1920: America's Great War

CHAPTER 15

Josh rather liked being driven around in a staff car by an enlisted driver, even though the driver was an Army private who must be wondering just what Josh had done to deserve him. At any rate, they drove in relative luxury until, about ten miles outside of town; they exchanged the car for a motorcycle and sidecar, with Josh in the sidecar. At this point, the driver turned into a lunatic who drove as fast as he could over the rutted dirt roads that rapidly deteriorated into crude paths in the dense and rugged woods.

Josh hung on for dear life as he was pitched back and forth. More than once his head hit the windscreen and he wondered if the bruises would qualify as yet another wound. When he questioned the driver, he was told that he was supposed to get Josh to the site by three. Josh thought they could have left a little earlier and driven more slowly, but such was life in the military.

A few minutes before three, they pulled up before a log gate that was guarded by a pair of grim-faced soldiers armed with Thompson submachine guns. Other guards were visible in the woods behind, and barbed-wire fencing ran as far as he could see.

The guards checked their ID and let them through. They drove down a hillside and into a valley. A tent city was at one end along with a crude airfield. Chalk outlines and rough structures that looked vaguely familiar were scattered about. Several dozen small biplanes were scattered about. From the miscellany of colors and styles, he assumed they were civilian craft, but what the devil were they doing in an army installation?

He would find out in a minute. He got out of the sidecar, checked his bruises and limbs to see that all was there and promptly snapped to attention. Colonel Billy Mitchell stood beside him.

“At ease, Lieutenant. How was your trip?”

“Sir, about as frightening as the thought of going up in one of those little planes.”

Mitchell chuckled. “We will arrange a ride to complete your education.”

Josh was about to say something when he realized that Mitchell was serious. “Sir, the admiral only said you were working on something to harm the German fleet and that I was to talk to you about your progress. May I ask what that is?”

Mitchell glared at him. “Certainly you are not alluding to my attempts to sink warships with bombs are you? While my attempts might have failed, I do believe such will happen and in the not to distant future.”

“As in the next few weeks, sir? I would dearly love to see the German fleet destroyed,” Josh asked hopefully.

“As I told your admiral, absolutely not,” he said as they walked over to a two-seater biplane. Josh was suddenly filled with dread. “Get in the rear and take two of those bags of flour with you.”

Josh did as the colonel ordered. A grinning mechanic handed him two bags of flour and then showed him how to use the speaker tubes to communicate with the pilot, Mitchell, if he didn’t feel like screaming at the top of his lungs. Mitchell started the engine and the mechanic spun the propeller, and they started bouncing down the dirt field.

“Don’t worry about freezing to death, Lieutenant; you won’t be up all that long.” They cleared a stand of trees by a few inches and climbed only a little. “And we won’t be going so high that you won’t be able to breathe. That doesn’t happen until about ten thousand feet.”

Josh didn’t know whether to feel reassured or not. The plane banked and Josh had a marvelous view of the camp and what he presumed were targets. He’d quickly realized that the shapes were intended to be ships and the collections of poles and canvas mimicked warships’ superstructures. The size of the targets told him that German battleships were what they were going to go after.

“Lieutenant, what we are going to do is very simple. I’m going to fly over the target and you’re going to drop a flour bag and try to hit the damn thing anywhere you can. The bags weigh twenty-five pounds each and will be awkward to handle, so just do your best. I don’t expect accuracy from you, only an understanding of what we’re doing out here and what we’re up against.”

Mitchell banked the plane again and came straight in on the port side of a target ship. “Drop when you’re ready,” Mitchell said.

Good god, Josh thought, we’re only about twenty feet off the ground, or ocean, he corrected himself. The bag was heavy and awkward to handle, but he managed to hold it over the side.

“Some day soon would be nice,” Mitchell snapped.

Josh dropped the bag and twisted to see. The plane banked and he spotted a white blob and a puff of dust on the ground about a hundred feet short of the outline of the hull.

Mitchell laughed. “Actually, that wasn’t half bad for a first try by someone who’d never been on a plane. Grab another bag and we’ll do it again.”

They did and, this time, Josh dropped with more decisiveness and confidence. He still missed but was much closer. Mitchell landed the plane and they got out, which was just as well as Josh was starting to feel very cold. Now he understood why pilots were heavily bundled up even in warm weather.

