The Conquest of America Part 17

"Because the conditions will never be right again. Armies will be suspicious after one has been wiped out, but the first time it's possible."

"How can you be sure von Hindenburg's army will cross the Susquehanna at the exact place where you want it to cross?"

"They will cross at the clearly indicated place for crossing, won't they?

That's where we have set our trap, five miles wide, on the direct line between Philadelphia and Baltimore. They can't cross lower down because the river swells into Chesapeake Bay, and if they cross higher up they simply go out of their way. Why should they? They're not afraid to meet Leonard Wood's little army, are they? They'll come straight across the river and then--good-night."

This was as near as I could get to an understanding of the mystery. Astor would tell me no more, although he knew I would die rather than betray the secret.

"You might talk in your sleep," he laughed. "I wish I didn't know the thing myself. It's like going around with a million dollars in your pocket." Then he added earnestly: "There are a lot of American cranks and members of Bryan's peace party who wouldn't stand for this if they knew it."

"You mean they would tell the Germans?"

"They would tell everybody. They'd call it barbarous, wicked. Perhaps it is, but--we're fighting for our lives, aren't we? For our country?"

"Sure we are," I agreed.

Later on Mr. Astor told me how he had come into possession of this extraordinary military knowledge. He was one of the Committee of Twenty-one.

The next day we flew out again to the battle front, taking care not to advance over the proscribed area, and we scanned the northern banks of the Susquehanna for signs of the enemy, but saw none. On the second day we had the same experience, but on the third day, towards evening, three Taubes approached swiftly at a great height and hovered over our lines, taking observations, and an hour later we made out a body of German cavalry on the distant hills.

"An advance guard of Saxons and Westphalians," said I, studying their flashing helmets. "There will be something doing to-morrow."

There was. The battle of the Susquehanna began at daybreak, October 14th, 1921, with an artillery duel which grew in violence as the batteries on either side of the river found the ranges. Aeroplanes skirmished for positions over the opposing armies and dropped revealing smoke columns as guides to the gunners. Hour after hour the Germans poured a terrific fire of sh.e.l.ls and shrapnel upon the American trenches and I wondered if they would not destroy or disarrange our trap, but Astor said they would not.

Our inadequate artillery replied as vigorously as possible and was supported by the old U. S. battleship _Montgomery_, manned by the Baltimore naval brigade under Commander Ralph Robinson, which lay two miles down the river and dropped twelve-inch sh.e.l.ls within the enemy's lines. Valuable service was also rendered by heavy mobile field artillery improvised by placing heavy coast defence mortars on strongly reinforced railroad trucks. None of this, however, prevented the Germans from forcing through their work of pontoon building, which had been started in the night. Five lines of pontoons were thrown across the Susquehanna in two days, and very early on the morning of October 14th, the crossing of troops began.

All day from our aeroplane, circling at a height of a mile or rising to two miles in case of danger, we looked down on fierce fighting in the trenches and saw the Germans drive steadily forward, sweeping ahead in close formation, mindless of heavy losses and victorious by reason of overwhelming numbers.

By four o'clock in the afternoon they had dislodged the Americans from their first lines of entrenchment and forced them to retreat in good order to reserve lines five miles back of the river. Between these front lines and the reserve lines there was a stretch of rolling farm land lined and zigzagged with three-foot ditches used for shelter by our troops as they fell back.

By six o'clock that evening the German army had occupied this entire area and by half-past seven, in the glory of a gorgeous crimson sunset, we saw the invaders capture our last lines of trenches and drive back the Americans in full retreat, leaving the ground strewn with their own dead and wounded.

"Now you'll see something," cried Astor with tightening lips as he scanned the battlefield. "It may come at any moment. We've got them where we want them. Thousands and thousands of them! Their whole army!"

He pointed to the pontoon bridges where the last companies of the German host were crossing. On the heights beyond, their artillery fire was slackening; and on our side the American fire had ceased. Night was falling and the Germans were evidently planning to encamp where they were.

"There are a few thousand over there with the artillery who haven't crossed yet," said I. "The Crown Prince must be there with his generals."

My friend nodded grimly. "We'll attend to them later. Ah! Now look! It's coming!"

I turned and saw a thick wall of grey and black smoke rolling in dense billows over a section of the rear trenches, and out of this leaped tongues of blue fire and red fire. And farther down the lines I saw similar sections of smoke and flame with open s.p.a.ces between, but these s.p.a.ces closed up swiftly until presently the fire wall was continuous over the whole extent of the rear trenches.

