1920: America's Great War

CHAPTER 8

Kirsten, Ella, and Maria were jammed into seats on a train that moved north from Los Angeles towards San Francisco at little more than a snail’s pace.

People filled every seat and the overflow sat in the aisle of the passenger car, while others were forced to stand wherever they could find a spot. There was no place to move. The air was thick with the stench of sweat, fear, and urine, and not all came from the children and infants. A couple of fools actually tried to light up cigarettes or cigars in the confined space, which had made more people sick. They had been shouted at until they put them out.

Many adults had relieved themselves where they stood or sat, and Kirsten wondered just when her turn would come as her bladder was getting uncomfortably full. She couldn’t stand if she wanted to, and several people had passed out. Some were still upright, unable to even fall.

There were several other passenger cars in the train and she assumed they were all as stuffed with humanity as this one. Nor was anyone interested in taking tickets. A man who actually had tickets complained that people were in his family’s seats; he had been beaten up by squatters while his wife and two children looked on in horror, shrieking and crying.

Kirsten wished she could talk to Ella, who had vomited on herself. In a way, Kirsten envied Ella, who seemed oblivious to the world around her. Of course, she did talk to Maria who was a wonderful woman, but, like so many like her, was undereducated and had limited interests. She simply wanted to get to family in the north, while Kirsten also wanted to talk to someone about the collapse of civilization that was going on around her. Was the world really coming to an end? And what were their real chances of survival?

She also wanted to talk to someone, anyone, about bathroom facilities, drinking water, and food. She felt sweaty and dirty, but these were the least of her worries. She estimated that the train was going maybe twenty miles an hour tops and most of the time at speeds far less than that. This meant many more hours of confinement. Of course, she could always get out and walk. But all the way to San Francisco? She’d stick with the train.

She wondered what was going on in Ella’s mind. Her cousin still hadn’t spoken a word since her ordeal. When she got to San Francisco, Kirsten would have to find a psychiatrist for her. If Ella didn’t get better, Kirsten dreaded the thought of having to care for her, although she dreaded even more the thought of putting her into an asylum. She’d visited one once and thought she’d go mad herself at the sight of the inmates. She prayed that Ella would get better.

At least Kirsten had a window. If the wind was blowing from the right, it meant fresh air. If the wind blew from the front it meant coal smoke, cinders, and people yelling at her to close the damn thing.

A pair of specks in the sky caught her attention. Were they large birds, she wondered? No, they were airplanes. She felt a shiver of fear. Only the Germans had planes. Surely they would leave a train full of refugees alone.

The two planes banked and approached the train side on. Others in the train saw them and began to scream. Gunfire rippled from the planes’ machine guns. Bullets tore through the wooden walls of the railroad car, finding packed flesh. Screams changed to howls of pain and panic, but the train rumbled on as people died and blood poured from the cars.

The planes banked and came on the train from the other side. One plane veered and attacked the engine. The boiler exploded in a plume of white steam that billowed skyward. The engine rolled off the tracks with a maniacal howl, pulling the other cars with it.

Kirsten knew horror as the car she was in tilted to her left and slid down a small embankment with scores of people screaming. It stopped abruptly on its side, and the car was filled with dust and smoke, blinding her. She clawed her way upward, thankful that the train had fallen on its left side and not the right where she had been sitting looking out the window. There were people below her and she felt them pulling at her, trying in panic to climb over her. The smoke and dust choked her. She didn’t want to burn to death.

The dust and smoke settled a bit and, with the help of others, she got the window open wide enough for people to crawl out. People pushed and tried to claw their way past her. A heavyset man succeeded and kicked her in the face. She spat blood, and somehow managed to pull a hat pin from her purse. She jabbed it into his thigh, but he didn’t notice.

Finally, she climbed out and stood shakily on the side of the train. People were pouring out of the train like ants from a disturbed hill. The two German planes had disappeared. Their horrible work was done. The train was destroyed and the line itself had been damaged. No more trains would be traveling from Los Angeles to San Francisco, at least not on these tracks, for some time.

