1920: America's Great War-eARC

by Robert Conroy

  Pershing was a widower. His wife and two of his three children had been killed in a fire. He was not the prude his stern appearance would seem to indicate. Indeed, after the loss of his wife, he had consoled himself by having several affairs, including one with the sister of one of his favorite young officers, George Patton.

  General Payton March thought Pershing was a very good general and a very flawed man. He was also the best March had. Liggett was tied up in California and, in March’s mind, the only remaining choice to command the American Army was Pershing, who was still unpopular in some quarters after Roosevelt had promoted him to brigadier rank ahead of many, many others senior to him. Major General Leonard Wood, also sixty, was available, but Wood wanted desperately to be president, not just a general, and March was concerned that his political agenda might interfere with his military one.

  March smiled and the two men sat down. “General Pershing, I have a very simple request to make. The Germans must be defeated. Can you do it?”

  Pershing did not blink. “Of course. However, I will need the time and resources to develop an army that can win and not be slaughtered in the attempt. You know as well as I do that despite the fact that enlistments are pouring in, there are no training camps, no uniforms, no tents, no officers, no sergeants, no machine guns, and no artillery. Oh yes, don’t forget planes and armored vehicles. Once those problems are resolved, we can and will expel Germany from our country.”

  “And how long will that take?” March asked, dreading the answer. The treatment of volunteers was a scandal. Many thousands were freezing in inadequate facilities in poorly designed camps.

  “At least a year,” Pershing answered without hesitation. “And I will require approximately a million men.”

  March blinked. Damn Woodrow Wilson and his naive belief that the United States could stay out of war by simply wishing it. Wilson could never accept the premise that some nations were predators. “Many are enlisting,” March said, “but nowhere near that number.”

  “Then, odious as it may seem, there must be conscription.”

  March leaned back in his chair. A conscription act was already working its way through Congress and would be law in about a week.

  “But why so many men?” March asked. “The Germans don’t have anywhere near that many in California, and Texas appears to be a totally Mexican-run operation.”

  Pershing smiled tightly. “You are quite correct. However, the Germans have made it plain that the declaration of war would result in attacks along the Atlantic coast. That will result in pressure on President Lansing to divert forces to garrison coastal cities against attacks that might or might not ever come. That and the fact that I would wish to outnumber the Germans when we do counterattack.”

  “But a year? That seems excessive.”

  “Let me be blunt, General March: it may take even longer. The only things we have in great numbers are Springfield rifles. Sadly, they require ammunition and trained personnel. We are like Washington at Valley Forge. We must create an army out of nothing, and an army a hundred times larger than Washington’s, and we don’t have a von Steuben to train them.”

  March nodded. “We cannot afford to strip our existing units to train recruits. We will have to use retired military personnel.”

  Pershing shook his head vigorously. “I do not want to use our own soldiers, or even experienced retired soldiers, to train recruits. However well intended they might be, the last war they might have fought in would have been against the Spanish in Cuba, or the Moros in the Philippines, or even the Apaches, and these are hardly examples of modern warfare. No, sir, if humanly possible, I would like the trainers to be British. They may have lost to the Germans, but they did confront the Germans and often hurt them badly. They would know their weapons and their tactics. And I would not want any French instructors. Their tactics were execrable.”

  March was about to say it was impossible, but the germ of an idea crept in. “Perhaps,” he said with a small smile.

  Pershing leaned forward. “Terrible things may happen in California and we will be unable to prevent them or strike back. The president will be under tremendous pressure to do something, anything, but to act prematurely would be disastrous.”

  “Are you saying General Liggett must be abandoned to his fate?”

  “Sadly, yes, and he is well aware of it. He knows the state of our military and how long it will take to create an army, and, for that matter, a navy.” It was a reminder that so many of the navy’s fine warships were seriously undermanned. “General Liggett is a fine general and he will do as well as anyone.” Pershing grinned uncharacteristically. “Perhaps the stress of combat will cause him to lose some of the incredible weight he carries.”

  March smiled as well. Liggett’s prodigious weight was a joke and had been a source of friendly contention between the obese Liggett and the austere and trim Pershing. Liggett was sixty-three and looked older. Christ, he thought. Don’t we have any generals under sixty?

  Belatedly, it annoyed March that Admiral Coontz had not been invited to this meeting, but it would have been a breach of Army-Navy protocol. It was understood that Josephus Daniels and Admiral Coontz were desperately trying to get the Navy’s ships manned and supplied. And damn protocol, he needed to get together with the Navy and coordinate their efforts.

  “General Pershing, is there any good news you can give?”

  “I think so. First, we can and will strike at the Mexicans in Texas. That should take pressure off the president and we should be able to expel them. Also, the German’s Achille’s heel is their supply line. We may be three thousand miles from San Francisco, but they are halfway around the world from Germany. The more we can interdict their supplies, the worse off they will be. We still hold the Panama Canal, do we not?”

  “We do. The Colombians tried to take it back from us, but our small garrison and the Panamanian Army defeated the effort. There were no Germans involved in the attack, although I am sure there were advisors in the background. I have directed the local American commander to blow up the locks if capture seems imminent and to inform the Germans of our intent. If we can’t have the Canal, then nobody can.”

