1920: America's Great War-eARC (2 page)

CHAPTER 1

His horse was near collapse and the six armed men chasing him were gaining steadily. The old and scrawny mare’s chest was heaving and her whole body was covered with sweat and foam. It hadn’t been such a great horse in the first place, and was thoroughly outclassed by the well-bred cavalry mounts pounding behind him and gaining with every stride.

Luke Martel would soon be helpless on the ground, confronted by a half dozen German lancers—Uhlans—who would like nothing better than to spit him like a rodent on one of their spear points. The Uhlans’s uniforms and weapons were archaic, but archaic or not, their lances could impale human flesh with ease.

Since he was pretending to be a civilian, Martel was armed with a Colt revolver and not his more powerful .45 automatic service weapon. Even though he thought lancers were an anachronism in twentieth-century warfare, the revolver he carried was an inaccurate weapon and carried such a light round that it might not stop a horse, much less a human being. That assumed he could hit either if forced to fire at a gallop from his staggering nag.

The river and safety were to his right, maybe a quarter of a mile away. But first he had to reach the river and, second, he had to cross it without getting captured or killed.

He looked behind him. His pursuers were momentarily hidden from view. A curve in the dirt track that passed for a road gave him an opportunity. Another curve was just in front of him. He slipped from his horse and slapped it hard on its flank. Freed of its unwelcome burden and motivated by the slap, the mare lurched forward and behind the curve where it disappeared from view.

Just make it a little farther, Martel begged his horse. He clambered up and behind some rocks to his left and away from the river. When the Germans realized he was on foot, he hoped they would logically assume that he’d headed directly for the river and salvation. He counted on their logic. If nothing else, Germans were so bloody damned logical.

He began to backtrack in the direction of his approaching enemy. Again, he hoped their orderly minds wouldn’t expect him to do anything other than run like hell from them and their damned lances, which any reasonably sane human being would do. Of course, a reasonably sane person wouldn’t have gotten himself in this mess in the first place.

Martel could hear the pursuing horses clearly now and, seconds later, they thundered past as he hid behind a rock. The lancers’ faces and their gaudy uniforms were covered with dust and grime, but the Germans were grinning, laughing, and riding easily, their lances canted slightly forward. The well-conditioned German horses seemed to be enjoying themselves as well. They were hunters after the ultimate prey.

And then they were gone. But they would be back. A moment later, he heard a gunshot. He presumed they’d found his exhausted horse and put it out of its misery. Too bad, he thought. The beast had served him well.

Now the Germans were confused. They returned to a point where he could see them again, and broke up into three pairs. They began to comb the ground between the road and the river. From his perch on the rocks and behind some thin bushes, Martel could see them searching along the riverbank that was a lot closer than he’d thought. It was maybe only a couple of hundred yards away. Of course, it might as well be a hundred miles with the Germans patrolling between him and it.

After maybe an hour, the Germans formed up and returned back down the road. Had they truly given up, or were they going back for more men to conduct a more comprehensive search? If the latter was the case, someone with a brain might figure out that maybe he hadn’t run directly for the river, but was waiting for an opportunity to make a move.

Martel decided it was time to get the hell out of there.

He clambered down from the rocks and, after looking as far down the road as he could, ran across. The ground was sandy and open and he felt like he was totally exposed and could be seen for miles.

He ran hard. The river was in front of him. It didn’t look deep, and he knew that it oftentimes wasn’t. Maybe he could dash across without having to swim.

He heard a shout from behind him. The bastard Germans had spotted him. They weren’t as dumb as he’d hoped. They’d circled back along the riverbank and not the road. And now one of them was less than a hundred yards away and coming hard.

Martel ran as fast as he’d ever run in his life. Almost immediately, he was in the river, splashing in water that was knee deep and getting deeper. He could hear the sound of the German’s horse breathing behind him and he could almost feel the lance going into his back and coming out his chest.

He threw himself into the water as a Uhlan roared past him, jabbing down. Martel rolled away, lunged upward, grabbed the cavalryman’s boot and jerked hard, causing the German’s horse to stumble and the rider to fall into the water. The Uhlan dropped his lance and tried to stand up, but fell back to his hands and knees.

Martel kicked the German in the head and pushed himself onward. He thought about grabbing the German’s horse, but the animal was already trotting back to the riverbank.

At some point, he’d be in the middle of the river and safe. At least that’s the way it worked in theory. The international boundary was the middle of the river. Maybe, though, the Krauts wouldn’t be too concerned about such niceties as international boundaries with countries for which they had utter contempt. They might also be enraged that one of their own had been humiliated, another reason to disregard vague boundaries.

