“Jesus.”
“Oh yes. Did your men actually shoot at that German pilot?”
“Hell, yes. Every swinging dick in my command shot at the son of a bitch. And who knows, maybe we even hit him.”
“And what do you think he reported?”
Patton grinned wickedly. “He’s a pilot and all pilots lie like rugs, even the crazy ones and they’re all crazy. He probably said he’d spotted a major American force moving on German positions, and that he bravely attacked it through a hail of bullets and barely escaped with his life.” He laughed. “Hell, I’m even smarter than I thought I was.”
Luke rolled his eyes. “Christ, George.”
Another shell crashed into the ground in front of them, close enough for them to feel the vibrations. They didn’t think the Germans were shooting at them. Instead, they were firing at places where they thought American units might be hiding. It was time to leave.
CHAPTER 5
Elise Thompson felt she had the best of both worlds. At nineteen, she was two years out of high school and now a trusted assistant to famed movie producer D.W. Griffith. David Wark Griffith was a Kentuckian who was raised to be a loyal son of the lost Confederacy. Thus, he would never have hired Elise had he known she’d been born in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles when she was twelve. He hated Northerners.
Griffith had made several major motion pictures, including Intolerance and Birth of a Nation. Now he was part of a new company, United Artists, and the future looked good for United Artists and the movie industry, much of which, in the last decade, had moved to the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.
Griffith’s latest epic, and one he hoped would help him recoup that portion of his reputation lost when Intolerance turned out to be an expensive bust, was titled Victory at the Marne. It was going to be Griffith’s salute to the German victory that had changed the world. To him, the Germans were white people, while the French, along with being incompetent and dirty, also were racial mongrels. He felt it was shame that the Brits had gotten caught up with such Gallic rabble, but such is life.
The fifty-five-year-old Griffith’s logic said the world was a better place because of the German victory. Germany and the United States, which to him meant the Union, were natural rivals and he hoped to portray the Germans as the potential saviors of white civilization. Some had condemned Birth of a Nation as racist and he rejected those criticisms. The movie told the truth as he understood it and had been brought up to believe.
To portray the 1914 battle of the Marne with the realism he demanded, trenches had been dug and impressive fortifications built on land fifty miles south and east of Los Angeles. Hundreds of extras wearing German, French, and British uniforms milled around waiting for the climactic battle scenes that were about to be filmed. Dummy cannon and machine guns were everywhere. Elise still wondered just how anyone could believe southern California resembled the interior of France. However, most people were like her and had never seen the interior of France and had nothing with which to compare.
Griffith had heard rumors of fighting between German and American soldiers along the Mexican border, but decided it didn’t concern him at all. Just a border incident, he thought. Whatever was going on was more than a hundred miles away and none of his business.
Elise was exhausted and happy. One other reason she’d gotten a job with Griffith was the fact that she wasn’t an aspiring actress using the clerical job to suck up to him, sometimes literally. She hated the young women who’d spread their legs or open their heavily lipsticked mouths to get a part in a movie. Thank God for real actresses like Mary Pickford and the Gish sisters who didn’t need to do those things. Elise considered herself a good girl, but was not a prude and knew full well where babies came from and what made men happy. She understood it sometimes made women happy, too, but hadn’t yet tried to find out, at least not all that much.
Elise worked hard to not appear pretty. She was short, thin, and not well endowed, which made it fairly easy. Her parents said she was beautiful and she loved them for it, but she knew they were biased. She’d succeeded with Griffith through her intelligence and hard work.
Griffith stood, a megaphone in his hand. “What the devil are those?”
Half a dozen large planes were flying towards them in a rough V-formation, and a score of smaller ones seemed to be escorting the larger ones. Griffith smiled. He knew a golden opportunity when he saw one.
“Get cameras on those magnificent things.” He said and turned to Elise. “Maybe we can use the footage sometime, and, heck, it’s all free.”
The planes flew closer, then they were over the movie-set trenches. Bombs fell and explosions rocked the large movie set, knocking people down and showering them with dirt and debris. Griffith’s jaw dropped as everyone panicked, running in all directions. The smaller planes swooped down and machine guns ripped into the uniformed extras who screamed and fell by the score.
When the cameraman started to bolt, Griffith yelled at him to keep his camera rolling. The man complied for a second and then ran, hurling an obscenity at Griffith. Elise took hold of the camera and aimed it in the general direction of the carnage and began to crank away.
The bombers departed, their deadly gifts given, but the escorts returned for another and equally murderous strafing run. After what seemed an eternity, they too flew away, leaving an unnatural silence that was quickly filled with screams.
Griffith looked at Elise. She had not stopped cranking the camera, although her face was pale with shock and her actions an automatic response.
Griffith grabbed the camera from her. “Get in the car.”
Elise shook herself. The carnage around her was overwhelming. “We have to help these people.”
“Are you a doctor?”
“No, but I do know some first aid. I can help.”
He grabbed her and pushed her into the back seat. “I need you and the film you took more then those people need you putting a bandage on them. Look, they’re already being taken care of.”
Still numb from the horror, Elise agreed. Incredibly enough, there were far more survivors than casualties, and every injured person seemed to have at least one or two persons performing first aid on them.
Griffith dumped the camera and its precious film in the trunk and jumped in the front seat with his driver. “We are going back to Hollywood as fast as we can to get that film developed. Then we’re going to run up to either San Francisco or Sacramento and see what the government thinks of this.”
Only a couple of days after the invasion, Kirsten became the de facto leader of a small but growing group of friends, relatives, and neighbors. Several other ranchers, remembering the decision to gather at her place, had shown up with their families and there was now a small tent village in the hills near Raleigh.
The Germans had swept through the area, taking whatever they wanted. It wasn’t quite looting, since they were generally disciplined enough to take only those things they needed, and high on the list was food. They’d herded away all her cattle, at least all they could find, and emptied storage sites. They’d even left receipts which would doubtless prove worthless.