1920: America's Great War

by Robert Conroy

  At any rate, Tim and Kathy had gone into a closet and made out like bandits. He’d kissed her hard and gotten his tongue in her mouth. She’d even let him touch her breast but stopped him when he tried to unbutton her blouse.

  “Nothing more until we’re married,” she’d gasped.

  Married? What the hell was she thinking of? He kissed her again and cupped her breast, outside the dress as she insisted, and she ground her pelvis against his erection. He decided it was better than nothing. Married? He liked her, but Jesus, was he ready to get married?

  Later, he picked up Wally, who was staggering drunk, and they went home, confident they’d have hellacious hangovers the next morning, which they did. It made the trip to Dix even more memorable as about half the young men on the train were in the same fix. After one guy got sick, almost everyone lost yesterday’s lunches, turning the train into a stinking mess.

  For several days after their arrival and getting uniforms, nothing happened in Camp Dix. They ate, they slept, and they wondered. Finally they were called out to the parade ground, all two hundred of the NCOs in training. They noticed similar groups gathering in other areas of the sprawling base.

  A little man in an impeccable khaki uniform stood in front of them and ordered them to sit down on the ground. He had a multitude of stripes on his sleeve. He was barely five feet tall and skinny and wrinkled. He could have been anywhere from thirty to eighty years in age.

  Instinctively, Wally and Tim knew this little man was to be both respected and feared.

  “Oy yam here to train you,” he said. His accent was unidentifiable but he was definitely speaking something resembling English.

  “Oy yam Sergeant Smith,” he pronounced it “Smeeth.” “And you will obey me in all things, and you will do so without hesitation or question. What I teach you might just save your fookin’ lives. If you have any difficulty with my accent or the way I talk or some strange words oy might use, it is because oy am from a little ways from here.”

  Wally sucked in his breath and poked Tim. “I’ll say he’s a ways from here. He’s British. Jesus, they brought in the British Army to train us.”

  Sergeant “Smith” paused. He heard the murmurings as his young trainees figured out what he’d said and not said. It was true, he thought with a happiness he dared not let them see. Americans were an intelligent lot. Smith and his companions at Dix and many other camps were ready to begin training the recruits. So what if they were still short of rifles and other tools of war. They would somehow make sure the recruits were at least as well prepared as the men he’d led at the Marne in 1914, or against the Boers years earlier. He knew he could not give these men his years of experience, but he could damn sure see to it that they were as ready as they could be when they faced down the Kaiser’s hordes.

  He glared at them and they met his look. They showed curiosity, even respect, but no fear. “Oy hate the fookin’ Germans. Hate them with a fookin’ passion.” He saw he had their attention.

  “Men, oy will train you to the best of your abilities. I will train you to achieve things you never thought you could possibly do and then you will do some more.”

  He paused. “I will train you to defeat the fookin’ Germans!” His voice didn’t quite rise, but it did gain in strength.

  “I will train you to kill the fookin’ Germans, and I will train you to drive their fookin’ Kraut asses out of your country! Now get up and get started!”

  There was silence, and Smith wondered if he’d gone too far, or maybe he’d scared them, or maybe they hadn’t understood his thick Yorkshire accent. Then all two hundred men stood up and started applauding, and the applause turned to cheers, and the cheers to howls. Yes, he thought, this was going to be most interesting, and God damn the fookin’ Germans.

  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 h
er 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.