Two more mounted Germans had entered the water and were plowing towards him. The German he’d kicked was standing unsteadily, dazed but apparently not seriously hurt.

Martel could hardly breathe as he pushed himself onward. The water that had been up to his waist was growing shallower and he looked up. The rocky north bank of the river was just before him. He turned around and saw that the mounted Germans had picked up their comrade and were withdrawing to the south bank. One turned and glared furiously at him and made an obscene gesture. What the hell had just happened? Maybe he would live long enough to see his thirtieth birthday.

Now on his hands and knees, gasping and vomiting dirty water, Martel reached the north bank and crawled through the sand and mud. He didn’t consider himself safe, not yet. Along with their ridiculous but deadly pig stickers, the Uhlans carried carbines. Would they fire across the border? Well, there wasn’t much he could do about that except gather himself and continue to run like hell.

“Where you goin’, boy?”

Martel looked up. Several rough-looking white men with rifles, mounted on scraggly but tough-looking horses, had emerged from the brush that had hidden them and were staring hard at him.

“I’m an American,” he managed to gasp.

“That’s what they all say,” said a lean and wiry man in his thirties who appeared to be their leader. “Now tell me just why the fucking Germans chased you all the away across the Rio Grande and into Texas.”

Martel stood up and tried to regain his dignity. “Because I’m an officer in the United States Army, and the fucking Germans didn’t like me snooping around them and their camps in Mexico this spring of 1920. Now who the hell are you?”

That seemed to amuse the man in charge who grinned amiably before spitting on the ground. “First off, my name is Marcus Tovey and I’m a Texas Ranger just like all these fine young gentlemen who are accompanying me, and anybody who’s being shot at by the fucking Germans can’t be all bad.”

Luke Martel noted that the cowboy was carrying a Winchester 30-06 carbine and that he was wearing a badge. “That’s an old weapon,” Luke said.

“It’ll still kill,” Tovey said. “So we are now going to take you to our post and let you prove your tale. Then you can try to answer a question for me?”

Martel relaxed. “I’ll try.”

“Then tell me, young soldier, just what the hell are the Germans doing along the Rio Grande and the boundary of the state of Texas this spring of 1920?”

CHAPTER 2

Brigadier General Fox Connor, recently returned from commanding the United States forces in Panama, was delighted to be back in California. The military complex was called the Presidio and was in San Francisco. It had a fine view of the Golden Gate and was a far better place to be than the steamy, corrupt, and sometimes violent squalor of Central America.

Fourteen years after the devastating earthquake of 1906, San Francisco was well on its way to once again becoming a place of sophistication and prominence. In fact, one had to know where to look to find evidence of the earthquake’s damage; the city’s half million people were willing to forget it ever happened. Some of the chamber of commerce types insisted that it never had, that the damage was the result of the fire and that there had been no earthquake. After all, acknowledging that an earthquake had occurred might lower property values.

Some thought the short, stocky general looked like an angry bulldog and not someone a junior officer could confide in. Not true. Connor liked nothing more than having intelligent young officers gathered around him so they could all freely exchange ideas. Connor considered it his duty and pleasure to develop the minds of those he considered to have great potential, or those he simply just liked.

This afternoon in early October, 1920, three young men sat with him. Two had potential—George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower while the third, Luke Martel, was respected and, in some ways, admired even though it was highly unlikely he would ever rise more than a couple of notches higher than his current rank, second lieutenant.

Patton, in particular, liked to tease Martel. “If the general uses words you don’t understand, Luke, I’ll explain them all to you later. If you’re nice, maybe I’ll even spell them for you.”

Martel rolled his eyes and grinned while Connor pretended not to hear the banter. Martel was used to the gibes and, besides, he and Patton were friends of a sort. Martel was an anomaly. He had gotten his commission the hard way, on the battlefield. Several years earlier, he’d been a sergeant in Pershing’s punitive force that had been sent into Mexico to fight the bandits who’d ravaged Texas. While on patrol, his platoon had been ambushed. His lieutenant was killed and he’d found himself in command of thirty desperate men surrounded by more than a hundred Mexicans who smelled blood and an easy victory.

Martel had rallied his men, defended their position, and then led a savage counterattack that chased the Mexicans away, leaving more than fifty of them dead or wounded after brutal hand-to-hand fighting. Martel had killed five Mexicans himself and been badly wounded. A scar running from his forehead down his cheek was a visible reminder of that encounter with death. For that he’d been awarded the Medal of Honor and the rank of second lieutenant by a grateful Pershing, who’d seen both a bloody defeat and a public-relations disaster averted.