“Not bad at all for a rookie,” Mitchell said. “A few more tries and you’d be hitting the target with monotonous regularity. Now you can tell Sims how easy it is. But tell me one thing, Lieutenant.”

“Sir?”

“Could you hit the target at night with fires burning all around you and with a score of assholes with machine guns trying to blow you out of the sky? And, oh yeah, your target might just be moving erratically at twenty knots an hour in an attempt to shake you off.”

Josh saw the point. “I hope I would give it a helluva try, Colonel.”

“Good answer. Now watch.”

A group of small planes lifted over the hill and descended in an attack pattern. The flour Josh had dropped had been washed away by the ground crew and the new pilots had a clean target. Twelve bags were dropped and seven of them hit.

“Good, but they can and will do better. Thank God we don’t have a shortage of gas or, for that matter, flour.”

Josh looked around at the number of other pilots who’d gathered near them. He was shocked to see that some were women. Mitchell commented that, yes, a dozen or so were women, but that all were civilians.

“And if Admiral Sims is concerned about the fair sex getting into combat, tell him not to worry. I have no intention of letting women fly when we do attack.”

Josh understood. Mitchell was covering his ass. When push came to shove, there would be little anyone could do to prevent a civilian woman from getting into her plane and doing whatever the hell she wished to help her country. Josh felt a surge of pride for the volunteers, male and female.

Sunlight was just starting to fade and Mitchell said that Josh would stay the night. When he protested that he really should get back to San Francisco, Mitchell laughed.

“Why I’ll bet you got a girl back there, don’t you? Well, I’ll just bet she’d like you alive and in one piece, now wouldn’t she? You saw how miserable that road was in the daytime, now think of your driver trying to navigate that dangerous trail in the dark. You crash and your body will be eaten by bears or cougars before you can say jack shit.”

Bears? Cougars? All of a sudden a night with a bunch of crazy civilian pilots didn’t seem like a bad idea after all.

A few dozen yards away and obscured by shadows, twenty-three-year-old Amelia Earhart watched the two men converse. She was surprised to see the lone junior officer gain access to the field. Mitchell was obsessive about security, so the young man must represent someone important. Sims, she concluded.

Amelia had managed to get fairly close to the visitor and concluded that he was fairly cute but not her type. Too bookish, she thought and laughed silently. She lived for the adventure of flying.

Amelia had been flying planes for more than a year. She’d fallen in love with the freedom of flight and had taken lessons. She’d proven an apt pupil. Her family lived in Long Beach; thus, she was able to join the strange force created by General Billy Mitchell and called the “Fireflies.”

She sometimes wondered if Mitchell was aware that she and several other pilots were women. The female pilots dressed like men and didn’t flaunt their femininity. Maybe Mitchell was kept ignorant of the gender of some of his pilots, or maybe he was just desperate for qualified pilots.

Either way, she had a plane, a Curtiss JN4 biplane. As a warplane in the 1916 campaign in Mexico, it had been a failure. It was now only used as a trainer. Some had even been sold to civilians which is how she got hers.

Fully loaded with five hundred pounds of cargo, its ninety horsepower in-line engine could barely get the plane off the ground. The plane was a two seater, but Amelia liked flying alone.

Amelia also thought she’d heard the colonel say something about women pilots not going into combat. The comment made her laugh. She would do what she bloody well wished.

Sometimes the prisoners would ignore Martina Flores when she walked by the compound, except, of course, to stare at her ripe femininity. The day before she’d signaled that she wanted a distraction. She said throw stones at her.

“Puta! Whore! Bitch!” yelled the men as she strolled by. She made an obscene gesture. The men behind the wire hurled rocks, being careful to make sure none hit her.

Martina screamed back at them and threw her own rock over the fence. None of the guards noticed that it wasn’t one that had been thrown at her, and none of them noticed it really wasn’t a rock.

Joe Sullivan picked it up and tucked it in his sleeve. It was a small package. When Martina ran away, the uproar ended. As instructed, he waited a few minutes and then delivered it to Captain Rice, who took it and walked away. When Rice was in the collection of rags he called his tent, he carefully opened the package. His eyes widened. Two keys lay snug in the box. One was labeled “Main Gate,” and the other said “Armory.”

