“Now, brave General Mahan, please tell me—just what on earth was he doing out near the Germans in the first place? Aren’t staff people supposed to perform their assignments in the rear of these armies? And please don’t insult me by saying he was only doing his duty. I know that. I have kept from being angry with the thought that you probably didn’t even know he was out on that patrol.”
It was true; he hadn’t known. “When Colonel Gordon said he wished to go as an observer with an upcoming patrol, I had no objections. Since Heinz was impressed with the British colonel, he’d volunteered to ‘see him off.’ When they got to the jump-off point, Heinz said it wasn’t right for the only officer in the patrol to be a Brit, and he suggested that he should go along to ‘help out as liaison.’ Colonel Harris thought this was a good idea and agreed. Although I take full responsibility, I have to admit I knew nothing about it.”
“What would you have done if you had?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
They had been sitting in chairs facing each other. Trina arose and stood over him for a moment, studying his upturned face. Then she settled quietly and easily onto his lap. “Just hold me for a moment,” she said as his arms went around her. “It was so easy to forget that you were preparing for war. Without casualties I could block out the fact that you and others, like Heinz and Colonel Harris, could be killed at any time.” A shudder ran through her body. “Imagine, I was starting to think of you as a vast collection of overgrown schoolboys on a camping trip.”
He held her, stroking her back with a gentleness he didn’t know he had, and hoping no one would walk in on them. “Sometimes I forget too.”
“Just hold me for a few more minutes. Then go back to commanding your precious damned army and leave me to figure out how I’m going to care for a pregnant sixteen-year-old and a huge lout with a broken arm.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
AS THEODORE ROOSEVELT glanced about the room, he could not help but feel fortunate that he truly was well served. Whether that good service would suffice to win the war was another question, but the talent pool from which he drew counsel was, in his opinion, top-notch.
Today, he had the services of the civilian secretaries of state, war, and navy, along with the military minds of Longstreet, Schofield, Wood, and the naval genius Alfred Mahan. Dewey was up with the fleet. This afternoon in September, the civilians would listen gravely and try to look wise while the military reported on what had transpired since they last met a week ago.
Roosevelt smiled eagerly. “General Longstreet, would you please begin?” Longstreet gestured in the direction of General Wood, who took his now-accustomed place at the podium.
“Sir,” began General Wood, “although the press and the public seem to think that the war has slowed down, I would like to remind everyone that a great deal of armed contact is going on between the two sides. General MacArthur reports that our army casualties are running more than a hundred a week, and we assume the Germans are suffering about the same. The contact consists mainly of patrols meeting and fighting in the areas between the two armies—no-man’s-land.”
Roosevelt shook his head. “What an ominous name. Is such patrolling necessary? What is the purpose of it?”
“Sir, although we do use the patrols to give the army the experience of actually fighting and being in danger, the primary purpose is to gather information. We have other means of getting some information, like observation balloons and airships that patrol the skies above our lines. These are good for spotting large masses of men moving about in fair weather, but they cannot see at night or during bad weather. In addition, the airships have to stay over our lines so they do not get shot down. So we need the patrols to give us specific information about what units are confronting us, what they are eating, how their morale is, and many other things. In some areas we have been sending Americanized Germans during the day and Negroes at night to keep tabs on the enemy. There’s very little truth to the theory that Negroes’ darker skin makes them invisible at night. They smear their faces with dirt to keep the shine of sweat from giving them away. Regarding our Germans, they sneak up and listen in on enemy conversations. Very rewarding.”
“How so?”
“Well,” injected Longstreet, “we just found out that two of the divisions on line are reservists.”
Roosevelt was surprised. “You’re joking. Reservists? Why?”
Longstreet nodded in the direction of John Hay, who smiled affably and responded. “General Longstreet and I believe they have made a conscious and calculated decision not to invest more of their frontline regulars, because it would weaken their military forces in Europe. As a result of this war, they are confronting an angry France and a very unhappy England and Russia. Since their reservists are almost as good as their regulars, I think they feel they can afford it. From a military standpoint they may be right, but it may damage them politically. We have been informed that the German public was not too happy about the war in the first place, and the fact that older reservists with families and jobs have been called up and sent over pleases them even less. The radical German press has been scathing in its criticism, and there has been some unrest in the cities, particularly the university towns with large student populations.”
Roosevelt leaned forward. “This is something we can use to our advantage, isn’t it?”
Hay and Longstreet both agreed. Hay said his sources in Germany were trying to gauge the mood of the German public. Longstreet said that however good the reserve divisions were, they were not quite as good as the regulars. The result was a small benefit to the United States, but hardly enough to confer a decisive advantage.
Wood went on. “As we continue to modernize weapons, we are also upgrading other areas of our military technology, and we feel we are finally gaining some solid advantages.” He knew that this was a slap at the previous military administration and regretted the necessity of saying it. “Our battle lines are now fully connected by telephone and telegraph, as well as semaphore and light signals. We are getting heavily involved in wireless telegraph as well. Some of our clandestine units on Long Island are using wireless to communicate, as well as a telephone line we managed to lay from New Haven to the Island.”
Roosevelt chuckled. “Just how did you accomplish that? I thought the Krauts had the place sealed off.”
“Not entirely, sir. We worked hard and, with the outstanding cooperation of the navy, it paid off.” Wood did not add that much of the work of laying the line had been done by the submarine Holland. What Roosevelt didn’t know, he couldn’t inadvertently tell. Wood and others felt very strongly that the ability of the underwater craft to penetrate Germany’s naval defenses should not be divulged, not even to the president. The secret would be theirs and the navy’s.
Roosevelt seemed satisfied. Airships and radios appealed to his sense of newness. “Bully. Now what about my army? How does it grow?”
General Wood grinned. “Slowly, sir. As we explained in the past, we have neither the resources nor the leaders to create an immense army overnight. We have built camps and are filling them with recruits as quickly as we can, but it will not be as fast as we had hoped. The training sites in Georgia, Indiana, and Missouri are starting to fill.”
A brief cloud passed over Roosevelt’s face. He had wanted to hear a different report. “You know, the German press is having a field day with the empty camps. They are saying we cannot get enough recruits because no one wants to fight their invincible army. I hope you can do something to change that perception, and soon.”
“Well, sir, it is not an entirely false perception. A number of states have indeed declined to send their guard and militia. They say they are required to defend their home shores and cities. Georgia, for instance, has declined to release its militia for our use. Ironically, they did the same thing in the Civil War, refusing to help the Confederacy despite Jeff Davis’s pleas.”
Roosevelt nodded. The problem of who controlled the state units had arisen during the Spanish-American War as well. It represented another item that needed to be corrected. Presidents should be able to control state militias during a time of national emergency. “I’m sure it’s only a coincidence that Governor Candler is a Democrat,” Roosevelt said drily.
“I also presume you are aware that recruiting in the war zone has dropped dramatically,” continued Wood. “Although we are building a camp outside Boston in hopes that enlistments will pick up, we are getting virtually no volunteers from that area. One can understand,” he added, “that the heavy casualties taken already have dampened local ardor. Although, to be fair, sir, we have many thousands of local residents under arms at this time.”