“Baldy, I want to move Pershing west and into those German defensive positions before the Germans can reoccupy them and keep us from pushing on to New York. We do that and the Krauts won’t have a place to retreat to. In effect we’ll be in their rear, and those great defensive works they spent so much time building will be just so many piles of dirt.”
Weeks earlier, Smith had ridden out to observe the defensive lines the Germans had constructed; he considered them better than anything he’d ever seen. “Joe, they’ll be murdered.”
Wheeler shook his head vehemently. “Those lines are empty. You can count peckers as well as I can, and all their troops are north of us, not in those lines. Maybe skeleton forces, but nothing of consequence. Look, Pershing cheated a little and kept two battalions on the west side of the Housatonic, so he can cross without opposition. From there they can dash up and rush those lines while there’s still time.”
Smith paused. He thought of another time and another war. He had been granted the opportunity to end the Civil War, but he had procrastinated, thinking the lines about Petersburg were full when they were empty. The rebels had fooled him, and it was a shame he had borne for decades.
But he still had to question. “And if their defenses are full of soldiers and not empty?”
“Then Pershing gets his nose bloodied and pulls back. Look, we don’t have to take all the old German line; just taking some of it will make the rest irrelevant, and Pershing can do that. Baldy, just think of the lives that’ll be saved if we don’t have to root them out like you Yanks had to at Petersburg.”
Smith remembered the ten-month agony of that siege. And all because of his error. He would not make the same mistake again. He had been given the opportunity to purge himself. “All right. Send them. How soon will we know?”
Wheeler turned to depart, a satisfied grin on his face. “A couple of hours.”
Smith looked at the map and his watch. An expression of disbelief crossed his face. “You goddamn little shit reb son of a bitch! You sent him already, didn’t you?”
Wheeler spat on the dirt floor and laughed while junior officers ran for cover. “Shit, Baldy, I trusted you. I knew you wouldn’t make the same dumb fucking mistake twice in your life.”
Johnny Two Dogs was cold, but he was almost used to that. The comings and goings at the farmhouse fascinated him. He never worried overmuch about white people, but he did wonder how Blake and Willy were faring.
Thus he was surprised when the door to the storm cellar opened and Willy emerged with some wires looped across his shoulder. He could see that Willy’s face was pale; the man looked terrified.
Suddenly, there was the sound of gunfire and a rush of soldiers running toward the house. Willy dropped the wires and ran almost directly at Johnny. Willy hunched visibly at the sound of further shots, but they were directed at someone inside the house, and he continued his mad dash. As he passed, Johnny reached out and tripped the frightened man.
At that moment, there was a flash of light and a loud bang that blew out the insides of the brick house in sheets of flame. Johnny grabbed Willy and they ran until they reached the safety of a nearby grove of apple trees. When Willy finally stopped gasping for breath, he gazed in disbelief. “You, you’re the injun who’s been trailing us.”
So much for being hidden, Johnny thought. I must be getting old. “What the hell happened in there?”
“The other guy, Blake, decided he was gonna do something really big to the Germans to get back at them for what they did to his family. He took some dynamite sticks and some caps and stuck them in his shirt. Then he told me to get the hell out of there. I didn’t want to, so he pushed me.” Not likely, thought Johnny. The little thief had doubtless run at the first opportunity. “Jesus, he killed himself.”
Johnny looked to where the house was burning. Although the brick walls had held, the roof had collapsed and the structure had become an inferno. Anyone inside was dead. “So what did Blake do that was so big?” Johnny framed the words carefully. His English was not the best, even after all these years. “Who did he kill?”
“Some guy he thought was a big German general. Name was something like Trotha.”
The battle was only a few hundred yards below and in front of them as Patrick, Ian, and Harris looked on from the crest of the hill. They watched in silence as the immense tableau unfolded. Before them, they could see thousands of men moving and swirling, fighting and dying. Somehow they knew such a scene would never occur again in their lifetimes. Nor would they ever wish it to happen again.
Ian was the first to break the spell. “Your General Sherman once said that war is hell. This has to be what he meant. I have never seen anything like this in my life.”
Patrick’s thoughts ran the same way. The sight was both astonishing and horrifying. “Ian, this must have been what it was like at Waterloo or Gettysburg.”
“Of course.” Ian watched as Patrick’s brigade surged forward, almost into the densely packed German river of men trying to flee to the safety of the west. Beyond them and plainly visible was the American force advancing north. The Germans were being squeezed, and soon the two American forces would converge and the Germans would be surrounded. “Perhaps even Agincourt.”
Patrick watched appalled as American gunfire scythed through the German mob, piling up bodies three and four deep. In most cases German discipline still held, and the return fire was almost as devastating. There seemed to be as many brown- as gray-clad bodies.
A new and hideous clatter joined in the torrent of sounds. The northward-approaching Americans had brought together a number of machine guns and were using them as massed weapons. The effect was devastating. German soldiers fell like wheat before a diabolical mechanical reaper.
“I’m sorry,” said Ian. “What I saw previously was no hell. This is. Patrick, I believe we are seeing the future. Machines of mass destruction and using rows of machine guns are only the beginning.”
The result was a parting of the German human sea, and the Americans joined forces. As the afternoon droned on, many of the trapped Germans attempted to break out, but their attacks were disorganized and fragmented and easily beaten back. Sometimes a few would make it through and run on, but they were the exception. Even more telling was the fact that no attempts were made by the Germans to link up from the west. The German command seemed to have written off its trapped soldiers.
“Behind you,” hissed Ian. Schofield and MacArthur were approaching. They were prudently alone and on foot. Two more men joining the three on the hill would not attract undue attention from maddened German gunners.
Schofield spoke. “Well done, Patrick. It would appear we’ve bagged a large number of them.”
Patrick mumbled appreciation and watched as MacArthur moved away from the little group. His face seemed tight and strained. Schofield explained. “He just got word that his son was badly wounded. He hasn’t gotten a chance to confirm anything.” Patrick nodded and gave the other man room for his silent grief.
There was an awareness that the sound level had decreased markedly, and the men turned again to what they could see of the battlefield, now strangely silent.
MacArthur stirred himself and came over. He shielded his eyes with his hand and stared into the distance, as did the others. “Thank God,” he said softly. “They’re surrendering.”
As they watched, German soldiers started throwing down their weapons and holding their arms up in the air.
28
T HEODORE ROOSEVELT SIPPED his tea and looked out at the now-empty Lafayette Park. Was it only a few weeks ago that it had been the scene of riotous celebrations? He watched as a January wind took a whipped piece of newspaper about. He hoped it was from a Hearst publication.