Pershing had also understood that Martel was a fighter, a commodity sometimes missing in many regular Army officers, especially in times of extended peace. The Army hadn’t fought a war in almost two decades, a small but nasty one in the Philippines and a shorter one in Cuba. In a regular army that prided itself on the quality of its West Point graduates, Martel hadn’t even completed high school. Even though intelligent, well read and self-taught, he was not one of the elite West Point Club and knew it. His latest enlistment would run out the coming spring and he had a decision to make. Hanging on as a supply officer somewhere until retirement was not something he wanted to do. Not for the first time did he wonder whether the promotion to lieutenant was more of a burden than a blessing.

* * *

General Connor thought it was a shame that no one had nominated Martel for the Academy. Since the government would have paid for it, money was not a prerequisite, and he thought Martel would have done well. Patton came from wealth, but Eisenhower’s family had been poor farmers. On the other hand, maybe it was better that Martel had come up through the ranks, where he’d gained invaluable real-world experience.

There was some jealousy on the part of other officers, Patton included, of Martel’s combat experience and his more recent intelligence-gathering forays into German-occupied Mexico. The latest one, where he’d nearly been killed by a number of Uhlans that grew with each telling, was quickly becoming the stuff of legend.

Even though Martel’s promotion to lieutenant had first been considered temporary, the army had let him keep his rank and it was quietly understood that someday he might be promoted to captain and later retired to live off a pittance of a pension. Nobody gave him too much grief, especially since he was physically strong at nearly six feet tall and one hundred and eighty pounds. He was potentially lethal, sinister-looking thanks to the scar, and, more important, was a favorite of Pershing. That generals Hunter Liggett and Fox Connor liked him didn’t hurt either.

Connor shook his head. “George, if you are through harassing our resident hero, why don’t we start talking things through.”

The three officers laughed. “Excellent,” said Connor. “Now let’s review. Patton, how would you describe the situation the United States is in?”

“Totally fucked up,” said the irrepressible Patton.

Connor sighed. “Thank you, George. That’s correct and concise, but I was looking for something more analytical. Now, in just about three weeks the United States will hold a presidential election. Who will win? Ike?”

Eisenhower answered quickly. “Wilson will be re-elected for an unprecedented third term. It’ll be close, but he’s the man who ended the war in Europe and gave us eternal peace as a result of the Treaty of Princeton. Or at least that’s what a lot of people believe. Like him or not, and I don’t know many military men who do, he’s the people’s choice and will be re-elected. Warren Harding doesn’t stand a chance after all the news about his private life came out.”

“Hell,” Patton said, “Wilson might even be dead by the time of the election or before the inauguration. We know he’s exhausted and they say he has a cold, maybe even the flu, but nobody’s seen him in a couple of weeks. I’ve heard rumors he’s had a stroke. Some president we’re gonna have.”

Connor stood up and walked to where a map of the Southwestern Division of the United States and another one of Mexico were pinned.

“Gentlemen, militarily, who is responsible for the mess we are in? Is it Germany for starting the war of 1914–1915?”

Martel sometimes felt inadequate in these discussions, but, hell, he was among friends. “No sir, I blame the French.”

Connor grinned. “Go on.”

“Sir, the French had every opportunity to stop the Germans at the Marne. We now know that they’d been informed that the German armies had lost touch with each other. Reports from pilots proved that. The French commander in Paris, Gallieni, knew that the German flank was hanging and begged permission to attack it, and that might have stopped the Germans in their tracks. But the French commander, Joffre, didn’t believe the intelligence. He was too traditional and fossilized to believe he’d been handed such an opportunity.”

The rest, they all knew, was history. The French had been crushed at the Marne, and then retreated south in what quickly became a rout. Paris fell and the French soon capitulated. The British Army, some three hundred thousand strong, was caught by an overwhelming German force while trying to reach a Mediterranean port where the Royal Navy could evacuate them. Almost to a man, the British Army had surrendered.

The war of 1914 had ended just before Christmas in an overwhelming German victory and a catastrophic defeat for France, England, and, to a lesser extent, Imperial Russia. Some fighting in peripheral areas lingered into 1915, but the war was effectively over. Woodrow Wilson had gained further fame as a peacemaker by brokering the Treaty of Princeton which was signed a year later in Princeton, New Jersey.

“And if the French had won at the Marne, what would have happened?” Ike posed to the group. “It probably would have resulted in a bloody and drawn-out stalemate.”

Martel agreed. “Still better for the French and British than a catastrophic defeat.”

“Hell, they would have dug in and the two sides might still be fighting,” Patton said.

Connor smiled. “Would we have been dragged in?”

Ike answered. “Not with Wilson in the White House. He’s the same person who said it wasn’t important when the Germans, following the peace, basically took over Mexico. He said it wasn’t important enough for us to fight over.” He turned to Martel and grinned. “And that is why Luke keeps visiting Mexico. Remind me, what did you find the last time?”