Well, well, Rice thought and smiled. The captive Americans had been in their prison near Raleigh for a couple of months and, by now, all had sharp objects they could use as knives. But a key to the German’s armory? That meant rifles. Well, well indeed.

“General Marshall, I really think you should come and look at the river.”

Marshall stood and stretched. He’d been working on yet another response to Washington outlining the futility of it all. “Thank you, Sergeant,” he said grumpily and walked the hundred yards to the ice-filled torrent.

What torrent? What river? His eyes widened as he took in the scene. Scores of soldiers were standing by the edge of the river. “Sir, it’s just like someone turned off a faucet.”

Indeed, it was. Marshall’s mind raced. The river was placid and calm and the depth was dropping rapidly. What the hell had Hoover done? Had he actually found a faucet? But the strange man had said to get ready. So Marshall’s men were ready.

“Barges and bridges,” Marshall yelled. “I want barges in the water and I want them stuffed with everything we’ve got. And get those pontoons across now!”

Everything had been loaded and waiting for several days. Preassembled pontoons were run out and connected, followed by planking for men and vehicles. The river did not complain. It continued to drop and was now only a few feet deep and moving very slowly. Barges pushed out like a Biblical horde, delivering men and supplies to the other side and then returning for more.

In only a few hours, the first bridge was finished, and then the second. A third and fourth would follow shortly. One bridge was for vehicles, and trucks began to move carefully across the bobbing structures. Infantry started their trek across the second bridge.

Hoover materialized beside Marshall. His face was grim, but there was a satisfied glint in his eyes. “What the devil did you do, Mr. Hoover?”

“Blew up a couple of mountains and choked the gorges. That created rough dams.”

“How long will they last?”

Hoover shrugged. “No idea. I would hurry, however. We are trying to ease pressure on the dams by allowing some water to run through, but the dams can’t last long.”

Marshall saw infantry moving slowly. “Double time, damn it,” he yelled.

“No!” Hoover said softly. “Vibrations will damage the bridges. Have them walk normally.”

Damn it, Marshall thought. I knew that. He was too anxious to get men across. Still, they could and did hurry with no gaps between the men.

Marshall had a horrible thought. He visualized a tidal wave rushing downstream when the dams gave up the ghost. “How much warning will we have and will the water rise quickly or gradually?”

“I have no idea. I do have men ready to signal if the dams collapse. Just keep your people moving.”

A truck stalled on the vehicle bridge and some men started to work on it. “Push it in the river,” Marshall yelled. “Nothing delays the crossing.” Men heaved and the truck fell off the shaking pontoons and into the river.

“I wonder if this is like Moses crossing the Red Sea,” Marshall said. “The Bible said the sea parted but never said the land was perfectly dry. Was it was something like this, with everybody running like the devil to get across in time?” He laughed harshly. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve an army to get across and it still might not get to San Francisco in time.”

Hoover didn’t reply. His mind was already someplace else.

The joint Army-Navy headquarters complex at the Presidio was a madhouse of activity as armed soldiers and sailors either took up stationary positions or patrolled the extensive grounds. The command and communications system had broken down and there was fear that the headquarters was in grave danger.

Civilian employees like Elise were either shuffled out of the compound or denied entry. Inside, Luke Martel strapped on a .45 automatic and wondered just what the hell had gone wrong.

General Nolan stormed into the conference room and took charge as more senior officers deferred to him. “Gentlemen, let’s review. At approximately three this morning, a boat containing eight men was spotted by one of our shore patrols as it was attempting to come ashore. The patrol and the people in the boat exchanged fire. Two of our men were killed and a couple more wounded. The occupants of the boat jumped out and ran inland. They were the survivors of the fight. We found four dead bodies and they were all German Navy Marines.”

Nolan took a sip of water and continued. “Several things bother the hell out of me; first, the fact that it then took several hours for us to be notified that as many as four armed Germans were now loose in San Francisco. The fact that the officer leading the shore patrol was killed is an obvious mitigating factor, but someone dropped the ball. It took far too long for us to be informed.”

There were nods all around. The timing issue was inexcusable.

“More important,” Nolan went on, “is the question of why they landed in the first place. Even if they all had made it, eight Germans aren’t going to cause that much harm to the war effort. They could blow up some ammunition, but we don’t have a central depot. Start fires? I just don’t think so. Therefore, we have come to the only remaining conclusion, and that is that the German’s target is us.”

