1901 (31 page)

There was a plaintive note to Willy’s voice. Gone was the insolent drunkard and thief. This was a man who’d been scared by forces he’d never known existed, and now he desperately craved a level of security. He also knew he had to find more food than he had been able to before now in order to survive the coming winter. Willy was almost gaunt. Blake Morris sighed and looked at the longing eyes of the man. “All right, Willy. You can tag along, but you’re gonna have to work for your keep. If I catch your worthless ass drunk or stealing one time, you’re gone and on your own to starve. You understand me? I got a job to do and I won’t have you in the way.”

Willy nodded eagerly, like a puppy. Morris slung his rifle over his shoulder and started to walk inland, away from Ardmore. The dozen hard-eyed men with him fell into a column. One man sprinted ahead to take up a point position, a second pushed Willy into the middle of the column, and a third took up position as rear guard.

Blake surveyed them quickly. Dressed as farmers and mechanics, they were as natural to the countryside as the trees. The well-intentioned officers on the mainland had made him promise they’d wear uniforms in case they got captured. In that case they’d stand a chance of not being executed as spies and terrorists. He had laughed bitterly. Wear uniforms? Why advertise their presence? No, there wasn’t a man in the group who wasn’t a volunteer and who was afraid of death. There was a job to do and they would do it.

P
ATRICK
M
AHAN LOUNGED
comfortably on a folding chair in front of his command tent—a larger structure than a regular tent that combined sleeping quarters and office—and tried to enjoy the relative cool of the morning. The camp was just beginning to stir, and he felt it appropriate that his brigade see their commanding officer up and ready well before they were. It also gave him some quiet time to enjoy a cup of coffee, read, and think. His staff understood this need and worked to ensure it. That growing staff was now headed by Lt. Col. Jonathan Harris, late of the Connecticut Militia, who had recently been invited by Patrick to be his chief of staff. Patrick had run into him at MacArthur’s headquarters and remembered the diligent way the then major had led his men after the disaster under Colonel Blaney. Or was it Haney? It seemed so long ago. When his own militia unit disbanded, Harris was left without a position. An owner of a prosperous shoe factory, Harris knew how to organize and manage.

One of the first instructions Harris issued was that the general was not to be disturbed during this time of day unless a large portion of the German army was directly behind the general’s tent.

Handing the general a fresh cup of coffee did not constitute an interruption, and Patrick took the new cup of steaming brew from a grinning mess attendant, then went back to his newspaper. With the military situation relatively stable, it was possible to get the news in a surprisingly up-to-date fashion. What he was reading this fine morning was the
New York Herald
, although the edition was printed in Boston and contained a lot of news local to that town. With New York City occupied, no local news was emanating from there.

A major story bemoaned the fact that food rationing might be imposed as a result of the war and warned people not to hoard. Great, thought Patrick, there is nothing like warning people not to do something as a certain means to motivate them to do it.

Another story referred to the growing number of sailors getting into fights and being generally disruptive. The story implied that there were many more sailors in town than before. Patrick shook his head. An intelligence agent with even a minimal intellect could infer that something was afoot and that ships were being stationed in Boston Harbor. The same article stated that certain areas of the coast were out-of-bounds to civilians because of military construction. Why not just send the Germans a letter stating that coastal forts were being built?

Yet another article hinted at an army training camp being built outside Springfield, Massachusetts, about eighty miles from Boston. Construction jobs, it said, might be available. Well, people have to eat, and there were enough refugees available to provide a labor force. Patrick knew that most wars resulted in economic prosperity for many of those not actually being shot at, but this war was not normal. For one thing, the refugees had overwhelmed the charitable resources of many locales and were unable to find work. Worse, some were underbidding the local labor force, which was causing bad feelings and some violent confrontations. An article in an earlier paper noted an upsurge in militant unionism as a result. Also, the closure of New York harbor was causing transportation problems, although other ports were trying to take up the slack and at a profit. Yes, he thought, there were many areas of the country and industries that were making a killing, but not too many in the immediate vicinity. Unless, of course, you counted the liquor merchants and the whores.

