He wished they were, almost as much as Major Sellers did. It would have made his life easier.
Geronimo drew a knife from his belt, to use the tip as a pointer. "We are here." He touched it to Tubac with complete confidence. He could not read, but he knew how to make the map in his head, the one a lifetime in these parts had given him, match the map on the paper. "The canyon is here, a little more than halfway to Tucson." He moved the knifepoint.
"If we are to ambush the bluecoats, we will have to wait there till you have lured them," Stuart said. "Is there water?" In so much of the Southwest, that was the overriding concern.
"Yes." Geronimo smiled for a moment: he"d asked the right question. "Two springs close by. Good water, even in summer: not much water, but enough." He waved around at the Indian encampment. "Some of us will be with you. If it is not as I say, they are men you may kill."
"Hostages," Stuart said. Chappo"s lips moved as he repeated the word to himself so he could learn it. Stuart plucked at his beard, considering. The Apaches were short on manpower. They thought a raid where they lost a couple of warriors a misfortune, because the fighters could not easily be replaced. Stuart didn"t think Geronimo would offer hostages unless he was sincere. "We"ll try it," he said. "My men can ride this afternoon."
"It is good," Geronimo said through Chappo. "We, most of us, will ride north now. When you are at the canyon, you will see what sort of place it is. You will see where to place your men where they can kill the bluecoats without being seen. You will see where to place your big rifles on wagons so the bluecoats do not know they are there till too late."
Even though Stuart could not understand a word of the Apache lingo, he paid close attention to Geronimo"s tone. The Indian sounded as if he was trying to rea.s.sure himself that Stuart, though only an ignorant white man, would indeed be able to see these things and do what was required of him. The Confederate general, civilizedly certain of his own expertise, smiled at the savage"s conceit.
"I will see these things," he answered gently, trying to ease Geronimo"s mind. "You will bring me the U.S. soldiers, and I will kill them."
That seemed to satisfy the Apache. Geronimo and the war leaders exchanged a few words, which Chappo did not translate. Stuart resolved to scare up some interpreters who would be on his side, not the Indians". Half-breeds, Mexicans ... one way or another, he"d manage. If his allies let something slip, he wanted a chance to know about it.
Geronimo was as good as his word. Most of the Apaches rode out inside the hour. About thirty stayed behind under Naiche. Chappo stayed, too, to translate, though Naiche and some of the others spoke Spanish. Batsinas also stayed, for no better reason Stuart could find than that he was fascinated by everything the white men did, and wanted to learn from them.
A lot of the Indians, though, found the Confederates more amusing than instructive. While the army broke camp, Horatio Sellers came up to Stuart shaking his head. "One of those red devils used a farmer to ask me what I"d do if I heard a gunshot," he said indignantly. "I told him I"d go over and see what in blazes had happened, of course. He thought that was the funniest thing he"d heard in all his born days. So I asked him what he"d do, if he was so blasted smart. He said he"d scout around and find out what was going on without letting anybody ever know he was there. Looked at me like I was a chuckleheaded n.i.g.g.e.r; and him with a line of yellow paint across his face to show he was on the warpath, the d.a.m.n savage." Sellers sounded like a man on the warpath himself.
"Don"t worry about it, Major," Stuart said soothingly, using much the same tone of voice he had with Geronimo. "We"ll position ourselves in this canyon and lick the stuffing out of the d.a.m.nyankees. That will make the redskins respect us, and I don"t think anything else will."
Riding to battle, Stuart felt the same exhilaration he"d known during the War of Secession. Somewhere back in Kentucky, his young son and namesake was going up against the Yankees, too. He hoped Jeb, Jr., would be all right. The boy-no, not a boy, not if he was fighting-had all of his own impetuous spirit, and hardly any years to temper it.
Stuart would have navigated by map and compa.s.s. The Apaches knew the country as well as-better than-he knew northern Virginia. He got the feeling they could have ridden along with their eyes closed and found their way across three hundred or three thousand miles of desert by the way the dust smelled and how the echoes from their horses" hoofbeats came back to their ears. They"d been here a long time; the roadrunners probably talked with them.
As far as he was concerned, they and the d.a.m.nyankees were welcome to the country, if you took it strictly as country. Rocks and sand and dust and cactus and brush and lizards and rattlesnakes and endless sun pounding down out of the sky so that, nearly as reliable as clockwork, every hour a Confederate would slide from the saddle and plop to the ground. Most of them recovered after they"d been splashed with precious water and ridden in the wagons for a while, but a couple had died, running unquenchable fevers that cooked them from the inside out.
