1920: America's Great War

CHAPTER 22

The final bombardment began at first light. The shells landed on the area where Luke and Ike had predicted. Now they could only hope it wasn’t a well-orchestrated feint. There was no corresponding shelling of American positions on von Hutier’s front.

This time, Luke was prudently far back. Still, as before, the ground shuddered and shook. He recalled the feeling of terror he’d had just a few days earlier when the shells rained down on the bunker. Kirsten was already at the hospital and this time she would be helping with the growing influx of wounded. Letter writing and bookkeeping could come later.

“Poor bloody infantry,” said a familiar voice.

“Hello Reggie, and are you supposed to be here?”

“Dashing young correspondents can dash about wherever they wish,” Carville said as he dumped down a suitcase. “And I have a chit from Liggett that says so, and another one from the kaiser himself if I should happen to be picked up by those nice people from Berlin. Just don’t ask how I happened to come by it.”

Overhead, scores of German planes dipped and swooped like gulls skimming the sea. Only they were strafing the trenches and not looking for fish. Or were they, Luke thought. Maybe they were looking for human fish. Gotha bombers dropped their loads from height and succeeded in hitting not much at all. The explosions, however, were impressive, and must have added to the primal fear of the men underneath them.

Reggie laughed. “High-level bombing is very much a work in process.”

“Thank God.”

“Ah, and here comes the infantry, entering stage left.”

As before, waves of Germans flowed out of their trenches and around their own barbed wire. They hadn’t gone far before the American barrage opened up on them, this time with much more intensity than before. There was no longer reason to save shells or hide guns. The American front had been strengthened by troops from other areas. Luke could only hope that neither the crown prince nor General Mackensen realized that the rest of the American line was virtually defenseless.

This time concentrated machine-gun fire came from the Americans and not the Germans, and Luke exulted. Men were dying in great bloody piles, but they were Germans, not Americans.

But the Germans were coming on. More left their trenches and began the inexorable move to reinforce the first wave. Behind them, Luke made out a third wave forming and a fourth. Mackensen had done the same thing Liggett had. All of the German Army was in front of him. He felt the sickening reality that the German weight of numbers and firepower would still prevail. He got up.

“Where to now?” Reggie asked.

“Back to headquarters. Liggett will want to know about this firsthand. What are you going to do?”

Carville smiled, and Luke noticed that his eyes were cold. “Why, I believe I’ll just sit here until the Germans arrive and see if any of them want to be interviewed.”

Admiral Hipper received word of the main infantry attack. He angrily paced the bridge of the Bayern. He was frustrated. The moment of glory was at hand and all he could see was fog, damned bloody fog. He couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him. He heard one of the junior officers joking that he had just made an obscene gesture to himself and couldn’t see it. He felt like strangling the little snot.

The German fleet was approximately ten miles off the coast of California and, if his navigators were any good, directly in front of the Golden Gate, the entrance to San Francisco Bay.

But he couldn’t do anything. Not only because of the promise he’d made to the crown prince, but because moving towards the coast would be foolhardy, not brave. And if he managed to ground one or more of his battleships, or God help him, the whole fleet, he and the German Navy would be disgraced for all eternity.

However, he had to do something. The ship moved forward at dead slow, barely moving. The other behemoth battleships crawled slowly as well in response to his orders. They were in line abreast, which meant there was little or no danger of a rear end collision. When—if?—the damned fog lifted, they’d be in position to move quickly. That is, if the minesweepers could clear the channel in enough time.

“Oh,” someone said and the ship was suddenly bathed in wonderful, miraculous sunshine. And straight in front of them was the Golden Gate. Hipper exultantly pounded his fist into the palm of his hand while others clapped and cheered. Not only had the fog lifted, but, thanks to superb navigation, he’d managed to creep close to the American shore without being seen. He laughed. Perhaps fog wasn’t a bad thing after all.

“Send in the minesweepers.”

Hipper gave the order and it was relayed to the small, M-Class minesweepers that had all been built in the previous couple of years. The need for them hadn’t existed until the Royal Navy had sown thousands of mines in the waters off Germany in the 1914 War.