“Makes sense,” Liggett murmured.

Luke looked around and sucked in his breath. In the room were Liggett and Sims, Nolan, and the Army’s two corps commanders, Fox Connor and James Harbord. If successful, an assassination attempt could decapitate the U.S. Army in California.

“How could they know we were all here?” a grim-faced Harbord asked.

“That’s something else to be investigated,” Nolan said. “Maybe they just hoped to get either Liggett or Sims, or both, and the rest would be a bonus.”

“I don’t wish to think of myself as anybody’s bonus,” Connor said to wry chuckles.

Nolan continued. “The problem is we don’t have a clue as to their whereabouts. We called an alert less than an hour ago and they could be anywhere, and that includes on this base. So far, nobody’s seen or heard anything unusual.”

“So what do we do?” asked Sims. “We can’t hide. We all have work to do and a war to run. German patrols are only fifty miles from here and we’re going to need all the time we can get.”

Liggett responded for the harassed Nolan. “For the next day or two, or until we find the Krauts, we have no choice but to stay here in this building under heavy guard. There are no more than four of them and if they are going to try something, it almost has to be soon. Every minute they are out there running around increases their chances of discovery.”

There was a clatter down the hallway and they all jumped. They looked sheepishly at each other as they realized it came from pots and pans clanging together.

“Somebody’s bringing us food,” Liggett said drily, “How wonderful.”

Something clicked in Luke’s mind. A mess hall would be fairly easy to take over by only a handful of people. “Anybody check these people out?” he said as he drew his pistol.

“Damn it to hell,” snarled Nolan. He drew his own pistol and ran into the hallway. The deafening roar of automatic weapons fire greeted him. Nolan fell over, nearly cut in half. A man dressed as a cook stood in the doorway. He had what Luke recognized as an MP18 German submachine gun and began shooting, awkwardly spraying the room. Luke dropped to his knees and shot him in the chest. The impact of the .45 bullet sent him flying backwards. Two more Germans appeared and began wildly firing their own automatic weapons. Now everybody in the room and others outside were shooting. The Germans fell and Liggett yelled cease fire. Then there was silence.

There had been four Germans. Luke had killed one and everybody had shot the two in the doorway, while the fourth had been killed in the hallway, apparently by Ike Eisenhower, who’d come running from his own office with a pistol in his hand. Inside the conference room, a distraught Liggett looked over Nolan’s mangled body. General Connor had taken a bullet in the thigh and the wound was bleeding profusely.

Luke looked around. His smoking pistol was still in his hand. Liggett and Sims were unhurt except for some scratches. Harbord was bleeding from a wound in his arm that didn’t appear serious.

Medics had rushed in and were frantically working to stop the bleeding from General Connor’s leg. The general’s face was ghastly pale. He reached up for something and Luke grabbed his hand. “You’ll be all right, General,” he said, knowing it was a lie. The general was dying. No one could lose that much blood and live.

Connor blinked and seemed to recognize Luke. He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. After a couple of minutes more, the medics gave up. The bullet had hit an artery and Fox Connor, a friend and mentor to many young officers, had bled to death.

“Sorry, sir,” the lead medic said to General Liggett, “but his artery was shredded. We couldn’t find a way to stop it.”

Liggett nodded sadly. “You did your best.”

They withdrew to Liggett’s office while the conference room was cleaned up. There were decisions to make and most of them were Liggett’s.

“We lost good friends today, but we still have to continue. We are not unlike a line outfit that just lost a couple of buddies in a skirmish with the enemy. We will not be permitted the luxury of mourning.

“Therefore, I have determined the following. First, General Nolan will be put in for a medal for his heroism in storming that door. Captain Martel, we will do something for you as well, just don’t ask me what.

“Next, we must have replacements. Eisenhower will replace Nolan. For a number of reasons, not the least that you’re far too junior and inexperienced, I cannot promote you, Captain Martel.”

“Understood, sir.” Luke actually felt relief. He didn’t feel qualified to step in for Nolan.

“Good. And what the devil is that you’re playing with, Luke?”

