Читать книгу The Invasion of America - J. W. Muller - Страница 8

“There were ships moving toward the Long Island Coast as if to threaten New York.”

ocean, that stole up the harbors and scarcely moved the air. Suddenly that brooding, heavy air was shaken. One! Two! Three!

Afterward, when men compared the time, they knew that it was heard at the same instant at New York and Boston, and all the stretches of coast between them and beyond. Even in that moment of fear, there were thousands who instinctively looked at their watches and timed it. It was exactly half-past ten when the first shot sounded. Very regularly, almost somnolently, came the far-off shocks through the air. There were half-minute intervals between them, quite exact.

The last boom was heard at eleven. Long before that the bulletins had begun to tell that ships were shelling the coast. Duxbury Beach near Boston was being shelled. Long Branch and Asbury Park were bombarded. Amagansett on Long Island was in flames.

“It has stopped,” said the bulletins, then, “The ships have ceased firing.”

Then there came news from the harbor defenses. Two ships, said Plum Island at the east end of Long Island Sound, had engaged the defenses at long range without effect. A ship had come in east of Coney Island, just outside of the zone of fire from Sandy Hook, reported Fort Hamilton, and dropped shells into Brooklyn’s suburbs.

Now the crowds were silent no longer. Long years afterward, old men told how on that still April morning they were in quiet places on the outskirts of the great cities, and heard from there a great, strange sound as of a vast æolian harp. It was the noise of multitudes, risen.

They stormed their City Halls, roaring for soldiers. They tried to rush their armories, demanding weapons. To Washington flashed the dreaded news of Mobs. “Troops must be sent at once,” said the cities.

The old Chief of Staff, with “the bit in his teeth,” dropped the dispatches on the floor. “Let ’em handle their own mobs,” said he.

Not Enough Men to Guard Even the Water Supply of New York and Boston

“Handle your own mobs!” he said again, to The Boss from New York, who appeared with a flaming face.

But The Boss had the bit in his teeth, too. Those dispatches, and long distance telephone messages from close lieutenants, had filled him with a dread that was bigger than the new-born dread of the old soldier. “I’ve broken bigger men than you!” he roared. “A thousand times bigger! Once and for the last time, are you going to send the army to protect us?”

“Once, and for the last time,” said the General, quietly, “no!”

The Boss looked at him. His eyes glared. Then, all at once, he saw that in the General’s face that gave him a big, new, overwhelming knowledge. He saw that the new word “NO” had been born in Washington; and that he and his henceforth would have to admit that it meant “NO.”

It hit him like a club. Something came from his throat that was not a sob, yet strangely like one. “Then what—then—are we going to everlasting smash?”

“Listen,” said the General, gravely calm as in the beginning. He laid his hand on the politician’s shoulder. “We have swept together the stuff that you and your kind gave us in these past years. Up there,” he pointed north, “in Connecticut, our officers have been fighting to make an army of it—of battalions that have no regiments, of divisions that are not divisions, of riflemen who never learned to shoot and of cavalry that never learned to maneuver. But even if all that mess were not a mess—if all these young men were fit to fight in the battle line this moment, there are not enough of them to guard even the water-supply of New York and Boston.”[13]

“Then you won’t put any men into the city?”

“To defend a city from within is an act of desperation, no matter how big one’s army is,” said the General. “The place to defend a city is as far away from it as you can meet the enemy.”

“But the newspapers say that you haven’t men enough to stop him.” The Boss had dismissed all attempt to bluster. “Isn’t there a chance?”

“Not if he comes in the force we expect—and he will be sure to come so.” The General did not endeavor to soften his statement. He spoke sharp and short, “And remember—the cities are not the United States. Our business is to keep the army in the field for the Union, not for New York or Boston or even Washington.

“There in Connecticut lay the Army. … Miles of tents separated by geometrically straight rows of Company streets.”

There is a price to be paid—and perhaps the cities must pay it.”

“And you’ll pay the price, too,” muttered the Chief of Staff, looking northward toward New England from his window after the politician had gone. “You’re paying it now, with sweat and nerves; and you’ll pay it in lives.”

