“After Pittsburgh, moving so fast seems strange,” Griffiths said.

“Yes, sir.” Pound nodded. In Pittsburgh, they’d measured progress in blocks per day, sometimes houses per day, not miles per hour. That was a fight of stalks and ambushes and strongpoints beaten down one by one. Now they were out in the open again, rolling forward. “Only a crust here,” Pound said. “Once we break it, they haven’t got so much behind it.”

As if to give him the lie, a Confederate machine gun opened up ahead of them. Even through the turret, Pound had no trouble telling it from a U.S. weapon. It fired much faster, with a noise like ripping canvas. The Confederates, with fewer men than the USA, threw bullets around with reckless abandon.

“Can you see where that’s coming from, sir?” he asked Lieutenant Griffiths.

Griffiths peered through the periscopes built into the commander’s cupola. He shook his head. “Afraid not, Sergeant,” he answered. “Want me to stick my head out and have a look?”

He didn’t lack for nerve. The barrel was buttoned up tight now. You could see more by opening the hatch and looking around, but you also ran a formidable risk of getting shot-especially anywhere in the neighborhood of one of those formidable machine guns.

“I don’t think you need to do that, sir,” Pound said. Now that he’d found a junior officer he could stand, he didn’t want the youngster putting his life on the line for no good reason. Sometimes you had to; Pound understood as much. Was this one of those times? He didn’t think so.

But Griffiths said, “Maybe I’d better. That gun’ll chew hell out of our infantry.” He flipped up the hatch and stood up so he could look around, head and shoulders out of the cupola. Along with a flood of cold air, his voice floated down to Pound: “I don’t like staying behind armor when the foot soldiers are out there naked.”