Walk in Hell by Harry Turtledove Read Free Book Online Page A

to the locks of hair that flowed out from under his service cap. He wore the cap all the time, indoors and out, for it concealed the shiny expanse of the crown of his head.
    “When I see the order ‘general attack,’ Major, I construe it to mean attack all along the line, and that is what I intend to do,” he snapped now. The only time his voice left the range from petulant to irritable was when he was talking to a war correspondent: then he spoke gently as any sucking dove. “We shall go at the enemy and smash him up.”
    “Wouldn’t it be wise, sir, to concentrate our attacks where he shows himself to be less strong, break through there, and then use the advantages we’ve gained to make further advances?” Dowling said, doing his best—as he’d done his best since the outset of the war, with results decidedly mixed—to be the voice of reason.
    Defiantly, Custer shook his head. Those dyed locks flipped back and forth. Not even the magic word
breakthrough
had reached him. “Without their niggers to help ’em, the Rebs are just a pack of weak sisters,” he declared. “One good push and the whole rotten structure they’ve built comes tumbling down.”
    “Sir, we’ve been pushing with all we have for the past year and more, and it hasn’t tumbled down yet,” Dowling said.
If it had, we’d be a lot deeper into the Confederacy than we are—and even good generals have trouble against the Rebs
.
    “We’ll drive them out of Morehead’s Horse Mill,” Custer said, “and that, thank God, will have the added benefit of getting us out of Bremen here. You can tell why this town is so small: no one in his right mind would want to live here. And once we have the railroad junction at Morehead’s Horse Mill, how in the name of all that’s holy can the Rebs hope to keep us out of Bowling Green?”
    Dowling suspected there would be a number of ways the Confederate forces could keep the U.S. Army out of Bowling Green, even with Negroes in rebellion behind Rebel lines. He didn’t say that to Custer; a well-developed sense of self-preservation kept his lips sealed however much his brain seethed.
    What he did say, after some thought, was, “So you’ll want me to prepare the orders with the
Schwerpunkt
aimed toward Morehead’s Horse Mill?” With the Confederates in disorder, they might actually take that town. Then, after another buildup, they could think about moving in the direction of—not yet
on
—Bowling Green.
    “Schwerpunkt.”
General Custer made it sound like a noise a sick horse might make. “It’s all very well to have the German Empire for an ally—without them, we’d be helpless against the Rebs and the limeys and the frogs and the Canucks. But we imitate them too much, if you ask me. A general in command of an army can’t walk to the outhouse without the General Staff looking in the half-moon window to make sure he undoes his trouser buttons in the proper order. And all these damned foreign words fog up the simple art of war.”
    The United States had lost the War of Secession. Then, twenty years later, they’d lost the Second Mexican War. Germany or its Prussian core, in the meantime, had smashed the Danes, the Austrians, and the French, each in short order. As far as Dowling was concerned, the country that lost wars needed to do some learning from the side that won them.
    That was something else he couldn’t say. He tried guile: “If we do break through at Morehead’s Horse Mill, sir, we’ll be in a good position to roll up the Rebel line all the way back to the Ohio River, or else to push hard toward Bowling Green and make the enemy react to us.”
    All of that was true. All of it was reasonable. None of it was what Custer wanted to hear. Much of Dowling’s job was telling Custer things he didn’t want to hear and making him pay attention to them. What Dowling wanted was to get up to the front and command units for himself. The only reason he didn’t apply for a transfer was his