The Eastern Front(101)

"When? Now?"

"Immediately, he said."

Jeff started lacing on his boots. He'd fallen to sleep still wearing his uniform, so he wouldn't have to take the time to put it on. It had already been wrinkled, so that wasn't an issue. After weeks of campaigning, uniforms in the here and now didn't look much like they did in artists' renditions of battlefield scenes. Jeff figured that had probably been true back up-time as well.

"Any change in the weather?"

Seeing the expression on the sergeant major's face—and how do I inform a colonel he's a donkey?—Jeff grinned and shook his head.

"Never mind. Stupid question." The sound of rain hammering on the roof was loud and clear, as it had been for more than a day now. Luckily, the damage sustained by the bakery during the battle hadn't compromised the roof, or Jeff would be swimming by now.

They were also lucky that Zielona Góra wasn't located on a river the way most cities and large towns were. The Złota Łącza had started to overflow, but it was a small enough stream that it didn't pose any real problems. Jeff wasn't at all sure that would be true with towns located on the Odra or the Warta.

When he got to the door that led out onto the street, Jeff grabbed a short and wide wooden plank that he'd positioned earlier on a side table. He should have had an oilskin rain cape, since he knew the army had been provided with them. But they were nowhere to be found in the supply wagons. Another thing Jeff had soon learned about big campaigns like this one was that the two most common phrases associated with logistics were "musta got left behind somewhere" and "sorry 'bout that."

There was no chance of finding an umbrella, since they weren't even officially part of the army's supply materials. Umbrellas were in short supply, period, if you didn't have an up-time one—and Jeff, naturally, had left his behind in Magdeburg. They weren't yet in common use in Europe although you could occasionally find ones imported from China. People used cloaks instead.

Jeff had a cloak, in fact. But while cloaks did all right when dealing with a drizzle or a light rain, in heavy rain like this they'd just get soaked completely through. He'd wind up arriving at the Rathaus every bit as wet and ten pounds heavier.

The plank was better. It'd keep off most of the rain.

He hoped. He hadn't actually walked as far as the Rathaus since the storm broke.



He started off running but Jeff gave that up quickly. The city's streets were a sea of mud. He'd be bound to slip and fall, especially because the visibility was pretty lousy. They were at least two hours past sunup, but the overcast was heavy enough to leave everything looking like early evening instead. Not to mention that everything was half-hidden behind sheets of rain. This was one hell of a storm.



He wasn't the last of the regimental commanding officers to arrive. Two other colonels came piling in a minute or so after he did. The three brigadiers seemed to have been in the Rathaus long enough to have started drying off in front of the fire. Jeff figured Mike Stearns had held an initial meeting with them before calling in the next layer of the division's officers. He'd used the city's Rathaus as his headquarters since they'd taken Zielona Góra. The tavern in the basement was well suited for the sort of command meetings he was holding right now.

Mike didn't waste any time. As soon as the last colonel came in, he said, "All hell has broken loose, gentleman. I received a radio call from General Torstensson a short while ago. The Polish army was able to use the weather to evade Gustav Adolf by moving north without being spotted." He waved his hand at the ceiling. "In this sort of weather, all of the air force's planes are grounded, of course."

He didn't add what he could have, which was that an overreliance on up-time technology could cause its own problems. Koniecpolski didn't have any airplanes. In good weather, that was a big handicap. In weather like this, though, the advantage shifted to him—because what he did have were a lot of excellent Cossack scouts.

The Swedish army had Finnish equivalents, but there weren't nearly as many of them. And the USE's army was notoriously weak when it came to cavalry. Horsemanship was a skill that was heavily concentrated among noblemen, and there weren't many noblemen who wanted to serve in the regular USE forces.

"Whether by good fortune or good intelligence, Koniecpolski was able to trap Hesse-Kassel and his army against the Warta. Which," Mike continued grimly, "was already overflowing its banks and had them pretty well mired."

He took a deep breath. "They got hammered badly. Torstensson's assessment is that they'll be out of the campaign altogether for at least a week. Torstensson thinks Koniecpolski will now try to come south, maneuvering around Gustav Adolf in order to attack one of the USE divisions. Meanwhile, von Thurn's column—that's about half the Swedish army, don't forget—is on the wrong side of the Warta. There's no way they'll be able to cross the river and come into the fight until the river ebbs and they can get their engineers to build some bridges."