A Militia That Cannot Shoot

There, in Connecticut, lay the army, looking formidable enough. Radiating in beautiful precision from a central point, were miles of tents separated by geometrically straight rows of company streets. Over all the great space, afoot and horseback, in companies and troops, in squadrons and battalions, moved spruce, agile figures in the trim efficient campaign dress of the American soldier. Glossy, bright flags floated everywhere. The sweet bugles sang.

It would have seemed a very harmonious, solidly welded whole, that army, to any layman who could have had a bird’s eye view of its business-like assembly, its great parks of artillery, its full corrals of mounts, its endless rows of tents and equipage and its enormous trains of transport vehicles and ambulances.

But at one end of that great, orderly, formidable camp were hordes of organized militia firing at targets. With the enemy on the coast, these men were still being broken in to shoot—not to become sharp-shooters, but to qualify merely as second-class marksmen that they might at least learn enough about the use of their rifles to be not entirely useless in battle. Ever since the militia of the coast States had come in, small-arms experts of the army had been clutching greedily at every bit of daylight, to teach 14,000 men how to shoot—14,000 men of an armed force that was offered by the States to be the country’s first line of defense.[14]

Into that camp had marched a month before, with flags flying, bands gallantly playing, weapons gleaming, one whole State’s militia organization of which only 700 men had fired regularly in practice during the whole preceding year. Only 525 of even that small number had qualified as shots, and more than a thousand were carried as utterly unqualified. Of that entire State force, only one man had passed through the regular army qualification course with the rifle, and only twelve had qualified at long range practice.[15]

“Brave?” said the hapless General of Brigade who had them under his hands. “Brave? If we gave ’em the order, they would charge an army with their bare hands, sir—and they might as well.”

He fluttered a sheet of paper in his hard, hairy fist. The sheet showed 25,353 organized militia enrolled as “trained men armed with the rifle.” Of these 15,927 men had qualified sufficiently to be fit for firing in battle. There were a thousand men in that command whose records showed that they had not fired their rifles a single time in a year: and the General had reason to believe that many of these never had used weapons except as instruments of parade.[16]

State Artillerymen That Have Never Qualified as Gunners.

A mile away, in the artillery encampment, a field artillery battery of regulars from Fort Sill swept their guns at top speed through passages so tight that it seemed impossible for the flying wheels to clear them. Sharply they wheeled and came to position, just as a militia battery arrived.

The militia guns were hauled by horses that their State had hastily hired or bought. The brutes had hauled trucks in a city; and in trying to wheel, one of them straddled the gun. In a moment the gun-team was around and over the guns in a confusion of chains and leather.

“Do you stable your mounts on top of your guns in the milish?” shouted a regular, gleefully. But he and his fellows helped good-naturedly enough.

“We never had horses till now,” growled one of the militiamen, who was stooping to tug at a trace-chain. It made his face fiery red. “State wouldn’t give us any, and we didn’t have stables, anyway, in our armory. So we couldn’t break in any mounts.”

“Nor you couldn’t break yourselves in, chum, I guess,” spoke another regular. “How the devil did you get gunnery practice? Haul your little gun out by hand to the firing ground?”

The militiamen fumbled at the trace again. “Didn’t fire it,” he said, without looking up.

“All right, milish!” shouted the regular. “Shake! You’re game, all right, you boys! Willing, by gum, to face the Hell that you’re going to get, and not a gunner in your battery. Fine leather-headed citizens you must have, back home.”

“They didn’t think much of artillery at home,” grinned the militiaman. “Thought that infantry was all they needed. They sort of thought we just had a little toy to play with.”

“You ain’t going to be lonely, milish,” grunted the regular, sauntering off. “Tie a necktie around your horses and then go over yonder. You’ll find three other batteries from three other States that never had no horses, never had no mounted drills, and never qualified as gunners.”[17]

Cavalry Without Horses and Undrilled

A grizzled Colonel of Cavalry rode by. Under his shaggy eye-brows he shot a glance at the helpless battery, and swore. He dated back to Indian times, and they said of him in the army that he knew nothing except cavalry tactics and horses. But he knew them; and he was breaking his old heart over the militia cavalry that had come under his command.