The task of the sixteen knot, 360-ton craft was doubly dangerous. First was their primary purpose—finding and removing mines so the fleet could charge through the channel to the bay. Second, they had to do this while enduring the American shore batteries at nearly point-blank range. Hipper thought all the crews of fifty men on each ship deserved medals.

“They’re doomed,” said Trotha from his position behind him.

Hipper didn’t want to look through his binoculars at what likely to be their destruction. He simply nodded. In a few moments, the American shore batteries opened fire. Near miss shells lifted enormous amounts of water much higher than the puny sweepers as they pushed forward.

Suddenly, one of them disappeared as a shell struck it, causing it to disintegrate in a cloud of splinters and human flesh. Hipper winced and Trotha cursed. Still, the brave little ships attempted to do their duty. They were inside the channel and taking fire from two directions. Now gunfire came from a third direction, as the guns from Alcatraz Island joined in. A second minesweeper was hit, and then a third was turned into a flaming ruin. All the batteries focused on the remaining one. A message blinked from a signal light. Her radio must be gone, Hipper thought. A shell struck her and she too began to sink. The American guns ceased fire. All four brave ships were destroyed, but had they succeeded?

He translated the Morse code from the last mine sweeper—No mines. “Damn them to hell,” Hipper raged. No mines. He had sacrificed four ships and two hundred men for nothing.

But had he? They now knew exactly where the American guns were located and how big they were. This would help immeasurably when he sent in his battleships.

Trotha was reading his mind, “When, Admiral?”

It was nearly noon. Hipper made up his mind quickly, “Now.”

Luke found Patton and his huge metal creatures a few miles from where the Germans were attacking. They were in a large grove of trees and hidden from sight. The thunder of battle, however, was loud and clear. With others around, he kept it formal and saluted.

“Change of plans, General.”

Patton poked his head out from the turret of his command tank. He was grease-covered and filthy, a long way from the officer who was so punctilious about his uniform.

“What the hell are you talking about, Acting Major Martell? I’m ready to launch a counterattack in a matter of moments, and it’s all based on the fact that the intelligence you and Ike gave me is proving accurate. You have noticed the firing off to the west, haven’t you?”

“I have indeed, Acting General Patton, and that’s the concern.”

“The hell with anybody’s concerns,” Patton snapped. “When the Germans are tied up in our trenches I’m going to hit their flank and roll them up. We’re gonna go through them like shit through a goose.”

Luke shook his head. “Harbord wants your tanks behind our lines as a means of blunting their attack.”

Patton turned red. “Bullshit. Not only is that bad tactics but it’s damned near impossible as well. Using tanks like that would be a waste of their potential. They’d get ground up in a fight and destroyed. No, we use them as planned.”

Luke glanced around and whispered. “Harbord’s given orders, George.”

“Look about and what do you see?”

Luke did as told. “George, I see scores of tanks and what look like armored trucks hidden under tarps and covered with branches. I also don’t seem them being attacked by any German planes. Good job, George.”

“Damned straight it’s a good job. I’ve assembled all fifty tanks and more than a hundred lightly armored trucks with machine guns to follow up the tanks when we attack. It’s taken me more than a week to bring them here without anybody noticing and camouflage them from the German planes, which, if you and General Harbord haven’t noticed, rule the skies. If I even attempt to move them where Harbord wants them, every German plane they have will attack them. At least most of the tanks should make it through a strafing, but the trucks will be slaughtered. Their side armor isn’t that thick and they have nothing on top. In short, nearly half my force won’t make it to where Harbord thinks he wants them.

“And one other thing, Major Martell, even if the tanks did make it, it won’t be today. I just can’t pick them up and change their direction like that. They aren’t fucking chess pieces and Harbord knows that.”

Luke was of the opinion that Patton was trying to blow smoke up his ass regarding the time necessary to move his outfit—that was typical Patton. But the man did have good points. Tanks were radical new weapons and certainly not designed to slug it out in the trenches. Striking the German flank and rear, like cavalry of old, did seem like the logical way of using them. He decided to change the subject a little.

“George, what are those things draped on the tanks?”

Patton grinned happily, “Another one of my brilliant ideas. Those are heavy rope cables and I got them in Seattle. It occurred to me that the wheels and tracks of the tanks and trucks were the most vulnerable, so I’ve draped woven ropes where they’re most needed. The ropes are lightweight and bulletproof.”

