* * * Why did I ever decide to go to Rita"s wedding? Elizabeth thought as she saw the latest effort of the 1st Rail Company (Narrow Gauge tactical) of the new U.S. Army. First Lieutenant Elizabeth Pitre was not a happy camper on this crisp September afternoon in 1633. She was a "volunteer" for this project by being in the right place at the wrong time. When she was stressed, the "Dis, dat, dese, dose, and dem" of a New Orleans" childhood came out.
"What da h.e.l.l kind of goat rope organization do I have here," she muttered to Chief Schwartz. It wasn"t that she didn"t understand the importance of her job. She had been perfectly happy as an MP platoon leader and was in line for command of the next MP Company to be organized.
Elizabeth was looking at a derailed train consisting of a garden tractor locomotive and two narrow gauge flatcars. The flatcars were about twenty-feet long and looked like half-sized versions of standard gauge cars.
"First Sergeant!" Elizabeth called, "Get the train back on the rails, bring the track laying crews back, and let"s get ready to go home. We"ll do the after action review before we head back.
"Chief, is it what I think?" Elizabeth asked.
"Yes ma"am, another case of not leveling the roadbed enough," the chief said, "but the rails didn"t break or spread this time and we laid a mile and a half of railway in six hours."
Elizabeth merely shook her head and walked off. Six hours of wasted work. Well, maybe not wasted . . .
they were getting a better feel for what they could or couldn"t do. They were learning what they needed to fix and what wouldn"t work. She thought about the two months it took to figure out that they needed more than two drive wheels on a locomotive.
At the end of the tracks she arrived at the site of the derailment. Three men were righting the lawn tractor locomotive, with another sitting nearby holding his leg. "Y"all okay, Sergeant Hatfield?" she asked.
"Yes ma"am", he answered, "Just a little shook up. Toeffel twisted his ankle when he was thrown off the
flatcar, though."
Elizabeth looked at the now dented tractor. "Hooah. Third time this week. What do you think caused it this time? Chief Schwartz thinks it"s because the roadbed isn"t level enough. Why do you think it happened?"
Sergeant Hatfield scratched his head and thought for a couple of seconds. "Mr. Schwartz is the railway expert, but I think if the tractor was heavier it would stay on these uneven rails. This locomotive should be heavier anyway, ma"am. Let me weld some seats over the front wheels and have two more men ride
there to test it?"
"You might be onto something, Sergeant Hatfield. We"ll try it tomorrow. At least we already have the
track in place. Do you think the track can handle the additional weight?" Elizabeth remembered only too well the experiments to come up with strap rail before they found the dog hole mines.
"I think so, ma"am. These rails will hold a lot more weight than the strap rail they are playing with on the
standard gauge lines so a couple of hundred extra pounds on a tractor should be all right."
"Well, by the time you get this turned around and back on the tracks, everyone else should be here."
Elizabeth walked farther down the tracks to see what the laying crew was up to. Sergeant Torbert had a platoon of new German recruits working on clearing the route and laying prefabricated track sections.
Sergeant Bach, who was also the bandleader, was there in his role as the platoon sergeant of the wire platoon. First Sergeant Plotz and the two were already discussing the events of the day.
"We were very lucky today. We didn"t have a lot of clearing to do," Sergeant Torbert said. "If we"re
going to lay track in the woods, I"m either going to need a lot more people or equipment. I"d really like to have three or four chain saws. I"ll talk to my brother tonight to see what he has hidden in his barn that we might be able to repair."
"Yeah, you got a lot of track laid, but you have to be more careful. It derailed again about half a mile down the track," First Sergeant Plotz replied.
"Afternoon, ma"am," Sergeant Torbert said as he saw Elizabeth approach.
"It"d be a lot better if we could keep the train on the tracks," Elizabeth said. She greeted her sergeants personally and then said, "You done good, Sergeant Torbert."
Once all the personnel were a.s.sembled, Elizabeth began, "Okay, we got a mile and a half of track laid in six hours, but the train derailed. Sergeant Hatfield thinks he can do something with more weight on the locomotive, but the chief thinks it is because of roadbeds not being level enough. We also need to be faster in laying the prefabricated track. We need to work out better procedures for using other troops when they are available."
"Ma"am," one of the privates said, "we can dig fast but we need some sort of tool to tell us when the
ground we"re digging is level."
Sergeant Torbert said, "That"s right ma"am. In fact we need some sort of gadget we can use to find the most level place so we won"t have to dig as much."
Elizabeth noted this as a project for the chief and Sergeant Hatfield.
