Walk in Hell

being good combat soldiers. They seemed very much at home squatting by a campfire, sketching lines in the dirt with a stick to improvise a map.

“I’m glad both of you understand my German,” Morrell said in that language. “We all study it at West Point, of course, but I’ve used it more for reading than speaking since.”

“It is not so bad, not so bad at all,” said Major Eduard Dietl, the Austrian of the duo: a dark man, thin to scrawniness, with an impressive beak of a nose. “Your teacher was a Bavarian, I would say.”

“Yes, that’s so,” Morrell agreed. “Captain Steinhart was born in Munich.”

“Here in the United States, I feel surrounded by Bavarians,” said the German officer, Captain Heinz Guderian. He was shorter and squatter than Dietl, with a round, clever face. He went on, “The U.S. uniform is almost the exact color of those the Bavarians wear.” His own tunic and trousers were standard German Imperial Army field- gray, a close match for Dietl’s pike-gray Austrian uniform. Neither differed much in cut from that which Morrell wore; the German uniform had served as the model for those of the other two leading Alliance powers.

Dietl sipped coffee from a tin cup. “This is such a-spacious land,” he said, waving his hand. “Oh, I know I think any land spacious after Heinz and I crossed the Atlantic by submersible, but the train ride across the USA and up into Canada to reach the front here…amazing.”

“He is right,” Guderian agreed. “West of Russia, Europe has no such vast, uncrowded sweeps of territory.”

“And these mountains.” Dietl waved again, now at the Canadian Rockies. “The Carpathians are as nothing beside them.” He spoke with the air of a man accustomed to comparing peaks one to another: unsurprising, since he wore the Edelweiss badge of a mountain soldier himself. Sighing, he went on, “Almost I wish the Italians had thrown away their neutrality. They’ve always wanted to; everyone knows it. But they never have dared. No nerve, damn them. Fighting in the Alps would be like this, I think.”

“Fighting is not a sport. Fighting is for a purpose,” Guderian said seriously. “The idea would be to break out of the mountains and into Venetia and Lombardy below-if there were a war, of course.”

Morrell thought that would be more than Austria-Hungary could manage, still fighting the Russians and the Serbs as she was. But he held his peace. Dietl struck him as a man like himself, happiest in the field. Maybe Guderian had worn red stripes on his trousers a little too long.

And then the German officer said, “Besides, you can’t conduct a proper pursuit in the mountains. Get around the enemy and smash him up-that’s what the whole business is about.” Morrell revised his earlier assessment.

Dietl said, “The problem of pursuit is the basic problem of this entire war. The foe retreats through territory not yet devastated, and toward his own railheads, while you advance over country that has been fought in, and away from your own sources of supply. No wonder we measure most advances in meters, not kilometers.”

“Barrels help this problem by making breakthroughs possible once more,” Guderian said.

“Barrels help, but they’re not enough, not by themselves,” Morrell said. “They’re too slow-how can you have a breakthrough at a slow walk? How can you outrun the retreating enemy when you’re not running? Once the barrels force a hole in the enemy’s defenses, we need something faster to go through the hole and create the confusion that really kills.”

Guderian smiled. “Some people would say cavalry is the answer.”

“Some people will say the earth is flat, too,” Morrell said. He made a quick sketch of a sailing ship falling off the edge. The German and Austrian observers laughed. He went on, “With machine guns and rifles, cavalry’s no answer at all. We need better machines, faster machines.”

“I can see why they called you to Philadelphia, Major,” Guderian said. “You have the mind of a General Staff officer. You impose yourself on the conditions around you; you do not let them impose themselves on you.”

“Is that what I do?” Morrell said, faintly bemused. He was a man without strong philosophical bent; his chief concern was to hit the enemy as hard as he could and as often as he could, until he didn’t need to hit him any more.

Someone on the Canuck side of the line had the same idea. Canadian artillery, which had been quiet for the previous several days, suddenly sprang to life. Morrell threw himself flat on the ground. So did Dietl. So did Guderian; he might have spent most of his time in amongst the maps, but he knew how to handle himself in the open air, too.

