“It’s good news, as a matter of fact.” If it was, no one had reacted so badly to good news since Pyrrhus of Epirus cried,
One more such victory and we are ruined!
Custer went on, “Libbie, it seems, has secured permission from the powers that be to enter into the war zone, and will soon be brightening my life here in Bremen for what she describes as an extended visit.”
“How lucky you are, sir, that you’ll have your own dear wife here to help you bear the heavy burden of command.” Dowling brought that out with an absolutely straight face. He was proud of himself. None of the delight he felt showed in his voice, either. Having Elizabeth Custer come to Bremen for a visit was better, more delightful news than any for which he’d dared hope.
He wondered what sort of convenient illness Olivia would contract the day before Mrs. Custer arrived, and whether she’d recover the day after Mrs. Custer left or perhaps that very afternoon. By the thoughtful look in his eye, the distinguished general might have been wondering the same thing.
Whatever Custer came up with, that, by God, was not something he could pile onto the shoulders of his long-suffering adjutant. He’d have to take care of it all by his lonesome.
“I’ll draft the orders for the push against Morehead’s Horse Mill,” Dowling said.
“Yes, go ahead,” Custer agreed abstractedly. Dowling had been sure he would be abstracted at the moment. Custer had made it plain he had no use for German terminology. Dowling reminded himself not to call the concentration against Morehead’s Horse Mill the
Schwerpunkt
of First Army action. But German was a useful language. English, for instance, had nothing close to
Schadenfreude
to describe the glee Dowling felt at his vain, pompous, foolish commander’s discomfiture.
Despite the many things Lieutenant Commander Roger Kim-ball had thought he might do in a submarine—and his fantasies had considerable scope, ranging from laying a pretty girl in the captain’s cramped cabin to sinking two Yankee battleships with the same spread of torpedoes—sailing up a South Carolina river on gunboat duty hadn’t made the list. But here he was, heading up the Pee Dee to bombard the revolting Negroes—in both senses of the word—who called themselves the Congaree Socialist Republic.
Diesel smoke poured from the exhaust of the
Bonefish
at the back of the conning tower on which he stood. The submersible drew only eleven feet of water, which meant it could go farther up the river before grounding itself than most of the surface warships that had been in Charleston harbor when the rebellion broke out.
All the same, Kimball was proceeding at a quarter speed and had a man with a sounding line at the bow. The sailor turned and called, “Three fathoms twain, sir!” He cast the line again. The lead weight splashed down into the muddy water of the Pee Dee.
“Three fathoms twain,” Kimball echoed to show he’d heard. Twenty feet—plenty of water under the
Bonefish
’s keel. He turned to the only other officer on the submersible, a junior lieutenant named Tom Brearley, who couldn’t possibly have been as young as he looked. “What I wish we had here is a river gunboat,” he said. “Then we could haul bigger guns further upstream than we’ll manage with our boat.”
“That’s a fact, sir,” Brearley agreed. He wasn’t long out of the Confederate naval academy at Mobile, and agreed with just about everything his commander said. After a moment, though, he added, “We have to do the best we can with what we’ve got.”
That was also a fact, as Kimball was glumly aware. His own features, blunter and harsher than Brearley’s, assumed a bulldog cast as he surveyed the weaponry aboard the
Bonefish
. The three-inch deck gun had been designed to sink freighters, not to bombard land targets, but it would serve that purpose. For the mission, a machine gun had been hastily bolted to the top of the conning tower and another
One more such victory and we are ruined!
Custer went on, “Libbie, it seems, has secured permission from the powers that be to enter into the war zone, and will soon be brightening my life here in Bremen for what she describes as an extended visit.”
“How lucky you are, sir, that you’ll have your own dear wife here to help you bear the heavy burden of command.” Dowling brought that out with an absolutely straight face. He was proud of himself. None of the delight he felt showed in his voice, either. Having Elizabeth Custer come to Bremen for a visit was better, more delightful news than any for which he’d dared hope.
He wondered what sort of convenient illness Olivia would contract the day before Mrs. Custer arrived, and whether she’d recover the day after Mrs. Custer left or perhaps that very afternoon. By the thoughtful look in his eye, the distinguished general might have been wondering the same thing.
Whatever Custer came up with, that, by God, was not something he could pile onto the shoulders of his long-suffering adjutant. He’d have to take care of it all by his lonesome.
“I’ll draft the orders for the push against Morehead’s Horse Mill,” Dowling said.
“Yes, go ahead,” Custer agreed abstractedly. Dowling had been sure he would be abstracted at the moment. Custer had made it plain he had no use for German terminology. Dowling reminded himself not to call the concentration against Morehead’s Horse Mill the
Schwerpunkt
of First Army action. But German was a useful language. English, for instance, had nothing close to
Schadenfreude
to describe the glee Dowling felt at his vain, pompous, foolish commander’s discomfiture.
Despite the many things Lieutenant Commander Roger Kim-ball had thought he might do in a submarine—and his fantasies had considerable scope, ranging from laying a pretty girl in the captain’s cramped cabin to sinking two Yankee battleships with the same spread of torpedoes—sailing up a South Carolina river on gunboat duty hadn’t made the list. But here he was, heading up the Pee Dee to bombard the revolting Negroes—in both senses of the word—who called themselves the Congaree Socialist Republic.
Diesel smoke poured from the exhaust of the
Bonefish
at the back of the conning tower on which he stood. The submersible drew only eleven feet of water, which meant it could go farther up the river before grounding itself than most of the surface warships that had been in Charleston harbor when the rebellion broke out.
All the same, Kimball was proceeding at a quarter speed and had a man with a sounding line at the bow. The sailor turned and called, “Three fathoms twain, sir!” He cast the line again. The lead weight splashed down into the muddy water of the Pee Dee.
“Three fathoms twain,” Kimball echoed to show he’d heard. Twenty feet—plenty of water under the
Bonefish
’s keel. He turned to the only other officer on the submersible, a junior lieutenant named Tom Brearley, who couldn’t possibly have been as young as he looked. “What I wish we had here is a river gunboat,” he said. “Then we could haul bigger guns further upstream than we’ll manage with our boat.”
“That’s a fact, sir,” Brearley agreed. He wasn’t long out of the Confederate naval academy at Mobile, and agreed with just about everything his commander said. After a moment, though, he added, “We have to do the best we can with what we’ve got.”
That was also a fact, as Kimball was glumly aware. His own features, blunter and harsher than Brearley’s, assumed a bulldog cast as he surveyed the weaponry aboard the
Bonefish
. The three-inch deck gun had been designed to sink freighters, not to bombard land targets, but it would serve that purpose. For the mission, a machine gun had been hastily bolted to the top of the conning tower and another
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