Ring of Fire III

Chapter 14

The third day went much like the first two. Two small armies moving slowly down the Danube, keeping the same steady distance. Hundreds of cavalrymen charging hither and yon across the landscape-everywhere except where the armies marched-plundering everything they could get their hands on.

Which wasn’t much. That landscape had been picked pretty clean. If a cavalry platoon caught a chicken, they deemed it a great prize and a cause for celebration. They would hold the celebration immediately, roasting the chicken on a spit while consuming a bottle of very bad wine they’d looted from a neighboring village. As ravening plunderers went, these fellows were definitely bottom feeders.

By then, although Colonel von Schnetter had said nothing openly to him, it was quite obvious to Captain von Haslang that the infantry commander had decided to let the Danube Regiment make its escape. He would follow them closely all the way to Regensburg, for the sake of appearances, but he would make no effort to bring the enemy to battle. He would not subject his own men to the casualties of a frontal assault on prepared artillery, with no cavalry support. If General von Lintelo broke into one of his tempers over the matter, let him place the blame where it rightly belonged-on the cavalry scoundrels and their own commander, Colonel von Troiberz.

Von Haslang had no objection. Neither to the substance of the issue, nor to the colonel’s tactical judgment. Insofar as the substance was concerned, he too saw no reason their own men should suffer because of a general’s carelessness and a cavalry officer’s dereliction.

As for the tactics…

If Colonel von Troiberz had been one of von Lintelo’s favorites, this would be a risky maneuver. The general would almost certainly then bring his wrath down on Colonel von Schnetter-and, the general being the sort of man he was, on von Schnetter’s staff as well. Happily, von Lintelo held Colonel von Troiberz in no high regard either. That was the reason he’d given him this assignment, almost as an afterthought, instead of including his unit in the more important mission to Amberg.

So, most likely, von Lintelo’s fury would come down on the cavalry, who richly deserved it. But it probably wouldn’t be that great a fury anyway, since it had also been obvious that von Lintelo didn’t view capturing the escaped fragments of the Danube Regiment as a particularly important matter.

He might come to regret that judgment. Captain von Haslang’s own assessment of the enemy commander had steadily grown over the past two and half days. Given that a siege of Regensburg now seemed inevitable, he’d be a lot happier if Major Simpson and his men weren’t part of the defending force.

But, like Colonel von Schnetter, he didn’t think it was worth the casualties to prevent that from happening. If a man sought perfection, he should find a different trade than that of a professional soldier.

To her great relief, Bonnie found that her new assignment was not as hard as she’d thought it would be. (For years thereafter, whenever confronted with a quandary, she would throw up her hands and exclaim “Oppenheimer!”) That was true for three reasons:

First, Heinz Bocler turned out to be far better in his General Groves persona than she was when she tried to imitate a world-class nuclear physicist like Oppenheimer. Within less than an hour after their arrival in Regensburg, he had the city’s officials and guild masters eating out of the palm of his plump little hand.

How he managed that was something of a mystery to Bonnie. It was certainly not due to his dazzling personality. Heinz was a pleasant enough fellow, but he possessed about as much in the way of social charm as you’d expect from a man raised by a parson, educated to be a clerk, and filled with the ambition to write a history book.

Her guess was that Heinz fit, to a T, every pompous city official and stuffed-shirt guildmaster’s notion of what the personal secretary of a provincial administrator should be like. So, oddly enough, it was his very lack of charisma that lent him great authority.

The second factor working in her favor was Brick Bozarth. Bonnie had completely forgotten-if she’d ever known at all, which she probably hadn’t-that the State of Thuringia-Franconia had sent Bozarth to Regensburg back in 1634. The man served as one of the SoTF’s semi-official trade representatives and consuls to the Oberpfalz.

Bozarth’s precise position in the SoTF’s bureaucracy was never clear to Bonnie. The middle-aged ex-miner had nothing more than a high school diploma, so far as his education was concerned. In his days as a coal miner, he’d operated a continuous mining machine-a skill that was about as useful, in the here and now, as knowing how to pilot a submarine. She suspected that his main qualification for his post was simply the fact that was a member of the United Mine Workers.

In the period after the Ring of Fire, Mike Stearns had leaned very heavily on the membership of his union local to provide him with a ready-made cadre. Those days were over now. Mike himself had left for Magdeburg and the man who succeeded him to serve as the province’s president, Ed Piazza, was not and had never been a coal miner.

By then, though, certain social customs had become rooted in the State of Thuringia-Franconia. The same customs didn’t hold much sway elsewhere in the United States of Europe. Being a UMWA member in Magdeburg province, for instance, was certainly respectable-even admirable-but gave a man no particular status in political terms.

In the governing circles of the SoTF and its surrounding officialdom, on the other hand, membership in the UMWA had much the same informal prestige and ability to open doors that being a Harvard or Yale graduate had provided back up-time. That hadn’t been due to the supposedly superb education one received at those Ivy League schools, no matter what people claimed. That education was certainly excellent, but so was the education a person could get at MIT or the University of California, or any number of top universities in America, public as well as private. Indeed, in many fields, the education someone could get outside of the Ivy League was quite a bit better.

No, the real cachet that having an Ivy League degree had given people back up-time was social, not educational. Being a graduate of Harvard or Yale put you in the right old boys’ networks. Being a UMWA member did much the same in the SoTF.

Thankfully, Bozarth had not taken his post to be a sinecure. Being fair, very few UMWA people did. They might not necessarily be the best person for a job, but they almost always carried out those jobs with the same blue-collar work ethic that they’d taken into coal mines.

