March looked away. Just how the hell do we accomplish that, he wondered.
Admiral Sims returned the salute of Colonel William Mitchell, commonly called “Billy” by his friends and by the newspaper reporters who enjoyed the controversy he generally stirred up. Mitchell was not shy about stating his sometimes radical views, and that annoyed his generally very conservative superiors.
It was still unusual for the Army and the Navy to be working together and it was even more unusual for Sims to be hosting a man who’d made public declarations that airplanes could sink any of the Navy’s capital ships.
Most in the Navy’s hierarchy had thought that Mitchell’s ideas were rubbish at best and, at worst, a heresy not to be spoken. Sims, however, had the nagging feeling that Mitchell might be on to something and wanted to know more about it, no matter how unpleasant the truth might be. In a way it reminded him of the resistance he’d confronted when he’d suggested that ships’ gunners practice under realistic long-range modern conditions, and not replicate the close-in gun duels as in the War of 1812, which had proven so irrelevant in modern warfare.
Someday in the future bombs might sink capital ships. But not this day, or even this decade, Sims had concluded. The tests he’d quietly authorized Mitchell to perform had proven it. Still, he’d let the intense colonel have his say.
To his credit, Mitchell did not sugarcoat. “Things did not work out as I expected, Admiral. In sum, I was bitterly disappointed.”
Sims sighed and leaned back. The German fleet would doubtless try to force San Francisco’s growing but still fragile defenses and he’d hoped against hope for another weapon to use against them.
“So tell me what happened,” the admiral persisted.
“Sir, our planes are too small and too slow, and the bombs they carry are just not large enough or powerful enough to be effective against heavily armored ships, assuming they could hit them in the first place. My planes flew at high altitude and dropped bags of flour at moving ships in the British side of Puget Sound and managed to hit nothing. Not a one. Dropped from significant height, the bombs landed where the ships had been and if the bomber attempted to lead a ship, he either missed outright or the ship had time to dodge. All we did was create a flour soup in the Sound, which must have mightily puzzled the fish.
“Attempts to bomb from lower and then extremely low altitudes were a little more successful, but we had to use very small planes and small bombs. We concluded that our bombs would have caused some minor damage and some casualties, but would never have sunk a heavily-armored capital ship.”
“I admit I’m disappointed, Colonel. Even though I love our Navy’s great ships, I was hoping for a way of neutralizing the German fleet’s advantages.”
Mitchell nodded solemnly. “Above all else I too want to defeat the Germans. However, while the idea of dropping explosive bombs on ships appears to be an idea whose time hasn’t come, I do have another thought that is just in the planning stage. It is brutal and might be against the rules of war; therefore, I’m loath to discuss it at this time.”
Sims was intrigued. “Indulge me, Colonel.”
Mitchell spoke for only a moment. Sims paled. He was horrified, in part because he was a sailor and what Mitchell was proposing was a sailor’s worst nightmare scenario. What Mitchell was thinking was an abomination that might even be against the Geneva Convention and the rules of war. But what good were rules in time of war? The enemy possessed flamethrowers, poison gas, and had brutally invaded his country and terrorized American citizens. Rules of war? To hell with the rules of war.
“And what will you call this monstrosity?”
“Operation Firefly.”
Sims pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Please work on it.”
CHAPTER 10
Marcus Tovey surveyed his empire. It wasn’t much, just flat, scarred land and a handful of ruined buildings. Nothing much he could build a strong defensive position on, but somehow he had. Several Mexican attacks had been beaten off, as attested to by the bloated and stinking corpses frying in the Texas sun. But now the Mexican’s dander was up and they were massing to his front. His scouts said it was a full division, more than enough to overwhelm him.
The fifteen hundred men in his command called him “general,” even though nobody had actually authorized his promotion. It had just happened and he thought it amusing. Other senior officers had either gotten themselves killed or had proven themselves inadequate under the circumstances. Those had either run off or been chased away by their own men. As a result, Tovey accumulated men who’d survived other battles and inferior commanders. They seemed to welcome his commonsense approach to fighting.
His approach was quite simple—all Marcus Tovey did was kill Mexicans. Well, not all Mexicans. Even he’d had to agree that there were good Mexicans and his command now included two companies of them. Some of his Mexicans were refugees who rightly thought that the current Mexican government wanted to murder them, and some were “Tejuanos,” which meant they’d been born in Texas of Mexican parents. It also meant they were American citizens. Tovey had never given a thought to their loyalties and now realized that most of them considered themselves as American as he. To his surprise, he’d even developed friendships with some of them.
After one particularly nasty skirmish, Governor Hobby had stopped by to congratulate Tovey and his men on their gallant stand. Tovey’d smiled and accepted the accolades, but thought that the governor was an utter idiot. It had been a gallant stand, but it had resulted in yet another retreat. A few more gallant stands and Mexico will have taken back all of Texas. Fuck Hobby, he thought and spat on the ground. And fuck the Texas government’s attitude that they didn’t need help from the Federal government in Washington. Hell, Tovey thought with a laugh, if he’d take help from tame Mexicans, he’d take help from Washington. He’d heard rumors that things were changing in this regard, but rumors didn’t put more soldiers in the trenches.
The really bad news about being a general meant he couldn’t be in the front lines with his men where the fighting was. He understood and accepted the logic. He had to command and, in order to command, he had to know what was going on in all parts of his command. Anyone in the front lines of a fight sometimes didn’t know what was happening ten feet away. Just as significant, generals in the front lines had a nasty habit of getting killed and leaving their armies leaderless at a critical time.
Tovey was in a secondary trench line, a quarter of a mile behind the primary one. He had telephone and telegraph contact with his other units in front of him, but wires had a bad habit of breaking or being cut. He prayed that one particular wire stayed intact for the duration of the day. He’d buried it deep enough so that—please God—it would be safe.
For dependable communications, he would depend on runners, flags, and flares. If he’d had pigeons or trained dogs, he’d have used them as well.
Six thousand Mexicans opposed his fifteen hundred men. A mile behind him lay the ruins of the Alamo. The Goddamned Mexicans had spite-shelled the sacred place and now it was a small pile of rubble. He wanted to cry. Better, he wanted to kill more Mexicans.
Trumpets blared to his front, and six thousand Mexicans surged out of their trenches, screaming as they ran towards the Texan trenches. Covey’s fifteen hundred opened fire with their rifles, and the couple of Gatling guns they’d acquired spat rapid-fire death as well. The Gatlings had been ancient a generation ago, and there was very little ammunition. Covey’s two cannon opened fire. They had been taken from an armory and were pre-Spanish-American war vintage. Again, there was very little ammunition, so the gunners fired slowly and carefully. A home-made mortar dropped shells on the advancing Mexicans, but quickly ran out of ammo.