It was, in fact, country for camels. The Fifth Confederate Cavalry"s humped livestock flourished here. The camels ate cactus, thorns and all, with every sign of relish. They didn"t need much water, and the succulent pulp gave them a lot of what they did need. They were gloriously bad-tempered, reveling in the heat where the horses labored under it.
The Apaches found them endlessly fascinating. The Indians admired the animals" ability to handle the rugged terrain, but thought them the ugliest things they"d ever seen. Chappo rode up alongside Stuart after traveling with the Fifth Camelry for a while and said, quite seriously, "The G.o.d who made those beasts was trying to shape horses, but did not know how."
Stuart started to laugh, then checked himself. He didn"t want to offend Geronimo"s son. And it was a better explanation of how camels had got to be the way they were than anything else he"d heard.
They crossed the Santa Cruz River, such as it was, not long before nightfall, and camped close by. The next morning, Naiche and the rest of the Apaches led the Confederates into the desert east of the little town that had grown up around the stagecoach station at Sahuarita, about twenty miles south of Tucson.
About nine o"clock the next morning, Naiche trotted his horse back to Stuart with a broad smile on his wide, Roman-nosed face. "Aqui esta," "Aqui esta," he said, and then, to his own obvious delight, came up with a word of English: "Here." he said, and then, to his own obvious delight, came up with a word of English: "Here."
Stuart rode ahead with him. The farther ahead he went, the better the place looked. It wasn"t one of the narrow valleys down which no pursuers in their right minds would follow fleeing redskins for fear of being bushwhacked. But it wasn"t so wide as to make an ambush impossible, either. As Geronimo had said he would, he spotted just the place to site his horse artillery, too: a low rise off to one side with a good view of the track down which the enemy would likely come, but not a feature of the landscape that would draw the Yankees" notice too soon.
"Water?" he asked, and made his canteen slosh.
"Ah. Agua. Si," Agua. Si," Naiche said. And Naiche said. And agua agua there was: two springs, as Geronimo had promised. Stuart"s force would have no trouble waiting a couple of days, until the Apaches who had gone on to raid Tucson could bring the d.a.m.nyankees back here in hot pursuit. there was: two springs, as Geronimo had promised. Stuart"s force would have no trouble waiting a couple of days, until the Apaches who had gone on to raid Tucson could bring the d.a.m.nyankees back here in hot pursuit. " Esta bien?" " Esta bien?" Naiche asked. He grinned, finding another English word: "Good?" Naiche asked. He grinned, finding another English word: "Good?"
"Yes. Si." Si." Stuart didn"t have a dozen words of Spanish himself, but that was one of them. "Good. Very good." Stuart didn"t have a dozen words of Spanish himself, but that was one of them. "Good. Very good."
"There it is!" Theodore Roosevelt swept out his right hand in the sort of dramatic gesture that came so naturally to him. "There it is, straight ahead: the Promised Land!"
Probably never before had anyone called Fort Benton the Promised Land. But it was as dear to Roosevelt as the land of Israel could ever have been to the Hebrews. And Roosevelt"s Unauthorized Regiment had wandered in the bureaucratic wilderness: not for the forty years Moses" followers had endured, true, but everything moved faster in the bustling, mechanized, modern world of the nineteenth century. The weeks that had pa.s.sed before the volunteers were accepted were far too long.
Behind Roosevelt, the men of the Unauthorized Regiment raised a cheer. Many of them, like their colonel, were delighted at finally becoming U.S. Volunteers. And others (and some of the same men, too, perhaps) were also delighted at the prospect of mustering close by a town, with all the pleasures attendant thereto. Out on Roosevelt"s ranch, they"d been living a life not far removed from the monastic.
"The Promised Land!" Roosevelt shouted once more, and his troopers cheered louder than ever. He nodded in enormous satisfaction and spoke again, this time more quietly: "If you want something done, by jingo, you have to pitch right in and do it yourself."
Soldiers up on the mud-brick wall of Fort Benton were staring at the oncoming cavalry regiment. Roosevelt could see their arms outstretched as they pointed to the cloud of dust in which the hors.e.m.e.n traveled. He was still too far away to make out the amazement on their faces or to hear their exclamations, but his active imagination had no trouble supplying the lack.
Not far from the fort was a stretch of level ground where the Seventh Infantry was in the habit of practicing its maneuvers. Roosevelt led the Unauthorized Regiment toward it. "a.s.semble by troops!" he shouted, and the trumpeters amplified the command.
