“Won’t kill me to go without,” he said mournfully, and patted that front pocket again.
“How long do you think it’ll be before we can start advancing again?” Ashton asked.
Laughing, Morrell said, “What is it about gunners? You guys can’t stand not to know about anything, can you?”
“I don’t know about anybody else, but I sure can’t,” Ashton said.
“Tell you what,” Morrell said. “Talk to God. If you can make the sun come out and dry up the mud, we’ll roll. Till somebody does…we won’t.”
“If God listened to me, sir, I wouldn’t be in a turret with you-no offense. I’d be in bed with a blonde-or a brunette, or a redhead. I’m not a fussy guy. Any kind of girl would do.”
“Blonde,” the loader said. “If you’re gonna ask, don’t be shy, for Chrissake. With big jugs, too.” He gestured.
“There you go,” Ashton said. “That’d work for me.” He glanced over at Morrell. “What about you, sir?”
“One of these days, I wouldn’t mind leave to go back to Kansas,” Morrell said. “That’s where my wife and daughter are.”
“Yes, sir,” the gunner said. “But you’re here now, and there’s plenty of broads around, and some of ’em’ll put out even if you’re a damnyankee.”
“I don’t need it that bad,” Morrell said. “Agnes isn’t fooling around on me back there, and I don’t feel right about cheating on her.”
Ashton and the loader looked at each other. He could read their minds, though they said not a word. Poor old guy, they had to be thinking. If he had more get up and go in him, he’d nail some of these Confederate bitches any which way. Maybe they were right. Morrell hoped not, but he recognized the possibility. A man in his twenties was a hard-on with legs. A man in his fifties damn well wasn’t, and never looked or acted more idiotic than when he pretended he was.
His earphones crackled with a new report: “Sir, our forward scouts say there’s a Confederate buildup centered on map square Red-14.”
“Have you called artillery in on it?” Morrell asked, maneuvering the map so he could see where the devil Red-14 was. Folding and unfolding the damn thing inside the turret reminded him of a crowded flat with laundry drying on lines strung across the front room. The square lay south and east of Resaca, not too far from where he was himself.
“Yes, sir,” said the voice on the wireless. “Doesn’t seem to be enough to break ’em up. Sure could use a spoiling attack.”
“Well, I believe you,” Morrell said. “Haven’t got a whole lot to spoil with, though. And this damn rain…”
“How much trouble can they cause if they break through there?” the voice asked.
Morrell looked at the map again. He did some more muttering. If everything went precisely wrong, the Confederates could retake Resaca. That would complicate his life. It would mean Atlanta wouldn’t fall any time soon. And it would put him in hot water with the War Department, where you were only as good as what you did yesterday.
“How big a buildup is it?” he asked. If it was brigade strength, maybe even division strength, he would put in a spoiling attack. He wouldn’t just put it in, either-he’d lead it himself. He knew he couldn’t put his hands on anywhere near a division’s worth of men and materiel, but he didn’t care. The Confederates wouldn’t be so sure of that. When barrels came at them out of a curtain of rain, wouldn’t they think twice before they tried attacking? He thought so-they couldn’t afford to get too intrepid. On the other hand, they couldn’t afford not to get too intrepid, either. How did you judge?
He knew how he judged. If they were there in corps strength, he’d have to receive an attack instead of delivering one. That was where he drew the line between aggressiveness and stupidity.
“Sir, best estimate is division strength,” said the man at the other end of the wireless connection.
“Heigh-ho,” Morrell said. “Let’s go.” He thumbed the TRANSMIT button. “Well, we’ll see if we can knock ’em back on their heels. Out.” Then he started calling the armored and infantry in the neighborhood. He wondered if their COs would groan and fuss and flabble and say they couldn’t possibly move in this downpour. Nobody did. They wanted to hit the Confederates. “We’ve been thumping ’em like a big bass drum from Pittsburgh down to here,” an infantry colonel said. “Let’s do it some more.”
Clark Ashton beamed at him when the command barrel squelched forward. “Frenchy told me to expect action when I rode with you,” he said. “He wasn’t blowing smoke, was he?”
“We aren’t here to give those butternut bastards a big kiss,” Morrell answered. “We’re here to blow ’em to hell and gone. And I aim to.”
His scratch force pushed in the Confederate pickets with the greatest of ease. Featherston’s men didn’t seem to dream that anybody could bring off an attack in weather like this. Some of them panicked when they found they were wrong.
Barrels loomed up out through the rain. Morrell called out targets. Clark Ashton hit one after another. Maybe Frenchy Bergeron had told him he’d better be a good gunner if he was going to get along with his new commander. Or maybe even the powers that be feared what Irving Morrell would say and do if they saddled him with a gunner who didn’t know his trade.
The Confederates fell back. Morrell started laughing fit to bust. The rain that had helped the CSA was helping him instead now. The enemy couldn’t tell how small his force really was. The way the U.S. barrels and soldiers pushed forward, they had plenty of weight behind them. They’d have to be nuts to push like that if they didn’t. Featherston’s men, sure they were sane, fell back. Irving Morrell, just as sure he wasn’t, laughed and laughed.
Carefully conned by a pilot who knew his way through the minefields, the Josephus Daniels came into New York harbor. Sailors stood at the rail admiring the tall buildings and boasting of the havoc they would wreak when they got liberty. Sam Carsten remembered leaves of his own when he was a rating, from Boston all the way to Honolulu.
He fondly recalled the lady-well, woman-he’d visited just before he first met George Enos, Jr. And wasn’t that a kick in the head? Funny the kid remembered it after all these years. Actually, Enos was no kid any more-he had to be past thirty. And how many miles have you got? Sam asked himself. Some questions were better left unanswered.
As usual, the pilot knew his business. A good thing, too, since in his line of work your first mistake was much too likely to be your last. Blowing a ship halfway to the moon would get you talked about, and not kindly, even if you lived through it.
“We have the first liberty party ready?” Sam asked Myron Zwilling as the ship approached its assigned quay.
“Yes, sir,” the executive officer answered. “All men with good disciplinary records.”
“That’s fine for the first party,” Sam said. “But I want everybody to be able to go ashore unless we get called back to sea sooner than I expect right now.”
“Yes, sir,” Zwilling repeated, but he didn’t sound happy about it. “Some of them don’t deserve the privilege, though.”
“Oh, come on,” Sam said. “Nobody’s knifed anybody, nobody’s slugged anybody, nobody’s got caught cooking hooch.” There was some illicit alcohol aboard the Josephus Daniels. There’d been some aboard every ship in which Carsten ever served. As long as the chiefs kept things within reasonable bounds, as long as nobody showed up at his battle station too toasted to do his job, the skipper was inclined to look the other way.
“No one’s been caught, no.” By the way the exec pursed his lips, he was inclined to act like a revenuer in the hills of West Virginia. Only Sam’s manifest unwillingness to let him held him back. “But I’m morally convinced there’s a still on this ship, and I’d like to get rid of it as soon as possible.”