1920: America's Great War

by Robert Conroy

  With that, Steiner blew a whistle and his Germans, like trained dogs, gathered around him and began a fighting withdrawal to the railroad tracks.

  Men were shouting in English. Most were yelling at others not to shoot them, while some of Olson’s men were trying to surrender. Steiner could see Olson crumple and start to scream. Seeing him fall, the rest of his men disappeared into the night, leaving Olson alone on the ground. Soon, Steiner and his men were long gone.

  * * *

  In a few minutes, Olson was surrounded by the now heavily armed former prisoners, while some Mexicans in American uniforms watched. “Okay,” he said through his pain. “You win. I’m your prisoner.”

  The prisoners’ leader, Captain Rice, looked down on him and spat in his face. This amused the others. Olson saw Martina walk toward him and it was suddenly difficult to breathe. Martina looked like a tigress stalking prey.

  Martina pulled a large knife from her belt. In Spanish, she asked for Montoya’s men to hold Olson. They happily complied, and with one motion, she ripped open his stomach. He stared in disbelief at the blood pouring from his gut. The men holding him let him go, and ignored his screams. Olson curled up into a ball and groaned while he bled to death. Martina was not a good surgeon.

  * * *

  Josh stole a moment to get some food from the Army’s mess hall at the Presidio. More meetings were going on and he was not needed. A mere lieutenant junior grade was not going to impact the war. Sometimes he had the feeling that Admiral Sims barely tolerated his presence. Perhaps it was because of Elise or maybe the admiral thought he was a good messenger. Either way, he was not involved in combat and, however Elise felt about it, it ate at Josh.

  Of course, the Navy at San Francisco wasn’t in a position to do much of anything except point a few shore guns at the Germans who now prudently stayed out of range, and prepare for the inevitable German ground assault. The reported escape of the Arizona and the Pennsylvania from Puget Sound had electrified everyone in San Francisco. The drawback of the escape was that the German battleships previously assigned to blockade them were now stationed off San Francisco.

  Lieutenant Commander Jesse Oldendorf was seated alone at a small table in the large but half empty dining hall stuffing food into his mouth. Despite shortages, the cooks had done their usual excellent job and the aromas were enticing.

  Josh envied the man. Almost every day, he was out there on the noble former trawler, the Shark, laying or inspecting the minefields. And just to keep things interesting, every now and then the distant Germans would lob a shell in his direction. They’d never come close, but a lucky hit was always a possibility. Even a near miss would send water a hundred feet into the air and create pressures that would crush the Shark’s hull.

  Oldendorf saw him and waved him over. “How are things with the gods on Mount Olympus?” he asked cheerfully. “And how are you with the beautiful Miss Elise? Still seeing her or has she come to her senses?”

  Josh laughed. “The gods tell me very darn little, and Elise has not yet regained consciousness.”

  “Then don’t let her. She’s a prize.”

  “She doesn’t want me out on any more combat missions.”

  “And smart, too.” Oldendorf finished devouring a slightly overcooked pork chop which was just the way he liked it. “Of course, the Navy hasn’t had much to do with half a dozen Kraut battleships watching us like German hawks.”

  The German warships patrolling Puget Sound had arrived and four had promptly departed in pairs. Obviously, their job was to try to search out the Arizona and the Pennsylvania. If the American warships stayed together, any battle with a pair of German ships would be fairly even, but the Americans could not afford to lose any ships, while the Germans could replace their losses. If the American ships split up, which Josh considered likely, then they would be outnumbered two to one if they met up with either German squadron.

  Of course, it was a very big ocean, and intercepted intelligence said the German ships would return in a few days. That news was ominous. There was only one reason for them to return and that was to attack.

  “At least you are doing something useful, Commander.”

  Oldendorf looked at him curiously. “And just what am I doing, Lieutenant?”

  Josh was puzzled. “Why, you’re out their laying mines for the time when the Germans try to bull their way through the Golden Gate.”