He"d made sure the troopers practiced that evolution every day of the journey along the Missouri from the ranch outside of Helena to Fort Benton. They performed it flawlessly now. He grinned from ear to ear. Maybe the only uniform they had at the moment was a red bandanna on the sleeve, but he"d turned them into soldiers, not an armed mob.
"If at the age of twenty-two I can bring order to a cavalry regiment," he murmured, suddenly thoughtful, "what will I be able to do when I have Lieutenant Colonel Welton"s years behind me?"
But those years, as yet, lay ahead of him. He rode toward Fort Benton, to bring the commander of the Regular Army garrison out to inspect the Unauthorized Regiment.
Henry Welton did him the courtesy of meeting him halfway. Now Roosevelt was wearing his colonel"s uniform. Nevertheless, he saluted Welton first-and, as he did so, noticed the Regular officer had eagles on his shoulder straps, too, not the silver oak leaves he"d worn when they met before. "Congratulations, Colonel Welton!" Roosevelt exclaimed.
"It"s your fault, Colonel Roosevelt," Welton answered with a smile, returning the salute. "The War Department had to accept you as a colonel in the U.S. Volunteers, so they gave me the same brevet rank, and made me five minutes senior to you while they were about it."
"As I told you when we first met, sir, that is as it should be," Roosevelt said.
"I"d be lying if I told you I thought you were wrong," Welton said. Roosevelt nodded; he had nothing but approval for a man who knew his own worth. Welton went on, "Now, by thunder, let"s have a look at the men who stirred up all this fuss."
"With great pleasure, sir." Side by side, the two colonels rode out toward the regiment Roosevelt had raised. They were drawing near when Roosevelt, unwontedly hesitant, said, "Even after our formal incorporation into the U.S. Army, sir, might we continue to style ourselves the Unauthorized Regiment? I believe it would have a salutary effect on the men"s morale."
"I don"t see why not," Welton said. "If you look at things from England"s point of view, we"re an unauthorized country, wouldn"t you say? Formally, what we have here is the First Montana Volunteer Cavalry. I can"t do anything about that. Informally-well, since it is informal, no one will fuss, at what you call yourselves. Plenty of regiments-even companies-in the War of Secession had nicknames by which they were better known than by their official t.i.tles."
Roosevelt started to say something more, but checked himself, for Welton and he had come up to the troops, who, as one man, saluted them. Henry Welton rode gravely from troop to troop. He was not a cavalry officer, but his examination struck Roosevelt as being as thorough as the grilling to which he himself had been subjected. Welton had been a.s.sessing soldiers for as long as Roosevelt had been alive, and knew what he was doing.
He puzzled the commander of the Unauthorized Regiment for a moment when, instead of keeping on the open path between troops, he rode through one, pausing every now and then to examine one man"s Winchester, another"s saddle, the cartridge belt of a third. And then enlightenment struck Roosevelt almost as abruptly as it had struck Paul on the road to Damascus. "Colonel Welton, had you asked, I would have told you that I did not place the best men on the outer edges of the troops, as a dishonest grocer will place a few pieces of good fruit on top of a great many bad ones."
"Had I asked, Colonel Roosevelt, I"m sure you would have told me that, whether it was so or not." Welton softened the words with a disarming grin. "I"d sooner see for myself. If you possibly can, you should always see for yourself. If you don"t make a habit of that, you will will be disappointed, generally when you can least afford it." be disappointed, generally when you can least afford it."
"Thank you, sir. I"ll remember that." Doing as much as he could by and for himself was always one of Roosevelt"s guiding principles. Having the veteran espouse it only strengthened it in his mind.
Not satisfied with riding through one troop, Henry Welton rode through another. That done, he gave his verdict: "These men are not up to the standards of the Regular Army, Colonel, but they are some of the finest volunteer troops I have ever set eyes on, especially for volunteers who have yet to see the elephant. If and when they do, I believe they"ll manage as well as anyone could hope."
"Thank you again, sir," Roosevelt said. "You make me feel my efforts on our beloved country"s behalf have proved worthwhile."
"And so they have." Welton rode out before the a.s.sembled troopers. "Men of Roosevelt"s Unauthorized Regiment," he began, and then had to stop while the cavalrymen yelled themselves hoa.r.s.e and several of the officers made their mounts caracole. "Men of the Unauthorized Regiment, will you take the oath that makes you into U.S. Volunteers?"
"Yes!" the men cried: one great roar of sound. Roosevelt shouted as loud as he could, but even in his own ears his voice was small and lost amid the others.