Some he had that were good enough to win his full praise; but none of these was full as to quota of men. The Colonel of the best of the regiments was riding at his side. It was an organized force of rich men, each of whom had brought his own mount, trained as carefully as any cavalry horse, and perfectly equipped. “Fine, sir, fine!” said the old Indian fighter. “But oh! Wait till you see what arrived last week. They can ride! Yes, sir, they can ride. Heaven knows how they learned it, for they didn’t ever have a mount except what they hired in livery stables. A rich State, too, and one that did its infantry damned well, damned well, sir. It was supposed to be a regiment of cavalry that we were to get. Do you know what arrived? Two squadrons! And, sir, they came afoot. They served a State that evidently prefers horseless cavalry.”[18]

He chewed his cigar and threw it away. “Look over there!” he continued. “See those chaps? They were among the first to come to us. Yes, sir. The entire cavalry force of that State came out—the entire force, you understand. D’you want to know how many there were? Three troops—three—troops—confound me, sir. Not a whole squadron. But as these three troops were in three different parts of the State they hadn’t even been drilled to move together in their little three troops as one body. We’re just getting ’em so that they can ride in squadron without smashing into some other troop and crumpling the whole outfit to Hades.”[19]

State Troops Without Medical Supplies, Shoes, Overcoats

Even while the old cavalry leader was swearing, a delegation of civilians, sent to visit the camp officially, was gathered at headquarters. The visitors were haggard and worried: but, with the ever-ready optimism of the extraordinary American race, the most worried one of them all said: “A splendid army. Looks fit to fight for its life. We are sure that you will give a good account of yourselves, General, against any force.”

“Against any force,” echoed another.

The Major-General did not reply. He gazed over the spick and span tents, the spick and span men, the spick and span guns, far and on, and on, over an encampment that stretched out of sight behind distant wooded heights.

In the immediate line of his vision lay the sanitary camp. There, beside his own regulars, lay sanitary troops of the State militia that had come into camp without ambulance companies, without field hospitals, without medical supplies. He thought of one regiment (a regiment on paper, seven companies in reality) that had appeared without even its service outfit of shoes and overcoats. Two whole State divisions, had they gone into action on their own strength, would have had no ambulances at all to carry off their wounded. One division, formed from a State that had done better than most with its militia, arrived for war with two field hospitals short and lacking seven full ambulance companies. Even the richest State of the sea-board groups had left its organized force short, both a field hospital and an ambulance company. Not one of all the militia forces from all the States had ambulances enough.[20]

The soldier looked up at the sky. “Lord! Lord!” he muttered, not impiously. “An extravagant land. As extravagant with its lives as with everything else.”

The One Thing in Which Our Army Would Be Perfect

There was only one thing in which that army was preëminent and perfect. It was in the matter of transport. Even that had been made only since war was declared; but it had been made swiftly, thoroughly, because it demanded only an efficient, swift gathering of vast resources.

Within an hour of the declaration, the army had swept the coast States from New Jersey to Maine clear of everything serviceable that had wheels. Piled on miles of sidings beside the magnificent railroad system lay the rolling stock of a dozen great commercial States. Like mammoth trains along the sides of all the highways, north, south, east and west from the camp, were the requisitioned automobiles and trucks.

This army was going to be able not only to fight on its stomach, as Napoleon said, but it was going to be able to fight on flying feet, too.

So great were its resources in motive power, that although there were motor vehicles making a double line miles long on each of half a dozen roads leading from the camp, there still were thousands of swift cars free to patrol the American coast from the end of Maine to the Virginia Capes.

The army might not be able to withstand a blow; but it could dodge.

It could know, too, in time to dodge. Its own trained intelligence department was supplemented by ten thousand and more untrained observers and watchers, who tried to make up for their lack of technical skill by keen intelligence, alertness, adventurous daring and—unlimited private means.

Queer enough were their reports, often incomprehensible, frequently absurd to the point of tragedy. In a measure, they made a confused trouble for army headquarters; yet on the whole they were invaluable in that time, when the United States was so wofully short of scouts.

The First American to See the Enemy’s Troop Ships

The volunteer scouts spied out the air as they did the roads.