Luke wondered just what the hell else was going on in Patton’s fertile mind. “George, when are you attacking?”

“In an hour or so.”

Luke rolled his eyes and looked skyward. No German planes were in sight. He made his decision. “I suggest you make it sooner, George, and I never found you.”

Once upon a time, Tim Randall thought trees were beautiful and loved to spend as much time as he could in a park or in the country. Not now. Everywhere he looked in Washington, Oregon, and northern California there were trees. The Pacific coast states were nothing but one long pine forest, and a snow-covered pine forest at that.

What he’d naively proclaimed would take only a couple of days had taken more than a week and they still hadn’t arrived at their destination. Everyone grudgingly admitted that they were closing in on San Francisco, but you couldn’t tell it by looking out a window. The troops saw nothing but snow-covered trees.

Nor had the trip been totally safe. Stuffed as they were in boxcars, many soldiers came down with colds that devolved into pneumonia. Always present was the fear that influenza would again rear its ugly head. Their company commander was in a hospital a couple of hundred miles to their north, which meant that Lieutenant Taylor was now the CO and Sergeant Tim Randall now ran the platoon. Christ, Tim thought, next thing, they’d make him an officer. Would that be such a bad thing? His family would be proud, sort of. The latest letters he’d received still bitterly held him responsible for Wally’s death. He’d pretty well decided he wasn’t going back to Camden. He couldn’t bring himself to hate his parents, but he’d be damned if he would let their bitterness dominate his life. He hadn’t put a gun to Wally’s head and forced him to enlist. No, Wally had been an adult and had volunteered. Wally had been as insistent as Tim that they join the Army. Who the hell knew a bug would kill him?

At least the letters he continued to get from Kathy Fenton were uplifting. After a rocky beginning, the two of them were getting to know each other pretty well as a result of their correspondence. He’d told her he wasn’t returning to Camden and implied that she should join him wherever he landed and she’d seemed intrigued. First, of course, there was the little matter of the war.

He yawned. General MacArthur had done a great job of getting them headed south. Tim was actually on the first train. Scores of other trains were coming along behind him, sooner or later. More than fifty thousand men were en route to San Francisco, which, according to MacArthur’s frequent bulletins and announcements, desperately needed them.

One of his men looked out the cracked door of the boxcar. They were fairly warm and out of the wind as long as it was closed, and by now they were used to sleeping on either the hard ground or the hard wooden floor of the boxcar. At least it wasn’t snowing inside. He seemed to recall reading that California was sunny and bright, but obviously the author of that epistle had been terribly misinformed.

The train began to slow. Damn, another stop. They’d get out, stretch their legs, piss, and wait to get started up again. At least pissing while standing on the ground was better than aiming a stream through one of the many cracks in the floor while the train was moving. Like little kids, some of the guys had made a contest of it.

“Everybody out and take all your shit!”

They didn’t know who said it, but they all complied. They wondered what the hell was happening now. They formed up and walked forward and past the engine. They paused and stared. A large body of water lay before them and a couple of miles beyond that was a city. South of the city, greasy black smoke rose skyward and now they could just hear the sounds of artillery.

They had reached San Francisco, or, more precisely, Oakland, California. Oakland had once been the western terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad. Originally, ferries were used to ship railroad cars across to San Francisco, but now it was the hub from which other lines led, including the Dumbarton Railroad Bridge at the southern end of the bay. However, the Dumbarton Bridge, which ran into the southern part of the peninsula, had been damaged by German shelling. Realization that the fighting they’d seen in Texas would be as nothing in comparison with the hell the Germans were serving up was beginning to sink in.

Lieutenant Taylor came up. “Well, weren’t you anxious to get to California? Now what do you think?”

“I remember an old phrase, sir—be careful what you wish for, it might come true.”

General Lejeune was angry. His face was flush with barely restrained fury. “Tell me again, young lady, precisely what has happened in this little town, Raleigh.”

Martina Flores was not intimidated by the general’s glare. She repeated what she knew. Maybe two hundred Americans had been held prisoner in Raleigh. They had been starved, beaten, tortured, and, in a couple of cases, executed by a German named Steiner and aided by an American collaborator named Olson. No, she corrected herself, the Americans had not been executed, they’d been murdered. She added that American civilians had also died at the hands of the Germans and American collaborators.