Where were Ella and Maria? She helped some people out through the window that had been by her seat while others climbed out other windows. Some were injured and bloody from bullet wounds and the crash, and a few were dead. Fortunately, most only looked stunned. Finally, Maria emerged through the window, pulling the limp form of Ella.

With help from other survivors, they got her out and down onto the ground. Ella was pale and not moving and her head was tilted in a strange position. Kirsten felt for a pulse and checked if she was breathing. Nothing.

“I tried,” said Maria, “but everything was crazy and she got crushed. She couldn’t defend herself against the panic.”

Ella was dead. Her neck was broken. Of course she couldn’t defend herself. She didn’t even know what world she was in. Kirsten wanted to cry but she was too angry. Nor was Ella the only fatality. Many other bodies lay limp, bloody and broken as good Samaritans pulled everyone from the cars. Many of the dead were women and children and Kirsten had a hard time fathoming what she was seeing. She could now really understand Ella’s withdrawal from reality. It was so tempting to run and hide in a world where sights like this were blocked out.

Mercifully, there had been no real fires, so everyone was spared that horror. Soon everyone, living and dead, had been taken from the train.

Some farmers came by with wagons and Kirsten could see they were appalled by the extent of the carnage. They loaded the injured onto the wagons and later came back for the dead. That evening, they buried Ella by a dirt road alongside a farmer’s field. Kirsten willed herself to remember the grave’s location. Thankfully, the farmer placed some rocks on the grave and logged her name and the place of her grave in a notebook. Someday they’d come back and give her a proper burial. She and Ella hadn’t always gotten along, far from it, but the woman deserved the decency in death she was denied at the end of her life.

Maria raised her eyes and looked at Kirsten. Now what, she was asking. Kirsten answered. “We have no choice but to go north and continue to San Francisco. The Germans aren’t going to stop at Los Angeles.”

It was almost four hundred miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco and they’d traveled maybe fifty of that distance before the disaster. Earlier, she had scoffed at the idea of walking to San Francisco. Now it seemed like the only viable alternative. She and Maria had a lot of walking ahead of them.

The crown prince was elated. His army had taken two major American ports, San Diego and Los Angeles, and a number of cities in between to be used as bases for future operations. He was certain his father, the emperor, would be proud of him and he was equally proud of his generals and his men.

And now the German Navy had arrived. He watched as the line of battleships and cruisers majestically entered Los Angeles harbor and anchored. A motor launch departed from the battleship Westfalen, the temporary flagship of the recently designated Pacific Fleet. The Pacific Fleet was the largest offshoot of the High Seas Fleet which remained in German waters and under the command of Admiral Scheer. The High Seas Fleet confronted England and the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet as it had for more than six years. The Pacific Fleet was commanded by Admiral Franz von Hipper, a fifty-seven-year-old professional. Like his subordinate, von Trotha, he’d felt cheated that there’d been no major battles in the 1914 war with the British. Von Hipper normally flew his flag from the Bayern, but that mighty battleship was on blockade duty off Puget Sound.

The two men greeted each other with warmth and mutual salutes. The Crown Prince suggested they go indoors for refreshments and the admiral happily agreed. When courtesies were over, they went to Wilhelm’s office in what had been Los Angeles’ city hall. A picture of Woodrow Wilson stared down at them as if in disapproval.

Hipper offered Wilhelm a cigar. “It’s Cuban, and most exquisite. I have to ask, your highness, just what is that acrid stench in the air?”

Wilhelm sighed. “What the Americans couldn’t take with them, they destroyed. Unfortunately, what you smell are the remains of the oil industry in Los Angeles. We have taken hostages and executed a number of them in reprisal for the damage that was caused to the refineries and storage facilities.”

Hipper sat upright, shock on his face. “What? How bad was the damage?”

“Quite complete, Admiral,” Wilhelm said, surprised at Hipper’s reaction. “The storage tanks and the refineries are very much ruined. Why?”