“Sir, I took it off one of the Germans. It’s a German submachine gun, 9mm, Model MP18. This version came with a thirty-two shot magazine which actually might have saved some lives. The thirty-two shot magazine is considered very awkward to use, unlike ones with a twenty-shot magazine, which is much more stable. We may have been lucky that they used the wrong weapon.”

Luke handed the weapon to Liggett who examined it briefly, muttered something, and gave it back.

“To continue, General Cameron will succeed General Connor as corps commander. Other changes will have to be made, but those can wait at least a little while. I also want Mr. Hearst to send a reporter here to view the carnage and let the world know what barbarians the Germans are, not that the Germans care. I am frankly stunned that the German Navy would stoop to murder and assassination. Yes, I know we are all soldiers and, therefore, prime targets, but it is one thing to be shot on a battlefield and quite another to be killed while gathered around a conference table. I didn’t think Admiral Hipper would stoop to that.”

“Perhaps he didn’t,” Sims said.

“Pardon?” said Liggett.

“Gentlemen,” Sims said, “the Office of Naval Intelligence is getting information that neither the German Army nor the German Navy are in total lockstep with their superior officers. In the German Navy in particular, the ship captains are very frustrated that they have been relegated to boring blockade duties, while the Army gets the glory of fighting us.”

“Some glory,” said Harbord.

“Agreed, but the German Navy is the new and junior service, very insecure, and very testy when it comes to getting a slice of the action. Like that stupid attempt to bombard our batteries that cost the Germans a cruiser, this too may have been an independent action by some overaggressive and overzealous junior commander. Gentlemen, they either want to fight us in a glorious fleet action, or get back to Europe and try to entice the British into fighting them in a high-seas battle. The German Navy has to prove its worth to a country that never really had a navy until relatively recently. It may even be possible to use that insecurity to our advantage if we can get the German Navy to do something truly foolish.

“Gentlemen,” Sims continued, “I will contact Admiral Hipper under flag of truce and tell him what his people did. I would bet money that he will issue an apology of sorts and claim that he didn’t know anything about it, which is possibly the truth.”

Luke left shortly after. A flag of truce to complain about shooting an enemy general? What the devil was the world coming to? Joe Flower would have sliced throats or cut off balls, while Luke would have shot every German officer he could.

Josh Cornell ran up. “Where the hell have you been?” Luke asked.

“Sims sent me out to the country to check on something. Jesus, is it as bad as they say?”

“Define bad, Josh,” Luke said grimly. “Connor and Nolan are dead, but Sims and Liggett are fine. There’s still hope for the world, but damn, it hurts.”

“Hey, Lieutenant, I hear we got a new division commander. Should I be concerned?”

Lieutenant Taylor yawned hugely and stretched out as far as he could in his seat in the passenger car of the slow moving train. “Normally, Sergeant Randall, I would agree that those of us so far down the ladder would have nothing to worry about, but I’ve heard some intriguing things about this Douglas MacArthur character.”

Tim laughed and continued cleaning his Springfield. “I hear character is the really tactful word for him.”

The Twelfth Division had undergone a major reorganization. Gone were the two Marine regiments and with them went General Lejeune. He now commanded a true Marine division of four regiments and was en route to the Mexican border, if he hadn’t already reached it. Two additional and very inexperienced infantry regiments were added to the 12th and so too was a new division commander, Major General Douglas MacArthur.

The Twelfth had managed to cross the Columbia before the water rose and the pontoon bridges were swept away. A trickle of supplies still made it across on motor-powered barges, but it would be a while before large numbers of troops and supplies could cross again. The Twelfth was not the only unit to make it across, but Tim didn’t know just how many other men were now on trains heading for Seattle and then south to San Francisco.

Rumors of the new commanding general had emerged only minutes before MacArthur himself had strolled down the train, speaking briefly to the men. Tim admitted he was impressed. MacArthur was taller than average, lean, and had eyes that pierced you. He was young, maybe forty, and had a deep, dramatic, and compelling voice. He wore a rumpled officer’s hat and Tim guessed it was for effect. Others joked that he couldn’t afford a new one.

“MacArthur’s going to be interesting,” said Taylor. “The man’s an unquestioned genius. He broke almost all academic records at West Point and he reorganized the place as its commandant. He’s also a man of unquestioned personal courage. It’s rumored that he personally gunned down some Mexican bandits during the 1914 incursion at Vera Cruz.”

