IWW2 Dispatches

So just about dawn on July 8, our troop train pulled into Norcross station. I call it a troop train only because I love my Uncle Sam and am inclined to generosity. You have to realize, we’d been at peace officially since the end of that Spanish thing a quarter-century before, and even counting the walkers, it’d been a dozen years since any American saw organized combat. Even the Indian Wars were over, more or less. And the American people, they don’t generally spend money on military maybes. The Army didn’t have any real troop trains. We rode in converted cattle cars – and barely converted, at that. Two and a half days in a rolling coffin stinking of manure made a man mad enough to take on anything, even the Martians, rather than spend another day cooped up.

We got off that train to thunderous applause. About the whole population of greater Atlanta was in Norcross station, hoping to be elsewhere. A few of the boys stood a bit straighter once they saw them Southern belles watching ‘em. Master Sergeant Donovan moved back and forth along the train, screaming at us. “You think these people are glad to see you get off this G*d d*mned train? Well, grunts, you’re right – ‘cause that makes room for them to run the hell away from this sorry burg. Every second you spend dying here is one more second they can run to Washington, or New York, or wherever the hell they think is safe.”

Once he saw we were all off the train, he put us right back on, this time unloading the heavy equipment. People had been talking about the mechanized army for a while, but it didn’t happen until after Foothold, when we had no logistical choice. Back in Gwinnett County, we still did things the old fashion way, getting the zap cannon and Streiburg guns into wooden caissons and hitching ‘em to horses. The zap cannon were surprisingly light for artillery, but of course, you had to drag along their generators and condensers, so it all came out in the wash anyway. The Georgia heat was already rising and it was a dirty dusty few hours before the train was completely unloaded and we could take a half-hour to recuperate. I don’t mind saying, my best memory of Gwinnett County is of the daughters of Atlanta moving up and down the line with fresh cold lemonade. Makes me regret us not saving much of the city, but of course, that was still a bit in the future.

We’d hardly caught our breath when Master Sergeant Donovan and the other non-coms rousted us and got us marching. The Army in its collective wisdom had decided that Norcross was too populated – meaning had too many important civilians in it – to be the right point to defend. They moved us about five miles south-southwest to a tiny rise called Pike Hill. No sooner had we dropped our rucksacks then the Master Sergeant gathered us into formation. “This here is a regulation M1912 Reinforced Entrenching Tool,.” he bellowed, holding up a shovel. “After your rifle, this is your best friend. Treat it with respect, use it with zeal, and you just might live long enough to cry home to momma. With this entrenching tool, you will right now carve out your own G*d-forsaken patch of this G*d-forsaken hill, a spiderhole three feet wide by four feet long by five feet deep.” Predictably there were groans and swearing. Master Sergeant accepted it with Buddha-like calm. “If you are too good to dig a hole five feet deep, you lousy lazy idiots, then I promise you someone else will be digging you a hole six feet deep. Dig your spiderhole or dig your grave – that’s the only choice.”

He was right, of course. He knew firsthand what we had heard but failed to absorb: the walkers’ main weapon, the heat ray – it was strictly line-of-sight. Anything Marty could see, he could fry. But the heat ray had no shrapnel effect, no ricochet. Most importantly for us, it had no arc of attack. It came in along a line straight as a teacher’s ruler. As far as anyone had ever seen, the Martians had no stand-off weapon, nothing they could sit back and lob at us the way we were hoping to send 0.75 shells their way. A guy in a spiderhole was virtually immune to Marty’s attack unless the walker stepped right over him. A lot of our guys didn’t get it and skimped on their digging, making their hole too shallow. They mostly didn’t realize their mistake until first contact with the Marty, when they would take a look out at the battlefield and come back with the top of their heads boiled off.

Anyone who made it through the first assault quickly learned to adore their second-best friend, the M1912 Field Entrenching Tool. A shame how few that turned out to be.

Tags: Gwinnett, campaigns //