So, as soon as Bonnie explained her needs to him, Bozarth knew exactly where, how and from whom those needs could be met. He knew Regensburg very well by now, especially that part of Regensburg that was involved in what he considered “useful work.”

Brick defined that term the way coal miners do. If you knew how to make something or fix something or grow something, you were a stout fellow. If you were a parson, you were regarded with respect but otherwise dismissed as being of no practical use. If you were a lawyer, you were automatically under a cloud of suspicion.

The third factor working in her favor was just blind luck. The first item Brick brought to her to try out as an additive to the gasoline was a tub of soap. It turned out that Regensburg had a soap manufacturer-the German term was “Seifensieder”; literally, soap-boiler-and he had plenty of his product available.

The standard soap of the time in the Germanies was a lye soap. You could also find some scented olive oil bar soaps from Italy, but they were an expensive luxury item. The lye soap came in the form of a semi-liquid soft soap, rather than being hardened into bars. In other words, absolutely perfect for Bonnie’s purposes.

The first batch of napalm she mixed up worked like a charm. Being a firm believer in the principle if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, Bonnie saw no point in going any further-to the great disappointment of the commercial factor in Regensburg who controlled the town’s sugar supply and had briefly imagined great riches were in store for him.

It was just as well. She found out later from people in Grantville who’d done the experiments back in the early days that sugar was a poor cousin to soap, in the “hey, guys, let’s make some napalm!” department.

The bomb cases were easy. The city’s cooper could provide her with barrels, but those were too big for the actual bombs. On the other hand, they made great containers to mix the batches. The result, which had the consistency of fresh-made pudding, could then be easily poured into jugs that held about three gallons. There were plenty of such jugs available in a town the size of Regensburg.

The end result was a bomb that didn’t weigh more than twenty-five pounds, something that even one man could handle easily enough.

That left the fuses. Bonnie dithered back and forth between using gunpowder fuses and the even simpler device of rags soaked in gasoline. Both methods worked-but which would work best when the bomb was dropped from a height of several hundred yards? She had no way of testing that short of the time-consuming method of taking them up in one of the airships.

In the end, Heinz solved the quandary for her, in his inimitable fashion. For a man whose great ambition was to become an historian, perhaps the world’s most impractical profession, he had a surprisingly wide pragmatic streak.

“There is no danger of an explosion, from either type of fuse?” he asked. “If you light it too soon, I mean, and it burns down into the bomb before you want it to.”

She shook her head. “No. These things aren’t really bombs. They’re basically great big Molotov cocktails. They don’t blow up, they just shatter when they hit the ground. The napalm goes flying everywhere and sticks to everything-and the lit fuse sets it on fire.”

“Then use both,” he said. “Stick one kind of fuse on one side of the sealed lid, and the other across from it. Light them both, drop the bomb. One of them has to work.”

She gave him a quick hug and set about giving the orders. So she didn’t see the look of surprise that came to Bocler’s face, followed by a look of pleasure, followed by a look of consternation.

By early afternoon, she had enough bombs to load up both the Pelican and the Albatross. The Petrel had arrived in the area also, by now, but it was flying over the Danube at the moment keeping an eye on the movements of the Bavarian troops below.

Given how easy the whole process had turned out to be, Bonnie decided it made more sense to transfer the final stages of the bomb-making from Regensburg to the field. Tom Simpson and his people were now within ten miles of Regensburg. The airships had found a suitable landing area about three miles farther down the Danube. It was on the north bank, fortunately, since the south bank was in Bavarian territory. She’d bring enough napalm there in barrels to provide the Petrel with a full load of bombs. And there’d be enough left over to fill quite a few more jugs. She figured at least one of the airships could carry out a second bombing run, if Major Simpson decided to do so.

So, off they went. By now, Bonnie was starting to take flying by dirigible almost for granted. She was even enjoying it.

Except for the incredible racket. Having four un-muffled lawnmower engines yammering at close range was enough to drive you crazy after a while. The noise was so bad that whenever they needed to use the radio or the walkie-talkie they had to shut off the engines and just let the ship drift for a while.

But Heinz had thought of that, too. He’d found linen and had it soaked in some kind of wax. Little strips of it rolled up and stuffed in your ears made pretty decent ear plugs.

The airship crews clapped him on the back. Bonnie gave him another hug. Not a quick one, either.

It did not occur to Johann Heinrich Bocler, then or ever, that it was peculiar for a man headed back to a war zone to spend the entire time worrying about anything else.

But, such was his nature. His background, training and personal inclination led him to be fatalistic on the subject of death and dismemberment. Not so at all, on the subject of right and proper conduct.

What was he to do? By now, his attraction to the American woman was undeniable. Indeed, it was getting feverish. He was having thoughts-images, even-that he was quite sure his father would declare unseemly. His grandfather, should he discover, would be furious.

They were unseemly thoughts. But he could not stop having them.

If the woman in question had been uninterested, Heinz was sure he could have brought himself under control. Unfortunately-well, also delightfully-she very clearly was not. That last hug, especially, had born no resemblance at all to the sort of hugs one occasionally got from a particularly affectionate and free-spirited sister, aunt or cousin.

The fact remained that he was still too young to consider marriage. These past days had been eventful and stimulating; certainly. He would even allow that they had been exciting. But soon enough, the real world would intrude-say better, return to normal. And he would go back to being a modestly paid secretary who was still some years away from having accumulated enough in the way of assets and income to sustain a household.

What was he to do?