  Pershing nodded. Lack of access to the Canal would force German supply ships to go the long way, or unload at Vera Cruz and ship overland. Either way, it created a monumental logistics problem for them.

  The meeting ended and Pershing departed. March opened the connecting door to the adjacent office. President Lansing stepped in. He was clearly unhappy at what he had overheard.

  “What Pershing said is deeply saddening,” Lansing said. “Unfortunately, it has the ring of truth, and I suppose that reality will be far more complex and daunting.”

  “Mr. President, do you wish General Pershing to be the general commanding ground operations against the Germans and Mexicans?”

  “Is there another choice?”

  “Leonard Wood and Liggett himself are the only two others. Wood has too many political ambitions and has never led large numbers in battle, while Liggett’s presence is required in California. I propose we give General Wood command over the eastern coastal defenses and task Pershing with ultimately driving out the Germans, however long it takes. Is Pershing acceptable to you and do you agree that his first focus must be Texas?”

  Lansing took a deep breath. He was in the position of Abraham Lincoln sixty-odd years earlier. Would he choose a McClellan or a Burnside or a Hooker who would lead them to disaster? Or would he be fortunate and select perhaps a Grant.

  “Pershing it is.”

  * * *

  The sound of an approaching train woke Luke. He’d been dozing in a field in the outskirts of San Diego. Incredibly, the slow-moving Germans hadn’t yet taken it. The city itself was largely abandoned. Thousands of residents, now refugees, had departed on roads headed north, joining a growing mass of humanity heading out.

  He’d arrived a couple of hours earlier, and again by plane. He was beginning to get used t
o the lunacy of being in the air with only canvas and wood keeping him up. He admitted to his extremely young pilot that it was exhilarating. The pilot had laughed and said that’s why he flew.

  Patton nudged him. “Hammer-man, you expecting a train? If so, it’s coming from the east.”

  Luke shook the cobwebs from his brain. “Christ, and that’s where the Germans are.”

  Patton swore. “Of course it is, my friend.”

  Patton now commanded half the 7th Cavalry, but his half of the regiment was down to fewer than two hundred effectives. Others had been siphoned off to other places to nibble at the German advance, while all too many others were dead or wounded. He had about two hundred men to hold San Diego.

  The train came into sight. It consisted of one locomotive and maybe twenty freight and flat cars. They were filled with men.

  “As I suspected,” Patton said, “German soldiers. And the country is so defenseless they just ride up like they were on a Sunday trip to Grandma’s. Damn them. At least we’re as prepared as we can be, and the German fleet hasn’t arrived yet.”

  The consensus in San Francisco was that the Germans had shelled San Francisco just to show they could, and were on their way to San Diego, which they would use as a California port once their army had taken it.

  “Open fire!” Patton yelled and two hundred soldiers emptied their bolt action Springfields at the crowded Germans. Although slowing, the train was still moving and the Germans were temporarily trapped. Finally, it slowed enough for them to jump off and begin to return fire. The clatter of a machine gun joined the din.

  Patton cursed. “Of course they have machine guns. They always have machine guns.”

  A second German machine gun opened up, then a third. Dirt from bullets kicked up uncomfortably near them. Someone screamed.

  Luke grabbed Patton’s arm. “It’s not getting any better, George, there’s another train coming.”

  Patton gave the order to pull back. His men gathered their wounded and their dead and piled them on horse-drawn carts. That was another thing, why didn’t the American Army have trucks?

  The Germans at the rail line were content to consolidate their position and didn’t follow. The Americans began to head north, all the while keeping an eye out for German planes.

  “Y’know Luke,” Patton said thoughtfully. “There are train lines all over the place and headed in all directions. If the Krauts could hop a train and ride into San Diego virtually unopposed, what’s to stop them from taking trains to Los Angeles, or, hell, San Francisco?”

  “Nothing I can think of.”

  “Okay, you find your little plane and pilot and get your ass back to Liggett and tell him I’m going to start destroying tracks and bridges as I pull back north. And then tell him that he’d be smart to do it anywhere else he can. If he doesn’t the Germans might just unexpectedly drop in at the Presidio for lunch.”

  * * *

  Elise Thompson sat primly, her notebook on her lap. Ensign Cornell sat along the wall across from her, a crutch beside him. He winked and she tried not to smile. Admiral Sims appeared not to notice, but she thought he had. General Liggett and Colonel Nolan completed the group in the conference room adjacent to Liggett’s office. The decision had been made to keep it small. Larger groups often resulted in too much posturing by people jockeying for promotion.

  The admiral smiled and began. “Miss Thompson will keep notes. I will edit them later in case we say something too treasonous. General, with your permission I will begin.

  “Like yourself, General, I have been promised little or nothing in the way of reinforcements. The squadron I have is bottled up in Puget Sound, where it is safe but accomplishing little except that it keeps a larger squadron of German ships occupied. However, I do believe that my small fleet can still be of use at this time.”

  Cornell’s ears perked up. He’d heard that Sims held views that were radical, even heretical, in a navy that worshiped battleships.