Colonel Welton administered the oath to them, one ringing phrase at a time. Behind his spectacles, Roosevelt felt his eyes fill with tears as he spoke the words that took him into the service of the United States. Reaching this point had proved a greater struggle than it ever should have, but, unlike Moses, he, having overcome every obstacle, was allowed to enter the land of milk and honey-or, the U.S. Army being what it was, at least the land of hardtack, salt pork, and beans.
The oath completed, he gave Henry Welton another crisp salute. "What are your orders, sir?"
"For now, Colonel, my orders are going to be very simple, very unexciting, and, I fear, very unwelcome," Welton answered. "Your men are to bivouac by troops here on this plain until such time as my regimental clerks have completed the boring but necessary business of taking down their names and other particulars. This will, among other things, put them on the government"s payroll and get them off of yours, and will a.s.sure pension benefits to their next of kin in the event of their becoming casualties of war."
Roosevelt sighed. "I do see the necessity, sir, but must it be done on the instant? You have no conception of how I long to strike the British a smart blow, nor of how hard it has been to sit by Helena knowing I had the men at hand for the task but also knowing I was not legally ent.i.tled to use them."
"Patience, Colonel." Welton chuckled. "I do do feel like I"m talking to my son. I say again, patience. The British have made no moves against us as yet in this quarter, nor, even if they do in the next two days-which is not likely-can they sweep down on Fort Benton and catch us unawares in that s.p.a.ce of time. You shall have your chance, I a.s.sure you. Not quite yet, though." feel like I"m talking to my son. I say again, patience. The British have made no moves against us as yet in this quarter, nor, even if they do in the next two days-which is not likely-can they sweep down on Fort Benton and catch us unawares in that s.p.a.ce of time. You shall have your chance, I a.s.sure you. Not quite yet, though."
"Yes, sir." Suddenly and painfully, Roosevelt realized that coming under the authority of the United States not only meant he could lead his troops against the English and the Canucks, it also meant he was required to obey orders he did not like. Then he brightened. "Sir, I shall place at your disposal all my regimental records, which should help your clerks do their jobs more quickly."
"Thank you. I"m sure that will help a great deal." Colonel Welton c.o.c.ked his head to one side. "I shouldn"t be a bit surprised if what you"ve got is a good deal more complete than anything I"m required to keep. There are some forms, though, on which we"ll have to get your men"s signatures or witnessed marks. Everyone talks about the exploits of the Army in the field. No one mentions the paperwork that makes those exploits-and the survival of the Army between them-possible, but it"s part of the life, too."
"I discovered something of this myself, on commencing to recruit the Unauthorized Regiment." Roosevelt bared his teeth in what was not quite a smile. "I should be lying if I said it was the most welcome discovery I ever made."
"Yes, I believe that," Welton said. "This being wartime, you"ll have your chance for action, and soon enough, even if not so soon as you might wish. Had you spent as much time in the Regular Army as I have done, you might by now have concluded that for a commanding officer the duty entails paperwork to the exclusion of nearly everything else."
Roosevelt tried to imagine himself on garrison duty at some dusty fort out here in the heart of the West, a fort without any hostile Indians nearby to give an excuse for action. He tried to imagine pa.s.sing year after year at such duty. His conclusion was that, were the fort anywhere close to a high cliff, he would have been likely to throw himself off it.
That must have shown on his face. Colonel Welton said, "Well, it"s not a fate you have to worry about. Now, would you like to order your regiment to pitch their tents here, or shall I?"
"Sir, why don"t you?" Roosevelt answered. "The sooner the men fully understand they are obliged to take orders from any man of rank superior to theirs, the sooner they will become soldiers in every sense of the word."
"Very well." Welton nodded. "And well reasoned, too." Effortlessly, he raised his voice so the entire Unauthorized Regiment could hear him. He did not seem to be shouting, either-Roosevelt wondered if he could learn the trick.
Having given the orders, Welton watched with interest to see how they were obeyed. He chuckled as the troopers pitched their tents. "A bit of variety in the canvas they"re living under, eh, Colonel?" A moment later, he stopped chuckling and stared. "Good heavens, is that a teepee?"
"Yes, sir. We have several of them in the regiment. They seem to work about as well as anything we white men make."
"That they do, Colonel. I"ve served enough time on the plains to be convinced of it. They caught me by surprise, is all." Henry Welton wasn"t only watching the soldiers of the Unauthorized Regiment set up their camp. Every so often, he pulled out his pocket watch to see how fast they were doing it.