  “You think they’ll try to do that?” he asked with a grin.

  “They have to, sir. The Kraut officers want action and they won’t get it sitting out there while the army takes San Francisco. No, sir, they will bull their way in and we will try to stop them with our shore guns and your mines.”

  Oldendorf pushed his empty plate away. “And how many mines have you seen the Shark lay?”

  Now Josh was truly confused, “Maybe hundreds.”

  Oldendorf smiled sadly. “I am now going to let you in on a little secret, Josh. You haven’t seen me lay a single mine. They’ve been rocks, Josh, rocks. You’ve seen the Shark and her loyal crew throw rocks overboard every day. Both you and the Krauts think we’ve been mining the entrance, which means they’ll come in real slow and cautious. When they do, our shore guns will try to pound the crap out of them. If we’ve fooled a man as keen as you, then we’ve fooled them as well.”

  Josh felt his jaw dropping, “Rocks? And you’re not kidding?”

  “Nope. We only had a handful of mines when the war started, and we used them all trying to stop the Krauts from leaving San Diego. You do remember that little escapade, don’t you?”

  Josh shook his head, “I still can’t believe that was all of them.”

  “Every last stinking one, young Lieutenant. Now, Josh, I’ve gone and told you a deep dark military secret. I want you to tell me something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “What the hell is ‘Operation Firefly’?”

  * * *

  Captain Heinz Muller was commodore of the convoy and its escorts. It consisted of a dozen transports, freighters, and fuel tankers all traveling slowly and in formation. Neat and tidy like good little Germans, Muller liked to think. Muller had a decent sense of humor and his crew, except for the Communists and anarchists among the enlisted men, liked and respected him.

  Muller had retired from active duty five years earlier and held the rank of captain in the naval reserves. At age sixty, he fully expected to finish his life in a rocking chair with a beer in his hand and a buxom young fraulein to hop off his lap and keep the glass full. He was a bachelor and the fantasy came easily to mind. But then came the war and the surprise order from the kaiser to take command of both the ancient pre-dreadnaught battleship Preussen and the hastily gathered convoy.

  Four destroyers and the light cruiser Pillau accompanied him and his battleship as additional escorts.

  The fourteen thousand ton Preussen was a virtual museum piece. She’d been commissioned in 1905. She was primitive in comparison with modern ships, such as the Bayern or, he shuddered, the American Arizona or Pennsylvania. Since the 1906 launch of the British super-ship, the Dreadnaught, naval architecture and warship design had been revolutionized. It was ironic that the Dreadnaught herself was now considered obsolete after only fifteen years of existence.

  The Preussen carried a mere four eleven-inch guns and a number of 6.7 inch guns, none of which could stand up to the Americans who had escaped from Puget Sound. If it hadn’t been for the damned American submarines, now long dead, Muller and his ship would have been back in Germany and the transports steaming on their own. The destroyers were there to herd the civilian ships and the light cruiser’s job was to watch over the destroyers. The Pillau could steam at twenty-seven knots, but carried only six-inch guns. Nobody had expected that they would have to look out for American battleships.

  The Yank submarine menace was gone, but, even before the escape of the Americans, there was the fear of Yankee surface raiders. Not every destroyer or cruiser had been accounted for and
the Americans certainly had other subs, but they were in the Atlantic. At least that’s where German intelligence said they were. He harrumphed to himself. German intelligence had been far from perfect so far.

  “Ship on the horizon!” a lookout yelled and Muller cursed.

  “Two ships,” the lookout corrected.

  Scores of telescopes and binoculars were instantly trained on the distant smudges, upperworks just beginning to appear over the horizon. Muller’s heart skipped a beat. They were large and their design wasn’t German. Please let a merciful God make those ships British and not American, he thought.

  God was not merciful. A few moments later and Muller’s worst dreams had been realized. He had found the Arizona and the Pennsylvania. “Order the convoy to scatter and run for their lives. The destroyers and the Pillau will follow me.”

