One of the Schuler boys offered to go with him, but Ludwig told him to go back to sleep. He could handle this massive threat to their security all by himself. It was only the third or fourth time anyone had come down the road all day. Ludwig stood in front of the sign and held his hand palm outward, and the wagon stopped. He could see that the two men were a little older and their uniforms didn’t fit that well, which made him fairly certain that they were reservists. Ludwig may have hated the army, but he took pride in the way they looked. This pair looked like slobs in comparison with the regulars. Perhaps he was being too harsh. Ludwig also didn’t recognize their unit, but that wasn’t surprising either. With all the reservists about, he hadn’t heard of half their regiments. After all, he thought, stifling a yawn, he was a teacher, not a soldier.
One of the men in the wagon was a sergeant; the driver was a private. Well, Ludwig thought, reserves or not, the sergeant has more stripes than I do and that makes him God if he wants to be. The sergeant didn’t want to push it, however. He smiled amiably and asked what the matter was.
“Nothing much.” Ludwig grinned back. “This is the most important road in America and we’re watching it for the Reich.”
The two men laughed and agreed. They knew make-work when they saw it. Funny, Ludwig thought, he didn’t quite recognize their accents, and he thought he knew all the regional nuances. “Where to?” he asked.
“Just going in to the supply center,” the sergeant replied. “We got a shopping list and specific directions from our captain. Jesus, what an old lady.”
Ludwig grinned and looked around. It wasn’t proper to criticize an officer that harshly. He and his friends did it privately, but not to a perfect stranger. He asked them what unit they were from and was told they were with the 141st Infantry, a reserve regiment. Well, that confirmed his guess and was probably why they were so critical of their commander. Rumor had it the reserves were not overwhelmed with joy at being here. For that matter, neither was he.
As he looked in the back of the wagon, Ludwig idly asked the sergeant where his hometown was and was given the name of a village he didn’t recall. It didn’t matter. He was getting bored again. The only things in the back of the wagon were a steamer trunk and the soldiers’ rifles, which lay flat on the floor. He noticed that the trunk was unlocked and the hasp had worked its way open. A piece of paper was protruding. He decided to do them a favor, so he pulled out the piece of paper and opened the trunk to reclose it properly.
He gasped. It was full of sheets of paper. Thousands of them. And they all had similar messages. “Surrender,” they read, or “Stay in America,” “Live Free,” or “Americans Are Your Friends—Not the Kaiser.”
His knees weakened and he had to grab the side of the wagon for support. He looked at the two men, who were staring at him, their faces suddenly pale and their expressions frozen. In his mind, he started to cry out for help, call for the others, but no sound came. Dear God, these are Americans, not Germans. No wonder their accents are so strange. Either they never lived in Germany or had lived there so long ago their accents had changed. Oh, God. Help.
Instead, a hand—it was a stranger’s, although he knew it was connected to his arm—closed the trunk and fixed it tight. Then a voice—it sounded like his—told them in a hoarse whisper to leave. Leave now. Get the fuck away from here! Now, now, now!
With forced slowness, the driver eased the wagon around the slight barricade and trotted on down the road. The sergeant turned and looked incredulously on the source of his good fortune, his survival. Had they been caught in German uniforms they would have hanged. Ludwig stood there, his body drenched in sweat, and tried to regain control of himself. He felt himself quivering. Finally he gathered the strength to return to his squad. He was certain they knew what had happened. He had let the Americans go, and the fact of his treason had to be emblazoned on his face. Instead, no one was even looking at him. One of the Schulers had found a toad and they were trying to make it jump by sticking it with a penknife. Ludwig leaned against a tree and tried to breathe.
“Hey, Ludwig, you look like hell.”
Ludwig forced a thin smile. “I made a big mistake. I ate that sausage crap you cooked for lunch, and now I gotta take a shit. You people watch the road for me. Let me know if you see the kaiser.”
They laughed and returned to their mindless game, and Ludwig walked into some bushes where he knew he would be left alone. Then he pulled the piece of paper from his pocket and started to read.
“General von Schlieffen,” Holstein began, practically purring, “I understand that you concur with the actions recommended by General von Waldersee. Quite frankly, I am surprised.”
“Dear count, I had no choice but to support the commander of our forces in the field. He is a continent away and in daily contact with local hostiles. His position, although hardly untenable, requires drastic action to prevent it from becoming so.”
Holstein nodded sagely. “I have no doubts as to the military necessity of the action, but the political implications will be enormous.”
“Are you concerned,” Schlieffen asked bitterly, “that we might find ourselves with yet another enemy? Who is left? Ecuador? No, dear count, I find myself in broad agreement with both the kaiser and von Waldersee that the war must be won first and the politics cleaned up later. I think you will agree with me when I say that a victor is forgiven many transgressions, even crimes against humanity. After all, is what we are doing to the Americans so different from what the British are doing to the Boers? Or what the Spanish did to the Cubans? No, I think the idea of expelling useless and dangerous mouths from the zone of occupation and requiring the remaining Americans to be incarcerated in concentration camps is now a necessity. We have lost too many men and too much equipment to their depredations.”
Holstein arched an eyebrow quizzically. “And supplies are now a problem?”
“Not for the military, and certainly not yet. The destruction of so many of our supplies simply means that we cannot afford to feed the Americans within our lines unless their presence outside would be dangerous to us, or if they have skills useful to our effort.”
“They will resist.”
It was Schlieffen’s turn to shrug. “Then they will be shot. We have given them one week to register with us. We will then determine whether they will be expelled or imprisoned. Anyone we find roaming loose after that who is not working for us as a collaborator will be executed as a spy and saboteur. I have given responsibility for the task to General Lothar von Trotha. Do you recall him?”
Holstein shuddered. “Yes. He did some of the kaiser’s best work in China. General von Schlieffen, the man is a butcher. Why not Hindenburg or von Moltke?”
“They declined.”
“General, there will be mistakes,” stated Holstein. “Surely you do not hope to reach every small child or old woman hiding in a slum basement. Would you kill them?”
“And why not?” answered Schlieffen. “The women in America are quite cunning with knives and very supportive of the men. As to children, sir, they are being used as messengers and deliverers of weapons and ammunition. Please do not scold me with prattle about innocent children.”
Holstein did not respond. He was surprised at the kaiser’s actions in expelling all Americans, but he was not shocked. American irregulars behind German lines were causing terrible losses. Schlieffen might try to downgrade the loss of the warehouses in Brooklyn, but they represented two weeks’ worth of food for the German army. It was getting more and more difficult to resupply them, since part of the American navy was now sitting in a rough arc running from Brest in France to Penzance in England; a second group sat off Dover, where the Channel was only a score of miles wide. Every German ship now had to travel by convoy, and each convoy had to fight its way through the American cruiser lines. The result of this had been the slowing down of supplies reaching the army as well as the siphoning off of warships from their coastal defense and fleet duties in order to protect the convoys.
Most of the ships got through, but a surprising percentage did not. The Americans tried to attack with a force larger than the warships shielding the convoy. Thus, although the convoy guards tried to protect themselves and their charges, American ships were almost always available to slip into the convoy and cause damage before being driven off. The Americans seemed to not want a major battle. Rather, they preferred to nip and snap, like a wild dog after a large prey, causing a multitude of small wounds rather than a single large one. Holstein recalled that the Chinese had a name for such a torture. They called it something like the death of a thousand cuts. Well, he sighed, Germany was being sliced and bled by very sharp American scalpels.