When she’d fled from the fighting that had liberated the prisoners and after killing Olson, she’d found a horse and ridden wildly away from the scene. It had been an act of mindless relief and terror and, when she’d finally stopped runnning, she’d then wondered how and if she could bring help to the prisoners. Granted, they’d been freed by Dubbins and Montoya and the Apache with the ridiculous name, but how long could they remain at large and safe in a land dominated by Germany? For all she knew, Steiner was hunting them down like animals.

Thus, when she’d given it some thought, she’d decided to head east and try to find the Americans who were heading towards California.

“I cannot believe an American like this Olson character would do anything so base and vile,” Lejeune snarled. “The bastard is up there with Benedict Arnold and John Wilkes Booth.”

Oh, she thought, you have no idea how base and vile Olson was. She thought of the humiliation she’d endured while kneeling between his thighs and servicing him. Or the times he lay upon her, his bulk crushing her, while he forced himself into her while she tried not to cry out in pain and shame. And all the time she knew that he hated her because she was Mexican, or that she wasn’t some American woman who’d scorned him.

“And what happened to this Olson?” Lejeune asked.

“Last time I saw him, he was lying on the ground and probably bleeding to death.”

“And why was that?” Lejeune asked.

“Because I stabbed him in the gut,” she answered calmly.

Marcus Tovey kept his face expressionless. Last night, she had told him the story of her abuse at Olson’s hands. She had shaken and sobbed almost hysterically as she’d purged herself of the terrible memories. He’d held her until her quivering subsided and she’d fallen asleep against his shoulder. When she awoke, she’d begged forgiveness for what she called her sins and he told her he didn’t see any sin on her part. She’d been forced to do what she did, and the true sinners were Steiner and Olson. The American collaborator had paid a terrible and just price for his sins, while Steiner remained at large.

Martina trusted him and he liked that. There were only a few Mexicans he thought highly of, and she was on the list. He reminded himself never to piss her off in the future, if they ever had a future.

“General, I do have an idea,” said Tovey.

“You always do, but do I have to remind you that we are moving very slowly because some German officer has gathered up the remnants of that regiment and they are fighting a masterful retreat.”

The name of the German leader, Erwin Rommel, had come from a prisoner. This Rommel had organized several hundred men into a unit and, while some tore up the tracks, others harassed the Americans and slowed their advance. As a result of constant skirmishing, Rommel now likely had fewer than a hundred men, but he was still doing damage and moving just fast enough to keep the rest of his men out of their way.

Tovey began to pace. “General, if the objective is Raleigh and the freed prisoners, give me a cavalry unit and we’ll bypass the tracks and the Krauts. From what other prisoners have said, there’s nobody between us and Raleigh or even San Diego.”

“How many of my Marines do you want?”

Tovey laughed. “Not a damn one, unless they’re really good horsemen, and I kind of doubt any are.”

Lejeune agreed reluctantly. “Most of my Marines don’t know which end of a horse goes first.”

“General, give me all the horses we have and I’ll mount up as many of my Texans as we have horses, and we’ll go to Raleigh.”

Lejeune nodded. “All of my horses? That means I’ll have to give you my personal horse and that beast has carried my butt for several years.”

Martina smiled. “I’ll ride him and take good care of him.”

“You’re going too?” Lejeune asked. He was not surprised.

She shrugged. “Like here, it’s my territory. I can take Marcus where we need to go.”

Lejeune smiled to himself. “Very well, but as to my horse, you will not ride him and or take good care of him.”

Martina was puzzled, “Why not?”

Lejeune grinned wickedly. “Because Daisy’s not a him.”

The shells were indiscriminate. Even though the hospital was clearly marked with red crosses, mistakes were made. Kirsten hoped they were mistakes. She had a hard time believing that the kaiser’s army would be so base and cruel as to intentionally shell medical facilities. Luke didn’t share her beliefs. He felt that the Germans were capable of almost anything. He’d read of their atrocities in Belgium and northern France in 1914–15, and in Africa a decade earlier. Luke had told her that the cousin of one of the German admirals, von Trotha, had been instrumental in the massacre of thousands of helpless Herero tribesmen. If monsters like the von Trothas were to be victorious, she thought, God help the people of California.