Along with the bombardment came a great crackle of rifle fire off to Morrell’s right. Trained on the British model, the Canucks made formidable riflemen. They were quick and accurate, and every shot of theirs counted. And, by the sound of what was going on over there, they had found the weak spot in Morrell’s line. He’d posted one company rather thinly over a long stretch of woods he’d reckoned almost impassable. The Canadians seemed intent on showing why almost was a word that didn’t belong in war-planners’ dictionaries.

Guderian and Dietl were both looking at him. All right, we have come into the field to observe the American Army and to observe this man: he could all but hear what they were thinking. He now finds himself in difficulty. How does he respond?

“Runners!” Morrell shouted, and the men came over to him: some running, some crawling along the ground, for shells were still dropping thick and fast. An American machine gun started banging away, there on the right, and he let out the briefest sigh of relief. That was where he’d posted Sergeant Finkel’s squad, and the Canadians would have a devil of a time shifting him if he didn’t feel like being shifted. And sure enough, shouts of dismay said the Canuck advance had suddenly run into a roadblock.

Morrell snapped orders: “Half of Captain Spadinger’s company to pull out of line and contain the damage. The same for the machine-gun company from Captain Hall’s company. The rest of the units not under immediate assault will counterattack, aiming to pinch off the neck of the Canadian advance. I will lead this counterattack personally.” The runners hurried away. Morrell smiled gaily at the observers. “Will you join me, gentlemen?”

Neither of them hesitated. Running doubled-over, ignoring his bad leg, Morrell got to Hall’s company bare moments after the runner he’d sent. The machine-gun men were already on their way off to the east, to shoot up any Canadians who burst out of those not quite impassable woods. Dietl and Guderian, both breathing hard, flopped into foxholes.

Captain Hall said, “I don’t think we’ll have any trouble holding them, sir. They can’t come too far.”

“Ich will nicht nur zu-” Morrell snarled in exasperation and switched from German to English: “I don’t want to hold them. I want to drive them back, to hurt them.” He pointed northeast.

“If their artillery is alert, they’ll slaughter us, sir,” Hall said.

“I don’t think they will be,” Morrell answered. They’d better not be. “They’ve got this bombardment laid on to cover an attack. Who’d be cuckoo enough to move forward when they’re putting pressure on us?” He didn’t give the company commander any chance to argue. He also didn’t give himself any chance to think twice. “Let’s go!” He scrambled to his feet and ran for the Canadian lines, Springfield in his hands.

His men followed, whooping like Red Indians. He’d gained them a couple of major advances toward Banff by all-out audacity; they were willing to believe he could buy them one more. For close to thirty seconds, the Canucks left behind in their trenches were too intent on their comrades’ push to pay much attention to what the Americans were doing off to the west. That was about fifteen seconds too long. Before a machine gun started mowing down the oncoming men in green-gray, they were within grenade range of its position. It fell silent. More grenades flew into the Canadian trenches. The Americans followed.

As Morrell leaped over the parapet, a Canadian aimed at him from point-blank range. He braced himself for another wound. Christ, not that leg again, he thought. I don’t want to be on crutches or in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. Blow my brains out and get it over with.

The Canuck fired. The bullet went wild, for the fellow in khaki had taken a wound of his own in the instant that he pulled the trigger. Morrell finished him with the bayonet, then looked over his shoulder to find Major Dietl there with a pistol in his hand. “Danke schon,” he said.

“Bitte,” the Austrian answered, with such Hapsburg formality that Morrell expected him to click his heels. He didn’t. He leaped down into the trench instead. Cleaning it of Canadians was the ugly business it always seemed to be. Dietl held his own. At one point, though, he observed, “These foes of yours are in greater earnest than the Russians and have discipline of a sort the Serbs have never imagined.”

“The Canadians are good soldiers,” Morrell agreed. “The Confederates, too, come to that.”

Having driven the Canucks back, his men turned their fire on the Canadian detachment that had gone ahead. Caught between two forces, some of the Canadians went down, some threw down their rifles and threw up their