1920: America's Great War-eARC (22 page)

Sims nodded, although with reluctance. The three American ships were not going to challenge five Germans. Their job was to taunt them and distract them. The American ships turned and steamed back up Puget Sound. German shells chased them and the Germans doubtless thought they’d won a minor, albeit largely moral, victory. When all was said and done, no ships had been hit and no one had been hurt on either side. Josh was singularly delighted that he hadn’t been scratched either.

Sims was pleased. Initial reports said that his distraction had worked. The three American light cruisers and five destroyers had made it out into the open sea. They would stop off at Catalina with additional fuel and torpedoes for Nimitz’s submarines and then set out as commerce raiders.

Josh caught the admiral laughing at him. “I told Elise I’d bring you back in one piece and so I will. It was a good night’s work, Lieutenant. The next time, though, we shall stay and sink them.”

CHAPTER 12

“Be seated,” said President Lansing, and the other attendees in the Oval Office sat. “May I assume, gentlemen, that the news is a mixed bag?”

“It usually is,” said General March. “However, that is much better than all the news being dolefully bad.”

“Then begin with the bad. What in God’s name happened in the mountains? Have our efforts been undone by one man?”

March sighed, “Pretty much. One German officer, a Captain Wulfram, managed to drop the bridge over the Columbia River into said river. It will take at least two months of concerted effort to repair it once the weather eases. Sadly, we had pretty much cleared the snow out of the passes and were going to commence sending trains through again. Hundreds of men on both sides of the mountains had been shoveling night and day.”

“The man must have been exceptionally brave, or foolish,” the president said. “What is his status?”

“He is very seriously wounded,” March continued. “He is on his way to a hospital in Chicago. Frostbite has claimed both of his feet and he may lose a leg to wounds and infection. And this poses a question, sir. Since he was not in uniform, shall we hang him?”

Lansing paused. He had not been prepared for the question. Nor was he quite prepared to hang someone, in particular someone who was so bravely and obstinately doing his duty. “No, at least not yet. We will hold him as a possible future bargaining chip. Although,” he smiled, “if we should decide to hang him we will do so from a railroad trestle.”

The others laughed grimly. Nothing like a little macabre humor to brighten the day, Lansing thought.

General March interrupted. “The weapons and ammo are beginning to come off the assembly lines in quantity from Detroit and elsewhere. The original plan was to ship them by rail through the northern pass to Washington State and then down to California. With this out of the question for the foreseeable future, can we plan on using Canadian rail lines as a substitute?”

An interesting question, thought Lansing. He turned to his Secretary of State, “Any thoughts, Mr. Hughes?”

“We have spoken with both the governor general and the prime minister of Canada and they are reluctant to have large quantities of supplies shipped directly through Canada. They are afraid of retaliation from the German fleet if they are found out. However, they will allow humanitarian aid, such as food, and will assist us in evacuating civilians and wounded.”

“Better than nothing,” Lansing muttered.

Hughes continued. “I have directed our railroads to try to rent line space from the Canadians in the form of a detour north from the broken line, into Canada, and then south. If it is done as a private venture, without the direct collaboration of the Canadian government, we might get away with it until the bridge is rebuilt.”

“Will that happen?” Lansing asked.

“Not until the Canucks and the Brits are certain we can win and they’re on the right side, and right now they can’t be confident of that.”

Railroads were something always taken for granted. One could take a train from virtually anywhere in the United States to any other place in the large and sprawling nation. And, since the highways and roads were generally quite miserable, going by train was virtually the only viable way to travel any sort of distance. The disruption of the lines between California and the rest of the world had shocked everyone. Someday there would have to be paved highways connecting at least the major cities of the United States. Right now, most roads outside major cities were little more than the same dirt trails pioneers had traveled on in the previous century.

“And I’m sure you’re aware of the success we had in destroying their bomber fleet,” March said proudly. “I am recommending Major Eisenhower and Captain Martel each for a medal. It was exceedingly well done.”

Lansing beamed. “It indeed was.” The name Martel sounded familiar. Then he recalled the young officer who’d been with him that fateful night when he became president.

“And what of the Navy’s foray?” he asked.

“Successful,” said Navy Secretary Daniels. “Shots were exchanged, and the German fleet got stirred up and aggravated. They chased our ships back to the sound while the cruiser squadron slipped out unnoticed. After resupplying our subs at Catalina, the cruisers will sail forth as independent commerce raiders, while the destroyers will work in conjunction with the submarines.”