“Because, sir, we were counting on that oil, the diesel in particular. My ships swallow prodigious amounts of it and we had planned to refuel here at Los Angeles. After all, the Los Angeles area currently produces nearly a quarter of the world’s oil! My ships’ fuel tanks are almost empty after steaming from Germany to California and we were only able to take so much in the holds of accompanying tankers, and from storage depots in Indo-China.”

“Good God,” the crown prince said.

“Your highness, I must ask—did you receive word that every effort was to be made to take those refineries and storage tanks as intact as possible?”

Wilhelm flushed and mentally cursed himself. No, he had not been told. Berlin’s bureaucracy and the eternal rivalry between the Army and the Navy had probably raised its ugly head and someone had managed to “lose” the message. Some bureaucrat probably decided it would be great good fun if the upstart Navy ran out of fuel and was embarrassed. Of course he should have known about the fleet’s fuel and other logistical requirements without being told. A modern navy needed oil. Only a few years ago, the German Navy ran on coal, which was available in many places, but oil, however abundant, had to be refined before it could be used.

The prince’s own army needed oil, but in the form of gasoline which was rather more available than diesel. Cars and trucks used gas and there were many small storage facilities and gas stations to use to fill the army’s trucks and other vehicles. Of course the fact that the army also used tens of thousands of horses meant they had alternatives should the supply of gas dry up.

But diesel? The prince had never really given it a thought. “Admiral, I regret that I received no such information and I deeply regret not having taken the initiative myself.”

“I am most concerned about the refineries. Are they really destroyed?”

Crown Prince Wilhelm was beginning to sweat. “I will arrange for your engineers and mine to survey the refineries and render a judgement. I can only say that they appeared to be totally destroyed. If that is the case, how long will it take to rebuild them and what impact will their loss, however temporary, have on your operations?”

Hipper thought for a moment. “I too will defer to my engineers, but I believe it will take months at best to make a badly-damaged refinery operational. I doubt that we have either the equipment or the skilled men to do the job, which means both will have to be imported. In the meantime, I will send messages to Berlin to have additional tankers sent here as quickly as possible, but that will take at least a month to gather them, fill them, and get them here. It would shorten the journey if we’d managed to take the Panama Canal, but that didn’t happen either.”

Hipper continued his analysis. “As to our current operations, we will drastically curtail them until the additional fuel arrives. We will continue to blockade Puget Sound and San Francisco, but the ships will be instructed to conserve fuel and not go chasing after shadows. Unfortunately, that will include American surface raiders should they emerge. We will also take oil from the smaller ships and give them to the larger. This means that some American ships might slip out through our blockade, but so be it.”

Hipper laughed without mirth. He had no choice but to curtail operations until he could arrange for fuel from other sources. The Dutch should have some in their Pacific colonies, he thought, but simply acquiring oil was not the solution. Oil existed in abundance almost everywhere, but it was useless gunk as it came out of the ground. It had to be refined, and the damned refineries had been destroyed.

“Still, it should not change things. You’ve got the American Army on the run and I’ve got the United States Navy bottled up. It doesn’t matter that things aren’t going perfectly, highness, they never do.”

Wilhelm recovered his aplomb. “Speaking of which, are you aware that the British have sent a squadron to Puget Sound?”

Again von Hipper was surprised. “What on earth for?”

“Apparently they are concerned for the neutrality of the Sound. They sent two battleships and a number of lighter ships as a reminder that the northern half of Puget Sound is theirs and we should not intrude. I understand they are sending a similar squadron to the St. Lawrence on the Atlantic side of this damned continent.”

Hipper was anxious to get back to his ships and make the appropriate arrangements to save fuel in hostile waters. Damn the fools who hadn’t informed the crown prince of the fleet’s needs.

The United States Army west of the Rockies and south of San Francisco was beginning to take tentative steps to move forward and away from the initial chaos. Liggett had organized disparate groups into two divisions, grandly named the First Infantry and the Second Infantry. The First was commanded by Luke’s old mentor, Fox Connor, and the Second by Major General James Harbord. They consisted of four understrength regiments each, totaling about fifteen thousand men per division. While larger than their German counterparts, they were still smaller than the American Army’s table of organization specifications which called for divisions of about twenty thousand men. They were poorly equipped, having little in the way of artillery, machine guns, and ammunition, but at least they existed. For the time being each division operated independently and reported directly to Liggett, a relationship that would change as the army grew.