Roosevelt wanted to get in there among them, to yell and wave his arms and urge them to greater speed. He made himself quietly sit on his horse and let them do it on their own. If they hadn"t learned what he"d worked so hard to drill into them, his harangues wouldn"t help now.
His gaze flicked from the troopers to Colonel Welton and back again. The men seemed to take forever. But, when the last tent was up, Welton put the watch back in his pocket and nodded pleasantly to him. "Not bad, Colonel. Once again, not bad at all."
"Thank you very much, sir." Colonel Theodore Roosevelt beamed.
Colonel Alfred von Schlieffen and Second Lieutenant Archibald Creel strode along what had been the waterfront of Louisville, Kentucky. Instead of his own uniform, Schlieffen wore the light blue trousers, dark blue blouse, and cap of a U.S. infantry private. The waterfront was in U.S. hands, but the Confederates had a way of sneaking snipers forward that made being in any way conspicuous a conspicuously bad idea.
In his trouser pocket, Schlieffen had one telegram from General Rosecrans authorizing General Willc.o.x to allow him to cross the Ohio to observe the battle at close quarters and another telegram from Minister Schlozer a.s.suring Willc.o.x the Fatherland would not hold him responsible if, while Schlieffen was performing his military duty, he was wounded or killed. The military attache had needed both wires to get Willc.o.x to let him cross.
Lieutenant Creel kept staring around in disbelief. "I"ve never seen anything like this in my life," he would say. A few minutes later, he would say it again, apparently forgetting his earlier words. After a bit, he rounded on Schlieffen. "Have you ever seen anything like this, Colonel?"
And Schlieffen had to shake his head. "No, I do not think I have."
Wherever war went, it left a trail of devastation. That Schlieffen knew. That he had seen for himself. But he had never seen war visit a good-sized city, decide it liked the place, and settle in for a long stay, as if it were a good-for-nothing brother-in-law. Never till now.
Stonewall Jackson had chosen to make his stand inside Louisville, to make the United States, if they wanted the city so badly, pay the greatest possible price for it, and to make sure that, if they ended up taking it, what they took would amount to nothing. The Confederates had fought in every building. They had forced the U.S. to sh.e.l.l whole blocks into rubble, and then fought in the rubble until cleared out by rifle and bayonet. They had taken horrible casualties, but those they"d inflicted were worse.
Schlieffen shook his head as he looked south toward the fighting front, which was still only a few hundred yards away. He could not see a single untouched building, not anywhere. Every single structure had big chunks bitten out of it from artillery, whether U.S. or C.S. Fire had licked through every building, too, leaving streaks of soot along what battered brickwork remained standing.
Off to Schlieffen"s left, a battery of U.S. field guns started barking. When the battle for Louisville began, General Willc.o.x hadn"t worried overmuch about getting cannon onto the southern bank of the Ohio. He"d realized soon enough, though-probably as fast as any German general would have-that infantry couldn"t do this job by itself. The sh.e.l.ls would blast some new part of Louisville into ruins. If they went where they were supposed to go, they might help the infantrymen advance a few more yards.
The air stank of smoke and death. How many men lay entombed in the wreckage both sides had created? Whatever the number, it was not small. Schlieffen had never smelled the battlefield stench so thick. Some of that was due to the intolerable weather, which hastened corruption. More sprang from the battle"s having gone on so long without moving to speak of.
Several pairs of litter-bearers came by, carrying wounded U.S. soldiers out of the fight. A couple of the hurt men lay limp; scarlet soaked through bandages on heads and torsos. Others screamed and thrashed. Those were the ones who felt worse torment now, but they were also liable to be the ones with the better chance of recovering.
Confederate sh.e.l.ls screamed in. Lieutenant Creel threw himself to the ground before they burst, huddling behind a heap of bricks that had once been part of some fine riverfront office or shop or hotel. So did Schlieffen. No hint of cowardice accrued to sheltering from splinters that killed without the courage of a proper human foe. This wasn"t his war, either.
He thought the C.S. gunners were aiming for their U.S. counterparts. As happened in war, their aim went awry. The sh.e.l.ls fell closer to the litter-bearers. Fresh screams rose from them, some from already injured men crying out as they were dropped, others from bearers crying out as they were wounded.
"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Lieutenant Creel said. Mud streaked his uniform. More streaked his face.
"I do not believe this was their purpose, to hurt these men," Schlieffen said.