“Nothing wrong with courage, Lieutenant.”

“Not unless it’s my courage he’s playing with, Sergeant. Keep it under your hat, but the dark side of the rumor mill says he’s a glory hound, and that means he could lead us into some reckless messes.”

“Damn,” said Tim.

The lieutenant’s frank assessment was unusual. Most times officers banded together and presented a wall of silence instead of permitting criticism of a brother officer, but Tim and the lieutenant had been through a lot together in a short time, and an easy relationship had formed. Tim looked out the soot-covered window. Despite the dirt covering the glass, he could see massive stands of snow covered pine trees and deep valleys. Every second took them closer to the front and the likelihood that they’d be fighting first-line German soldiers who would be a lot more lethal than the disorganized and poorly-trained Mexicans they’d whipped outside San Antonio.

“Yeah,” said Taylor. “All I want to do is finish this war and then get back to my daddy’s Wall Street law practice where I can get rich squashing ordinary people like you and driving you further into financial ruin.”

“Jeez, you’re all heart, Lieutenant.”

The Rio Grande. Tovey and his men cheered when the river came into view. Shallow and sandy, it had become a symbol of Texas pride and independence, as had the burned-out hulk that had once been the proud city of Laredo.

Tovey now commanded the First Texas Volunteer Brigade and served alongside the First Marine Division now commanded by General John Lejeune. After the intense fighting at San Antonio, the Marines and the men of the Texas Brigade had formed a bond, one created in blood. Undisciplined though the Texans were, the Marines recognized fighters when they saw them. For their part, the Texans stood in some awe of the thoroughly deadly and totally professional Marines.

As they approached Laredo, they could see the rear of the Mexican Army crossing back to their own country. Rank and file soldiers wondered if the Mexicans had reached sanctuary or if the army would be allowed to pursue. To a man they wanted to chase the Mexicans as far south as they could.

Carefully, soldiers and Marines entered the shattered city of Laredo, looking for booby-traps and snipers. Most buildings were charred hulks and those that hadn’t been burned out were at least badly damaged. The city stank of death. A handful of emaciated dogs emerged from someplace and growled at the approaching Americans. Tovey wondered what they’d been eating. He decided he already knew. The dogs would have to die. A shame. He liked dogs.

Astonishingly, a handful of people remained in Laredo. A few old men and a handful of scraggly women emerged and looked at them with a mixture of relief and uncertainty. The men had hidden in caves and basements, while the women had worked for the Mexicans to pick up a little food by doing their cooking and laundry. Some had doubtless whored for them as well, but Tovey wasn’t in the mood to be judgmental. Let them answer to their God, their neighbors, and maybe the laws of the State of Texas.

Sporadic gunfire kept the men on their toes. Mexican and American snipers sparred with each other from their respective sides of the river. Tovey sprawled behind a ruined wall and took a swallow of brackish water from his canteen. Lejeune dropped down beside him. “Tovey, what do you want to do about the bastards who destroyed this town?”

Tovey grinned wickedly. “Chase the sons of bitches back to the halls of Montezuma, general, and then maybe all the way to the fucking shores of Tripoli.”

Lejuene roared. “Good one. Instead of going that far, why don’t we make a little compromise? Why don’t we just go as far south as Monterrey? That way maybe we can catch that butcher Carranza and cut the German supply route from Vera Cruz to the west.”

Tovey sloshed his parched mouth with what remained of the contents of his canteen. He’d likely have to fill up in the Rio Grande and God only knew who’d been shitting and pissing in that river.

“Great idea,” he said. “When do we go?”

Lejuene looked over the situation. Several battalions had made it to the shallow running river and the Mexican presence across in the town of Ciudad Juarez seemed minimal.

“I’d say there’s no time like the present.”

“Hot damn,” said Tovey. He stood and waved his rifle. “Texans, get off your asses and cross this fucking river! Now, now, now!”

Texans and Marines roared their approval and surged forward, crossing in a rush, with machine guns covering their approach. Mexican resistance, limited already, melted entirely. Within minutes, several thousand Americans were in Ciudad Juarez, Mexican territory.

Lejeune slapped Marcus on the back. “Tovey, your speech was the most inspirational and eloquent I’ve ever heard. You should’ve been a Marine.”