The Seventh Cavalry Regiment was now part of the First Division and very few of the remaining soldiers still had horses. Patton was delighted to receive the fifty mounted Mexicans under Montoya and voiced thoughts about recruiting a Mexican brigade. Patton had come to the conclusion that many thousands of Mexicans were either refugees who hated the brutal Carranza government, or Americans of Mexican descent who hated the Carranza government as well. Either way, they were a source of eager manpower.

Thus relieved of the obligation of protecting Montoya from wrathful Californians, Martel found himself in yet another biplane headed for San Francisco. Corporal Flower informed Luke he’d rather die than go up in one of those things and took a train.

There were numerous changes to San Francisco since Luke had departed. It now had the appearance of a city under siege. The German warships had made several moves toward the city and bombarded her again. More buildings were damaged and many of the remainder were protected by piles of sandbags. Much of the civilian population had departed and the rest were packing for the inevitable day when the German Army arrived. However, refugees were streaming in from the south and had more than replaced the people who’d fled north.

As promised by Admiral Sims, many of the twelve-inch guns from the sunk or damaged ships at Mare Island had been removed and now faced out towards the Pacific or covered the entrance to the Bay. A number of six-inch and four-inch guns had been mounted on Alcatraz Island, which covered the mouth of the entrance to the bay. That giant rock was now an unsinkable battleship.

South and east of the city, work was progressing on trenches and fortifications that would both protect the city and extend into the mountains. As Harbord’s and Connor’s divisions slowly retreated, they did their best to nibble at the Germans and delay them. Every day they delayed the invaders meant more fortifications constructed and more recruits trained in the camps outside Sacramento.

General Liggett and Admiral Sims had combined their headquarters and Luke found himself working alongside naval personnel who were as bemused with him as he was with them. The war was eliminating the historic rivalries between the two services.

Luke had told Kirsten where he could be found and she said she would look him up when she finally made it to San Francisco. Thus, he was stunned and sickened when it was reported that the train she’d been traveling on had been attacked by German planes. The official report said more than fifty dead and a hundred injured, many of them badly. The injured were identified and Kirsten wasn’t among them, but the list of the dead was incomplete. He recognized her cousin Ella’s name, but many of the dead had been unidentifiable. He prayed that Kirsten wasn’t one of them, or, if she was, that her death had been painless. That is, he thought bitterly, if violent death could ever be painless.

Even though they’d only known each other for a few days, Luke had felt a sense of kinship with her. His own relations with ladies, and not just women, had been limited at best, and the young widow had fascinated him. She was bright, pretty, intelligent, and self-reliant, not a vapid shadow like so many woman were, even in this relatively enlightened age. And now maybe she was dead.

Most maddeningly, there was nothing he could do. If she was wandering her way up north, she’d arrive when she did. If she was dead, he’d never hear anything about it. Women should not be casualties in a war, he thought. But, of course, they had been since time immemorial.

Elise was furious as she stood at the foot of the hospital bed. “How dare you go and get yourself wounded again! Wasn’t once enough to satisfy you?”

Ensign Josh Cornell lay back on the pillows and tried to grin, but the pain from his infected shoulder wouldn’t let him. By the time the Shark had gotten back to San Francisco, the splinters that he’d thought were so trivial had become infected. Doctors at the tent hospital on the grounds of the Presidio had worked to pull the tiny pieces of wood out of his flesh and clean the wounds with iodine and alcohol. They were of the opinion that his shoulder and arm would never fully recover and he wondered what impact that would have on a Navy career.

Elise was not done scolding. “First you hurt your leg and now you hurt your arm. What is it going to be next, your thick empty skull?”

She huffed and sat down beside his bed and Josh could see tears welling in her eyes. She was so lovely and her concern so real, he thought he would melt.

“Elise, it’s not like I went looking to get shot up. It just happened. I’m in the Navy and I can’t just stand back when other people are out fighting the Krauts. My job is to fight them, too.”

