“Now why can’t Porschmidt come up with ideas like that?” he asked.
“Oh, some of Porschmidt’s brainchildren work well enough, better than I expected.” Gerta said. She smiled. “As our friends to the south will soon find out.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“A great difference from the beginning of the war, n’est pas?” General Gerard said with melancholy pride.
Many of the soldiers trudging along the sides of the dusty road cheered as the car carrying Gerard and Jeffrey went by. They were almost all Unionaise on this front, not Freedom Brigades, so they were probably cheering the local officer—although Jeffrey was popular enough.
And they do shape a lot better, Jeffrey thought. For one thing, they were all in uniform and almost all had plain bowl-shaped steel helmets, and they all had the Table of Organization and Equipment gear besides. More importantly, they were moving in coherent groups and not getting tangled up or scattering across the countryside. Infantry marching on either side, horse-drawn guns and mule-drawn wagons and ambulances towards the middle, and a fair number of Santander-made trucks, Ferrins, and big squarish Appelthwaits. Occasionally an airplane would pass by overhead, drawing no more than a few curious stares; the men were accustomed to the notion that they had their own air service, these days.
The air was thick with dust and the animal-dung-and-gasoline stink of troops on the move. Around them the central plateau stretched in rolling immensity, with the snowpeaks of the Monts du Nora growing ever closer on the northeast horizon. The grainfields were long since reaped, sere yellow stubble against reddish-yellow earth, with dust smoking off it now and then. Widely spaced vineyards of trained vines looking like bushy cups covered many of the hillsides, and there was an occasional grove of fruit trees or cork oaks. The people all lived in the big clumped villages, looking like heaps of spilled sugar cubes with their flat-roofed houses of whitewashed adobe. The peasants came out to cheer the Loyalist armies; Jeffrey suspected that prudence would make them cheer the Nationalists almost as loudly. Not that the government wasn’t more popular than the rebel generals, who brought the landlords back in their train wherever they conquered, but Unionvil’s anticlerical policies weren’t very popular outside the cities, either.
“Everyone seems to be expecting a military picnic,” Jeffrey said, leaning back in the rear seat of the big staff car.
It was Santander-made, of course; a model that wealthy men bought, or wealthy private schools. Six-wheeled, with a collapsible top, and two rows of leather-cushioned seats in the rear. Gerard had had the original seats replaced with narrower, harder models, plus communications gear and maps, with a pintle-mounted twin machine gun set between the driver’s compartment and the passengers. Henri Trudeau stood behind the grips of the weapons, carefully scanning the sky.
“Morale is good,” Gerard acknowledged. “The men know they’ve gotten a lot better, these past two years.”
“You’ve done a good job,” Jeffrey said.
“And you, my friend. Those suggestions for an accelerated officer-training system helped very much.”
Ninety-day wonders, courtesy of Raj and Center, Jeffrey thought. Center had a lot of records of sudden mobilizations for large-scale warfare.
“Well, combat is the best way to identify potential leaders,” Jeffrey said. “It’s sort of expensive as a sorting process, but it works.”
Henri spoke unexpectedly. “Things wouldn’t be going this well if you hadn’t got those anarchist batards killed off right at the start, sir.”
Gerard looked up with a smile; the Loyalist Army was still informal in some respects. Jeffrey shook his head.
“The rebels inflicted heavy casualties on the anarchist militia, that’s true,” he said judiciously. I’m becoming a politician like John, he thought. “But that’s scarcely my fault. They wanted to fight, and I put them where they could fight. Besides, you were with them, Henri.”
The Unionaise soldier grinned. “I wanted to win, sir. Which is why I’ve stuck with you since. And they were a wonderful example, in their way—everyone could see what came of their notions.”
Then his head came up. “Watch it!” The machine gun swiveled around on its pivot.
* * *
“Listen up, people.”
The selection of Chosen officers who would be supporting the offensive braced to attention inside the green dimness of the tent.