Hells march, p.20
Hell's March, page 20
“I thought she was advisin’ Alcaldesa Periz. What the hell’s she doin’ here?” Anson growled.
“Helpin’ Dr. Newlin, o’ course. An’ come to see you.”
Dr. Francis Newlin, a somewhat scruffy, scrawny, and bespectacled civilian physician, had been engaged to look after the health of the 3rd Pennsylvania Volunteers so they wouldn’t be entirely at the mercy of poorly trained army surgeons. As it turned out, on this world, there wasn’t a lot he could teach the Ocelomeh and Uxmalo healers. They not only had a wealth of knowledge about terrible wounds (Newlin had never personally treated a man who’d had his leg bitten off and been thrown a fair distance) but had also developed some astonishing antisepsis medications (though sadly still not as effective as a hint of what the Mi-Anakka once had and couldn’t replace). Newlin had seen men shot through the body already returned to active service, and far more had survived amputations than he ever would’ve imagined possible. Just as important, local healers understood how to treat or prevent various tropical fevers they insisted were transmitted by mosquitoes, of all things, and those sorts of ailments were almost unknown in the army. When heading to Mexico with the 3rd, Newlin had resigned himself to the fact that more men would die of disease than enemy bullets. That was just the way of things. Not here, at least not with this army, and that by itself almost doubled its combat power.
In any event, with his medical skills eclipsed by his Ocelomeh and Uxmalo colleagues, Newlin fell back on his training as a chemist, something the locals couldn’t compete with. He’d helped organize the medical effort on a large scale, something the locals didn’t have much experience with either, but focused on tinkering with less curative chemical compounds, like fulminate of mercury, that would aid the war effort in other ways.
Anson loosed an exasperated sigh, then cocked his head to the side as more cannon sounded and 2nd Division’s musketry increased. “Won’t be long now. Mr. Lara, you and Mr. Burton ease over the crest an’ have a look. Captain Beeryman, let’s finish combinin’ our commands an’ get ready for our little chore. Lancers first? That oughta scare hell out of ’em.”
* * *
“Commence independent fire!” roared Captain Hudgens to his battery.
“You heard him,” First Sergeant Petty growled loudly behind his section. “Let them devils have it!”
“Load solid shot!” shouted Corporal Hanny Cox, back at Private Apo Tuin, his Number Six behind the horses and ammunition limber. Another young Uxmalo named Kini Hau, the Number Five, had been standing by Hanny and now trotted back to repeat the command, while Apo—who heard it fine—opened the heavy, copper-covered lid of the chest in front of him and transferred the appropriate round to a large leather haversack carried by Billy Randall (Number Seven). He brought it briskly forward and stopped by Hanny’s side. Hanny raised the flap and saw the shiny new six-pound copper roundshot strapped to a lathe-turned wooden sabot with a tightly woven woolen powder bag tied to its base. Seeing the tall Private McDonough raise his staff and rap the muzzle of the 6pdr with the rammer head, he put his hand on Billy’s back and urged him forward before casting a quick glance back at Apo.
Ordinarily, a Six was a sergeant and “chief of the piece,” but for reasons First Sergeant Petty hadn’t made plain, the Number Two gun’s sergeant went to the 3rd Pennsylvania, with his nearsighted gunner and a third of the crew. That let Hanny bring most of his infantry squad over with Sergeant Visser’s blessing. He had friends around him, and that mattered a lot. Apo was diligent and made a fine Six from a supervisory standpoint, carefully guarding the ammunition and watching the crew like a hawk to prevent accidents. McDonough was a perfect Number One, whose duty in front of the gun, actually loading it while most exposed to an enemy, probably required a man with his brand of grouchy steadiness. Billy and Kini came with him as well, but the rest of his squad was still learning their jobs and were back with the caisson while the remnant of the gun’s previous crew filled the other posts.