“I know,” she said softly. “This may seem very bold of me to tell you, but you are a special person in my life, and I didn’t want to lose you just when I’ve found you.”

She laughed. “Close your mouth, Ensign, your jaw is dropping.”

He grinned. “It’s just that I’m stunned, and very, very pleased. You are special to me too.”

A nurse came and glared at Elise. Women were not supposed to be in the men’s ward, even though Josh was an officer and supposedly a gentleman. A word from Admiral Sims had gotten her entry but she would not abuse the privilege.

“I have to go now,” she whispered and glared at the nurse, “one of the three witches from Macbeth has arrived and I must get back to work. When you feel better, we will talk and begin to see where this takes us.”

He watched her slender figure as she departed. Like many young women she wore a skirt that came to mid calf, and what a lovely calf it was. He had no idea why some thought Elise was plain or skinny. He thought she was a lithe young goddess. And she liked him. He would concentrate on getting better.

General Nolan walked up to Luke’s desk. A mountain of paperwork was stacked on it, consisting of transcripts of interrogations of refugees and the rare prisoner. They stated the obvious and didn’t need an intelligence officer to analyze them.

Nolan glanced at the unread documents and smiled wickedly. “Congratulations, you’ve been breveted to captain for your work down south and in particular, Los Angeles. Destroying those refineries was a stroke of genius. Now you can start destroying those papers.”

He handed Luke a set of captain’s bars and Luke put them on. He thought he’d be eighty before he made captain. Funny what a war can do, even if it was only a temporary rank.

“I have to give Montoya credit for destroying the refineries. He knew where they were and it was his idea.”

“Montoya appears to be a good man and we’re glad he’s on our side, even if he is a Mexican. I’ve got to remember that we’ve got Germans, like Ike Eisenhower, working for us, and that a lot of Mexicans north of the border hate the ones south of the border. Still, it was you who agreed with Montoya and you who led the raid. And already the loss of oil is playing hell with the Krauts’ plans. In other words, Luke, we finally did something right. We’ve intercepted word that the Germans have told their warships to cut down on fuel usage, and that Admiral Hipper is requesting fuel tankers be sent from Germany or wherever the hell the Kaiser can find them. Admiral Sims and Liggett are discussing plans to do something about that as well.”

Luke was too tactful to remind Nolan that Dwight Eisenhower, like millions of other Americans, was of German extraction, but not German born. Newly-promoted captains do not argue with newly-promoted generals.

“And Luke, I’m genuinely sorry you haven’t heard anything about that woman you met down there. The fact that you haven’t heard anything could actually be good news.”

Luke agreed but didn’t want to talk about it, which Nolan understood. He’d asked those in the intelligence division to keep an eye out for survivors of the train attack, so just about everyone knew something had gone wrong with his personal life. So much for privacy, he thought.

Along with sharing working quarters, the Army and Navy shared support personnel. One of the more helpful staffers was a rather plainish young woman named Elise Thompson who, Luke understood, was seeing a young ensign who was currently in the hospital after being shot up in a raid.

She walked over, smiled slightly, handed him a folded piece of paper and winked. Nolan left and Luke read the note: Conference Room B, was all it said.

Puzzled, he turned towards Elise who smiled, flushed and looked away. All right, it was not going to be an assignation with the ensign’s thin girlfriend. He got up and walked down the short hallway to Conference Room B. He knocked and entered and nearly fell over.

“Kirsten?”

Instinctively, he reached out his hands and she came into his arms. They hugged and he kissed her on the forehead. He wanted to do more, but she pulled back. She looked like hell. Her clothes, jeans, and blouse, were filthy and torn and her hair was a mess. The bruise on her face was receding but still multicolored, like summer storm clouds.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, meaning it.

“And you’re blind, soldier,” she said, laughing. “Ah, you’ve been promoted. Wonderful.”

“How did you get here?”