Baseball was still being played. Boston had beaten Hartford by one run. Hartford? Games were going on under the shadow of the German guns. Well, thank God, he thought, someone has a firm grip on what’s important and what’s not. It would be nice to get home to Detroit and see a game. He wondered whether Trina liked baseball.

He flipped to the editorial page and read a column exhorting the State Department to get more aid from foreign governments. The writer clearly had no idea what aid the British and, to a lesser extent, the French had been providing to the large but awkward American army.

Another impassioned writer wondered where the navy was. It was inconceivable, the writer said, that the same navy that had humbled the British in 1812 and whipped the Spanish in 1898 would hide and act cowardly in 1901 against the Germans. Patrick wondered where the writer had learned his history. We hadn’t humbled the British in 1812, we merely sunk a handful of the ships in their vast navy; as to the Spanish, well, they were so totally inept and poorly led, it was no contest. No, the German navy would be something else entirely.

The letters to the editor were interesting. One writer groused that the entire theater season would be lost if this war wasn’t over soon. The
Herald
staff must have had fun printing that one. Another complained about the number of beggars and refugees in the streets. He offered no solution, just complaints.

More seriously, several writers decried what they perceived as inaction by the army. Why didn’t the army drive out the invader and restore things to normal? Good question. One particularly poignant letter concerned a son who’d been killed at Danbury and questioned whether it was all worth it.

Another writer said that this was God’s punishment upon us for being so greedy. We had no need or right to lands beyond our shores. Give them up, he said. People should not have to die for Puerto Rico. He alluded to a speech given just a few days prior by William Jennings Bryan in which the orator had said much the same thing.

A woman writer opined that there would have been no war if women had been able to vote. Patrick grinned and determined to clip the letter for Trina.

The letters and articles, taken in aggregate, showed frustration and pride. There was pride that the United States had not been humbled further by a great European power, but there was frustration that the war had not been decided, one way or the other. It was almost as if it would be better to take action and lose than to wait and win. When he read letters like these, he understood the pressure on the political leaders to move before they were ready. It was hard to sympathize with Theodore Roosevelt or the late McKinley, but he did understand a little better.

The first clue that something was wrong was the sound of distant angry shouting. Patrick rose quickly from his chair and looked for the source. One of the many patrols was likely returning and there must have been trouble. Lieutenant Colonel Harris, his face flushed, ran over.

“General, a patrol got cut up.”

Patrick nodded. It was always tragic, but it happened. The war between the lines was a deadly one. “Continue, Colonel.”

Harris wiped his sweaty brow. “Damnit, it was the one with the British officer and Heinz. Somebody said Heinz is dead.”

To Ludwig Weber, New York City evoked thoughts of what ancient Rome must have looked like in the Dark Ages. Although being in the city was immensely depressing, he felt himself privileged to have seen what could only be described as living ruins. In normal times, several million people lived in New York, but now the population was probably less than a tenth of that. No one knew precisely, of course; any figure was someone’s guess.

The streets of Manhattan were virtually deserted. Almost anyone moving about was either a German or one of the relatively few Americans who’d chosen to stay and collaborate with them. These people were very suspect and were trusted little by the occupying army. There were very few locals about in this area of town. Weber had been warned that the slums and tenements of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where so many of the immigrants had once lived, were still occupied and potentially dangerous because of the large number of criminals and social deviants who lurked there. Stay away was the warning. Virtually all of the immigrant Germans had fled, but there were still some Jews, and everyone said they were thieves. Some Italians remained in the Bowery, and other nationalities were scattered about. Most of them had no reason to love Germans.

What a joyous leave. The 4th Rifles had marched from their encampment and headed toward the city, all the while watching every brush and shrub in case some red savages were lurking there. Fear of the Indians had kept all but the bravest and most foolish in their tents at night. Guards were doubled and latrines moved closer to the living quarters. This made it safer to relieve oneself, but it also made camp life a more noxious experience.