It was a volunteer who soared out in his bi-plane from New Bedford in Massachusetts that morning, when the newspapers announced the approach of the hostile fleet. He had learned to loop the loop for fun, fun being the great object of his gay though strenuous existence.

Fortunate it was, indeed, that rich men had taken up aviation as a sport: for the enemy had come with aeroplanes counted not by scores, but by hundreds. And to oppose them, the American army and navy combined had exactly 23![21]

Now it had happened that the few military airmen, attempting their scouting flights from the south and the west, had encountered unfortunate cloudless conditions, which quite prevented them from evading the far superior forces of hostile airmen. They had, therefore, been beaten back, continually, before they could pierce the screen.

The volunteer, however, sweeping across the mouth of Buzzards Bay and out between the islands of No Man’s Land and Martha’s Vineyard, dipped into one of those drifting, isolated fogs that are born in the waters of Nantucket Shoals. Before a slow, lazy wind, the thick vapors went steaming and trailing out to sea, and he went with them. Occasionally he rose above the bank and looked out, like a man lifting himself from a trench. He had done this about a dozen times, and he was getting into the thin, seaward end of the fog-belt, when he saw ships.

Instantly he went up, up, up. It was a racing one-man biplane. He thanked Heaven for its speed: for even as he was looking down on the ships, little things detached themselves from the decks and arose. They were specks at first, but in a moment they had grown. He watched them grow out of a corner of his eye, but with all his vision, all his concentrated attention, he looked at the fleet.

There, surrounded by war vessels, he saw a long line of immense two-funneled, three funneled and four-funneled steamships; and he knew that he was the first American to see the troop transports of the enemy.

The News the Airman Brought

He was turning in a sharp circle to flee even while he counted them. He was darting toward the coast, even while he still looked sidewise down at them to finish his count. Then, rolling and swooping as he put on the fullest speed of his racing engine, he fled, with five navy planes behind him, coming on the wings of their explosive storm.

He wondered if they were firing at him. All that he knew was that his world just then was only one blur of whistling, strangling, smiting air and deafening roar. He struck a hole in the air and pitched sharply. He swept over the fog bank. It could not help him now. He dared not sink low enough to hide in it. Shining brightly in the bright air, he volleyed straight on as if he were going to dash into the blue wall of sky ahead.

He won. He never knew how far the enemy planes had pursued, or whether they had come near him or not. He knew only that suddenly there was a yellow band of sandy land deep, deep under him, that the next instant trees and hills swept past like little color-prints, and that he came to earth.

Then he reached for a flask. And then he looked to wonder where he had landed. And then he heard the roar of a motor on one side of him, and the roar of a motor on the other. “Hands up!” shouted a man in khaki, leaning from the side of a swaying, drunkenly rolling car. He put up his hands, laughing hysterically.

Fifteen minutes later the telephone bells rang in the forts on Fisher’s Island, Plum Island, in the Narragansett Harbor defenses, and in the headquarters of the field army. It told them that the enemy transports were thirty miles south of Nantucket Island, standing in for Block Island Sound or Long Island.

Unleashing the Submarines

Up from Fisher’s Island under the Connecticut shore mounted an army hydro-aeroplane. It rose 2,000 feet, and circled there,

“Up mounted a hydro-aeroplane.”

with such graceful, steady wheelings that despite its constant speed, it seemed to be soaring in lazy spirals like a sleepy gull. Under the two fliers in the machine lay the eastern entrance of Long Island Sound—the watergate to New York, with half-open jaws whose fangs were the guns of Fisher’s Island on the north and Plum Island on the south. Utterly harmless and innocuous seemed those two jaws, for not even the keenest eye could make out from above anything more savage than grassy mounds and daintily graded slopes of earth. Not even the sharpest glass could see within those pretty models in relief the dragons of 12-inch mortars that squatted in hidden pits sixteen in a group, or the sleek, graceful rifled cannon whose secret machinery could swing their thirty-five tons upward in an instant and as instantly withdraw them after they had spat out their half ton of shot.

Between the guarding jaws there was deep water—deep and beautifully green. One of the airmen spoke to the other, who was looking out to sea through his glasses. “There they go,” he said, nodding to indicate the water below.

Both looked. They looked into fifty feet of ocean, but their height made it but as a thick pane of dim green glass.

