This afternoon in early October, 1920, three young men sat with him. Two had potential—George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower while the third, Luke Martel, was respected and, in some ways, admired even though it was highly unlikely he would ever rise more than a couple of notches higher than his current rank, second lieutenant.
Patton, in particular, liked to tease Martel. “If the general uses words you don’t understand, Luke, I’ll explain them all to you later. If you’re nice, maybe I’ll even spell them for you.”
Martel rolled his eyes and grinned while Connor pretended not to hear the banter. Martel was used to the gibes and, besides, he and Patton were friends of a sort. Martel was an anomaly. He had gotten his commission the hard way, on the battlefield. Several years earlier, he’d been a sergeant in Pershing’s punitive force that had been sent into Mexico to fight the bandits who’d ravaged Texas. While on patrol, his platoon had been ambushed. His lieutenant was killed and he’d found himself in command of thirty desperate men surrounded by more than a hundred Mexicans who smelled blood and an easy victory.
Martel had rallied his men, defended their position, and then led a savage counterattack that chased the Mexicans away, leaving more than fifty of them dead or wounded after brutal hand-to-hand fighting. Martel had killed five Mexicans himself and been badly wounded. A scar running from his forehead down his cheek was a visible reminder of that encounter with death. For that he’d been awarded the Medal of Honor and the rank of second lieutenant by a grateful Pershing, who’d seen both a bloody defeat and a public-relations disaster averted.
Pershing had also understood that Martel was a fighter, a commodity sometimes missing in many regular Army officers, especially in times of extended peace. The Army hadn’t fought a war in almost two decades, a small but nasty one in the Philippines and a shorter one in Cuba. In a regular army that prided itself on the quality of its West Point graduates, Martel hadn’t even completed high school. Even though intelligent, well read and self-taught, he was not one of the elite West Point Club and knew it. His latest enlistment would run out the coming spring and he had a decision to make. Hanging on as a supply officer somewhere until retirement was not something he wanted to do. Not for the first time did he wonder whether the promotion to lieutenant was more of a burden than a blessing.
General Connor thought it was a shame that no one had nominated Martel for the Academy. Since the government would have paid for it, money was not a prerequisite, and he thought Martel would have done well. Patton came from wealth, but Eisenhower’s family had been poor farmers. On the other hand, maybe it was better that Martel had come up through the ranks, where he’d gained invaluable real-world experience.
There was some jealousy on the part of other officers, Patton included, of Martel’s combat experience and his more recent intelligence-gathering forays into German-occupied Mexico. The latest one, where he’d nearly been killed by a number of Uhlans that grew with each telling, was quickly becoming the stuff of legend.
Even though Martel’s promotion to lieutenant had first been considered temporary, the army had let him keep his rank and it was quietly understood that someday he might be promoted to captain and later retired to live off a pittance of a pension. Nobody gave him too much grief, especially since he was physically strong at nearly six feet tall and one hundred and eighty pounds. He was potentially lethal, sinister-looking thanks to the scar, and, more important, was a favorite of Pershing. That generals Hunter Liggett and Fox Connor liked him didn’t hurt either.
Connor shook his head. “George, if you are through harassing our resident hero, why don’t we start talking things through.”
The three officers laughed. “Excellent,” said Connor. “Now let’s review. Patton, how would you describe the situation the United States is in?”
“Totally fucked up,” said the irrepressible Patton.
Connor sighed. “Thank you, George. That’s correct and concise, but I was looking for something more analytical. Now, in just about three weeks the United States will hold a presidential election. Who will win? Ike?”
Eisenhower answered quickly. “Wilson will be re-elected for an unprecedented third term. It’ll be close, but he’s the man who ended the war in Europe and gave us eternal peace as a result of the Treaty of Princeton. Or at least that’s what a lot of people believe. Like him or not, and I don’t know many military men who do, he’s the people’s choice and will be re-elected. Warren Harding doesn’t stand a chance after all the news about his private life came out.”
“Hell,” Patton said, “Wilson might even be dead by the time of the election or before the inauguration. We know he’s exhausted and they say he has a cold, maybe even the flu, but nobody’s seen him in a couple of weeks. I’ve heard rumors he’s had a stroke. Some president we’re gonna have.”
Connor stood up and walked to where a map of the Southwestern Division of the United States and another one of Mexico were pinned.
“Gentlemen, militarily, who is responsible for the mess we are in? Is it Germany for starting the war of 1914–1915?”
Martel sometimes felt inadequate in these discussions, but, hell, he was among friends. “No sir, I blame the French.”
Connor grinned. “Go on.”
“Sir, the French had every opportunity to stop the Germans at the Marne. We now know that they’d been informed that the German armies had lost touch with each other. Reports from pilots proved that. The French commander in Paris, Gallieni, knew that the German flank was hanging and begged permission to attack it, and that might have stopped the Germans in their tracks. But the French commander, Joffre, didn’t believe the intelligence. He was too traditional and fossilized to believe he’d been handed such an opportunity.”
The rest, they all knew, was history. The French had been crushed at the Marne, and then retreated south in what quickly became a rout. Paris fell and the French soon capitulated. The British Army, some three hundred thousand strong, was caught by an overwhelming German force while trying to reach a Mediterranean port where the Royal Navy could evacuate them. Almost to a man, the British Army had surrendered.
The war of 1914 had ended just before Christmas in an overwhelming German victory and a catastrophic defeat for France, England, and, to a lesser extent, Imperial Russia. Some fighting in peripheral areas lingered into 1915, but the war was effectively over. Woodrow Wilson had gained further fame as a peacemaker by brokering the Treaty of Princeton which was signed a year later in Princeton, New Jersey.
“And if the French had won at the Marne, what would have happened?” Ike posed to the group. “It probably would have resulted in a bloody and drawn-out stalemate.”
Martel agreed. “Still better for the French and British than a catastrophic defeat.”
“Hell, they would have dug in and the two sides might still be fighting,” Patton said.
Connor smiled. “Would we have been dragged in?”
Ike answered. “Not with Wilson in the White House. He’s the same person who said it wasn’t important when the Germans, following the peace, basically took over Mexico. He said it wasn’t important enough for us to fight over.” He turned to Martel and grinned. “And that is why Luke keeps visiting Mexico. Remind me, what did you find the last time?”
Martel flushed slightly. It had been six months since the last time and the wild escape that finished it. “I located six German divisions within fifty miles of the border, and evidence of another eight more in the area by reading unit insignias on officers in Mexico City.”