Good Hope Road: A Novel (28 page)

The Major took the coffee, grateful for its warmth. ‘Things still busy outside from the sounds of it?’

‘They’re still marching. How’re things in here?’

The Major grimaced. ‘There’s a few of us waiting. This evening, the aide said, but we’ll see.’

Jim saw the way his father’s hand trembled ever so slightly as he raised the coffee to his lips. ‘Connor sent this for you.’ He handed over the copy of the
BEF News
. ‘There’s an article about a certain rooster that you might find amusing.’

The Major opened the newspaper, smiling wanly over Rooster Curtis’ antics. He pressed the cup of coffee against his throat, trying to dull the ache as an adjoining article caught his eye.

‘Veteran’s wife writes story of her life in BEF’, it began.

Marion I. Anderson

The sun shines, the rain descends, and history repeats itself. Sturdy, lion-hearted pioneers, who blazed the trail ‘Westward Ho’ now look down to see their descendants blazing a trail back to the east . . . to the foot of the United States Capitol. They are here in defence of a just cause. Patriots, everyone – and Americans.

The railroads and bankers are not going to save this country from anything that overtakes it. The seasoned veterans – the men who are marching now – are the boys who are going to stand by and fight! The farmers in their sad predicament say one to another, ‘That’s what we ought to do.’ The great army of the unemployed say one to another, ‘That’s what we ought to do.’

The veterans have the advantage: they know how to organise. And they don’t know what getting licked means. They are marching on Washington, asking for that which is theirs . . . and back out there the country awaits their destiny.

The veterans marched all day. So vexed were the senators by the steadily increasing numbers trudging past their windows that someone, Vice President Curtis included, some said later, picked up the ’phone and dialled Navy Yard. A contingent of Marines was to be sent at once to clear the veterans from the grounds.

Two companies of Marines were duly dispatched, in full battle gear and with fixed bayonets. They assembled in formation on the Hill, eyes filled with shame over the task they had been assigned.

Mistakenly believing that the Marines were there as a token of support for their cause, the veterans started to cheer. They surged about the troops, shaking hands and slapping backs, a few among them even recognising acquaintances dating back to the war years and beyond.

A vein of doubt rippled through Jim as he stood watching from the sidelines. Something wasn’t right, a suspicion confirmed when the Major came limping out of the building, his face drawn.

‘Those Marines—’ Jim began.

‘Those Marines aren’t here for show,’ the Major said tersely.

Realisation was slowly beginning to dawn upon the veterans as well. The Marines had been ordered to the Hill not in support but to remove them with force. The cheering of a minute ago gave way to an ominous buzz of disbelief and anger.

Things were poised to turn ugly had it not been for Chief of Police Pelham Glassford. He demanded an immediate recall of the Marines. They left, bayonets lowered, as the floodlights came on around the Capitol, highlighting the distaste, and the relief, etched in equal measure upon their faces.

Behind them, hooting in derision at the dazzlingly lit Capitol, clanking their battered tin cups and canteens and waving the Stars and Stripes, the veterans resumed the Death March, singing.

‘Oh, Mellon pulled the whistle boys; And Hoover rang the bell. Wall Street gave the signal; And the country went to hell!’

The Major stood on the stairs, watching in silence. It was going to come to nothing; all of this was going to amount to nothing. How would the Bill ever be passed when there was so much resistance to it from within the hallowed portals of the Hill?

That old feeling of helplessness, of being adrift, of being unable to connect with anything of meaning . . . the Major wearily rubbed his forehead. Suddenly aware of Jim’s gaze upon him, he straightened, trying to gather himself. He looked then, at his son, and knew he’d come to the same realisation: the Bill was unlikely to be passed.

There was something more that the Major saw in his son’s eyes though, a steady, reassuring fortitude that seemed to reach out to the older man without need of words or explanation, an invisible supporting hand spanning across the few feet that separated them, father and son.

Jim bent down and lifted two hand-drawn signs at random from the small pile left scattered by the stairs during the earlier excitement over the Marines: ‘Give Us Our Bonus Now!’ and ‘Asking Only For What
You
Promised!’

He handed one to his father, a small, wry smile on his lips. Holding the other high, Jim turned around and, without a word, began walking towards the veterans. The Major swallowed past the lump in his throat, which had very little to do with the soreness that had been plaguing him all day.

‘Damn fool boy,’ he muttered, as he gripped the placard closer and limped down the stairs, to join Jim and that ragged, tattooed, doggedly marching brigade.

16 July 1932

im glanced curiously at the Distinguished Service Cross medal pinned to Joe Angelo’s chest. Still, he didn’t want to ask. His father had not once in all the years that he’d been back spoken about his own medals. Jim might not even have known about them had it not been for Ellie. She’d taken him by the hand one day, not long after his mother passed, and shown him where they were hidden, inside a pewter vase. Anywhere else, Ellie had explained gently, and the Major would keep finding them and throwing them into the garbage.

Angelo seemed to share no such reticence. ‘You know how I got this?’ he asked, gesturing at the medal. ‘In the Meuse Argonne, with the 304th.’

He’d been assigned as an orderly to a lieutenant colonel. A real daredevil officer he was too, walking about the Front to reconnoitre the terrain, even slipping into No Man’s Land to make sure that the ground was solid enough to support the weight of the tanks. Angelo grinned. ‘Drove the senior officers crazy, but he did it anyway.’