Martel flushed slightly. It had been six months since the last time and the wild escape that finished it. “I located six German divisions within fifty miles of the border, and evidence of another eight more in the area by reading unit insignias on officers in Mexico City.”

Martel had spent several weeks posing as a fertilizer salesman from Canada before the Germans became suspicious and chased him across the Rio Grande. Patton and Ike had both joked that selling bullshit was something Luke handled very well.

They glanced at the map of Mexico which sported a number of colored pins. The green ones showed the last known locations of German units, and the red ones, the Mexican Army. The information had changed little in the last few months. Word had come from Washington that no more forays like Martel’s would be tolerated. Too provocative to the Mexicans, Liggett and Connor were told. Thus, the only information they got was from Mexican refugees fleeing from their latest civil war. When interrogated, they generally knew little.

The clock on the wall chimed three. “Damn,” said Connor. “We’ll have to break this up and go back to duty. I have a meeting with Liggett. Just a reminder, Lieutenant Martel is carrying dispatches to Washington and will be gone for several weeks. If you have anything you want him to take, see him now.”

Both Ike and Patton grinned at Martel. Connor had thrown Luke a bone. He was actually going to Washington to attend a cousin’s wedding, but, since he was being used as a courier, didn’t have to use any of his accumulated leave time, and the government would pay for the trip. It was characteristically thoughtful of Connor.

Patton jabbed Martel on the shoulder and grinned wickedly. “Just try and stay out of trouble. Don’t want to hear anything about Germans chasing your ass across the Potomac.”

* * *

Kirsten Biel liked to ride in the early mornings. It was relatively clear and cool and southern California could get very warm; especially that part located close to the Mexico, and her home was only twenty miles north of the border.

Mornings also let her think without interference from her cousins who still didn’t believe she was capable of running the ranch she’d inherited from her late husband. Ridiculous. She’d been raised on a ranch in Texas and under far harsher circumstances before being swept off her feet by Richard Biel. She admitted that the rough and hilly ground was marginal at best, but so far she’d been able to make a go of it. The land had been cheap for a good reason, yet was able to support a number of cattle that were sold for a decent profit. So far. She just hoped the troubles in nearby Mexico stayed in Mexico.

She shook her head sadly as she let the horse lead the way. Poor Richard, she thought, so suddenly dead of an infection that developed from a bruise on his leg. That was two years ago and now, at twenty-five, Kirsten found herself running an operation that included hundreds of head of cattle, hundreds of acres of land, and a half dozen full-time employees.

She wondered what she and her cousins would argue about today. Fred and Ella Biel were decent people, but it was clear that they resented the fact that she, an outsider, was in charge of the ranch and their collective futures. They thought it would be nice if Kirsten remarried, moved out, and sold the ranch to them, at an extremely reasonable price of course.

Remarriage was not on her agenda. Although Kirsten considered herself attractive enough, she knew she did not conform to classic definitions of feminine beauty. Despite long blonde hair and green eyes, at five-eight she was a little too tall for many men’s tastes, and at one hundred and forty pounds, just a little too sturdy and athletic for the average male. She’d long decided that the average male was very insecure, and her intelligence, education, and outspokenness had turned away a number of potential suitors.

She was especially outspoken when it came to political matters.

Attitudes regarding women were changing nationally. Women could now vote throughout the country even though women in California had been able to vote since 1911. Not too many people looked askance at her when she went riding while wearing a pair of Levi’s denim jeans instead of something more demure. Of course, very few people, other than family and hired hands, actually saw her on horseback. She also liked it that hemlines were rising and that women going swimming could actually wear bathing suits that didn’t endanger them by being so bulky they dragged the swimmer under water.

With all that was happening south of the border, she’d been told it was dangerous to ride alone. She agreed to a point and carried a model 1899 Krag carbine that had belonged to her father, and a Colt revolver she’d bought for herself in San Diego a few months ago. She was an excellent shot. She was not so familiar with the Bowie knife strapped to the outside of her boot. She jokingly said she mainly used it to clean her nails, while her cousin Ella once quietly accused her of using it to castrate suitors. Kirsten had the feeling that Ella was a fragile creature who was having a difficult time dealing with the harshness of ranch life.

Motion in the sky caught her eye. For an instant, she thought it might have been an airplane. She’d only seen a couple of them and they fascinated her as they did just about everyone. Even though they’d been invented more than fifteen years ago, they were still so rare that the very sight of one resulted in gasps of wonderment. Someday she would like to go up in one. Maybe she could use some of her precious savings to buy a ride from one of those pilots people were calling barnstormers.