It was sweetly ironic that Kessel had been required to stay behind with a few others and protect the camp. Apparently Captain Walter feared a repeat of Kessel’s earlier looting escapade if he were turned loose in New York. Kessel said nothing. His eyes said everything. They were filled with hate.

Fortunately, no one in the 4th had been murdered by the savages, but everyone knew of others who had. Sometimes Ludwig felt that the stories of the Indians were like the stories old people told about bogeymen in order to scare children out of their wits. Only these bogeymen were real. The Indians scalped, mutilated, skinned, and sometimes left men dying and castrated with their penises in their mouths. Germans could stand up to an enemy in the field, but not as well to shadows in the night. Morale was dipping. There were other problems as well. Horses were being lamed and supplies burned by American irregular troops. Just a few days ago one of the bridges over the Harlem River had been blown up. No one had been caught, but there was agreement that this act of sabotage was not the work of Indians.

Even more interesting than the sabotage was the sudden proliferation of pamphlets and signs offering help and amnesty to any German soldiers who deserted their units and surrendered. They would not, the documents said, be repatriated against their will. America was the land of opportunity, and they would be helped, even given money, to begin a new life somewhere, anywhere, in this huge land. It was very seductive. All the notices were in fluent German.

This was the second of their three days in the great city, or what had once been a great city. Ludwig, as befitted a schoolteacher, took his friends on a tour of the many places he’d seen as a boy. The Statue of Liberty was off-limits and Ellis Island was being used as a naval barracks, but that left many others such as Grant’s Tomb, Madison Square Garden, Wall Street, Broadway, and the Brooklyn Bridge, which everyone cheerfully tried to sell to Ulli, who laughed hugely at himself. How could anyone dislike the clod? It was, Ludwig thought, one of the few truly pleasurable moments of the trip.

Ludwig had wanted to take in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but it was closed. When he pursued the matter, he was informed that the treasures were being shipped back to Germany as advance reparations for the war. He could only shake his head in puzzlement.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment, aside from the desolation in the city and the ruins plainly visible across the river in Brooklyn, was Central Park. Once it had been a wonderful place for a child to romp. Then came the war and it had housed thousands of American prisoners until they’d been moved to more secure quarters in warehouses. The park had been thoroughly ruined. The fact that the Germans were not at all interested in landscaping and maintaining it didn’t help either. It looked like a jungle in the making, and too much like the overgrown fields in Connecticut and on Long Island.

Madison Square Garden and Carnegie Hall were empty, although a concert for officers only was scheduled for Carnegie. Would Captain Walter be there? Music by Wagner and Beethoven was to be played by the army band. Probably better than nothing. Of the churches, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was surprisingly small in comparison with the great churches of Europe. Ludwig felt that it paled in comparison with the cathedral in Köln. Besides, it was Catholic. Only the unfinished Saint John the Divine showed potential.

The most intriguing sight was the view of Jersey City across the Hudson. There was an unofficial truce between the Germans and Americans in which neither fired across the river at the other. As a result of this live-and-let-live approach, Ludwig was able to borrow a telescope and watch Americans at work and play. Some of them had telescopes and were doubtless looking at him. He did not give in to the childish urge to wave. Sandbagged fortifications and people in uniform were a grim reminder that there was a war on, unofficial truce or not.

Worse, no one had obtained sex yet. The army operated some beer halls, in which cold and virtually free brew was available, but no brothels. Someone at the top must have gotten religion. Ludwig had heard it was the kaiser’s wife, the Kaiserine Dona, who was known as a prude, who’d stopped the idea of official whorehouses. Or else they were all afraid of the clap. Ludwig had never been to a whore and had no intention of starting, but others, like poor Ulli, bemoaned their fate as celibates. In a burst of insight, Ludwig realized that, far from being sexually active as he liked to brag, Ulli had probably never had a woman.