Major Jones couldn’t help but grin. “Now, son, that does not sound like my friend Captain Tyree. What exactly did he say?”
The Professor gulped. “He said you should stop this fucking circus train and get your ugly black ass up with his as soon as possible. And quietlike.”
Esau Jones guffawed, gave the order, and spurred his horse forward into yet more woods. He had gone only a little way when a soldier emerged from behind a tree and stopped him, urging silence and caution. Jones dismounted and, following the soldier, went cautiously to the crest of a low hill where Tyree lay on his stomach, field glasses to his eyes.
“What’s out there, Tyree?” He could easily see several score of men, horses, and wagons on a hill a half mile away.
“God and his angels, I think, Esau.” He handed Jones the binoculars. When he brought the scene into focus, he whistled. His assignment had been to find the German army. Although this group of people was not the whole army, its importance was obvious. Was he justified in exposing his presence? It was apparent that the people on the hill had not heard the sounds of the battle behind them. They were all looking away from him and at something that was causing much smoke in the distance. Jones made up his mind.
“Tyree, tell the Professor to bring all the company commanders here, and pronto. Also damned quietly.” He grinned at temporary-Captain Tyree. “We’re gonna deliver some paybacks for all the shit we been takin’ the last few months.” He also recalled some of his men being skewered on German bayonets that awful day in early June. “Damn fine binoculars,” he said as he handed them back to Tyree, who put them in a case bearing the insignia of the Imperial German Army. “Someday you gotta tell me how you got those.”
Lieutenant Sigmond von Hoff hated every moment of his present existence. He was a Prussian and a Uhlan, an elite cavalryman, by God, not a damned babysitter. Or a nanny! Perhaps there were those who would consider his current position as guard to the high command both an honor and a safe place to be, but he was not one of them. All about him were the sounds and smells of battle, glorious battle, but he and his fellow Uhlans were not part of it. There was some feeling at headquarters that this was not the right war for cavalry armed with lances.
It infuriated him. Why had the Imperial General Staff shipped them over if not to use them? Some peabrains in headquarters had stripped them of their lances and given them carbines, which they barely knew how to operate. Now they were considered useless soldiers fit only for ornamental guard duties like this.
Hoff was personally considered much worse than useless. He was a pariah. What had he done wrong? His orders had been to execute American prisoners, and all he had done was to follow those orders. And, by God, those orders had come from the kaiser himself. When Hoff’s actions caused such a stink, everyone had conveniently forgotten the fact that he hadn’t acted alone. Now no one wanted to even talk to him. Still more galling was the fact that others had achieved promotion in this war, whereas he was still a lieutenant at the ripe old age of twenty-four.
Disgusted, he lay down on the grass and stared at the sky. Let the mighty ones he was protecting gaze at the smoke towers and try to figure out where they were. He almost giggled at the thought of some stupid Bavarian staff officer having to admit they were, while not quite lost, not quite certain just where they were. They could only assume that much of their army was in action a few miles away.
“Lieutenant!” Hoff sat up and looked where a soldier was pointing. A row of horsemen had emerged from the woods and a second was forming behind it. Columns of cavalry commenced to gallop both to his left and to his right. As he watched in astonishment, the double line began to move forward. Toward him.
He jumped to his feet and yelled for his men to mount up, which they did with alacrity. He had only one troop. It appeared that several hundred of what he now easily identified as Americans were about to envelop his position. His actions had attracted the attention of the senior officers, and he saw them scrambling for their horses and carriages.
In dismay, Hoff saw that the rapidly moving flanking columns would easily cut off most, if not all, of the fleeing Germans on horseback and certainly all of the slower carriages. Even if he managed to survive this debacle, his career was ruined.
“Open fire!” he shrieked, and his men let loose a ragged volley that appeared to accomplish little. Suddenly, he realized that the enemy cavalry all had dark skins. “Blacks!” he screamed. It was too much. In a blind rage he spurred his horse forward. He pulled a revolver and emptied it as the black horsemen swirled passed him. His horse stumbled, and Hoff fell heavily to the ground. As he attempted to pull his saber from its scabbard, a careening horse ran over him and he felt his legs snap. Before the waves of agony could reach his brain, he looked up at his assailant and saw an iron-shod hoof descending on his head.
On the hill, the fight deteriorated into a short-lived melee. At arm’s length, carbines and revolvers emptied into living flesh. The Germans fought hard to protect their charges, but they were soon overwhelmed. As Hoff had guessed, none of the carriages escaped. In one, an old man flailed about with a saber in one hand and a pistol in the other. As a young black trooper reached for him, the old man shot him in the face. On the other side of the carriage, Maj. Esau Jones saw this and emptied his revolver at point-blank range into the back of the old man, who crumpled onto the floor of the carriage.
Then Jones looked about. His men had taken a number of prisoners, and virtually all of them appeared to be officers. “Who speaks English?” asked Jones.
A little man with a bad cut on his cheek, which had drained blood onto an immaculate light blue uniform, responded that he did. The man approached cautiously and looked into the carriage. “God help us,” he said. Then he looked up into the stern face of Jones. “Do you know what you have done?”
“You tell me.”
“You have just killed Field Marshal Count Alfred von Waldersee, commander of the Imperial German Army.”
News of the counterattack brought Roosevelt rushing back to the war room. “About time. The papers are beginning to run extras about our total incompetence and what they think has happened. Hearst says I have sent dumb recruits to be slaughtered. Goddamn him!”
Roosevelt looked at the changes on the map. “Leonard, it happened, didn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. At least so far. The four brigades brought over from the Philippines were successfully carried by train from Springfield and joined the one brigade in line. They pushed aside the German screening force rather easily and are now in the German rear.”
Roosevelt fought the urge to chortle. When MacArthur had first proposed bringing his regiments back from the Philippines, he had said no. The trip was too dangerous. With no American ships in the Pacific to protect them, the German Asiatic squadron could attack and slaughter them. And there was the danger that the Filipinos would revolt and kill the troops and administrators left behind. No, he had said, too great a risk.
But then came word through the British that the Germans had pulled their ships as well. John Hay proposed a treaty of understanding with the Philippine leader Aguinaldo, which had been hammered out quickly by the American governor in the Philippines, William Howard Taft. Specifically, the Philippines would be independent one year after the end of the war with Germany, and the United States would guarantee independence from other predatory countries in return for a naval base at Subic Bay and coaling rights at Cavite. A similar agreement was quickly reached with the Cuban insurgents, who were scheduled for independence in a few years anyhow. The Democrats would crow and some of the more radical Manifest Destiny types would scream betrayal, but twenty-five thousand good American troops had been freed for use against the Germans.