"Yes. It's the general concentration point. Elmon got instructions
by radio just before he went west. Jackson is bringing up his army
from the Gulf, Davies is marching in from Springfield. They say
three flights are taking off from Fort Sill; we'll have a small air
force. If we can beat the Toties off at Louisville, we'll cut their
communications line from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati, hold the Ohio."
That night we slept along the Big Sandy. Before we bivouacked I broke
our little company into six squads, each of eleven men, each headed by
a veteran on whom I knew I could depend. I appointed Danny Wilson and
Ronnie St. Cloud as my lieutenants. In arranging the squads, I tried to
place the men according to nationality under one of their own race.
Raoul Devereaux led one of the French squads, while Anatole LeBrun
the other. That would have been funny a few years ago, when the army
was still organized under the caste basis, because Devereaux used to
be a captain and LeBrun a common private. But that old "officer and
gentleman by Act of Congress" stuff had gone overboard a long time ago.
Now we picked our leaders by their leadership ability.
Ian Pelham-Jones, the Britisher, and Bruce MacGregor headed two
English-speaking squads; Rudy Van Huys commanded a group of Dutch and
Belgians; the tall Norwegian, Ingolf Knudsen, led a collection of
assorted Scandinavians. Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Danes--Lord, there
was a tough outfit!
And so we hit the trail. There's not much use telling about the days
that followed. We marched and slept and ate and marched again. We were
spotted once by a Totie spyplane; he came down to do a little plain and
fancy strafing but we had the advantage of broken terrain. We took to
cover and turned his crate into a colander before he decided he'd had
enough. Lars Frynge, the Swedish sharpshooter, claims he punctured the
pilot as well as the plane, but I wouldn't know about that. Though it's
true that he did wobble as he flew away.
* * * * *
We avoided Lexington, cutting south through Campton and Irvine. We
picked up a railroad at Lancaster. Joe Sanders, a native of these
parts, said it was a part of the old Louisville & Nashville. If it
were in operation, he said, it would take us right to our destination.
But that was like saying if we had wings we could fly. The rails were
twisted ribbons of steel; in some places the roadbed had been so
completely eradicated you would never know it had been there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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