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In the Army Now

Written by Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

David Bartley and Johan Kipper got off the train at Camp Saale and looked around. It wasn't the first time they had been here, but it was their first time as regular army instead of weekend warriors. The camp was mostly deserted since it was the middle of the week. The headquarters of the SoTF National Guard was neither in Grantville, nor the new state capital of Bamberg. It could have moved when the state capital did, but they wanted to keep access to the phones and other logistical support. At the same time, they couldn't afford the rent in Grantville or even next to the Ring of Fire so it was located on the far side of Saalfeld. Close enough to the Ring of Fire to have phone and rail access for the weekend warriors.

The national guardsmen could take the train to Camp Saale one weekend a month and drill. The phone service meant that at least a lot of them could be reached in a hurry if a call up were required. All very logical. Then there was the other reason. The distance from Bamberg to the nearest likely enemy was fifty-five miles to the border of Saxony. The base across the river from Saalfeld was all of seven and a quarter miles from that same border. A unit of cavalry leaving Krolpa in Saxony after breakfast would be at Camp Saale by mid-morning. If they waited on the infantry they would still be there before lunch. Of course, everyone knew fat drunken John George would never do that. The up-timer weapons were too powerful. Retribution would be all too certain. Besides, even if Saxony was John George's territory, that didn't mean everyone living there was on his side. If he acted out of desperation there would be warning.

David headed for the supply office with Johan right behind.

****

"Well, well, well." Major Walker's smile didn't reach his eyes. "If it isn't the seventeenth century's new financial Wunderkind. Welcome, Your Lordship. To what do we owe the honor of your presence?"

David Bartley didn't say a word. His research department had briefed him on Major Tandy Walker. Sort of a last favor. Instead of answering he reached for his orders.

"What's this? A letter from your mommy, perhaps? No. It wouldn't be from your mother. Who then?"

"My orders, sir," David managed to get out. His mother wasn't Velma Hardesty by any stretch of the imagination, but she did have a reputation. David's mother wasn't bright, and she hadn't coped all that well with the up-time world. Less because it was complicated than because it lacked some of the personal support that had become available to her in seventeenth-century Germany. She needed an extensive support structure. Major Walker wasn't the first to use that to attack David. And it always hurt because there was some truth in it. But it had been mostly at school; the adults he had worked with had, for the most part, been more subtle. But then a large part of Major Walker's trouble was lack of subtlety. Major Walker glanced at David's orders but spent considerably more time looking David up and down.

David was wearing a tailored uniform. Officers were expected to buy their own uniforms and, of necessity, there was considerable variation. David didn't think of himself as a clotheshorse. But he did—according to Johan Kipper his aide and Karl Schmidt his stepfather and the SoTF senator from Badenburg, who was considering a run for the USE legislature—have appearances to maintain. Silver-electroplated lieutenant's bars shined on his epaulets and the flaming wheel of supply next to them. His pants were dark blue with a red stripe up the side; his jacket lighter blue with rather more gold trim than David would have preferred. The major's uniform, on the other hand, was a pair of blue jeans that had seen better days and a striped up-time blue dress shirt that was in even worse repair. The jacket was apparently down-time made but the dye job hadn't worked as well as it should have. It was faded in ways that weren't camouflage but were a bit reminiscent of it.

Tandy Walker was the younger son of Coleman Walker, the Fed chair of the USE. But that had earned him no benefits. Coleman—and Tandy, for that matter—avoided even the appearance of nepotism like the plague. In fact, his father being the Fed chair had hurt Tandy because people expected him to be someone that they could use to get to the Fed. Which Major Walker took as a personal insult. That, along with a naturally abrasive personality, was why Major Tandy Walker was back in Grantville rather than on Frank Jackson's staff. David wondered what Coleman had told the major about him. From the report David had gotten, Coleman, who received quite a good salary as Fed Chair, didn't help his sons out financially. The report didn't say why, so it was entirely possible that Coleman hadn't said a thing about David to his son. If he had, it probably hadn't been complementary. David and Coleman didn't get along. In any case, it was quite possible that the uniform Major Walker was wearing was all he could afford. Majors were paid well by seventeenth century standards but Major Walker had a wife and three kids and in spite of the changes clothing was still expensive as all get out, compared to what it was up-time.