But as gunner and chief, Hanny had more responsibility than First Sergeant Petty led him to expect. Not only did he have to brush up on his duties as gunner, memorize the tables of fire, and in general get more comfortable with something he’d had only limited instruction in, he had to learn Colonel Cayce’s modifications to the 1845 manual well enough to train his squad to work seamlessly with the others, some of whom were still somewhat demoralized. Worst of all, in a way, he was only an indifferent horseman to begin with. Normally, the chiefs of the piece and its caisson rode their own horses, and half the detachment rode replacement animals. Due to the shortage of horses and the long trek they’d embarked on with minimal forage, Hudgens’s battery wasn’t as well mounted as “proper” flying artillery. To Private McDonough’s short-lived glee, the entire detachment did indeed ride something, but no one had a horse to himself. In another departure from the manual, all six horses pulling the gun and limber, and indeed the following caisson carriage, had riders sitting on them. Drivers—like Hanny had to learn to be, though he was on the rearmost horse closest to the limber—still rode the lead, or left-hand horses, and there were a lot of bashed knees and sore legs until the men and animals learned to work as a team and anticipate one another’s movements. Everyone else rode the limber (ammunition) chests, three on each one with arms interlocked and only a folded canvas gun tarp to cushion their hips and spines from the jarring, tooth-rattling ride. So there were nine men always with a gun, theoretically ready to leap down and unlimber it and bring it into action, and fifteen more on the caisson horses and carriage, their duty to transfer ammunition forward if the primary limber ran low and serve as replacements for casualties on the gun. There were no replacement animals, however, except those that came from the same small herd all the other mounted men drew from. That meant they got those already worn-out or no one wanted to ride.
Hanny looked back to the front, saw McDonough seat the ammunition down the bore, withdraw the rammer, and step outside the wheel. The Number Three, an older man named Ricken originally from Baltimore, removed his leather-clad thumb from the vent and hurried to the handspike protruding back from the trail. Hanny stepped forward, placed his sight in the bracket screwed to the back of the breech, clapped his left hand on the cascabel, crouched alongside the long wooden trail, and snugged his chin into the gap between his thumb and fingers so he could align the front sight with the notch on the adjustable slide, already set at the appropriate elevation for the six hundred yards between the battery and the surging horde of Holcanos. He gently stroked the right side of the trail, and Private Ricken used the leverage of the handspike to shift the trail ever so slightly that direction, aiming the gun a little more to the left. Hanny then gave the elevation screw half a turn clockwise to raise his point of aim—the gun had been rolled back into battery in the deepening tracks the iron-shod wheels made in the soft, grassy topsoil with the previous shots. He finally retrieved the sight and stood straight, signaling to the rest of the crew he was satisfied.
Ricken returned to his place by the breech of the gun, pierced the powder bag inside it with a long brass “priming wire,” inserted one of the new paper “tubes” in the vent, and broke off the protruding end. They were very low on percussion primers for their Hidden’s Patent locks, and no one was sure how to make the newfangled “friction primers” few of the regular artillerymen had even heard of and fewer had seen. About a dozen women and children in Uxmal had been set to making “tubes” by treating coarse paper with gummy sap, cutting it in long strips, pressing an edge in a tray of finely ground gunpowder, then tightly rolling it into a tube a quarter inch in diameter. These were then painted with a durable shellac, both to stiffen and protect them from the elements. Breaking them exposed the powder inside and rather splayed it out, making it easier for the Number Four man to touch with the smoldering ember on the slow match inserted in his linstock. After many drill sessions, both before and after a long day’s march, all this took about fifteen seconds.
Ricken stepped outside the right wheel and jerked a nod at Hanny—who’d had him crying “ready” until Petty reminded him that was the gunner’s job. That confused and alarmed Hanny, fearing he might get excited and make the call before all the men were clear, but he did as he was told. “Ready!” he shouted, for the benefit of his own crew alone, since they were firing independently. Everyone assumed their positions, the Numbers One and Two men even with the axles leaning slightly away and covering their ears.
The Number One gun to their right suddenly fired, blowing smoke across them. Hanny jumped slightly.
“Frightened poor Corporal Hanny, we did!” cawed a familiar voice full of glee. No one was fooled by the lighthearted tone shrouding malevolent amusement.
“Shut yer gob, Hahessy, an’ clap onto them spokes,” shouted Corporal Dodd, but his voice lacked conviction. Dodd, a good gunner and chief of piece for Gun Number One, was never anything but an artilleryman. No doubt that’s why First Sergeant Petty gave him Hahessy as a Number One man. That made sense. Hahessy was big and suited the position. But though Dodd was friendly enough and welcomed Hanny and his men to the section and the battery, even helping with their training, he knew Hanny and the brutal former sergeant had a past that he didn’t want to be involved in. Most of the crew of Gun Number One seemed to feel the same, and that was starting to build resentment among the crew of Gun Number Two, even the older hands, already protective of their new gunner. It was a bad situation. Rivalries between different batteries, even sections within them was one thing, but crews of the two guns within any section had to be able to rely on each other. “Back into battery, lads,” Dodd called louder. “Swab her out an’ we’ll do ’er again!”