They sat at the conference table and she told him that she and Maria had started walking the morning after burying Ella. The general idea was to head north since the Germans would, sooner or later, be coming from the south. After a day of that, they’d managed a ride on a truck that took them to Bakersfield where they’d jumped on a flatcar and ridden the train up to San Francisco. She said the flatcar was covered with refugees like her and there were many flatcars, all jammed with people.

“At least the engineer kept the speed down. Otherwise people would have flown off as we went around turns. I got off as close to here as I could, but it was still across the bay and I had to take a ferry. Maria’s decided to stay with some relatives, so I’m now alone. My feet hurt, I’m filthy, and I need a bath. And after that, I’ll need a place to live. It’s just too cold and rainy to camp out in the park. I do have some money, so I’m not destitute.”

Sleeping in the park was not a facetious comment. Many of the parks were filled with tents, and chaos was starting to take over. Liggett had said he was on the verge of declaring martial law, and the hell with what Sonny Jim Rolph, the mayor of San Francisco or what William Stevenson, governor of California, thought. The city was sliding towards anarchy and something had to be done. In the meantime, there were housing shortages along with concerns about food.

“Would you settle for dinner while I figure this out?”

There was a knock on the door and Elise entered. She saw they were holding hands and smiled. “Mrs. Biel, I couldn’t help but wonder if you’re looking for a place to live? If you are, I have an apartment available since my so-called roommates just left for the north. It’s not majestic or anything, but it does have two beds and a bath.”

Kirsten smiled. “Do you read minds?”

Elise laughed. “It was too obvious. Admiral Sims and General Liggett said I should take some time and get you settled. And you, Captain Martel, General Nolan says you should get back to work on that pile of papers.”

Roy Olson looked and saw yet another corpse swinging in the breeze. The Germans had stopped shooting people. It wasted ammunition. Hanging was much cheaper and leaving the body dangling was a very dramatic warning. This one was blackened by the sun and its face had been chewed to the bone by birds. It looked as if it had been there for several days. The dead man was one of the two remaining Dubbins boys. Olson’s deputies had caught him and the German, Steiner, had strung him up.

Steiner came out of his office and greeted Olson outside. Olson was always amazed how German officers could keep their uniforms so immaculate. Olson was dusty from a hard ride in from his ranch. They walked to a large barbed-wire corral in which several hundred men, white men, sat and stared at them. Most of them wore civilian clothes and only a handful were dressed in any kind of uniform. Some were angry, exuding hate, and some looked blank and fearful.

“Who the hell are these guys?” Olson asked.

“Your workforce. These are prisoners taken in the Los Angeles campaign and you will use them to perform the menial duties that used to be done by the residents of the area until they all ran away. It has already been pointed out to the prisoners that they are fortunate to be alive since they were irregulars and could have been shot as terrorists.”

Fortunate indeed, Olson thought. The swinging corpse was proof that the Germans played rough with anyone who opposed them. He noticed a number of Mexican guards around the prisoners. Steiner saw him looking and smiled. “And that is your security force. One hundred Mexicans along with the twenty ignorant barbarians you call your deputies ought to be enough to keep the prisoners in line. An early execution or two might be impressive as well.”

Olson agreed. Once he might have been upset at killing Americans, but those days were long gone. He’d felt a tremor of panic when that young American officer momentarily convinced him that the U.S. Army was just over the horizon, but he quickly realized the man had tricked him. Steiner said he’d been played for a fool and Steiner was right. They’d dug in and waited several days for an American attack that never came. Now he knew that the Germans were definitely here to stay and he was damn glad to be on the right side, the winning side.

Steiner smiled. “You’ve made a good life for yourself, Mr. Olson. You live in a large house, you’re making a lot of money and you have a lovely Mexican mistress who actually believes her husband stays alive because she lets you fuck her. He is alive, isn’t he?”

“He died weeks ago.” Olson said. He felt no regret. The woman, Martina, was still better off with him than whoring about the countryside. When he closed his eyes, he could imagine she was Kirsten Biel. He wondered just where she’d gone to and whether she was fucking the young officer she’d rode off with. Probably, he thought.