Sergeant Bach said, "Perhaps my wire teams could be of some help, too. If we know where the track is
going to be laid, we could go out and find the best places while we lay wire. That way you already have the telegraph line in before the track is laid."
"Good idea, Sergeant Bach. Anything else?"
Her soldiers were tired and hungry and just wanted to get back to their billets. It had been a long day.
"Top, lets get our troops back to the train and get them home. It"s been a long day and I still have to meet with the regimental commander to back-brief him," she told First Sergeant Plotz.
* * * Elizabeth returned to the Hatfield farm after meeting with the staff of the 1st Grantville Volunteer Regiment (Hans Richter). The one bright spot of a disappointing day was that there were now more soldiers cross trained in track laying who could help her when the word came. She expected that word sooner rather than later.She looked at the soldiers lined up at the mess railcar and felt a small twinge of satisfaction. Well, that at least is something I did that turned out all right, she thought. The kitchen car had three gas burners designed from a picture of her grandfather"s crawfish boiler. It was also set up so a griddle could be used for breakfast cooking. Elizabeth loved food like only someone who was born in New Orleans could. That, combined with her father"s continual carping about quality of military cooking, made her very interested in what she and her soldiers would eat. She detested the blandness of their diet and she normally carried a bottle of hot sauce everywhere. But supplies were running out and she kept what she had left for special occasions.
"Well, young Lieutenant, I"ve a treat for you tonight," Mess Sergeant Liesel Schmidt told her. "I was
able to get hold of some fish for you today."
"Is there enough for the troops, too?" Elizabeth asked.
"Yes ma"am." Liesel knew that the only way Elizabeth would eat was after every soldier in the unit was
fed first. "Corporal Rau was practicing with some of the new hand grenades and he accidentally threw
one into the river. We have enough fish for a couple of days."
"I bet," Elizabeth said, restraining the urge to chuckle. She had too many relatives who thought game and fish limits were strictly advisory. Her father often said, with a big grin on his face, that he thought the reason her grandfather made sergeant was because of his skill in doing such things as fishing with hand grenades. "Sergeant Schmidt, what am I going to do with you?" Elizabeth asked.
"Well someday, you"re going to teach me to cook this gumbo you"re always talking about," Sergeant
Schmidt replied.
"Tell you what, good Sergeant, I"ll write out a copy of a sausage gumbo recipe off my computer and let"s see what we can do next week. I"ve seen some good-looking venison sausage we should be able to use."
Elizabeth was thankful that she had her laptop with her when she made the trip to Grantville. On it was most of her life in one form or another.
When she arrived at the company"s orderly room, Elizabeth was surprised to see that the chief and her sergeants weren"t wrapped up in their usual evening argument about what went wrong and how to fix it.
Normally Chief Schwartz and Sergeant Hatfield would be locked in a tooth and nail fight about what should be done. Elizabeth was in no mood to referee tonight. She just wanted to eat and go back to her room.
To her surprise, there was no argument tonight. Elizabeth soon found out why. Her old college roommates, Mary Pat Flanagan and Caroline Platzer were waiting for her. With the support of the warrant officers and NCO"s, they virtually dragged her to the Thuringen Gardens for junior officers"
night.
Elizabeth went off with her friends and drank herself into oblivion. She ranted and raved the whole time about her frustrations over the last year, beginning with her belief that she was shanghaied into the railways.
Elizabeth got so drunk that she had to be carried home by First Sergeant Plotz and Sergeant Hatfield.
Her friend Caroline put her to bed. As soon as she was carried out of the Thuringen Gardens, Frank Jackson"s phone began to ring.
Thankfully, Diane Jackson was the voice of common sense and kept Frank from doing anything rash.
Diane went over to Elizabeth"s quarters and spoke to her first.
About an hour and a half after meeting Diane, Elizabeth appeared at the army headquarters in Grantville wearing the one set of U.S. Army battledress she saved for special occasions. She was thankful she left her dirty uniforms in her car before she went to Rita"s wedding. But the rubber riding boots bore no comparison to the jump boots she had left behind.
As Elizabeth waited in General Jackson"s outer office she was surprised to realize she really wanted to stay with the railroad project. When she was called into the inner office she found General Jackson, not behind his desk as she expected, but looking out the window.
"Come here, Lieutenant, look out there. What do you see?" Jackson asked.
As Elizabeth looked out all she saw was the typical scene of a Grantville street, people from the twentieth century and people from the seventeenth century, to judge by their clothing, going about their business, many of them riding the new streetcars. And she knew many would be speaking in the mixed
German-English patois that was becoming the common street language of Grantville, and to a certain extent of the new U.S. Army.
"Just people, sir. It looks busy."