And U.S. fighters also prowled above the clouds. Transports weren’t made to go fast and be nimble, any more than buses were. If fighters attacked them, their best hope lay in how much damage they could take before they fell out of the sky.
Sometimes the Confederate transports had Hound Dogs of their own to escort them to the target and drive off U.S. Wright fighters. Sometimes they didn’t. When they didn’t, they paid for it.
“Why don’t the Confederates send escorts along all the time?” Chester asked when a burning transport crashed less than half a mile from his foxhole.
“Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think I can make a pretty fair guess,” Lieutenant Wheat answered.
“Sir?” Chester said. He’d served under a couple of platoon commanders whose opinions he didn’t want, but who insisted on giving them anyhow. Del Wheat wasn’t like that. Some of the things he had to say were worth hearing, but he didn’t make a big deal out of them. Those other guys seemed to think they were the Pope speaking ex cathedra.
“Well, my guess is that the Confederate States don’t have enough airplanes-or maybe enough pilots-to be able to do all the things they’d like to do,” Wheat said. “Now they can do this, now they can do that-but it doesn’t look like they can do this and that at the same time.”
Chester thought about it. After a moment, he nodded. “That does make sense, yes, sir.” He paused again, then resumed: “Getting that cargo into Pittsburgh is pretty important for them right now. If they can’t take care of that because of everything else they’ve got going on, maybe they bit off more than they can chew.”
“That’s true. Sergeant. Maybe they did.” Lieutenant Wheat looked like a cat contemplating a saucer of cream.
Civilians came from C.S.-occupied territory farther west. They claimed the Confederates there were building up for an attack on the U.S. ring. Lieutenant Wheat listened to them and sent them on to Intelligence officers back at division HQ. “You’re not flabbling much about this,” Chester remarked.
“Nope, not me,” the platoon commander said. “If the enemy does try to come through here, we’ll do our damnedest to stop him. That’s all we can do. But what do you want to bet that some of those so-called civilians are really Confederate plants, and they’re trying to make us jump at shadows?”
“Ah,” Chester said. “Well, sir, since you put it that way, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
“Neither would I,” Delbert Wheat said. “So I’ll worry when my superiors tell me to, but not till then.”
Chester did notice that some of the ammunition coming in for the antiaircraft guns had the black-painted tips of armor-piercing rounds. The Confederates used their antiaircraft guns against barrels with vicious effect. Imitation was the sincerest, and most deadly, kind of flattery.
Not long before Christmas, word came down from on high that the Confederates would be coming soon. The United States had taken advantage of the weather to break through in November. A new snowstorm might give the Confederates the same sort of extra concealment.
The C.S. bombardment had gas shells in it. They were less deadly in cold weather, and gas masks more nearly tolerable-unless your mask froze up. That didn’t mean Chester wanted to put on his mask. Want it or not, he did. He’d seen gas casualties in the Great War, and a few this time, too. Getting shot was bad enough. He knew just how bad it was from twofold experience. By everything he knew except that direct experience, getting gassed was worse.
As soon as the shelling let up, Lieutenant Wheat shouted, “Be ready!” Up and down the U.S. line, that same cry rang out. The troops in green-gray had the advantage of standing behind the Tuscarawas River. Chester hoped that would mean something. The Confederates had more practice crossing in the face of resistance than any Great War army had.
Where Chester’s platoon was stationed, the river, which ran mostly north and south, took an east-west bend. Instead of pressing down on that east-west length, the soldiers in butternut trundled past it to hit the next north-south stretch. “They’re giving us their flank!” Wheat exclaimed in amazement.
True, the Confederates did stay out of effective rifle range of the men on the south bank of the Tuscarawas. But several of their barrels trundled along only a few hundred yards from the antiaircraft guns that could also fire against ground targets. When the gunners got targets that artillerymen mostly only dreamt of, they made the most of them. Four or five barrels went up in flames in a few minutes’ time. U.S. machine guns and riflemen harried the crewmen bailing out of the machines. They were shooting at long range, but with enough bullets in the air some probably struck home.
Some barrels paused, presented their glacis plates to their tormentors, and fired back. Others scooted farther north, so the U.S. guns wouldn’t bear on them any more. Artillery fire fell around those antiaircraft guns. Sometimes it fell on them. Had the weather been better, Asskickers would have gone after them one by one. With clouds huddling low, though, dive bombers were liable to fly straight into the ground instead of pulling up in time.
When yet another Confederate barrel brewed up because it incautiously came too close to the U.S. antiaircraft guns, Chester yelled and pounded the dirt at the front of his foxhole. “Those butternut bastards aren’t buying anything cheap today!” he yelled.
But he could see only his little corner of the fight. Early in the afternoon, orders came to fall back to the east. “Why?” somebody said indignantly. “We’re pounding the crap out of ’em here!”
“Here, yes,” Lieutenant Wheat said. “But Featherston’s fuckers are over the Tuscarawas south of Coshocton-south and west of here. If we don’t give up some ground, they’ll hit us in the flank and enfilade us.”
Taking enfilading fire was like getting your T crossed in a naval battle: all the enemy’s firepower bore on you, but most of yours wouldn’t bear on him. It was, in other words, a damn good recipe for getting killed.
“Have we got positions farther east that face west instead of north?” Chester asked.
“Good question, Sergeant,” Del Wheat said. “We’ll both find out at the same time.” He paused. “I hope we do. We must have known this was coming. If we didn’t get ready for it, then we’ve got the same old muddle up at the top.”
When they came to zigzag trenches hastily dug and bulldozed out of fields, Chester felt like cheering. Somebody with stars on his shoulder straps could actually see a step or two ahead. That made Chester think things might go better than he’d expected.
The Confederates who came up against those trenches went to earth in a hurry when a fierce blast of fire met them. More than a few U.S. soldiers carried captured C.S. automatic rifles for extra firepower. They had to get ammunition from dead enemy soldiers, but there’d been a lot of them around.
Before long, Chester and his comrades needed to fall back again. Again, though, they fell back into prepared positions. In spite of retreating, he felt more confident. The Confederates could overrun any one position, but each one cost them. How many could they overrun before they started running out of men to do it?
Not far from Ellaville, Georgia, ran a stretch of highway locally called the Memorial Mile. Marble stelae stood by the side of the road. Brass plaques mounted on the marble commemorated Sumter County soldiers who’d served in the Great War. WIA by a name meant the soldier had been wounded in action; KIA by a name meant he’d been killed.
The Negro guerrillas who’d attached Jonathan Moss and Nick Cantarella to their number hated the Memorial Mile with a fierce and terrible passion. “How many names you reckon they be if they put up all the niggers from here they done killed?” asked their chief, who went by the name of Spartacus. Moss suspected that was a nom de guerre; it was, as far as he was concerned, a damn good one.