“When this is over,” Steiner continued, “you will be well rewarded in many ways. By the way, you’re not Jewish are you?”

“Of course not,” he said angrily.

“Good. Neither the kaiser nor his son nor anyone in a senior position can abide Jews. Of course they are a necessary evil and some will rise to a certain level of authority based on merit, especially in banking and finance, but no Jews will hold a truly senior position in the German government. Or, if I have my way, in the province of California.”

Steiner laughed. “In Germany, there are some radical organizations suggesting that all the Christ-killers be deported to someplace like Africa, but that is impractical. A pleasant thought, but impractical. It is as unlikely as actually killing all of them.”

Olson smiled and shrugged. He didn’t give a crap about Jews, Negroes, Chinese, Malays or anyone else. He just wanted to become an important man in the German Reich and make a lot of money. And when he got tired of little Martina—and she was starting to bore him—there would be others. Maybe someday he’d find out what happened to Kirsten Biel. Hell, she still owned property in the area, maybe she’d come back. Well, if she did, he had a big treat in store for her.

For most it began with a simple cough. Hell, everyone had a cold and everyone coughed and everyone coughed on everyone else. With so many bodies jammed so tightly in the barracks of Camp Dix, it was impossible not to.

The winter weather was wet and clammy and the barracks were a disaster. With so many openings in the walls, the soldiers joked that the walls didn’t really exist, that they were just white paint on the sky. Staying warm and dry was impossible.

Of course, the training took place outside in that same wet and clammy weather. Woolen uniforms got wet and soggy and clung to already cold and tired bodies. Overcoats hadn’t arrived yet. Soon, they were told, but soon might be July the way the Army ran things. Even Sergeant Smith was concerned by the whole unhealthy state of affairs, but of course, couldn’t show it.

The sneezing and sniffling evolved into coughing and the coughing into great hacking coughs with gobs of phlegm hurled about. The coughs then became fevers and men began going on sick call. Their numbers were few at first, because nobody wanted to go on sick call. That was for sissies. Real men would gut it out. After all, it was only a damn cold and colds went away after a few days, didn’t they? Even the really sick refused to seek medical help. They were there to train to fight and kill the enemy, and to hell with a cough. They didn’t want to be left behind.

Drill sergeants like Sergeant Smith made a point of going through the barracks and ordering the truly ill to go to the infirmary. Reluctantly, they went, and soon the medical facilities at Camp Dix were overwhelmed. Worse, recruits had begun arriving already feeling sick and transfers from other bases were showing up in the same condition, sometimes even worse. One train from the Midwest arrived with several dead soldiers on it, shocking everyone.

Tim couldn’t take it any longer. Wally was sick and there was no denying it. One moment he was well and a moment later he was sick. Now his face had a blue tint to it and he was having great difficulty breathing. Tim didn’t feel all that well himself. He felt weak and had begun coughing, too, which scared him. There was no way he could handle his brother and get him on sick call, so he got some of his buddies to help him take Wally to the hospital.

The hospital was hell. Tim had heard that a large number of his fellow doughboys were sick, but never realized just how many were down. Every bed was taken and patients were lying on the floor, covered with a blanket and trying to sleep in their own filth. Harassed medical personnel were trying desperately to cope and some of them looked sick as well.

He finally got someone to tell him where to put Wally. Tim and the others laid him down on the floor by a cot where a man looked like he was going to die. When he did, Wally could have the cot. Their buddies made Wally as comfortable as they could and said they’d be back to check on him and Tim. The doctors wanted the extra people out. They were in the way. No problem. Tim’s friends wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of this house of death. They nodded and nearly ran outside.

Tim looked down on Wally and wondered if his baby brother understood just what was going on. He doubted it. Wally’s eyes looked vacant and empty and all his efforts were concentrated on drawing the next breath. Tim tried to confront the likelihood that his younger brother was going to die and couldn’t deal with it.

After an eternity, a doctor stopped by and quickly checked on Wally. He shook his head and didn’t look at Tim.

