"'Fraid so," Donnelly said. "Hurts like hell when I piss."

"Well, we can do something about that," O'Doull said; guys with VD were just as much out of the fight as if Jake Featherston's men had plugged them. "Drop your pants, Donnelly, and turn the other cheek."

"You gonna give me a shot?" the soldier asked apprehensively.

"Yup." O'Doull readied the needle-a big one.

"I thought you got pills for the clap." Donnelly might well be fearless in the field, but he sure wasn't here.

"You used to. This penicillin clears it up faster and better, though," O'Doull said. "Now bend over."

"You fuck around, Donnelly, I'll have you bend over and I'll kick your sorry ass-I won't stick it," the kid lieutenant said.

By the expression on Donnelly's face, he would rather have got a kicking than a shot. But he saw he had no choice. He yelped when the needle went home. O'Doull pushed in the plunger with a certain malicious glee. "For Chrissake, wear a rubber next time," he said.

"It's like screwing in socks," Donnelly whined.

"Well, your sweetheart sure gave you something to remember her by," O'Doull said. "What did you give her?"

"Four cans of deviled ham. She was skinny as all get-out. How was I supposed to know she'd give me a drippy faucet?"

"You're supposed to think about shit like that," his platoon commander snapped before O'Doull could say anything. "How many times did you hear about it in basic?"

"Yes, sir," Donnelly said. O'Doull had a good notion of what he wasn't saying: that the only thing he'd cared about was getting his jollies.

That was natural enough. Of course, so was running away if somebody started shooting at you. Soldiers could learn not to. They could also learn not to screw without being careful. They could, but this one hadn't.

"Clap isn't the only thing to worry about down here," O'Doull said. "Medic who worked with me got murdered for laying a Confederate woman."

"I wasn't worried about that, sir. I wasn't worried about anything," Donnelly said.

He wouldn't listen. O'Doull could see that. "Well, pull your pants up and get the hell out of here," he said. "If you come down with another dose, so help me God I'll find a bigger needle." The threat might work if anything did.

It made Donnelly look worried as he covered himself again, anyhow. The lieutenant kept barking at him as he led him away from the aid station. "How often does that happen?" Lord asked.

"Every now and again," O'Doull answered. "At least this guy didn't have a chancre."

"Penicillin'll do for syphilis, too," Sergeant Lord said.

"Sure a lot better than the chemicals full of arsenic we used before," O'Doull agreed. "And before that it was mercury and all kinds of other poison."

The senior medic made a face. "I think I'd rather have the pox. A lot of the time, something else would kill you before it got bad."

"Maybe," O'Doull said. "But maybe not, too. A lot of the time, you'd get sick over and over, one thing after another. They'd all be different. They'd all look different, anyhow. But they'd all have syphilis at the bottom. Damn thing's the great pretender."

"You know more about it than I do, sir," Sergeant Lord said. "I played the trombone before I got conscripted. I knew some guys who had it, and it didn't seem to bother them all that much."

"Seem to is right," O'Doull said, and then, "The trombone, eh? Have one with you?"

"Afraid not, sir. It's not like a flute or even the trumpet-not so easy to carry around."

"Too bad. Well, maybe you can liberate one."

"Maybe." Goodson Lord looked dubious. "I've seen fiddles and pianos and guitars in these pissant Confederate towns, but that's about it."

"Well, let the corpsmen know. Let the guys in front of us know," O'Doull said. "You'd be amazed at what they can come up with-besides the clap, I mean."

"If I want that, I'll get it myself," Lord said. O'Doull snorted.

Since the medic didn't seem to want to spread the word, O'Doull did it for him. Inside of three days, Eddie produced a horn. "Here you go," he said. "Merry Christmas."

"I'll be a son of a bitch," Goodson Lord said. He took the trombone and started to play. Notes smooth and mellow as butter filled the tent. They made the Army bugles O'Doull was used to seem like screeching blue jays by comparison.

"Wow!" Eddie said. "You really can play that so-and-so."

"You think I was lying?" Lord asked, lowering the trombone.

"No, not like that," Eddie answered. "But there's playing, and then there's playing, you know? You're really good!"

"Oh. Thanks." The corpsman's enthusiasm made the sergeant blink. He started to play some more.

He got about thirty seconds into a number from Oh, Sequoyah! before a corpsman brought in a man with a piece of shrapnel in his thigh. "You can blow that thing, man," the soldier said. "Can you keep playing while the doc works on me?"

"Sorry," Lord said after a quick look at the wound. "I think we're gonna have to knock you out."

"Aw, hell," the wounded man said. As far as Leonard O'Doull could remember, that was the first time he'd ever heard a man ask not to be anesthetized.

Sergeant Lord got the patient etherized on the table. O'Doull cut away the man's trouser leg and started cleaning out the wound and tying off bleeders. He could see the femoral artery pulsing in there, but it wasn't cut. If it had been, the man likely would have bled out before he got back to the aid station.

O'Doull sewed him up and injected him with penicillin and tetanus antitoxin. "These aren't so bad," he said. "He should heal up fine."

"You do like to work on 'em when they turn out that way," Lord agreed. "How many amputations have you done?"

"I couldn't even begin to count 'em. They're like burns: more than I ever wanted to, that's for damn sure," O'Doull said.

"Yeah, same here," Lord said. "They're easy to perform, they're fast, and the patient usually comes through 'em pretty well. But you know he'll never be the same afterwards, the poor bastard."

"Ain't it the truth?" O'Doull said sadly. "Most of the time when I do an amputation, I feel more like a butcher than a surgeon."

"That's about the size of it," Lord said.

O'Doull wished they hadn't been talking about it, because the very next man the corpsman carried in had a foot and lower leg smashed beyond the hope of saving. The doctor pulled out the bone saw and did what he had to do. As Sergeant Lord had said, the soldier would probably pull through. Whether he would be happy about it was a different question. O'Doull wasn't likely ever to learn his answer to it.

F ayetteville lay south and even a little west of Atlanta. A rail line ran through it. Once the U.S. Army got astride that line, it would pinch off one more Confederate artery into the beleaguered capital of Georgia. Lieutenant Michael Pound didn't think the enemy would be able to hold Atlanta much longer after that happened.

Being a platoon commander, Pound wore earphones more often than he wanted to. Instead of doing as he pleased, he had to keep track of what the other units in the regiment and the other barrels in his platoon were up to. He thought it cramped his style.

"Marquard's platoon has lost three barrels at square G-5," a voice from somewhere in back of the line intoned. "Need armor there to cover the infantry advance."

Pound checked the map. If his platoon was where he thought, they were right on the edge of G-5 themselves. "Pound here," he answered on the same frequency. "We can cover. Do you know why they lost them? Over."

He waited. He didn't have to wait long. "Roger your covering," the voice said. "Report is that the losses are due to enemy barrels. Over."

"What the hell's wrong with Marquard?" Pound asked, but not with the TRANSMIT key pressed. He happened to know that the other lieutenant had new-model machines. To his way of thinking, you had to be worse than careless to lose three in a hurry to C.S. barrels. You damn near had to be criminally negligent.