The smoke had largely cleared in front of Hanny now, not that it mattered. He’d simply aimed his piece into the mass of the enemy. He looked at his Number Four, Andrew Morris, an average-height, wiry man from New Jersey, gently blowing on the glowing end of his slow match. “Fire!” he called. Morris immediately arced his arm up and over the wheel, holding the linstock with the back of his hand forward, and expertly touched the slow match to the splayed end of the tube. Fire jetted up with a fwoosh! and the gun boomed and bucked, spewing orange fire and bright white smoke, the muzzle slamming down on the front of the trail between the ironbound wooden cheeks supporting the trunnions, the whole thing lurching back several yards with a clank and jangling rattle as the breech fell back on the elevation screw and brake chain jumped and swayed. The ripping-canvas sound of roundshot flying downrange was short, and Hanny didn’t see where it fell through the smoke, but even over the booming of the big 12pdrs to his left and the rumble of distant battle, he heard shrill screams. Without a word, Hanny’s crew was already rolling the gun back on the line. Once there, McDonough dipped the fouling-stained sheepskin wrapped around the opposite end of his rammer staff into the heavy iron sponge bucket on the ground under the muzzle. Deftly spinning the staff to throw off excess water, he ran it down the barrel while Ricken pressed his thumb on the vent.
“Missed the whole bunch, ye did. Seen it from here!” Hahessy taunted as he rammed a round down. “Shot plunked down in the river, most likely. Startled a fish er two.”
“Reload solid shot!” Hanny called, trying to ignore the man and keep his voice level. McDonough couldn’t do it and hoarsely shouted, “That’s a god damned lie!” shocking everyone the confirmed Calvinist had chastised for cursing in the past. He seemed unaware.
“A liar, I am, am I?” Hahessy demanded darkly, stepping back outside his wheel. “I’ll have satisfaction fer that.” Dodd hesitated in stepping forward to aim his piece, caught in the middle of the exchange and unwilling to tamp Hahessy down.
“Aye,” seethed McDonough. “Nothin’d satisfy me more!”
First Sergeant Petty strode up between the guns. “See to your duties, damn you! In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in action.” He focused on Hahessy and snapped, “You’re the turd in the puddin’ here, Private. If you don’t leave off tormentin’ better men, I’ll see you never have another satisfyin’ instant in yer’ miserable life.” Petty wasn’t half the size of the big Irishman, but didn’t show a trace of fear, deliberately emphasizing the fact Hahessy had been broken from sergeant.
Hahessy sneered at him. “You gonna have me flogged?” He shrugged. “Me back’s been scratched before.”
“You should’a been hanged. If any man in this section comes to harm because of you, I’ll see that you are.” He raised his voice to encompass them all. “An’ that goes for the rest of you! Cap’n Hudgens is lookin’ this way. If he comes an’ asks why our rate o’ fire is slippin’, I’ll tell him, by God, that your squabbles are more important than your duty. He was born a Brit, you know, an’ came up from the ranks. You think that’ll make him sympathetic? He’ll more likely flog every man in the section!”
Hanny barely knew Captain Hudgens, but rather doubted that. Still, the 12pdrs to their left punctuated Petty’s warning, and McDonough brutally seated the charge and shot the Number Two man had placed in the muzzle. Petty caught his eye as he stepped outside the wheel. “Am I clear, Private?”
“Aye, First Sergeant. Clear tae me an’ mine, I ken. Corporal Cox’ll see tae that.” He flicked a resentful glare at Hahessy. “I’ll not harm the blackguardly hurdie.”
Hahessy snorted amusement, and Petty whirled to glare at him before stalking to the rear, past the gunners. “Tighten your grip on your men,” he growled at them, “an’ pick up the pace.” He nodded down toward the city. 1st Division was almost up with them now, the regiments quickly deploying out from behind one another in their broad-fronted, densely packed rectangles that lengthened and thinned into battle lines with well-remembered fluidity. There was some confusion—how could there not be after such a long march? But the enemy wouldn’t see it from the front. 1st Division would appear to them like a terrible wave rising up and expanding to sweep them away under a colorful spray of regimental and “national” flags, now uncased and streaming in the breeze. And it looked like some of the 1st Ocelomeh was beginning to form outside the north gate of the city, apparently having passed completely through. “We’ll have to cease firing shortly, or move to get a better angle.”
