time or two. The special announcements they handed out weren’t good news, not if you backed the Entente.
He didn’t get the chance to learn Briggs’ opinion of his guess; he had to hurry off to form up outside his own harsh, chilly building, a good ways away from where the Navy man was holding forth. The uniforms he and his comrades in misery wore would have given a Confederate drill sergeant a fit, but the ranks the men formed were as neat and orderly as anything that sergeant could have wanted.
“What do you reckon this is?” Jasper Jenkins asked, taking his place beside Bartlett.
“Dunno,” Reggie told his friend. “I hope it’s that we’ve had a couple more escapes, and they’re gonna make the rest of us work harder on account of that. I don’t mind paying the price they put on it. Worth it, you ask me.”
“Yeah, that’d be good,” Jenkins agreed. “They haven’t figured out that we’re gonna keep on tryin’ to break out o’ here no matter what they do. Only a fool’d want to stay, and that’s a fact.”
A U.S. captain strode importantly to the front of the prisoners’ formation. He unfolded a sheet of paper and read from it in a loud, harsh voice: “The Imperial German government, the loyal ally of the United States, has announced the capture of the city of Verdun, the French having evacuated the said city after being unable in six weeks of battle to withstand the might of German arms. Victory shall be ours! Dismissed!”
The neat ranks of prisoners broke up into pockets of chattering men. Jasper Jenkins tugged at Bartlett’s sleeve. “Hey, Reggie, where’s this Vair-done place at?” he asked. Before the war, he probably would have asked the same thing about Houston or Nashville or Charleston; his horizon had been limited to his farm and the small town where he sold his crops and bought what little he couldn’t raise for himself.
Reggie could have done better at the geography of the Confederate States. When it came to foreign countries, even foreign countries to which the CSA was allied…“I dunno, not exactly,” he admitted. “Somewhere in France, it has to be, and I reckon somewhere near Germany, or the Huns wouldn’t have been fighting for it. Past that, though, I can’t tell you.”
“Damnyankees sound like losin’ it’s about two steps from the end o’ the world for the Frenchies,” Jenkins said.
“I know they do,” Reggie answered, “but you’ve got to remember two things. First one is, for all you know, they’re lying just to get us downhearted. Second one is, even if they’re not, I expect they’re making it out to be more important than it really is. What are we going to do, call ’em liars?”
“They’re damnyankees-of course they’re liars,” Jenkins said, as if stating a law of nature. “You got a good way of lookin’ at things, pal. Thanks.” He went off, whistling a dirty song.
Having made his friend happy, Reggie discovered he was unhappy himself: Jenkins had made his bump of curiosity itch. He went off looking for Senior Lieutenant Briggs. The naval officer being an educated man, he would be the one to know where Verdun was and what its fall meant.
He found Briggs without much trouble, then wished he hadn’t. The Navy man sat on the ground in front of his barracks, head in hands, the picture of misery. Bartlett didn’t think the news the Yankees had announced could do that to a man, and wondered if Briggs had just got word his brother had been killed or his sweetheart had married somebody else.
But when he asked what the matter was, Briggs, like Poe’s raven, spoke one word and nothing more: “Verdun.”
“Sir?” Reggie said. Losing one town didn’t sound like that big a catastrophe to him. The Confederacy had lost a good many towns, all along the border, but was still very much in the fight.
“Verdun,” Briggs repeated, and climbed heavily to his feet. “From everything I heard, the French were swearing they’d defend the place to the last man. Now they’ve pulled back instead. The Germans have hit ’em such a lick, they couldn’t afford to keep on fighting where they were, not if they wanted to hang on. Best they think they can do now, looks like, is make the Huns pay such a price for the land they get that they decide it’s not worth the cost.”
“That’s not so bad,” Reggie began, but then corrected himself: “It’s not so good, either. The Germans, they’re inside France, and the French, they don’t have any soldiers inside Germany.”
“Now you’re getting the picture,” Briggs agreed. “Same sort of picture we’ve got over here, too-a goddamn ugly one.”
“Yes, sir.” Reggie tried to look on the bright side: “We’ve still got us Washington.”
“For now,” the Navy man said-the report from France seemed to have taken all the wind from his sails. “I tell you this, though, Bartlett: our country is going to need every man it can lay its hands on if we’re going to give the American Huns what they deserve.” He paused to let that sink in, then added in a low voice, “It is the positive duty of every prisoner of war to try to escape.”
Reggie felt a sudden hollow in the pit of his stomach having nothing to do with the hunger that never left. “The Yankees can shoot you if they catch you trying to escape,” he remarked. “They catch you after you’ve got out, they can pretty much do what they want to you.” Under the laws of war, Confederate guards had the same rights with U.S. prisoners, but he didn’t dwell on that.
Briggs just nodded, as if he’d remarked on the weather. “If we once get out, we can get away. We wouldn’t be like Frenchmen stuck in the middle of Germany. We speak the same language as the Yankees.”
“Not just the same language,” Reggie objected. “They talk ugly.”
“I think so, too,” Briggs said. “But I know how they talk and how it’s different from the way we talk. I can teach you. Come with me.” The last three words had the snap of an order. Bartlett followed him into the barracks. The senior lieutenant picked up an object made of galvanized sheet iron and walked across the room with it, asking, “What am I doing?” as he walked.
“Why, you’re toting that pail, sir.” Reggie stated the obvious.
But Briggs shook his head. “That’s what I’d be doing in the CSA,” he said. “If I’m doing it in the USA, I’m carrying this bucket. You see?”
“Yes, sir,” Bartlett said, and he did see. For that last part of the sentence, Briggs hadn’t sounded like a Confederate at all. He’d not only chosen different words, he’d sort of pinched his mouth up, so all the vowel sounds were somehow sharper. “How’d you do that?”
“Got started in theatricals at the Naval Academy down in Mobile,” Briggs answered. “If we can get outside the wire, it’ll come in handy. Like I say, I can teach you. Do you want to learn? Do you want to do the other things you’ll have to do to get outside the wire?”
It was a good question. If he stayed here, Reggie could sit out the war, if not in comfort, at least in security. If he tried to escape, he guaranteed himself all the risks involved with Yankee guards and patrols. If he managed to evade them and got back to the CSA, what would happen next? He knew exactly what would happen: they’d pat him on the back, grant him a little leave, and then hand him a new uniform and a Tredegar and put him back in the line. Hadn’t he had enough of that for a lifetime?
“I’m carrying the bucket,” he said, trying to pronounce the words as Briggs had. He wasn’t getting them right. He could hear that.
“Listen.” Briggs repeated the phrase. Bartlett tried it again. “Better,” the Navy man said. Reggie didn’t know exactly how he’d agreed to try to escape from the prisoner-of-war camp, but, by the time he left Briggs’ barracks, he had no doubt he’d done just that.
“Closing time, gentlemen,” Nellie Semphroch said as the clock in the coffeehouse finished striking nine. When none of the Confederate officers-or the Washingtonians who’d grown rich dealing with them-showed any sign of being ready to leave, she added, “I’m following the regulations you people set down. You wouldn’t want me to break your own rules, would you?”
A plump, gray-haired colonel who did not look to be the sort for late night adventures rose from his chair, saying, “We must set an example for the lovely ladies here.” He tossed a half-dollar down on the table and walked out into the night.
With him taking the lead, the rest of the men and the handful of women-
“Ma, you keep doin’ things like that, he won’t come back no more,” Edna said, gathering up cups and saucers and plates and tips, some in scrip, some in good silver money.
“God, I hope he doesn’t,” Nellie said. “He’s not here for the coffee and victuals. He’s here because he’s all
