Chapter 15

Things were generally quiet for the month of June, but then some idiots in Worth County, the county with a common border with Dougherty County on our eastern side, decided to appropriate some of our county. The way things were in such a stew with Gov. Throckmorton, this was a good time, if any time were, for such an invasion and appropriation of territory.

Throckmorton would probably welcome someone who took us down a peg or two, so the state government would not interfere. Worth County had a militia that was nominally about 50% larger than ours, if only the men were counted. No one was taking seriously our women’s auxiliary to the militia, and I was just as happy over that.

I don’t have any idea what went wrong in our spying service, but we did not hear about the coming invasion from Worth County until six days before it happened. We knew that the Worth County militia was holding a training exercise at a spot about five miles from our border, but we did not worry about it. The Worth County militia managed to assemble 253 men with about 40 officers from the county’s aristocrats 11 days before they struck.

Suddenly, the news dropped in on us in the form of an Indian who was running away from the militia’s mustering site. He was looking for a reward for telling us about the invasion, and I gave him a $10 gold piece. He was ecstatic over that and rushed away as soon as he gave us all of the information he had. I sent out an emergency call for the male portion of our militia to muster, ready to fight. David’s cavalry was the means for delivering the call to arms, and we were ready when the time finally came.

In contrast to the men, the women were warned to be ready to defend their towns if any of the invaders broke through, and they reacted as they had been trained. I was proud of all of them. Of necessity, their officers were all men, but I did hope to find some officer material if the women did get into shooting fights with the invaders. These officers were all men too old to serve in the normal combat units, but they had enough experience in the War as sergeants to know what to have the women do if they were attacked. I really didn’t expect any of the women to be tested by gunfire, but I was confident that they could put up a good fight.

We men had assembled in Albany and traveled east by wagon. I was not going to have a fight with a lot of my troops tired out by marching to battle. As usual with our part of Georgia, there were few roads and the country was not suitable for an organized march cross country. Therefore, we knew which roads the enemy would be using, and we set up our ambush just on our side of the border with Worth County.

We were assembled on one side of a narrow section of road. This was an ideal choke point from our point of view. The plan was identical to the one used against the CSA Army in Lee County. We had a further advantage in that our side of the road was backed by an old growth forest with little underbrush. Therefore, our cavalry could operate in there with only a minimum of trouble. The far side of the road was bordered by a swamp full of alligators and snakes, sure to spoil one’s day if he encountered one.

I blew my whistle to signal the start of the attack when the officers and their bodyguards were between us and the swamp. This time, I joined in on the shooting because I wanted to try out the fully automatic capability of my S-2. The S-2 worked so well, and I got so excited that I kept firing until my 20-round magazine was empty. I was embarrassed by this, but I noticed that everyone else did the same thing. We turned the enemy into ground beef as a result of our fire.

Apparently, all of my men did the same kind of thing up and down the line because I never heard a single shot from the other side. This was not a battle, it was a slaughter. Because of some wild shooting, not even all of the horses survived.

We had our own wagons, so we had a place to put the collected Enfield rifles and the powder and balls. As usual, we took the serviceable boots, but left everything else but the souvenirs that the men took. We had killed almost 260 working men and 40 aristocrats. The economic structure of western Worth County was demolished.

We left the dead to be cleaned up by the alligators, wild hogs, and a few bears. Our trip home was one long celebration until we met a woman riding like the wind. Dammit, she was a master of horseback riding! Anyway, her news was that we had been tricked.

We had also been attacked by elements of the Mitchell County militia. It was not until a lot later that we learned how this had happened, but the important part was that four groups of 25 men in each group were attacking from the south. The women were fighting, but they wanted our help as soon as we could provide it. Naturally, we rushed back home as fast as we could move.

Fortunately, the men and wagons were divided along regional lines, so it was easy to divert wagons toward where the fighting was going on and let the men on the wagons be able to look after their own families and homes. As a matter of principle, all of the air tanks had been topped off and more minie balls distributed as soon as we had assembled after our fight. Thus, our men were ready to fight as soon as they could find an enemy to shoot at.

David’s cavalry men were all from around Albany, so I released them to rush ahead of us to help the women there. The rest of us headed to Albany as fast as we could push our mules. Fortunately, the mules were not tired because they had not been pushed to get to the fight, and they had rested during the fight, so we were able to move at a good clip toward Albany.

The first group to reach their homes found a fight still going on. The invaders were using muzzle-loading Enfields, so our women had them outgunned from the start of the battle. Frankly, the only reason the fight was still in progress was simply because the women were having some trouble recovering from killing a raider. They were shooting to wound, not to kill, and that was bad tactics because they were outnumbered. So far, the women were fighting from inside their houses and shooting through the windows, so there were no dead women, though there were some who had moderate wounds—painful, but nothing more.

Our men did exactly the proper thing. They jumped out of the wagons and formed a line behind the raiders. That put the raiders in a crossfire, and it did not take long to kill all of them. Of course, we did not have uniforms, but every one of our men wore a wide red cloth wrapped around his left upper arm, and the women knew not to shoot at someone with that marker on his arm.

This was the gist of the story for two of the other raider parties. They were all wiped out, and no women were killed or seriously wounded. In all cases, the repeating rifle had saved the day. No man was ever going to jeer at a woman with a rifle again.

The story was a little bit different at Albany because the raiders from Mitchell County had farther to travel. Therefore, the cavalry caught them before they reached Albany. This was an interesting fight in that, though the horsemen had practiced the tactic, none of them ever expected to use it. They set their S-3s for automatic fire and charged down the line of the three enemy wagons all on the right-hand side so that they could shoot across their body.

They used nothing but automatic fire, and a man pulled out of the line to recharge his S-3 before rejoining the end of the line. The tactic turned out to be so effective that not all of the cavalry even got a chance to shoot. Some of the men were pissed off about that, but David calmed them by promising that they could be at the front of the line the next time the chance came up.

No looting was done at this time. Instead, they drove the wagons into Albany and were waiting with the women defenders there when we showed up. Would you believe that some of the women were kind of pissed off because they had not been able to shoot at the raiders? As a consolation, the women had been allowed to loot the bodies for souvenirs. Some of the women had to be stopped when they were going to take the cock and balls of the dead men as souvenirs. That was a little too much for the men present, since there had been no rapes.

Just to be on the safe side, scouts were sent out to make sure that we had taken care of the sneaky raiders. None were found, and a celebration was held that night. Oh, my God, where did all of that liquor come from? I thought that it had been all drunk at the first celebration, but I was obviously wrong. Again, I did not complain. Everything was going too well for that.