They saw things moving, deep down. They were sleek and gray, like small whales. But they had snouts longer and sharper than any whale that ever swam. Three of them there were, moving out to sea through the entrance, steadily, at about ten knots an hour.

The Wait for the Enemy to Strike

An hour passed. The men in the hydro-aeroplane descended, and their reliefs went up. They circled for an hour. Sometimes they drifted out to sea till the land was lost behind them.

The forts and the army headquarters caught a wireless from the air. The enemy fleet was approaching Block Island, said the message. The hydro-aeroplane was rushing homeward while it spattered its news into the air, for it was a slow machine, and swifter ones were over the fleet. The enemy had formed in columns, ejaculated the fleeing machines, with destroyers and light cruisers in advance, and the transports, gripped on all sides by armored ships,

“The Dragons of twelve-inch mortars that squatted in hidden pits.”

were coming on in echelon formation, eight cable lengths, or 4,800 feet, apart.

Simultaneously, almost, all the coast places from Barnegat to the end of New York Harbor’s farthest flung domain signaled and telephoned and wired that the menacing ships had disappeared. To Washington and the waiting American fleet passed the message from sea-scouts that all the enemy screen was withdrawing slowly toward the east—a mighty screen, lying along a hundred miles out to sea, and steadily closing in on its nucleus, to protect its flanks and rear against surprise from the ocean ways.

They were moving fast now—much faster than fourteen knots. There was no feint now. They were sweeping straight at the land. But where would they strike? Would they land at Long Island to march their army to New York, or would they strike at Rhode Island or the southern coast of Massachusetts?

Boston was sure that they would come at Massachusetts. New York roared with the news that its own Long Island coast was the enemy’s object. But though the cities were shaken with panic, there were no mobs now. Noise and fear and medley of advice and demand and anger there were, but no mobs. The cities had handled their mobs with long cordons of silent, stout, unimaginative police and with firemen who brought out clanging engines and hose. It was the best answer to hysteria; for these sudden-born mobs had been born only of hysteria. They became all the more orderly, after it had had its vent. And the real mob, the silent, brooding, dangerous under-world, had not begun to stir.

It would not, now. Before noon there were men in all the armories—militia fragments and volunteers. They were incapable of fighting soldiers; but the mobs were as helpless against them as they, in turn, were helpless against trained armies.

All That Our Submarines Could Accomplish

On a dreadnaught in the van of the convoying fleet, stood the Admiral of the armada. He was speaking with the ship’s Captain, as they paced up and down the bridge. Everywhere enormously long polished black cannon thrust their supple bodies out of turrets. Like the peering heads of serpents, the guns of the secondary batteries looked out from bow to stern. Everywhere stood officers and men at quarters. Without a moment’s pause signals ran up and down, wimpling out their gaudy messages, and everlastingly the wireless sounded its stuttering staccato. Yet there was a placid, strangely peaceful quiet over the whole gray, tall, bristling machine. Except for its appearance, it might have been a pleasure yacht.

“It’s a lovely shore,” the Admiral was saying. “Some beautiful estates and charming people. I was delightfully entertained within five miles of where we shall land. It seems a rough return for hospitality. But one does for one’s country what one would not do—hello!”

The dreadnaught’s circling destroyers were coming at the ship headlong. The Captain leaped to the rail. Before he got there, the ship’s port battery crashed. A signalman pointed at the water fifty yards off. Something like a staring, hooded eye had looked from the sea for a moment.

It was the last thing the signalman saw on earth. The dreadnaught shuddered. While its guns were still firing, it lifted with a jerk as a man would lift if caught by an upward swing under the jaw. A great, queerly muffled explosion shook it. For perhaps a minute it tore along under the impetus of its own speed, but it did not move smoothly. It jolted, like a cart going over a rough road. Then it began to topple. Over and over it leaned, slowly, fast, faster. There was not an outcry. Short calls of command there were from officers, but not a sound from the men.

It was very still now. The wireless had ceased, the engines were shut off, and there was only the roar of steam.

