The president lifted his cup of tea in a mock salute. “Gentlemen, I pray for an uneventful dawn.”
CHAPTER THREE
ARDMORE, LOCATED ON the southern shore of Long Island about twenty miles from New York City, was a town of about five hundred people. For more than two centuries, it had been a slow-growing and not very prosperous place to live, depending as it did on small farms and a handful of professional fishermen.
In recent years, however, subtle changes had begun to occur. The growth of the metropolis to the west had started to bring people to the area for the purposes of rest and recreation. They found the soft beaches, fishing, and quiet ambience of Ardmore compelling reasons to return on an annual basis. This brought a new level of prosperity, which resulted in a hotel, a new rooming house, and a restaurant that was open in summer only.
It also meant more people and more problems, which resulted in the town of Ardmore hiring a policeman. He was called the chief, which was a private joke, since he, Blake Morris, was the only member of the Ardmore police force.
One of the chief’s recurring annoyances was Willy Talmadge, who, this warm night in June, was doing what he did best—sleeping off a drunken stupor.
This time, however, he was sleeping it off on the beach and not in the small jail, as he had the night before. He was sharing the beach with the crabs and other creatures that came out at night. Willy Talmadge was frankly delighted that he had eluded Chief Morris, who, in Willy’s opinion, was getting to be a bit of a shit regarding his behavior. Willy was half Indian and half Irish, and the attraction to alcohol was permanent and overwhelming. Not overly fond of work, Willy supported his habit by petty thievery. This antagonized Chief Morris, who would punch Willy in the stomach and kidneys when he caught him with something that belonged elsewhere. The punches, although hard and painful, caused no visible wounds and no serious damage. Chief Morris, Willy decided, was well on his way to becoming a serious cop.
Willy rolled over on the sand and stared at the cloud-speckled sky and the fading stars. Screw Morris. No, he smirked, screw his wife.
With dawn almost on him, his view of the ocean was clear, and there was no fog or mist to confuse him. His eyes widened as he took in the panorama before him. He saw a huge ocean liner just offshore with other, smaller ships almost alongside the liner. He quickly realized that the smaller ships were warships!
Stunned, he lurched to his feet and ran to the center of the little town until he was at the fire alarm bell, which he commenced ringing as quickly and as hard as he could.
Almost immediately, windows opened and voices shouted their concern. Some, when they realized it was Willy Talmadge on the bell, presumed he was still drunk and having some stupid sort of fit. He hushed them by waving out to sea where the ships were now plainly visible.
Just about the first person to actually arrive was Chief Morris, grim-faced and angry. “Goddamnit, Willy, you are about to spend a long time in my jail for this.” Then he saw the ships. “Oh, Jesus.”
Willy knew when he had the upper hand. “Yeah, looks like that big liner’s in some kind of trouble and the others are gonna help it out.”
Morris quickly agreed with the evaluation. The liner was obviously aground; although he thought there was plenty of water where the ship was, maybe a sandbar had shifted. What was the damned thing doing so close to shore in the first place?
“Wow, what a sight!”
The comment came from Homer Walls, the owner of the hotel and publisher of the summer weekly. Homer also had the town’s only telephone.
Morris grabbed his arm. “Homer, I think you ought to call someone in the big city and tell them what’s happened.”
Homer smirked. “Did that already. Called the New York Post.” Then he looked a little chagrined. “They weren’t as excited as I thought they would be. Seems there were a bunch of explosions and fires all over the city last night and everyone’s in an uproar about them. The Post seemed to think they were caused by labor agitators or something and didn’t particularly give a damn about a ship aground off Ardmore.”
Morris grunted and continued to watch. By this time a number of the townspeople had gathered, and others were coming as quickly as they could. It was apparent that the sight was drawing people from as far away as they could run to the beach. Chief Morris’s wife and four-year-old daughter joined him and brought his telescope. He noticed a number of other spectators using telescopes as well.
“Hey, Homer,” Morris said. “Guess what? That isn’t an American ship. Looks like a German flag.”
“Yeah,” Homer replied. “And those don’t look like American flags on the warships either.”
After further discussion they decided there was no reason why a German ship couldn’t have run aground. As to the German ships helping out, well, why not? Only thing was, the liner didn’t look aground; instead it seemed to be floating freely and held in place by its anchor.
The crowd grew even more excited when the warships lowered boats and sent men over to the liner. Shortly after, the lifeboats on the liner filled with men and were lowered to the water.
“Chief, are all those people on the boats wearing the same thing? Like uniforms?” asked Homer.
“Yep, and those look like rifles they’re carrying.”
“Holy shit,” yelled Homer. “Now I am going to get those assholes in New York to pay attention!” With that, he ran off toward his hotel and the telephone.
The lifeboats gathered in a group and commenced to row toward shore. It was obvious that the sailors from the warships were working the oars while those who seemed to be soldiers sat and waited. For what? Chief Morris wondered.
As the boats rowed closer to shore, the crowd, now quite large, drew nearer to the beach, almost by instinct. On board the closest German ship, the light cruiser Gazelle, the captain looked on that movement with dismay. What had once been a lonely stretch of sand was now packed with people. Were they armed? Of course they were! All Americans were riflemen, and wasn’t this part of the country the home of the Minutemen?
The captain of the Gazelle looked at the soldiers huddled helplessly in the little boats, jammed so tightly they couldn’t raise their arms and fire back if they wished to. Almost three hundred men being rowed toward shore and all of them possibly heading for a slaughter. He couldn’t take the chance. His duty was clear.
“Open fire on the beach!”
Within seconds half a dozen of his ten 4.1-inch guns roared, sending shells into the packed humanity at virtually point-blank range, while machine guns on the deck clattered and scythed the human crop on the beach. The explosions hurled sand and bodies into the air. The survivors swirled, like leaves in a vagrant wind, not knowing what to do, then turned and ran away from the ships and toward the town. A second broadside was fired with the same deadly results: the gun captains had calculated the retreat and sighted their weapons accordingly.
Inside the hotel, Homer had indeed made contact with New York and now they were interested, very interested, particularly about the soldiers. When the ships opened fire, Homer screamed in disbelief into the open phone and, sobbing, described the carnage on the beach. He was still trying to report when a shell from the third volley crashed into the hotel, destroying it and blowing the life out of his body.
Instead of fleeing inland with the others, a panic-stricken Willy Talmadge screamed and ran down the beach as fast as his thin legs could propel him. He was unharmed.
Blake Morris turned and ran from the beach as soon as he saw the guns fire. The concussions hurled him to the ground and momentarily deafened him. He rose quickly and looked for his wife. She too was running from the beach. Her skirts were hiked up around her hips, and she was carrying their screaming daughter in her arms. Morris automatically figured them to be about a hundred yards ahead, and he started moving faster than he ever thought possible to reach them.
There had to be screams, perhaps even his own, but he could hear nothing. He tried to yell for her to hurry, prayed for her to hurry.
Suddenly, the earth about her opened up and a mountain of dirt leaped for the sky. Later, he would desperately try to recall if he saw her and the child in that explosion, but he could never be certain.