column and send them plowing straight into the enemy. Everyone had told him he couldn’t do that-doctrine forbade it. He’d gone ahead and done it anyhow-and he’d forced a breakthrough where there had been no such creature in going on three years of war.
There would be considerable wailing and gnashing of teeth in Philadelphia on account of what he’d done. There already had been, in fact. Custer had rubbed the War Department’s nose in the fact that it hadn’t had the faintest idea what to do with barrels once it got them. The only way a man got away with committing such a sin was to be proved extravagantly right. Custer had done that, too.
Another reporter spoke up: “Having beaten the Rebels once in this way, General, can we lick them again?”
“We
Dowling listened to that in something close to amazement. Custer must indeed have had a surfeit of glory if he was willing to share some with generals operating on other fronts. He was, in his own way, a patriot. Maybe that accounted for it. Dowling couldn’t think of anything else that would.
“Not quite what I meant, sir,” the reporter said. “Can we here in western Tennessee strike the Confederates another blow as strong as the one we just dealt them?”
“Well, why the devil not?” Custer said grandly. The correspondents laughed and clapped their hands.
Without trying hard, Dowling could come up with half a dozen reasons why the devil not, starting with the need to refit and reinforce the barrels and ending with the geography. Breaking through on the other side of the Cumberland would be anything but easy. It wasn’t so great a river as the St. Lawrence, which had bedeviled U.S. strategy throughout the war, but it was by no means inconsiderable, either. Dowling wished Custer wouldn’t be so damned blithe and breezy. Custer’s adjutant wished any number of things about him, none of which looked like coming true.
With a sigh, Dowling turned away from Custer. In doing so, he bumped into a U.S. officer of less exalted rank. “Beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “Didn’t see you were there till too late.”
“No damage done, Major,” Lieutenant Colonel Irving Morrell said. Dowling nodded his thanks. Having led the column of barrels that made the breakthrough, Morrell was in very good odor at First Army headquarters. “I’m glad I found you,” he went on now. “I have an idea I want to put to you.”
“Yes, sir. I’m listening,” Dowling said. Even though Morrell stood perfectly still before him, the man seemed to quiver slightly, as if he were a telegraph wire with a great many messages speeding back and forth on it. Dowling suspected he didn’t have
“Major,” Morrell said, “I think I know how we can secure a bridgehead on the far side of the Cumberland.”
“You have my attention, sir,” Dowling said. That was surely the problem Custer would face when he was done celebrating the victory he’d just achieved. “Tell me how you would go about it.” Dowling did not say he would give Morrell Custer’s ear if he liked the idea. A man full of so many ideas would be able to figure that out for himself.
And Morrell started to talk. He wasn’t a particularly fluent talker, but he was extraordinarily lucid. He had no bluster in him. After years at General Custer’s side, that in itself made listening to him a pleasure for Dowling. It was no wonder, the adjutant thought, that
Morrell also knew what he was talking about. Again, Dowling suppressed any invidious comparisons with the general commanding First Army. Morrell knew what resources First Army had, and what reinforcements it was likely to receive. He knew what part of those could be committed to his scheme, and he had as good a notion as a U.S. soldier could of what the CSA could bring to bear against them.
When he was through, Dowling paid him a high compliment: “This is no humbug.” He followed it with one he reckoned even higher: “Anyone would think you were still on the General Staff.”
But Morrell pursed his lips and shook his head. “I enjoy serving in the field too much to be happy in Philadelphia, Major.”
That he had in common with Custer, at least before Custer had got old and plump and fragile. Dowling had questioned a great many things about Custer, but never his courage. That courage was one of the things that led him to go after the enemy piledriver fashion. It had led Lieutenant Colonel Morrell in a different direction.
Abner Dowling glanced back toward Custer. His illustrious superior had begun to run out of bombast; some of the correspondents were drifting off to write up their stories and wire them to their newspapers or magazines. Dowling didn’t feel any great compunction about leading Morrell through the knot of men around Custer and saying, “Excuse me, General, but this officer would like your opinion on something.”
Custer looked miffed; he hadn’t been completely finished. But then he recognized the man at Dowling’s side. “Ah-Lieutenant Colonel Morrell, who so valiantly headed the column of barrels.” Again, he shared glory: no matter how brightly a lieutenant colonel might be burnished, he would never outshine a lieutenant general. Custer waved to the reporters. “Go on, boys. Business calls. Any time so gallant a soldier as this brave officer seeks my ear, you may rest assured I am pleased to give it to him.”
That made the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate pay more attention to Morrell than they would have otherwise. A photographer snapped his picture. A sketch artist worked on a likeness till Custer waved again, imperiously this time. The fellow closed the notebook and went off with Morrell only half immortalized.
“Now, then,” Custer said, “what can I do for you, Lieutenant Colonel? I trust it is a matter of some importance, or Major Dowling would not have interrupted me in the course of my remarks.” He gave his adjutant a veiled stare to let him know that was not forgotten.
Dowling had no trouble bearing up under Custer’s stares, veiled or not. Sometimes he did have trouble not laughing in Custer’s face, but that was a different story. Anyhow, veiled stare notwithstanding, he thought Custer would forget his pique this time. With a nod to Morrell, he said, “Go ahead, sir.”
Morrell went ahead. Even more precisely than he had for Dowling, he set forth his idea for Custer. Dowling intently watched the general commanding First Army, wondering how the old boy would take it-it wasn’t his usual cup of tea, nor anything close.
Custer didn’t show much while Morrell was talking. How many hours on garrison duty here and there in the West had he spent behind a pile of poker chips? Enough to learn to hold his face still, anyway.
When Morrell was done, Custer stroked his peroxided mustache. “I shall have to give this further consideration, Lieutenant Colonel, but I can say now that you have plainly done some hard thinking here. Some solid thinking, too, unless I am much mistaken.”
“Thank you, sir.” Morrell had the sense to stop there, not to push Custer for a greater commitment.
“Shall I begin converting this to a plan of operation, sir?” Dowling asked.
“Yes, why not?” Custer said, artfully careless.
VIII
“All the news is bad these days,” Arthur McGregor complained to his wife over a supper plate of fried chicken and fried potatoes.
“More Yankee lies, I expect,” Maude answered. “They don’t let any of the truth get loose. Remember how many times their papers have said Toronto has fallen, or Paris to the Germans?”
“I don’t think it’s like that this time,” McGregor said. “Those other stories, you could tell they were made up. What we hear now-that Nashville place getting knocked to bits, and the Americans pushing ahead on the border farther east…those are the kinds of things that really do happen in a war. They’re the kinds of things you have to believe when you read them.”
“But if you do believe them, it means we’re losing the war,” his daughter Julia said.
“It means our allies are in trouble, anyhow,” McGregor said gravely. He bit at the inside of his lower lip before