  They were two hundred miles away from Los Angeles, and, while his radio was broadcasting the alarm, he knew it was a fruitless gesture. Were there any German warships in the vicinity? Highly unlikely, he admitted to himself.

  Flashes on the American ships showed that their great fourteen-inch guns had fired. A moment passed and shells fell short of the Preussen. Muller fired his forward turret. His own shells fell well short. He had fired just to show the Yanks that the Preussen had teeth. Maybe it would delay the Americans and give his sheep a chance of escaping. The Americans fired again and this time the shells landed long. They were bracketed.

  “Tell the destroyers and the Pillau to try to escape,” Muller ordered sadly. “And keep trying to raise our fleet. They have to be out there someplace, damn it.”

  More shells landed, and water splashed over the German battleship. Fragments from the shells struck down on the deck. A dozen crewmen fell in screaming bloody heaps.

  Suddenly, Muller was lying face down on the deck of the bridge. Bodies lay around him. The ship was rocking violently and flames were shooting out from a score of places. A human arm lay near him. It was his. He tried to get up but hands held him down and placed a tourniquet on the stump of his shattered arm.

  “Status!” Muller screamed through waves of pain. The report was dismal. The forward eleven-inch turret had been destroyed and the engines were not responding. His ship was dead in the water and sinking. He sobbed and gave the order to abandon ship. The Preussen hadn’t lasted ten minutes against the Americans.

  As he was being lowered into a lifeboat he realized that the Americans were no longer firing at the helpless old battleship. A small mercy, he thought. A shell struck the Pillau and the five-thousand-ton cruiser broke in half. One of the American battleships was in with the transports, sinking them with her secondary battery of five-inch guns. One did not use fourteen inch shells on a transport any more than one used a shotgun to kill a fly. It also occurred to him that perhaps the Americans didn’t have an abundance of fourteen-inch shells.

  A couple of transports struck their colors. Their crews began abandoning ship. There weren’t enough boats for the men on the troop transport and they spilled into the water. Many would drown. God help them, Muller thought.

  * * *

  Two hours later, the Preussen still stubbornly held onto life. From where he sat in a lifeboat, Muller could see that she listed well to port and would sooner or later capsize. A brave ship, Muller thought. More ships were appearing over the horizon. The German Navy had arrived. Finally, Muller thought bitterly. The Americans had wrought their havoc and long since disappeared.

  CHAPTER 20

  Why me, thought Luke as he stood in front of what was thought to be an empty wood-frame house. Because you’re the only one available, that’s why, he thought as he answered his own question. He gripped his .45 automatic and waited while the rest of the detachment, six soldiers from the provost marshal’s office, came up. Four took up positions by the front door and two in the rear.

  The house looked as if it had survived the earthquake of 1906, but might not make it much longer. Windows were shuttered and paint was peeling.

  Luke took a deep breath. He wasn’t a cop but he was going to have to act like one. “We know you’re in there. Come out with your hands up or you’ll get shot.”

  There was silence and then a voice cried out. “I’m not going back!” Luke picked up on the sense of desperation in the man’s voice.

  A second voice added, “We’ve got guns and we’ll use them. Leave us alone. That’s all we ask, just leave us alone.”

  Of course they have weapons, Luke thought. They’re soldiers, or once upon a time they were. Now they’re deserters and would hang if caught. A police patrol happened to see motion in what was thought to be an abandoned house and shots were fired when the cops went to investigate. Fortunately, no cops had been hit in the skirmish, but it had proven that the deserters were indeed desperate.

  Even in peacetime, desertion was a problem, and now it was especially severe. After the major German attack on the trenches, Luke had seen hundreds of men running in panic towards safety in the rear. That happened all the time with inexperienced troops. Men broke and ran. Most of them came back after a while, all sheepish and shamefaced. Sometimes they were punished with extra duty and sometimes a sympathetic commander let them back in their units with little more than a scolding. Every soldier understood terror. Modern battle was a terrifying thing.