“Excellent,” said Lansing, “but too slow. We need something to inspire the American people. The delivery of supplies, however critical, is too prosaic. We need something dramatic.”

General March smiled. “Will you take Texas?”

* * *

“Sarge, what the hell did that sign say?”

Tim Randall yawned. He’d been sleeping soundly, something that hadn’t been happening all that much lately. The rocking of the train, however, was calming and helped him forget his personal agonies.

“What the hell do you think it said?” he answered grumpily. He had to teach these children who thought they were soldiers that you just don’t go around waking up sleeping sergeants. “You can read, can’t you?”

“Actually, he can’t read all that well, Sarge,” said one of the other men. “He’s from Poland. But the sign did say we’d just entered Texas, and that’s where we’ll be fighting, right?”

“It is,” Tim said, “but don’t get your knickers twisted. For those of you who’ve never seen a map, Texas is larger than most countries.”

“Jeez, Sarge, does that mean it’s larger than Camden?”

Tim stifled a grin. Every group had at least one smartass, and it looked like he had several. “Your sergeant requires sleep, so you do whatever you want. Just stay out of trouble, Private Asshole.”

Tim still couldn’t believe he was on a train, one of scores of them, rolling south through Texas. He had a squad of men and he was part of the Twelfth Infantry Division, which consisted of two Marine Corps regiments and two infantry regiments that had been cobbled together out of units from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The regiments were all understrength as a result of the flu. A normal American division consisted of twenty thousand men. He’d heard that the Twelfth had fewer than fifteen thousand, all lightly trained and still lacking heavy weapons.

The flu. God, he wished he could forget about it. He’d stopped off in Camden to visit his family. He found his parents mourning the loss of their youngest son and leaving Tim with the vague feeling that they held him responsible for his brother’s death. On a whim and a need to get out of a house filled with despair and blame, he’d gone to visit Kathy Fenton. She had written him a couple of times while he was in training. She’d apologized to him for being so presumptuous their last night together and blamed it on the drink. He’d written back, apologizing for getting so stinking drunk and pawing her like a pig, although he’d phrased it a good deal more tactfully.

Kathy was in mourning too. Like Tim, she’d survived a touch of the flu, although it had been late in the season and fairly mild. However, she’d lost her sister and a cousin to the disease. She had lost a lot of weight, and was pale and grey. Her eyes looked haunted. He’d sat on her couch with her head on his shoulder while she cried. Then she’d looked in his eyes, seen his pain, and put his head on her shoulder, holding him tightly, like a baby, while he wept bitterly. Later, they parted. They’d kissed each other on the cheek and hugged. Yes, they said, they would continue to write. Tim wondered just where this would ever go.

He now commanded ten men on their way to kill other people. He knew he was inexperienced but what was truly frightening was the fact that his men were even rawer than he was. Some had only fired their rifles a couple of times. He wondered if the men in charge of the Army and the country had any idea what they were getting their men into. He’d read enough about the Civil War to know that inexperienced generals often get their men slaughtered. Pershing commanded the entire Texas Front army, while some Marine named Lejeune commanded the division. That too was funny. What the hell was a Marine doing in charge of an Army division?

“Sarge, any idea where the hell we’re going in this godawful big state?” Private Asshole asked.

“No,” he said, “but I’ll bet there’ll be Mexicans around.”

* * *

D.W. Griffith worked the projector. He barely glanced at Elise who smiled at being ignored. She was history. Griffith was in his element. The screen on the wall showed the German crossing of the Salinas River at San Luis Obispo.

Patton’s defensive positions were well sited, but he had too few men to seriously hinder the German onslaught, and the Salinas wasn’t all that much of a barrier, even with water rushing down from the nearby mountains. It was more of a nuisance than a moat. With more men and guns, the rugged terrain would have heavily favored the defense, but Patton was short of both.

Still, the Germans had paused to consolidate and bombard Patton’s defenses, which gave the defenders of San Francisco a little more time to prepare.

There were muted gasps from the dozen or so in the conference room as scores of small boats pushed off from the southern shore. Each carried a dozen German soldiers.

“I think they could have waded,” muttered Nolan.

