1636_ The Saxon Uprising - Eric Flint [153]
Richter straightened up from the table. “All right, I’ll let it go. That’s not really any of my business. Here’s what it comes down to, Jozef.”
She nodded toward Eric Krenz. The lieutenant wasn’t actually “in command” of the city’s garrison. He was more like the first among equals of the dozen or so lieutenants from the regular USE army who acted as a command staff. Command college might almost be a better way of putting it. Nonetheless, whenever Gretchen needed to consult an individual officer, it was usually Krenz. That might partly be due to his relationship with Richter’s close associate Tata, of course. But Wojtowicz allowed that the man did seem competent in his own right.
“Eric tells me that we may need to make a sortie at some point. It’s now clear that Banér is going to challenge Stearns in the field. He’s starting to pull his mercenaries out of the trenches.”
Jozef felt alarmed. “Now? Gretchen, Banér is almost certain to be expecting a sortie while he carries out such an evolution.”
Richter’s expression became a little sarcastic. “No real military skills? Yet you seem very familiar with all this.”
Jozef flushed a little. “Fine!” he snapped, “You can’t spend any time at all with Koniecpolskis without picking up a lot. Those people talk tactics over breakfast, starting at the age of four. My point remains—this is not a time to be talking about making a sortie. Banér will be ready for it.”
“Oh, relax,” said Krenz. “I’m not stupid. Stupid officers don’t last in the Third Division. The general is relaxed about a lot of things, but he’ll shitcan an incompetent officer very quickly.”
The term shitcan was English, blended in smoothly and perfectly with the German that made up the rest of the sentence. That was how Amideutsch worked.
“We’re not planning any sorties right now,” Krenz continued. “We may never even do one at all. But we want to be ready in case the general does what we think he’s going to do. Try to do, anyway.”
“And that is…?” Jozef was skeptical that a commanding general with as little experience as Stearns was planning any sort of tactic, much less a subtle one.
Krenz apparently sensed the skepticism. He smiled a bit crookedly. “You don’t really understand the general. Professional soldiers usually don’t—and spare me the lecture about being not-really-a-hussar, Wojtowicz. You know a lot more than any civilian would, that’s obvious.”
Jozef decided to ignore that. “Please enlighten me, then.”
“The general knows he isn’t an experienced commander, so he relies on his staff for that. What he does himself is bear down on those things he does understand and know how to do.”
“Such as?”
“He’s the best organizer you’ll ever meet and—this is rare as hen’s teeth, in your circles—he actually gives a damn about his soldiers.”
Jozef started to say something and then stopped. Protesting the skills in that area of Stanislaw Koniecpolski was also contra-indicated.
Still, he must have flushed, because Eric’s not-quite-a-sneering-lip curled further. “And I’m not talking about the way a good noble general will respect and appreciate his soldiers’ valor and morale, either. I’m talking about socks.”
“About…what?”
Eric pointed to his feet. “Socks. And boots. All that sort of mundane and unromantic stuff. Do you know what the disease rate is, in the Third Division?
He didn’t wait for an answer—which Jozef wouldn’t have been able to provide anyway.
“The Third Division has better health than any division in the USE army. And the USE army has better health than any other army in the world. Do you know how fast the Third Division can march?”
Again, he didn’t wait for the answer. “Faster than any other division in the USE army. A lot faster, in fact. Everyone else—our own people as much as the enemy—keeps being surprised at how soon we show up somewhere. And do you know why?”
He pressed right on. Even if he’d wanted to, Jozef couldn’t have squeezed in a word.
“Because the men always have good boots. All the men always have good boots, with plenty of spares. Socks, too. The horses