  But the men in the house had not come back to duty. They’d stolen food, shot at cops, and now were a threat to Luke and his men. He couldn’t just leave them there despite their entreaties.

  “If you surrender and come out, I promise you a fair trial and that you won’t hang if you’re guilty.”

  Of course they’re guilty, he thought. They wouldn’t be in that house if they weren’t. The not-hanging promise had been concurred with by Liggett. A long and hard prison sentence awaited them, with them probably breaking rocks for most of the rest of their lives. Maybe hanging would be more merciful, he thought. With the Germans only ten miles away from the city, no one was inclined to be merciful.

  “Fuck you, soldier!” someone yelled from the house.

  Luke turned to the corporal in charge of the enlisted men. “Well, that settles it. I don’t think they like us. Throw in some tear gas.”

  The corporal grinned wickedly and he and his men lobbed tear gas grenades through the windows, smashing what remained of the glass. The original owners of the house are going to be pissed when they come back, Luke thought.

  They could hear coughing and choking from inside. Someone fired wildly through a window and they ducked. “Stupid sons of bitches,” snarled the corporal. “Should we shoot inside, sir?”

  “No. Hold off for a minute.” The house was frame and he was concerned that bullets would go right through and innocent people would be hit by strays. Already, a crowd of spectators had gathered and police were having a hard time keeping them out of the way.

  “More gas,” he ordered and a half dozen more grenades added to the choking fumes.

  A moment later, the front door opened and a man came out. He had a revolver and fired it wildly. The corporal did not need an invitation. He fired and hit the man in the chest. The deserter went down, flapping his arms.

  The two others emerged, also blinded and firing wildly. Luke’s men returned fire and both men fell, wounded. The corporal and another man dragged the three deserters from the doorway. The first man was dead and the others seriously wounded. With luck they would live until they were hanged. Liggett had been adamant on that further point. There would be no mercy if they didn’t surrender.

  One of the deserters, a boy about eighteen, was crying and not just because of the tear gas. He was hurt and he was going to die. Maybe not today, but very soon, and he was scared to death. Luke wondered if the others had led him on. Too bad. He was old enough to make his own decisions and he had made a tragically bad one.

  A couple of trucks were driven up and the prisoners were dumped inside. One of the wounded screamed. Luke thought he should chide the corporal for letting that happ
en, but what the hell. Those men had let down their comrades and then tried to kill Luke and the other soldiers. Maybe the people who wrote the Geneva Convention wouldn’t like it, but Luke didn’t recall signing the damned thing.

  * * *

  The Dumbarton Railroad Bridge ran from the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay to the village of Menlo Park, just south of the city of San Francisco. It was essential to the existence of the city since no other railroads ran into the city. A spur line ran from the bridge north to the heart of town, but the Dumbarton Bridge stood alone.

  The bridge had been completed in 1910. Prior to its existence, food, supplies, clothing, and anything else that arrived in Oakland were either ferried across the bay or driven the long way around it.

  And now its existence was being challenged. German artillery had begun firing at it from long range. Granted, the shelling was inaccurate, but it was only a matter of time before the bridge was struck and the city would be back once again to its dependence on ferries.

  From several miles away, Kirsten and Elise watched as shells splashed in the water and sent geysers skyward. It was morbidly beautiful.

  “Today the bridge, tomorrow the city,” Kirsten murmured and Elise nodded solemn agreement.

  “I guess I never realized we were so vulnerable,” Elise said. “With the exception of the attack on that movie production site, war was always so far away. I watched others plan, but never watched it in action. Even the bombings and shellings seemed like aberrations that would stop and go away.”

  “I know. When I see those poor boys in the hospital, I don’t particularly think of them as having come from down the road. Perhaps from another world, but not someplace nearby.”

  The number of casualties had diminished, if only for a while, and exhausted medical personnel and volunteers like Kirsten had been given blessed relief from their sometimes terrible duties.

  Kirsten looked up suddenly. “I just realized something. Tell me, do you see any trains crossing?”