“The second group did,” answered Griffith. “Patton said it was terrible intelligence work on the Germans’ part. Their commander’s some guy named von Seekt, and I am not impressed.”

Nor was anyone else, it turned out. The overcautious Germans had missed an opportunity to overwhelm the American defenders.

As they watched, American riflemen on the north shore began to shoot up the boats and the handful of Hotchkiss machine guns and Browning Automatic Rifles the Americans possessed chewed them as well. Bodies tumbled into the bottom of the boats or into the river. In one instance a boat capsized, bewildered survivors standing up to their waists in water.

Nolan nudged Martel. “If people weren’t dying that would’ve been funny.”

All humor vanished when German machine guns on the south shore began to kill Americans. Griffith shook his head sadly. “Patton said they had fifty machine guns for each one we had. With respect, General Liggett, when the devil are we going to get our own?”

Luke recalled hearing that Griffith had been pro-German before the war. Apparently his views had changed. Well, so had a lot of people’s.

“We’re working on it, Mr. Griffith,” Liggett said quietly.

The film ended. “That’s it, folks,” Griffith said in a most unmilitary manner. “And with your permission, General, I would like to arrange for a copy of it to get to Washington.”

Liggett yawned. He was exhausted and the heat in the closed room had nearly put him to sleep. A telegram from Brigadier General George Marshall had exhorted him to keep the rail line to the east open despite the fact that the bridge over the Columbia tributary had been destroyed. What the hell was Marshall up to now? Regardless, he’d given the orders and the construction battalion that had been withdrawn from the pass was returned.

“By all means make a copy and we’ll arrange to have it sent via Canada as diplomatic mail. Let those people out east see what we’re up against.”

* * *

Lieutenant Ron Carter, captain of the sub O-7, was one of the few men who thought Catalina Island was beautiful. It had a rugged and dramatic quality that appealed to him.

He was halfway up a hillside and looking down into the harbor where the five submarines were anchored. It was time to take on supplies and stores, that is, as soon as they came. Since sinking those two transports, Carter’s sub had sent three more German ships to the bottom and one had a full cargo of oil. It had burned furiously. He would have exulted except he had seen a lifeboat from the transport overtaken by a wall of flames and the men inside turned into human torches. He thought he could hear them scream. He couldn’t, of course, but it was the stuff of nightmares.

In the course of his cruises, he’d used all his torpedoes and most of his three-inch shells; thus, his sub was virtually helpless. He was also almost out of fuel. So too were the others. Supply ships were allegedly en route, but, until they arrived, there really wasn’t much to do. Chief Ryan was on the sub with a half dozen crewmen while the rest, like Carter, relaxed.

A trumpet blared from up the hill behind him. What the hell, he thought sleepily, that damn thing was only to be blown if the Germans were sighted.

Oh shit.

Carter jumped to his feet and squinted seaward. A pair of sleek grey shapes was approaching fast. They’d been hidden by the morning mist. More alarms sounded and men began to run around, some aimlessly as they realized they would never get to their subs in time. He began to run down to the little cove they were using, but he saw that Chief Ryan had already cast off the lines and was heading out to sea. Good man, Carter thought. It would have been at least fifteen minutes before he made it to the sub and it was imperative that the boat get to deep water and dive.

The Germans were at extreme range, but they commenced firing anyhow. Seconds later, shells splashed around the other four subs, which were also frantically trying to get away.

A sub was hit. Crewmen began to abandon her immediately. Seconds later, an explosion ripped through a second boat. More German shells landed around the stricken vessels while the remaining American subs found water deep enough to dive in. So too had the O-7, Carter thought gratefully as she disappeared beneath the waves. He thought her hull might be scraping the bottom, but that was better than being shelled.

Deprived of their primary targets, the Germans contented themselves with bombarding any buildings and any people they saw. Carter hid himself in a fold of earth as dirt and debris fell all around him. Nimitz crawled up beside him. “I don’t know about you, Carter, but we’d all better pray the bastards don’t land troops. We have nothing to fight with unless you’re good at throwing stones.” Neither man even had a sidearm, however futile a .45 automatic might be against a destroyer.

“How’d they find out about us, sir?”

“Guess it wasn’t that big a secret. That and the fact that we had to be someplace might have led them to a logical conclusion. Do you recall if they sent over any planes to spy on us?”