Breakthroughs

was telling the whole truth. It sounded no different from his lies.

Hannebrink didn’t answer. He waited while his men fixed the punctures, which they handled with practiced efficiency. Then all the Yank soldiers piled into the motorcars and drove off.

McGregor waited till they’d left his land. Then he walked into the house. His wife was furious. “They turned everything upside down and inside out, those dirty-” She hissed like a cat with its fur puffed out, then went on, “I wish I was a man, so I could say what I think.”

“Never mind,” McGregor said, which made Maude hiss again. Ignoring her, he went over to Mary. He knelt down and kissed her on the forehead. “This is for what you did, and for being clever enough to use a nail and not a knife.” Then he spanked her, hard enough to make her yelp in both surprise and pain. “And this is to remind you not to do it again, no matter how much you want to.”

His younger daughter stared. “How did you know it was me, Pa? You were inside the barn with the Yankees. You couldn’t see it.”

“How did I know? Because I’m your father, that’s how. This time, I’m proud of you, you little sneak. Some things you can only get away with once, though. This is one of them. Remember it.”

“Yes, Pa,” Mary said demurely, so demurely that McGregor could only hope she’d paid some attention-a little attention-to what he’d told her.

The big guns rumbled and roared. The bombardment of Nashville itself hadn’t stopped since the U.S. guns got close enough to reach the city. Lieutenant Colonel Irving Morrell had long since got used to that rumble from the western horizon.

Closer, but still west of his position on the northern bank of the Cumberland, another bombardment lay its thunder over the more distant rumble. For the past six days, U.S. artillery had been hammering the Confederate positions south of the river with high explosives and gas. Bombing aeroplanes had added the weight of their munitions to the unending gunfire. Fighting scouts swooped low, strafing the Rebel’s trenches with their machine guns.

General Custer could hardly have made it more obvious where he intended to throw First Army across the Cumberland. He had even been rash enough to let them get glimpses of the barrels he was gathering for his frontal blow.

And the Confederates, having such generosity bestowed upon them, were not slow to take advantage of it. Though the U.S. artillery hampered their movements, they brought reinforcements forward. Their own guns pounded away at the force Custer had assembled. Their aeroplanes were outnumbered, but still stung the U.S. soldiers waiting on Custer’s order to cross the river.

Irving Morrell looked west with benign approval.

Beside him, Colonel Ned Sherrard pulled out his watch. Morrell imitated the gesture. Together, they said, “Five minutes to go.”

Sherrard put his watch back into its pocket. He said, “How does it feel to have the whole First Army moving to a scheme you thought up?”

“Ask me in a few days,” Morrell answered. “If it goes the way I hope, it’ll feel great. If it doesn’t, I’ll be so low a deep dugout will look like up to me.”

As he watched the second hand of his own watch sweep into its final minutes before the curtain went up, he realized how much he had riding on the next few days. He would soon know the answer to a question so many men ask themselves: are you really as smart as you think you are? If he was, he’d be wearing a colonel’s eagles himself soon, or maybe even a brigadier general’s single stars. If he wasn’t, he’d be a lieutenant colonel if he stayed in the Army for the next fifty years, and no one would pay any attention to him during all that time.

Compared to failure, dying on the battlefield had its attractions.

“Fifteen sec-” he started to say, and then the guns behind him, the guns that had stayed hidden under canvas and branches, the guns that had remained silent for so long while their brethren pounded the Confederates to the west, opened up with everything they had against the thinned Rebel line just east of Lakewood, Tennessee. On the far side of the Cumberland, earth leapt and danced and quivered in agony.

A flight of bombers added their explosives to the attack, as they were doing farther west. Under the cover of the bombardment, Army engineers rushed to the bank of the Cumberland and began building half a dozen pontoon bridges across the river. Everything depended on the sappers. If they could get those bridges built fast enough, the rest of Morrell’s plan would unfold as he’d designed it. If they failed, he failed with them.

He wanted to stay and watch them work. He knew what was riding on their shoulders. Already a few of them had fallen, from machine-gun fire and from shells falling too near. The rest kept on. That was their job.

Colonel Sherrard reminded him of his job: “Into the barrel, Irv. As soon as those bridges get across, we go.” Sherrard shouted at the top of his lungs, right into Morrell’s ear. Morrell barely heard him. He thought about pretending he didn’t hear him so he could keep on watching the sappers, but knew Sherrard was right. He trotted off toward his barrel.

Like all the others waiting to cross the Cumberland, it had come here by night, to keep prying Rebel observation aeroplanes from spotting it. Like the artillery concentrated by similarly stealthy means, it had hidden under canvas since arriving. Now the canvas was off. The columns of barrels were ready to go forward if they could. And Irving Morrell’s would go first.

He nodded to the driver, reached down and slapped the right-side engineer on the back, and then, unable to bear being cooped up in this great iron box, opened the top hatch and stood up in the cupola. He had to watch the engineers at work. He had to watch the bridges snake across the Cumberland.

If one was wrecked, he could go with five. If two were wrecked, he could go with four. If three were wrecked, he had orders not to go, but thought he might disobey them. But all six bridges still pushed forward toward the southern bank of the spring-swollen river. General Custer’s ostentatious preparation had pulled the Confederate defenders closer to Nashville. Not many men, not many guns, were left to contest what would be the real crossing.

Riflemen and machine-gun crews in green-gray rushed to the ends of the extending bridges as they neared the far bank of the Cumberland. They started blazing away at the Confederates closest to the river, men who already risked their lives thanks to U.S. artillery fire.

A green flare-one of the bridges had reached the southern bank. A moment later, another one burned in the sky. The rest of the engineering crews worked like madmen. The sappers were as fiercely competitive as any soldiers God ever made. A third green flare blazed from the southern bank of the Cumberland.

Morrell ducked down into the cupola. “Fire ’em up!” he shouted. “We’re going.” The twin White truck engines bellowed to life. The iron deck, patterned to keep feet from slipping, shivered and rattled and shook under his boots. Maybe he was jumping the gun, but he didn’t think so. One of those last three bridges would surely succeed in making it across, and even if it didn’t…He stood up again, to stare across the Cumberland.

There! The fourth green flare. Now he could go with no reservations whatever. Some of the other barrel commanders were also standing up in their cupolas. He waved to them. They waved back. He’d also detailed a soldier with a hammer to run down each line of barrels and give the side of every machine in it a good, solid clang to signal that action was at hand.

More engines coughed and belched and caught. Even as Morrell stooped down into the cupola once more, the sixth and last green flare rose into the sky. He grinned. So far, everything was perfect. The way to keep it perfect was to push hard, never let the Confederates have a chance to build a defensive line of the sort they’d held so well for so long north of Nashville.

“Off balance,” he muttered to himself, not that anyone else in the barrel could have heard him even had he shouted. “Got to keep them off balance.” He pointed straight ahead, index finger extended. Forward.

Forward the barrel went, adding the clatter and rattle of the tracks to the engines’ flatulent roar. Morrell stood up again. The driver had his louvers open. He could see as much as he ever could, which wasn’t a great deal. But it was enough to let him get onto the bridge over which he would cross the Cumberland.

The bridge dipped and swayed a little under the weight of the barrel, but held. At the machine’s best pace- about that of a trotting soldier in full kit-it waddled over the bridge. Barrels also crossed on two more bridges. On the other three, infantry marched at double time.