The dreadnaught’s crew was clinging, like men clinging to a steep cliff, holding fast to everything that would give foot-hold or hand-grip on the inclined deck. A signal climbed along the toppling mast. Then, with a thunder of breaking metal, with fire-hose, ammunition cases, instruments, ship’s furniture all volleying into the sea, the ship fell full on her side and went down.

A Maneuver to Escape Undersea Attack

In a hissing, breaking sea that instantly was gray with ashes and multi-colored with oil, swam eight hundred men. None came near them. The dreadnaught’s last signal had been the order to keep off: and the big fleet was weaving in and out at top speed, in a maneuver long since perfected, to escape other attacks from the invisible things.

Far astern raved the guns again. This time the alert destroyers had not missed their aim. A periscope disappeared. Presently, slowly, little spreading disks of oil swam on the surface, and united, and more floated upward and spread.

Not for a moment had the fleet fallen into disorder. Even while the destroyers were picking up what survivors they could find, another dreadnaught hoisted its commander’s flag as Admiral, in place of the one who lay under the bright green water. A speed cone went up: and warships and convoy steamed full speed ahead.

Half an hour later the periscopes of two submarines, outdistanced, bobbed up far behind the fleet. Their gray shapes arose, streaming. The manholes opened and heads came out, blinking into the sunlight and drawing in great breaths of fresh air. They followed the ships toward the coast.

One of them hoisted a wireless apparatus, and began to call. It was a weak call, that had to be repeated again and again. Then Montauk Point heard, over a temporary apparatus, and received, and began to send on to New York; and the bulletins told that submarine M-9 had sunk the Admiral’s flag-ship, that submarine G-3 had sunk a destroyer, and that submarine O-1 had been lost.

“Victory! Victory! VICTORY!” ran the news. They knew that it was not victory, those great, anxious crowds that stopped all traffic that day in all the continent of North America. But for a while they were thrilled, and they cheered, and forgot the slow, implacable grip of irresistible power that was closing in on their eastern sea-coast, not to be stayed, not even to be halted.

The Bombardment of the Coast

The day passed, and the dusk came in. A pleasant evening it was, warm enough to tempt people to stay out-of-doors. Even in the trembling sea-cities there was all the wonted life of such a season. The rich had fled; but the others remained. There was nothing else for them to do. A few months before, had any of them been asked what they would do in case of an invasion, they would have painted a picture of the millions fleeing from their cities with what possessions they could lug. Thus it had been in Europe, as they had read. Thus it would be in America.

But it was not so. There they were, watching and waiting, and clinging to the only hold they knew. And in this soft dusk, there they loitered in their countless miles of streets, and talked, and argued, and prophesied, just as they had done always. And everywhere in the miles fronted by little houses and tenements and tall apartments the children were ushering in the spring by playing ring-around-rosy. Everywhere their thin, clear young voices made the old accustomed music of the towns.

EXTRA! EXTRA!

In the soft dusk, on the Rhode Island and Massachusetts coast there was falling red Hell and ruin.

Out of the tranquil, empty sea it had come. Out there, far out, in the pearl and gray, there had been flashes. There had been roars and whistles and bellows in the high, still air, coming, coming! And the shells had plunged down, everywhere, unending. Streams of iron, streams of fire, streams of screaming, bursting things: things that struck the land and spun into it like beasts biting, and burst, blasting away forests and houses and men in crimson whirlwind: things that plunged into towns and ricocheted, and pulled down walls and towers: things that darted at power plants and darkened the world: and things that burst into towns with fierce fire and set the world a-light.

It was not news that came through the spring night. To the men at the receiving ends of wires it was as if there were coming to them one wild din of terror. Here were telephone messages that broke off in the middle and were never to be resumed on this earth. Here were telegraph dispatches that stopped suddenly and left the wire dead, its far end dangling where a shell had torn down the poles. From hill tops far inland came raving words of burning towns glaring red in the country below. From somewhere unknown, from somebody unknown, came one word over a telephone that instantly went out of commission. It was: “God.”

In the cabin of the new flag-ship sat the new Admiral. The ship was shaking with the explosions from its secondary batteries, but the cabin was orderly and sedate. A shaded light was shining on a chart.

“Another hour of this,” said the Admiral, “and I think the coast will be nicely cleared for the landing.” He selected a cigar from its box, and lit it carefully.