Read Online American Front by Harry Turtledove - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Harry Turtledove
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make sure Edna listened and didn’t stare back at the machine gunner bold in his uniform, she dragged her daughter to the floor.
More fragments whined past overhead. The shells that went
whizz-bang
weren’t very big; the front wall of the coffeehouse stopped most of their fragments, though plenty screamed through what had been the window and scarred the plaster above the counter.
The barrage stopped as suddenly as it had begun. That didn’t mean the street was silent; far from it. Cries and screams and moans and wails and sounds of pain for which Nellie had no descriptive words filled the air. She got to her feet and looked out. The street had been a sorry sight before. The slaughter now was worse than anything she’d ever imagined.
Men and pieces of men lay everywhere. The ones who were dead were less appalling than the ones who were wounded. A trooper tried to stuff spilled intestines back into his belly through a neat slit torn in his tunic. Another sat staring foolishly at his right arm, which he’d picked up off the pavement and was holding in his left hand. Quietly, without much fuss, he crumpled over and lay still.
“We have to help them, Ma,” Edna said. “We have plenty of rags and things—”
Nellie hadn’t noticed her daughter get up beside her. She nodded, though she knew what would happen if more shells caught them out in the open.
Stretcher bearers were taking charge of some of the wounded. They nodded gratefully, though, when they saw Nellie and Edna come out with old clothes in their hands.
The second man Nellie bandaged was the machine gunner who’d leered at Edna. Now his face was waxy pale instead of ruddy and alight with lust. Nellie had to force his hands—protectively cupped too late—away from the wound at the base of his belly before she could try to stanch the bleeding. If he lived, he wouldn’t be doing much with the girls, not any more.
Off to the west, rifle fire rang out. You lived in the city, you heard guns every so often; you got to know what they sounded like. But, a moment later, Nellie heard a sound she’d never known before. It was something like gunfire, something like a giant ripping a piece of canvas the size of a football field. It made the hair stand up at the back of her neck.
Mangled and in agony though he was, the machine gunner smiled a little. He knew what the sound was, though Nellie didn’t. Seeing his knowledge made her understand, too.
“So that’s the noise a machine gun makes,” Nellie murmured. The pale-faced soldier nodded, a single short jerk of his head. “Good,” Nellie told him. “That means the Rebs are catching it hot.” He nodded again.
The wheat was turning golden under the warm August sun. From the front porch of his farmhouse, Arthur McGregor surveyed the crop with dour satisfaction. The quick-ripening hybrid Marquis strain he’d put in the ground these past few years beat the old Red Fife all hollow. Here a quarter of the way from the U.S. border to Winnipeg, every day you could shave off the growing season was a good one, especially since half your ground lay fallow each year.
McGregor—a tall, lean man, his face weathered almost like a sailor’s from endless exposure to sun and wind—watched the wheat bow and then straighten, politely acknowledging the breeze. The fields seemed to go on forever. He let out a sour snort. That was partly because he’d had the work of plowing and planting them. But the Manitoba prairie was flat as a sheet of newspaper, flat as if it had been pressed. And so, in a way, it had; from what the geologists said, great sheets of ice had lain here in ancient days, squashing down any irregularities that might once have existed.
For hundreds of miles, the only blemishes on the surface of the land were the belts of wire and the fortifications on either side of the border between the United States and the Dominion of Canada. McGregor sighed, thinking about that
More fragments whined past overhead. The shells that went
whizz-bang
weren’t very big; the front wall of the coffeehouse stopped most of their fragments, though plenty screamed through what had been the window and scarred the plaster above the counter.
The barrage stopped as suddenly as it had begun. That didn’t mean the street was silent; far from it. Cries and screams and moans and wails and sounds of pain for which Nellie had no descriptive words filled the air. She got to her feet and looked out. The street had been a sorry sight before. The slaughter now was worse than anything she’d ever imagined.
Men and pieces of men lay everywhere. The ones who were dead were less appalling than the ones who were wounded. A trooper tried to stuff spilled intestines back into his belly through a neat slit torn in his tunic. Another sat staring foolishly at his right arm, which he’d picked up off the pavement and was holding in his left hand. Quietly, without much fuss, he crumpled over and lay still.
“We have to help them, Ma,” Edna said. “We have plenty of rags and things—”
Nellie hadn’t noticed her daughter get up beside her. She nodded, though she knew what would happen if more shells caught them out in the open.
Stretcher bearers were taking charge of some of the wounded. They nodded gratefully, though, when they saw Nellie and Edna come out with old clothes in their hands.
The second man Nellie bandaged was the machine gunner who’d leered at Edna. Now his face was waxy pale instead of ruddy and alight with lust. Nellie had to force his hands—protectively cupped too late—away from the wound at the base of his belly before she could try to stanch the bleeding. If he lived, he wouldn’t be doing much with the girls, not any more.
Off to the west, rifle fire rang out. You lived in the city, you heard guns every so often; you got to know what they sounded like. But, a moment later, Nellie heard a sound she’d never known before. It was something like gunfire, something like a giant ripping a piece of canvas the size of a football field. It made the hair stand up at the back of her neck.
Mangled and in agony though he was, the machine gunner smiled a little. He knew what the sound was, though Nellie didn’t. Seeing his knowledge made her understand, too.
“So that’s the noise a machine gun makes,” Nellie murmured. The pale-faced soldier nodded, a single short jerk of his head. “Good,” Nellie told him. “That means the Rebs are catching it hot.” He nodded again.
The wheat was turning golden under the warm August sun. From the front porch of his farmhouse, Arthur McGregor surveyed the crop with dour satisfaction. The quick-ripening hybrid Marquis strain he’d put in the ground these past few years beat the old Red Fife all hollow. Here a quarter of the way from the U.S. border to Winnipeg, every day you could shave off the growing season was a good one, especially since half your ground lay fallow each year.
McGregor—a tall, lean man, his face weathered almost like a sailor’s from endless exposure to sun and wind—watched the wheat bow and then straighten, politely acknowledging the breeze. The fields seemed to go on forever. He let out a sour snort. That was partly because he’d had the work of plowing and planting them. But the Manitoba prairie was flat as a sheet of newspaper, flat as if it had been pressed. And so, in a way, it had; from what the geologists said, great sheets of ice had lain here in ancient days, squashing down any irregularities that might once have existed.
For hundreds of miles, the only blemishes on the surface of the land were the belts of wire and the fortifications on either side of the border between the United States and the Dominion of Canada. McGregor sighed, thinking about that
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