“Sadly, yes, and he is well aware of it. He knows the state of our military and how long it will take to create an army, and, for that matter, a navy.” It was a reminder that so many of the navy’s fine warships were seriously undermanned. “General Liggett is a fine general and he will do as well as anyone.” Pershing grinned uncharacteristically. “Perhaps the stress of combat will cause him to lose some of the incredible weight he carries.”
March smiled as well. Liggett’s prodigious weight was a joke and had been a source of friendly contention between the obese Liggett and the austere and trim Pershing. Liggett was sixty-three and looked older. Christ, he thought. Don’t we have any generals under sixty?
Belatedly, it annoyed March that Admiral Coontz had not been invited to this meeting, but it would have been a breach of Army-Navy protocol. It was understood that Josephus Daniels and Admiral Coontz were desperately trying to get the Navy’s ships manned and supplied. And damn protocol, he needed to get together with the Navy and coordinate their efforts.
“General Pershing, is there any good news you can give?”
“I think so. First, we can and will strike at the Mexicans in Texas. That should take pressure off the president and we should be able to expel them. Also, the German’s Achille’s heel is their supply line. We may be three thousand miles from San Francisco, but they are halfway around the world from Germany. The more we can interdict their supplies, the worse off they will be. We still hold the Panama Canal, do we not?”
“We do. The Colombians tried to take it back from us, but our small garrison and the Panamanian Army defeated the effort. There were no Germans involved in the attack, although I am sure there were advisors in the background. I have directed the local American commander to blow up the locks if capture seems imminent and to inform the Germans of our intent. If we can’t have the Canal, then nobody can.”
Pershing nodded. Lack of access to the Canal would force German supply ships to go the long way, or unload at Vera Cruz and ship overland. Either way, it created a monumental logistics problem for them.
The meeting ended and Pershing departed. March opened the connecting door to the adjacent office. President Lansing stepped in. He was clearly unhappy at what he had overheard.
“What Pershing said is deeply saddening,” Lansing said. “Unfortunately, it has the ring of truth, and I suppose that reality will be far more complex and daunting.”
“Mr. President, do you wish General Pershing to be the general commanding ground operations against the Germans and Mexicans?”
“Is there another choice?”
“Leonard Wood and Liggett himself are the only two others. Wood has too many political ambitions and has never led large numbers in battle, while Liggett’s presence is required in California. I propose we give General Wood command over the eastern coastal defenses and task Pershing with ultimately driving out the Germans, however long it takes. Is Pershing acceptable to you and do you agree that his first focus must be Texas?”
Lansing took a deep breath. He was in the position of Abraham Lincoln sixty-odd years earlier. Would he choose a McClellan or a Burnside or a Hooker who would lead them to disaster? Or would he be fortunate and select perhaps a Grant.
“Pershing it is.”
The sound of an approaching train woke Luke. He’d been dozing in a field in the outskirts of San Diego. Incredibly, the slow-moving Germans hadn’t yet taken it. The city itself was largely abandoned. Thousands of residents, now refugees, had departed on roads headed north, joining a growing mass of humanity heading out.
He’d arrived a couple of hours earlier, and again by plane. He was beginning to get used to the lunacy of being in the air with only canvas and wood keeping him up. He admitted to his extremely young pilot that it was exhilarating. The pilot had laughed and said that’s why he flew.
Patton nudged him. “Hammer-man, you expecting a train? If so, it’s coming from the east.”
Luke shook the cobwebs from his brain. “Christ, and that’s where the Germans are.”
Patton swore. “Of course it is, my friend.”
Patton now commanded half the 7th Cavalry, but his half of the regiment was down to fewer than two hundred effectives. Others had been siphoned off to other places to nibble at the German advance, while all too many others were dead or wounded. He had about two hundred men to hold San Diego.
The train came into sight. It consisted of one locomotive and maybe twenty freight and flat cars. They were filled with men.
“As I suspected,” Patton said, “German soldiers. And the country is so defenseless they just ride up like they were on a Sunday trip to Grandma’s. Damn them. At least we’re as prepared as we can be, and the German fleet hasn’t arrived yet.”
The consensus in San Francisco was that the Germans had shelled San Francisco just to show they could, and were on their way to San Diego, which they would use as a California port once their army had taken it.
“Open fire!” Patton yelled and two hundred soldiers emptied their bolt action Springfields at the crowded Germans. Although slowing, the train was still moving and the Germans were temporarily trapped. Finally, it slowed enough for them to jump off and begin to return fire. The clatter of a machine gun joined the din.
Patton cursed. “Of course they have machine guns. They always have machine guns.”
A second German machine gun opened up, then a third. Dirt from bullets kicked up uncomfortably near them. Someone screamed.
Luke grabbed Patton’s arm. “It’s not getting any better, George, there’s another train coming.”
Patton gave the order to pull back. His men gathered their wounded and their dead and piled them on horse-drawn carts. That was another thing, why didn’t the American Army have trucks?
The Germans at the rail line were content to consolidate their position and didn’t follow. The Americans began to head north, all the while keeping an eye out for German planes.
“Y’know Luke,” Patton said thoughtfully. “There are train lines all over the place and headed in all directions. If the Krauts could hop a train and ride into San Diego virtually unopposed, what’s to stop them from taking trains to Los Angeles, or, hell, San Francisco?”
“Nothing I can think of.”
“Okay, you find your little plane and pilot and get your ass back to Liggett and tell him I’m going to start destroying tracks and bridges as I pull back north. And then tell him that he’d be smart to do it anywhere else he can. If he doesn’t the Germans might just unexpectedly drop in at the Presidio for lunch.”
Elise Thompson sat primly, her notebook on her lap. Ensign Cornell sat along the wall across from her, a crutch beside him. He winked and she tried not to smile. Admiral Sims appeared not to notice, but she thought he had. General Liggett and Colonel Nolan completed the group in the conference room adjacent to Liggett’s office. The decision had been made to keep it small. Larger groups often resulted in too much posturing by people jockeying for promotion.
The admiral smiled and began. “Miss Thompson will keep notes. I will edit them later in case we say something too treasonous. General, with your permission I will begin.
“Like yourself, General, I have been promised little or nothing in the way of reinforcements. The squadron I have is bottled up in Puget Sound, where it is safe but accomplishing little except that it keeps a larger squadron of German ships occupied. However, I do believe that my small fleet can still be of use at this time.”
Cornell’s ears perked up. He’d heard that Sims held views that were radical, even heretical, in a navy that worshiped battleships.