.”
“Really, sir?” That was interesting. Custer was…Morrell didn’t know how old he was, but he had to be older than God. Surprising he had any ideas of his own. Off what Morrell had seen in Philadelphia of his performance, he didn’t have many. He just went straight at the Rebs and slugged till someone eventually had to take a step back.
“I’ll tell you something else you may find funny,” Sherrard said. Morrell raised a questioning eyebrow. In a half-shamefaced way, the colonel who’d served on the General Staff went on, “God damn me to hell if I haven’t started thinking he’s right, too. Which also means I think you may be right, Lieutenant Colonel. As you put it, if we’ve got a big stick, we ought to clout the bastards with it.”
“Really, sir?” Morrell knew he was repeating himself again, but couldn’t help it. That eyebrow-both eyebrows-went up again, this time in astonishment. “Have you let the War Department know you’ve changed your mind?”
“I’ve sent them more memoranda than you can shake a stick at.” Sherrard sighed. “Have you ever dropped a small stone off a tall cliff and waited for the sound it makes when it hits the ground to come back to your ears?”
“Yes, sir,” Morrell replied. “The sound never comes back, not if it’s small enough and the cliff is high enough.” He paused. “Dealing with the War Department can be a lot like that.”
“Ain’t it the truth?” The colloquialism from Sherrard surprised Morrell yet again. “That’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed in the field since I shepherded the first barrels down to this front. The cliff isn’t so tall here in the field. There’s less space between me and the enemy, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, yes, sir, I know exactly what you mean,” Morrell answered. “Sometimes I think our boys in the field have worse enemies in Philadelphia than they do in Richmond.”
Again, he wished he hadn’t been so forthright. Again, it was too late. He waited to see how Colonel Sherrard would respond. Sherrard didn’t show much; he got the distinct impression Sherrard seldom showed much. After a thoughtful pause, the colonel said, “Well, you were crazy enough to want to serve in barrels, Lieutenant Colonel. Now that you’re here, don’t you think you ought to go for a ride in one so you can see how big a mistake you made?”
“Yes, sir!” Morrell said enthusiastically. “I hear it’s quite something.”
“So it is. A kick in the teeth is quite something, too.” Sherrard’s voice was dry. “General Custer calls it the biggest sock-dologer in the history of the world. My father, God rest his soul, used to use that word. I think it fits here. Come on. You will, too.”
They left the tent and squelched through the mud to a barrel Sherrard happened to know was in running order. Along the way, the colonel commandeered a driver and a couple of engineers. “In case it doesn’t feel like staying in running order,” Sherrard explained. “In a real fight, we’d have two men on each machine gun-they’re from the infantry-and two artillerymen at the cannon.”