The horror of the scene was overwhelming. He sat on the ground beside Wally. He would stay and keep him company until he was booted out. He overheard some other doctors wonder whether the disease had originated in the U.S. or had come from Europe. Tim wanted to say he didn’t give a damn. He wanted his brother cured.

Nobody noticed when he pitched forward and then rolled onto his side. He was just one more desperately ill soldier who was likely going to die.

Generals March and Pershing wanted to congratulate the solemn young man who had wrought miracles in getting so much in the way of supplies and equipment to this staging area outside Kansas City. Newly promoted Brigadier General George Catlett Marshall didn’t want approbation; he wanted results and they weren’t forthcoming, at least not in the manner he wished. There were those who considered Marshall a genius and cited the vast quantities of supplies he’d gathered as proof. But the supplies weren’t going anyplace and that was the problem.

Marshall had coerced a reluctant Henry Ford into manufacturing a thousand army trucks and more were coming. An additional two hundred were armor plated and awaited the machine guns or small cannon that would give them a lethal mobility like the German armored vehicles had. Other, smaller, automobile companies, like General Motors, were also supplying vehicles, and Harley Davidson was providing motorcycles, some with a sidecar that could also hold a machine gun.

Warehouses in Kansas City were stuffed with uniforms and other paraphernalia, including helmets, underwear, overcoats, boots, and socks. The Springfield Arsenal in Massachusetts had supplied a quarter of a million of the rifles that bore its name along with millions of rounds of ammunition. There were assurances that machine guns and the new Browning Automatic Rifles were on the way as well as artillery, but no one had seen anything yet. The factories were still tooling up. Production would begin soon, whenever the hell soon meant. Everyone knew that when the wheels of industry began to roll, there’d be weapons and ammunition galore, just not quite yet.

Even more frustrating, so much of the precious supplies they did have were just sitting there, out in a field, and gradually being covered with snow. With only one rail line working through the mountains to the northwestern states and then south to California, the bottleneck was enormous. And now it was the middle of the winter and a series of blizzards had struck, temporarily overwhelming any efforts to keep the tracks clear.

All three generals had come to the reluctant conclusion that significant aid to California might not be possible until late spring. General Liggett and the entire Pacific Coast Command were on their own until then. They could only hope and pray that Liggett could hold onto San Francisco. Or, barring that, at least maintain a military presence south of Portland. Or at least Seattle. Experts and intelligence said the Germans had no plans to go that far north, but who knew what the Germans would decide to do if San Francisco fell.

“If we can do nothing about California at this time, then we will move on Mexico,” Pershing said and March nodded. Marshall looked away. He clearly didn’t care which enemy was struck at first. He just wanted the supplies used against at least one of America’s enemies.

“We have to do something,” Pershing added, “and also be seen to be doing something. The American people are utterly frustrated by our lack of response and I cannot blame them for their anger. Between the lack of supplies, the lack of transportation, and the pneumonia in our camps, the American people are outraged. If we cannot cross into California, then we will have to take on the Mexicans and relieve the Texans.”

Fighting in Texas now centered on San Antonio where a state of siege existed. The Mexicans were finding the Texans a hard nut to crack and National Guard units from nearby states had already reinforced the hard-fighting but beleaguered Texans. It was felt that Mexico was vulnerable to a strong counterattack.

A soldier on a motorcycle drove up to them, dismounted, saluted, and handed General March an envelope. March read it and paled.

“What we do may not matter at all,” he said. “The disease striking our training camps has been identified as a particularly virulent form of influenza. It has apparently originated in the United States and not in Europe or Asia like epidemics normally do. Surgeon General Cumming believes this is the case because the influenza has only now begun to strike Europe. He has ordered all military facilities quarantined until further notice. All training must cease and no new recruits will be admitted. He now feels that perhaps a quarter of our army will die of this influenza; therefore, all emphasis must be on the survival of those who have not yet gotten the flu.”

He crumpled the note and threw it on the ground where a puff of wind took it and spun it. “If the surgeon general is correct, we could suffer hundreds of thousands of dead without firing a shot!”

Marshall looked at the mountains of supplies and the acres of parked vehicles. Was it possible that there would be no one to use them?