Topical Guide 888
Mark Dorset
Forts and Fortifications: Redoubt
Mr. Fillmore ignored me. He began striding off the dock and onto the island, waving his hands and sketching his plans in the air. “This could work,” he said. “We drop you here by night. Parachute.”
“Parachute,” I said. “Of course.”
“Your mission: penetrate the redoubt — ”
“The redoubt?” I asked.
“The hotel,” Liza explained with a smile.
“ — and terminate all targeted personnel,” said Mr. Fillmore. He stopped and stood with his hands on his hips, looking up at the hotel, where, to judge from the expression on his face, no targeted personnel had been left standing.
Wikipedia, “Redoubt”:
A redoubt (historically redout) is a fort or fort system usually consisting of an enclosed defensive emplacement outside a larger fort, usually relying on earthworks, although some are constructed of stone or brick. It is meant to protect soldiers outside the main defensive line and can be a permanent structure or a hastily constructed temporary fortification. The word means “a place of retreat.”
Mr. Fillmore’s martial fantasies remind me of those of Tristram Shandy’s Uncle Toby:
’Tis a pity, Trim, said my uncle Toby, resting with his hand upon the corporal’s shoulder, as they both stood surveying their works,—that we have not a couple of field-pieces to mount in the gorge of that new redoubt;——’twould secure the lines all along there, and make the attack on that side quite complete:——get me a couple cast, Trim.
Your honour shall have them, replied Trim, before to-morrow morning.
It was the joy of Trim’s heart,—nor was his fertile head ever at a loss for expedients in doing it, to supply my uncle Toby in his campaigns, with whatever his fancy called for; […] my uncle Toby’s demand for two more pieces for the redoubt, had set the corporal at work again; and no better resource offering, he had taken the two leaden weights from the nursery window: and as the sash pullies, when the lead was gone, were of no kind of use, he had taken them away also, to make a couple of wheels for one of their carriages.
He had dismantled every sash-window in my uncle Toby’s house long before, in the very same way,—though not always in the same order; for sometimes the pullies have been wanted, and not the lead,—so then he began with the pullies,—and the pullies being picked out, then the lead became useless,—and so the lead went to pot too.
A great moral might be picked handsomely out of this, but I have not time—’tis enough to say, wherever the demolition began, ’twas equally fatal to the sash window.
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