1632

The next few minutes were taken up with preparing the American positions. Mike kept the APC and Mackay's cavalry out of sight, hidden beyond a curve in the road. They would be used to pursue and capture the defeated enemy. He stationed Heinrich and the German contingents across the road itself. They would form the barrier to the oncoming mercenaries.

The new German recruits constituted about half of Mike's infantry force. They were still organized into their own units, under newly elected officers. Heinrich was in overall command.

Mike had intended to integrate the army immediately, rather than keeping the Germans in separate contingents. But experience had taught him that the process was going to be protracted. The problem was not "social," and involved no prejudice. The American and German soldiers were getting along quite nicely, as it happened-especially after a notable barroom brawl in which several American and German soldiers marched into the Club 250 and taught the resident rednecks who was who and what was what. Dan Frost and his deputies had tossed the lot of them into the town's jury-rigged jail thereafter, but the event had crystallized the army's growing sentiment of comradeship.

No, the problem was purely military, and purely simple.

Germans couldn't shoot.

Blast away, yes. Stand their ground like lions, yes.

Aim? Hit a target? Not a chance.

Squeeze the trigger? You must be joking! An arquebus has no "trigger." Just a heavy hand-lever closed with a jerk-after shutting your eyes to protect them from powder burns.

Heinrich and his men were veterans, and their habits were deeply ingrained. With the exception of a handful of the youngsters, none of the Germans had been able to adjust to modern rifles. The attempt to train them had simply produced frustration on all sides.

In the end, Mike had taken the practical course. "Screw it," he told Frank. "Just arm them with shotguns loaded with lead slugs. We'll use them for close action."

The Germans had been ecstatic. They took to shotguns like bears to honey. The shotguns were more accurate than arquebuses, even after the chokes were sawn off to produce cylinder bores which would handle solid slugs. But the Germans didn't give a damn about accuracy, anyway. They had survived as long as they had because each and every one of them was a devotee of the First Principle of Smoothbore Battle:

Rate of fire. That was Moses and the prophets, as far as the German soldiers were concerned. Rate of fire. Victory in battle went to the men who stood their ground and blasted away the most. Simple as that.

The American invention of bayonets was icing on the cake. None of them, any longer-arquebusier or pikeman-had to worry about the reliability of the other. All were now both in one.

Pump-action shotguns, fitted with bayonets-those, if nothing else, sealed the allegiance of Heinrich and his men to the new order. Their love for the marvelous devices was so great that it even reconciled them to the grotesque eccentricities of the Americans. Such as***

The German soldiers were careful not to ogle Gayle as she and two of the other women passed down the lines handing out extra ammunition pouches. Nor did they seem to pay any attention to Rita-unseemly attention, at any rate-when she took up her position as the unit's radio operator. Heinrich and his men, for all their crudities, had long ago learned the First Principle of Mercenary Armies: Don't piss off the toughest guys around. Which exalted status the Americans still had, in general-and one American in particular.

Rita's brother, of course, was their commander. But what was more important-much more-was that her husband stood in their own ranks. In the center, in the front line-as befitted a man who had gained the absolute confidence of his new comrades. And a man whom none of them-not the biggest and toughest veteran-would even think of challenging. Easy-going, he was-true, true. Not a friendlier man in the company!

Good thing, too. Seeing as how he was as big as a walrus and could bench-press a horse. So, at least, thought the man's German comrades. When the man himself had explained to them that he wasn't quite up to the standards of "professional football," he single-handedly killed-quite inadvertently-any chance that football would become a popular sport in the new society. In this new universe, it would be Tom Simpson, not Abner Doubleday, who caused the astounding popularity of baseball. A reasonable sport, baseball, playable by reasonable-sized men.

But Tom Simpson now had other accomplishments to his credit. One, in particular: it had been he, in truth-far more than the shotguns-who truly welded the German soldiers into the American army.

***