The German fleet was probing the Golden Gate, the channel to San Francisco Bay, and both sides were lobbing shells at each other. One struck the hospital, sending scores of already badly mangled young men to an even more badly mangled death. Kirsten helped pick up the bodies, and the pieces of bodies. This, she realized, is what it must be like at the heart of the battle now raging a few miles to the south and east.

She felt worse when someone told her the shell that struck the hospital had come from an American battery on the north side of the channel. Doctor Rossini had simply shrugged and told her things like that happen. “You shoot an arrow in the air and who knows where it comes down. The same thing applies to rifle and cannon fire.”

The wounded were coming in droves. The battle for the third line of defense was intense. It looked, however, that the American lines were holding, at least for a while. Good, she thought, make the German bastards pay.

To take her mind off the horrors around her, she tried to think of her home and the town of Raleigh. Would she ever go back there? Likely not, she decided. If she and Luke survived this, and if the United States prevailed, she and he would make their homes closer to San Francisco and either farm or grow vines and make wine.

Then she thought ruefully that she’d spoken two very big ifs.

“Mr. Griffith, just how many cameramen do you have available?” Elise asked coolly.

“At the moment four, my dear young lady. Why, do you have uses for them?”

“Where do you have them?”

“One is in the trenches where the attacks are taking place. I am so proud of our American boys who are holding up the Germans.”

So far, she thought.

“And I was instructed to have another with a young officer named Patton, while two others are watching the German fleet.”

“Mr. Griffith, I am about to let you in on at least one military secret. The German fleet is going to force the channel and wind up in San Francisco Bay. Therefore I would suggest you have at least one of your men on the Oakland side to watch what is going to happen when they begin to duel with our other guns.”

“And what will happen, Elise?”

She smiled grimly. “Admiral Sims wishes to destroy them all. It is something called Firefly.”

Captain Horst Richter urged his men forward, “Hurry, you ugly sons of bitches! Move or they’ll kill you.”

The Alpine troops, the Austrian “volunteers,” had done a marvelous job of picking a path through the American wire and other defenses. Now it was time for the shock troops, the spearpoint of Hutier’s attack on San Francisco, to make their move.

According to plan, the artillery barrage had been short and intense, just enough to keep the Americans’ heads down. When it lifted, the first line of his shock troops were within a hundred yards of the American trenches and through the wire that had been cut the night before by the Austrians. Up and over, the Germans went, screaming like wild men, shooting and stabbing at anything that moved. In the face of such ferocity, American resistance wavered and soldiers fell back. Some gathered themselves and tried to retake ground seized by the Germans. The fighting was bloody and intense.

Richter shot an American defender in the face with his Luger. “Forward!” he screamed. “Keep moving forward. Leave them for the follow-up troops.”

In the heat of battle, most of his exhortations were lost and he had to physically grab men, sending them out of this trench and onward to others. The breach made was small, and others would widen it. A German fell dead beside him. The Americans were recovering and fighting back. Too late, he exulted. He waved his men forward.

Richter and a score of his fighters emerged from the American trenches. Some astonished rear-echelon soldiers either ran or tried to surrender. Richter ignored them. His little band pressed forward. He looked behind and saw more coal-scuttle helmets and soldiers in field gray. He laughed. They were through. Hutier’s tactics were working.

He paused and looked forward. In the distance he could not yet see downtown San Francisco, but buildings and houses were in plain view. More important, there was no sign of any further American defenses. They were through and before him lay the city of San Francisco. Richter knew he had to wait, if only a little while. Twenty men would not take the city. Nor could a few hundred. Others were joining him as the breach was widened, but it would be a while before he had an attack force. He laughed as he saw that Hutier was joining them. The old general was out of shape and breathing heavily. His once immaculate uniform was filthy, but he was grinning happily.

“Excellent work, Richter. You will be promoted and given a medal.”

“Thank you, sir, but it was all your idea. The men really executed it.”

“No modesty, please. Now, let us gather a force and head to San Francisco. Great God, we have waited so long for this. With a little bit of luck, we will have supper in the officers’ club at their Presidio. Perhaps General Liggett will join us, eh?”

Richter grinned impishly. “Perhaps we can serve him humble pie.”