While all this was running through David's mind, Major Walker had apparently been trying to intimidate David with his officer's stare. David hadn't noticed. The interview went downhill from there.

****

"That went well," Johan Kipper said, once they had left Walker's office.

David gave his friend and aide a sardonic look. "You think so?"

"First day on the job you pissed off your new boss so much that he can't see straight." Johan gave him the look right back. "Couldn't be better."

David snorted. He was pretty sure that there wasn't a whole lot that he could have done that wouldn't have pissed off Major Walker. Walker—like quite a number of the up-timers who hadn't had the get up and go to get rich themselves—saw David as just one more corrupt jackass. He undoubtedly figured that David was protected by his wealth from any consequences and planning to use his position in supply to make himself and his cronies rich. "So, is the uniform situation as bad as I think it is?"

"Probably," Johan said. "It seems we can't get away from the clothing trades." Walker had given David a budget and a job. However, the budget wouldn't cover the job. Which wasn't Major Walker's fault. The uniform situation had actually been better a year or so ago. The process of turning raw materials into clothing was full of bottlenecks. When an up-timer tech opened one bottleneck, there would be a sudden drop in price causing a rush to buy. Which would be followed by a rise in price. The price of clothing in central Germany was, to put it mildly, erratic. At this point the main bottleneck was producing the raw wool, flax and so on. And that one wasn't going to go away till they grew more sheep or developed large-scale synthetic-fabric production.

"Hemp, I think," David said.

Johan gave him a look. "Sail cloth?"

"Not quite, but close." David said. "It must have been two years ago that Pete Strauss came to OPM with the plans for the hemp processor." The hemp processor had come from Mother Earth News, Natural Living, or one of those hippie magazines. David couldn’t remember. Basically a bunch of gears and cams that twisted and pounded the heck out of the hemp plant. Put the hemp in one end, turn the crank, and out comes hemp fiber ready for carding and spinning on the other. If David recalled correctly the hemp had to be left out to rot a bit before going through the machine. Pete had wanted it to make sails cheaper. Which it had, and in so doing, increased the hemp planting from central Germany to Siberia. Which left hemp as the cheapest of the major materials that might be used to make uniforms. "A few months ago he started experimenting with varying the mix. Hemp and wool, hemp and linen." Cotton was more expensive and harder to get than silk and the limited quantity of rayon that was being produced was still more expensive even than cotton. At this point it was effectively restricted to experimental and limited industrial use. "He says he's been getting good results. Insists that the new blends wear well and get more comfortable with use."

"It's still going to be expensive."

"Yes and no. Pete is trying to break into the linen market. Right now hemp is thought of as poor people's clothes. Something worn by people who can't afford to wear anything else or, as you mentioned, sail cloth. He doesn't need the sales that we would represent but he does need some good press. So if we can make sharp-looking uniforms to display his cloth, we might get a bargain." David paused. His secretary had stayed with OPM to spy on the new CEO. "I'll contact Herr Strauss later. For now we probably need to meet the staff we have assigned to us."

Johan winced. Walker had made it quite clear the staff he was giving David was the worst he could find, the smallest he could manage and, with one exception, part time. He had justified that using Johan as an example. Johan was one of the many outright defeats that the up-time military tradition had met with in dealing with the down-time armies. Johan was not being paid by the army and for the most part he didn't report to the army. He was David's Putzer,or batman, hired by David and reporting only to David. Officers in the USE Army could hire their own subordinates if they had the means, or use those assigned. David was in a position to hire his own staff and Walker expected him to do so. If David insisted on using Army personnel, he was going to get the worst of the lot.

****

Sergeant Beckman looked around his little kingdom and dithered. He didn't know whether to be thrilled or seek a transfer. Supply clerk had been a really good job in the USE Army, especially for the SoTF National Guard. Formerly a mercenary with Gustav Adolph's forces in Thuringia, though not Mackay's bunch, he had gotten the job because he spoke English and because no one else wanted him. Which put something of a damper on the transfer idea.

He looked at a set of shelves covered with hundreds of mess kits. Unfortunately, several hundred less than there were supposed to be. David Bartley was supposed to be a sharp one. On the other hand, he was an up-timer and—in Franz Beckman's opinion—the up-timers were rarely sharp on their own. Beckman had been careful; the supplies he had sold off weren't really needed. ...