The day of the attack had started with the usual barrage of artillery fire; American tanks starting for the enemy lines just before dawn. ‘I can hardly see my fingers, the fog’s so thick on the ground. We hear the guns ahead but can’t see a thing. We’ve no idea where our tanks are. So the Colonel decides to leave the observation post and go find them. We follow in the general direction of the shelling and come upon five of our tanks stuck in the mud. The shelling’s been too heavy for anyone to dig them out again. Well, damned if the Colonel doesn’t run on up to one of the tanks and, grabbing a shovel that’s tied to the side, start to dig. We step up right beside him, and keep at it all through some real heavy firing from the Boche. We free each one of those iron horses and they start to move forward once more, but there’s no time no cheer, what with the Boche still slinging bullets every which way. Besides, the Colonel’s already sprinting ahead like a jackrabbit, yelling for us to follow.

‘We’re racing forward,’ Angelo continued, ‘just running hell for leather, and get all the way to the top of a rise when we realise we’ve run right into the sights of a Boche nest. The machine guns swing our way. “Who’s with me?” the Colonel shouts, waving his baton.

‘There’s five of us who keep him company. I run as hard and fast as I can – when I look back for just a second, I see that all the other boys who came with us are down. It’s just me and the Colonel now.

‘Now, I ain’t got no idea where exactly we’re running
to
. Any further, I reckon, and the Colonel and I going to be jumping right into the laps of those Boche. Lucky for both of us, it don’t come to that – a bullet gets the Colonel. He keeps going another forty feet or so before he falls. I drag him into a shell hole. The bullet’s gone in high through his thigh and come clean out the other side, right through the ass. He’s bleeding pretty bad, and I rip up his trousers and bandage the wound the best I can. Nothing to do now but wait for reinforcements. When we see our tanks come up over the rise, I run to them in rushes, staying real low to the ground, and point out where the machine-gun nests are. Then I run back to the shell hole to stay with the Colonel. More tanks come around. I go back out again to point out the nests, come back once more to the shell hole. I tell you, it’s a blessing I’m little because those bullets, they keep falling all around, but not one of them gets me.

‘Our boys finally take out those Boche guns and get us the hell out of there. The Colonel gets a DSC for digging out those iron horses and they give one to me,’ he waited for a beat, eyes crinkling, ‘for saving the Colonel’s ass.’

Angelo’s brow furrowed as he looked at the men doggedly marching around the buildings. ‘Them fat-cat politicians, they done all kinds of nonsense to the likes of the Colonel too. He was promoted three times during the war. Why? Because he fought like hell, that’s why. And what do they do after we win and the war’s over? Cancel all battlefield promotions and demote him back to captain.’ He shook his head at the craziness of it all.

‘He’s still in the army, been promoted to Major now, but for me he’ll always be the Colonel. He’s stationed right here, across the river at Fort Myer. Any time I wanted, I could’ve gone to him, asked for a loan to tide me over. I ain’t done that though,’ he said proudly, ‘and I ain’t about to. He’s been down to Camden to see me. Caused quite a stir in the neighbourhood, rolling up in a shiny Pierce Arrow. He and his wife, they given me gifts – a gold watch, a bowl, a tie pin . . . ’ He patted the medal on his chest. ‘They know alright, just how much I done in France.’

He slowly stubbed out his cigarette as he looked up at Connor. ‘You’re right,’ he acknowledged. ‘What you said the other day. They’re not all bad. There’s some real good men standing up for us, and Colonel George S. Patton, he’s one of the very best.’

The Major finally managed to meet with the Senator, who apologised for the long wait, but: ‘The Senate is due to adjourn tomorrow,’ he pointed out. ‘There’s a great deal still on the agenda, and it doesn’t appear as if anything can be done about the Bonus Bill in this session.’

‘And yet the House found the resources to pass a two-billion-dollar relief bill yesterday.’

‘Indeed,’ the Senator agreed sharply. ‘Relief for the unemployed, home owners and a host of other pressing matters.’

‘The veterans outside your offices, they’re unemployed too, Senator. Why aren’t their needs seen as pressing? Read this,’ the Major said, pushing the
BEF News
across the desk. ‘No, I must insist. This article, by the wife of one the veterans in the camps.’

‘They’re going to “march on Washington and fight”?’ the Senator quoted incredulously as he scanned through the article. ‘Fight against their own Government, elected by none other than the people themselves? Come, Major, you’re a thinking man,’ he scoffed. ‘Many of these so-called “veterans” are no more than a bunch of communist radicals.’

The Senator gestured towards the window. ‘These shenanigans outside – they’re just a wind-up job by political factions with an eye on the presidential elections this year. I ask you, is this the face that we want to present to the world? The very seat of our Government being overrun by these . . . these . . .’

‘These?’ the Major prodded coldly. ‘These men who’ve shed blood for their country? Come, Senator, as a thinking man, let me remind you that the men out there have a genuine and pressing cause. Wind-up job? There’s no wind-up job. These men are here of their own accord, and they have just as much say in the governance of this country as anyone else. More, if you ask me, than most of the men sitting in this building, the likes of whom have never so much as set foot upon a battlefield or sacrificed anything for the good of this country.’

The Major limped from the Senator’s office without a second glance, his face dark with anger.

It finally rained, a massive outpouring of the brooding, pent-up force that had been amassing all that week. An electrical storm hit the city, arcs of lightning crackling across the Hill, bucking and zigzagging over the river and highlighting the bridges in stark relief. The veterans on the Hill ran for cover, as did the policemen assigned to monitor them, demonstrator and lawman alike sheltering on the steps and against the stone balustrades of the Capitol as the storm lashed out overhead. Rainwater poured down the streets, overwhelming the sewers and flooding the pavements, washing into parked cars and choking their engines silent. Many outlying neighbourhoods lost power. A number of the residents didn’t bother with candles, but stared transfixed from their windows instead at the savage, unsettling beauty of the night.