"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds anyhow," Creel answered. He did not seem so young now as he had when Schlieffen first made his acquaintance not long before. He went on, "I"d like to see every one of those Rebel sons of b.i.t.c.hes dead."
His fury gave Schlieffen an opportunity he had not been sure he would have. The German military attache, a General Staff officer to the core, had long since planned what to do if that opportunity arose. He did not hesitate to put the plan into effect, saying, "Let us forward go, then, to the very front, so we have the best chance of seeing the enemy fall."
Creel had courage. Schlieffen had already seen that. Now his blood was up, too. He nodded. "All right, Colonel, we"ll do that. I wish I were carrying a Springfield, not this blamed revolver on my hip. I"d have a better chance of potting some of them myself."
Being a neutral, Schlieffen bore no weapon of any sort. He did not acutely feel the lack. He knew a certain sympathy for the USA over the CSA because he was attached to the U.S. forces, and another certain sympathy for the United States because the Confederate States were allied with France. None of that, however, was enough to make him anxious to go potting Confederates himself.
Together, he and Second Lieutenant Creel picked their way forward through the cratered, rubble-strewn streets. Shirtsleeved soldiers with picks and shovels labored to clear the paths so fresh troops and munitions could go forward and wounded men come back.
Craack! Before Schlieffen could react, a bullet slapped past his head and buried itself with a slap in some charred timbers. Archibald Creel turned back to him with a wry grin. "You were the one who wanted to do this, remember." Before Schlieffen could react, a bullet slapped past his head and buried itself with a slap in some charred timbers. Archibald Creel turned back to him with a wry grin. "You were the one who wanted to do this, remember."
"I remember, yes," Schlieffen said calmly, and kept on.
Trenches started well before the front line. Schlieffen and Creel had been pa.s.sing trench lines ever since they entered Louisville, in fact, but the ones close by the Ohio were hard to recognize because sh.e.l.lfire had all but obliterated them. Sh.e.l.ls were falling on these trenches, too, but they still retained their shape.
"You fellers want to watch yourselves," a grimy, unshaven soldier said as Creel and Schlieffen went by. "The Rebs got a sniper in one o" them buildings up ahead who"s a h.e.l.l of a shot. Ain"t n.o.body been able to cipher out just where he"s at, but he done blew the heads off three of our boys already today."
The closer to the front Schlieffen got, the deeper the trenches grew. That hadn"t helped the luckless three the soldier had mentioned, but it did offer their comrades some protection. The German military attache pondered as he lifted his feet over broken bricks. The French could fight for a town tooth and nail in the same way the Confederates were doing here. If they fought in several towns in a row with this bulldog tenacity, how could an army hope to defeat them without tearing itself to ribbons in the process?
Posing the question, unfortunately, looked easier than answering it.
"I think we"re here," Lieutenant Creel remarked. The only way Schlieffen could judge whether the U.S. officer was right was by how alert the riflemen here looked, and by the fact that no trenches ran forward from this transverse one.
"Where are the Confederates?" Schlieffen asked.
"If you stick your head up, you can see their line plain as day maybe fifty yards thataway," answered another soldier who looked as if he"d been here for months, not days. ""Course, if you stick your head up, they can see you, too, and a couple of our fellows here"ll have to lug you back to the Ohio feet first." He studied Schlieffen. "You"re the oldest d.a.m.n private I ever did see."
"I am the German military attache, here to learn what I can of how you are fighting this war," Schlieffen explained.
"Ah. I got you." The soldier nodded knowingly. "That"s why this here baby lieutenant is taking care of you "stead of the other way round."
No German officer would for an instant have tolerated such insolence, even if offered only indirectly. All Creel did was grin and shrug and look sheepish. Schlieffen had already seen that standards of discipline were lax in America. He had heard that was even more true in the CSA than in the USA. If that was so, he wondered how the Confederates could have any standards of discipline whatever.
He shrugged. Except as data, standards of discipline in American troops, U.S. or C.S., were not his problem-unless, of course, they made the men fight less well. For reasons he did not fully grasp, that was not the case. Had it been so, the soldiers here would not have performed so steadily and so bravely in a battle waged under conditions more appalling than any he had known in Europe.
And now that he was here at the front to see them fight, he discovered that, like a man who had wandered down to sit in the first row of seats at a theater, he was too close to the action to get a good view of it. Off to his right, the rifle fire, which had been intermittent, suddenly picked up. He couldn"t look to see what was going on there, not unless he wanted to get killed. All he could do was listen.
"I think they drove us back a bit," said the soldier who"d spoken before. "Hope they paid high for it."