Even as he crouched to aim his piece again, it struck Hanny strange to see the whole division arrayed in the open once more. The sight of the disciplined ranks of men in blue, wherever they were from, and especially the Stars and Stripes flying over so many, stirred him and gave him heart. It also reinforced what Colonel Cayce had long implied: that everyone here on the field this day—with some exceptions, he thought with a final glance at Hahessy—whether they were Americans, Ocelomeh, Uxmalos, Techonos, Itzincabos, Pidros . . . All had come a very long way to fight for that flag, in a fashion. At least for the fundamental principles it represented. He wondered how many felt the same as he, and whether their allies had begun to realize it?
Stepping back from the gun, he waited while Ricken primed it, then called the men to “Ready” and gave the command to “Fire!”
CHAPTER 12
The artillery, both C Battery on the left, and the guns of 2nd Division were tearing the Holcanos up. Roundshot from the left was plowing great, long, diagonal furrows through their seething mass and canister, and point-blank musket fire to their front was literally hacking them apart. Some of that canister and a few warbling musket balls made it all the way to 1st Division, six hundred yards away, but most that had already passed through bodies or struck the ground and was largely spent. Those projectiles might still bruise, even crack a skull or shin, but the time had come to join the fight because the reason 2nd Division’s fire had increased was that the Holcanos were finally aware of the danger behind them and were frantically turning to face it.
“Sound the advance!” Lewis Cayce said loudly to his dragoon bugler, Private Hannity, who quickly blew the notes. Drummers all along the line beat out the corresponding tattoos while Major Beck, Major Manley, and Major Ulrich shouted, “First US!” “First Uxmal!” “Third Pennsylvania!” all repeated by captains, lieutenants, then NCOs. “Advance!”
Drums thundered and settled into a common-time cadence as the various company commanders completed their order to “March!” and the long lines moved forward, brightly polished muskets with fixed bayonets riding high on men’s shoulders. These regiments were all armed with 1816 and 1835 Springfields, and that glaring, lethal uniformity under the late-morning sun had to alarm the suddenly beleaguered and increasingly apprehensive Holcanos who’d felt on the brink of victory only to learn they were surrounded. Worse, they’d imagine their circumstances were the result of a carefully executed trap instead of the mere chance that brought both divisions upon them at roughly the same time.
“Music?” Major Beck called over to Lewis as he moved slightly away toward the center of the 1st US.
Lewis shook his head. “Drums only, for now.”
“What’re the odds, I wonder?” Leonor murmured as she walked her horse alongside Lewis’s, Varaa-Choon’s, and Reverend Harkin’s, followed by Private Hannity, Corporal Willis, and half a dozen dragoon guards/messengers. Lewis and Harkin must’ve been thinking the same, because Lewis merely shook his head and Harkin grunted, clearing his throat, expression serious.
“There are no odds to calculate, my dear,” he declared over the rumble of drums and Poom-poom! of a section on their left. The shot churned into the Holcanos, and an arm, clearly identifiable, twirled high in the air. “I believe Colonel Lewis remains . . . displeased that Second Division engaged without us. I’m sure there’s an explanation. There can be no doubt, however, when one considers the very different paths we followed and the tremendous distances and difficulties we were both forced to overcome, that only divine providence could’ve brought our two forces here at the precise necessary moment to join”—he glanced at Lewis—“or rescue, if you prefer, Second Division in this battle.” He gestured forward. What had been the rear of the Holcano assault was trying to sort itself into a sufficient force to attack them as well. “And His hand is certainly guiding events now. Even I—no military man!—can see that the enemy couldn’t be better placed for destruction!” He nodded graciously at Varaa. “Consul Koaar must’ve already secured the strategic points in the city because some of his Ocelomeh are beginning to assemble outside the northern gate, closest to the Holcanos. The enemy will never get back inside, we won’t have to root them out, and the bulk of Don Discipo’s strength will be caught in the open and crushed between our two forces.”