  Sims had made a name for himself by revolutionizing the way navy guns were aimed and fired. Many captains had come to the horrible conclusion that their ships couldn’t hit anything. The human mind couldn’t do the calculations necessary to enable the guns to aim at objects moving at speed and in different directions, and then hit what they thought they’d aimed at. Sims, along with an equally brilliant Royal Navy officer, had devised an electronic range finder that did the work. That and extensive gunnery practice, of course.

  “First,” said Sims, “the Germans sank or badly damaged three older battleships at Mare Island. They were little more than floating targets when the Germans arrived because I had stripped them of their crews to enable the two newer ones to flee after the Arizona. In doing so I did the older ships and their crews a favor. Had they fought the Germans, they would have been destroyed. Had they fled, they would have been caught and sunk. The older ships had half the firepower of the German battleships that attacked them. However badly damaged they might be, those three old ships still have many of their guns. If given enough time, some of the damaged guns can be repaired. I propose that those guns that can be salvaged be removed, shipped from Mare Island to here, and mounted on either side of the Golden Gate and elsewhere to protect San Francisco.”

  Liggett beamed. “That can be done?”

  “Indeed. They were anchored in shallow water; thus, even the ship that sank, the Michigan, is resting with her superstructure above the surface.”

  “Excellent,” Liggett said, “Anything I can do to help please ask.”

  “General, I will require transportation. Some of the equipment can go by barges or trains, but others will require improvisation. May I call on your engineers?”

  “Of course.”

  “I do have a small number of other, smaller warships at Seattle, and these include a handful of cruisers and, more important, some torpedo boats and six submarines. I propose to utilize them as soon as I can to interdict German supply ships. I believe the only reason the Germans didn’t dally longer off San Francisco was that they are beginning to run low on fuel after a very long voyage. It isn’t yet a crisis for them, but it could be. Their fuel vulnerability is something to keep track of.”

  It was Liggett’s turn to update the group and he informed the admiral that two more regiments of regular American Army infantry were on trains and crossing the mountains via the northern route and should be in San Francisco in a week. Monumental efforts were being made to keep the tracks open and clear of snow. He reported that the snow removal efforts had unearthed a couple of dead bodies along the northernmost route. It was presumed that these were some of the German saboteurs who had failed in their assignment.

  Of more importance, the additional six thousand regular army soldiers would be useful but only a drop in the bucket when compared with the German Army now estimated at a quarter of a million.

  “Where will you make your stand, General?”

  Liggett winced. He was going to have to admit that most of California was indefensible. “Ultimately, San Francisco. My engineers are designing defenses that will surround San Francisco and lead east into the mountains. It is about five hundred miles from San Diego to San Francisco and I fervently hope we can delay the Germans long enough to complete our works.”

  With little more to discuss, the meeting broke up. Josh Cornell thought it was interesting that both the admiral and the general appeared to be getting along. Perhaps a shared crisis makes people think more clearly and less parochially. Regardless, he had more pressing things on his mind.

  He smiled at Elise, “Lunch?”

  She smiled briefly in return and looked at her notes. “I think I should type these as soon as possible.”

  “But you do have to eat. You must conserve your strength for your typing.”

  She was about to retort sharply when Admiral Sims voice boomed from his office. “For God’s sake, Elise, go to lunch with him or you’ll never get anything done.”

  * * *

  Colonel M
arcus Tovey of the Texas National Guard hoped he had prepared his defensive position well. He had his flanks covered and his men were dug in. He wished they had something more than just their rifles. The damned Mexicans had machine guns and artillery to go along with their excellent German rifles.

  What he and his men wanted more than anything was to kill Mexicans. And if there were any Germans around they’d kill them as well.

  Tovey and the rest of his men still seethed over the horror of the burning of Laredo. Granted, many of the fires had likely started during the vicious house-to-house fighting that had erupted when the citizens of that border city awoke to the fact that the Mexican Army had swarmed across the Rio Grande. Just about every man in town had grabbed his rifle or pistol and started shooting Mexicans. The battle quickly disintegrated into a chaotic brawl.

  The results had left many dead, including hundreds of civilians, among them women and children. Atrocities had been committed on both sides in an orgy of violence that would take a long time to forgive. Tovey knew he would never forget the sight of several small children who’d been dismembered by an artillery shell, or a woman who’d been shot in the back of the head by Mexican soldiers as she’d tried to flee. There were rumors of rapes and the thought of Mexican soldiers assaulting white women made his blood boil.

  Thus, what the Mexican command thought would take only an hour or two wound up taking three long bloody days. Buildings were destroyed and homes were burned as the fighting raged from house to house and room to room. The delay enabled Guard units like Tovey’s to gather and join the fight. They had been too few and too late, and the Mexicans ultimately prevailed, but only after paying a heavy price.

  He recalled that American army officer who’d crawled out of the Rio Grande so long ago, and asking him just what the hell Germans were doing south of the Rio Grande? Now Tovey knew. Everyone knew. The sons of bitches had been planning a “stab in the back” attack on the United States. And they had burned Laredo. They would pay.