We could see German soldiers by hundreds rushing back from this peril; but, as they ran, fires started at dozens of points before them in the network of ditches and, spreading with incredible rapidity, formed flaming barriers that shut off the ways of escape. Within a few minutes the whole area beneath us, miles in length and width, that had been occupied by the victorious German army, was like a great gridiron of fire or like a city with streets and avenues and broad diagonals of fire. All the trenches and ditches suddenly belched forth waves of black smoke with blue and red flames darting through them, and fiercest of all burned the fire walls close to the river bank.

"Good G.o.d!" I cried, astounded at this vast conflagration. "What is it that's burning?"

"Oil," said Astor. "The whole supply from the Standard Oil pipe lines diverted here, millions and millions of gallons. It's driven by big pumps through mains and pipes and reservoirs, buried deep. It's spurting from a hundred outlets. Nothing can put it out. Look! The river is on fire!"

I did look, but I will not tell what I saw nor describe the horrors of the ensuing hour. By nine o'clock it was all over. The last word in frightfulness had been spoken and the despoilers of Belgium were the victims.

I learned later that the pipes which carried these floods of oil carried also considerable quant.i.ties of a.r.s.eniuretted hydrogen. The blue flames that Mr. Astor and I noticed came from the fierce burning of this a.r.s.eniuretted hydrogen as it hissed from oil vents in the trenches under the drive of powerful pumps.

Thousands of those that escaped from the fire area and tried to cross back on the pontoons were caught and destroyed, a-midstream, by fire floods that roared down the oil-spread Susquehanna. And about 7,000 that escaped at the sides were made prisoners.

It was announced in subsequent estimates and not denied by the Germans that 113,000 of the invaders lost their lives here. To all intents and purposes von Hindenburg's army had ceased to exist.

CHAPTER XIX

GENERAL WOOD SCORES ANOTHER BRILLIANT SUCCESS AGAINST THE CROWN PRINCE

On the evening of October 14, 1921, Field Marshal von Kluck awaited final news of the battle of the Susquehanna while enjoying an excellent meal with his staff in the carved and gilded dining-room of the old S. B.

Chittenden mansion on Brooklyn Heights, headquarters of the army of occupation. All the earlier despatches through the afternoon had been favourable and, as the company finished their _Kartoffelsuppe_, von Kluck had risen, amidst _hochs_ of applause, and read a telegram from his Imperial master, the Crown Prince, who, with Field Marshal von Hindenburg, was directing the battle from Perryville on the Northern bank, announcing that the German army had crossed the river and driven back Leonard Wood's forces for five miles and occupied a vast network of American trenches.

The officers lingered over their _preisselbeeren compote_ and _kaffeekuchen_ and, presently, the commander rose again, holding a telegram just delivered by a red-faced lieutenant whose cheek was slashed with scars.

"Comrades, the great moment has come--I feel it. Our victory at the Susquehanna means the end of American resistance, the capture of Baltimore, Washington and the whole Atlantic seaboard. Let us drink to the Fatherland and our place in the sun."

Up on their feet came the fire-eating company, with lifted gla.s.ses and the gleam of conquerors in their eyes.

"_Hoch! Hoch!_" they cried and waited, fiercely joyful, while von Kluck opened the despatch. His s.h.a.ggy brows contracted ominously as he scanned two yellow sheets crowded with closely written German script.

"_Gott in Himmel!_" he shouted, and threw the telegram on the table.

The blow had fallen, the incredible truth was there before them. Not only had the redoubtable von Hindenburg, idol of a nation, hero of countless Russian victories, suffered crushing defeat, but his proud battalions had been almost annihilated. In the whole history of warfare there had never been so complete a disaster to so powerful an army.

"Burned to death! Our brave soldiers! Was there ever so barbarous a crime?" raved the Field Marshal. "But the American people will pay for this, yes, ten times over. We still have two armies on their soil and a fleet ready to transport from Germany another army of half a million. We hold their greatest cities, their leading citizens at our mercy, and they shall have none. Burned in oil! _Mein Gott!_ We will show them."

"Excellency," questioned the others anxiously, "what of his Imperial Highness the Crown Prince?"

"Safe, thank G.o.d, and von Hindenburg is safe. They did not cross the cursed river. They stayed on the Northern bank with the artillery and three thousand men."

I learned later that these three thousand of the German rear guard, together with seven thousand that escaped from the fire zone and were made prisoners, were all that remained alive of the 120,000 Germans that had crossed the Susquehanna that fatal morning with flying eagles.

Orders were immediately given by von Kluck that retaliatory steps be taken to strike terror into the hearts of the American people, and the wires throughout New England were kept humming that night with instructions to the commanding officers of German forces of occupation in Boston, Hartford, New Haven, Portland, Springfield, Worcester, Newport, Fall River, Stamford; also in Newark, Jersey City, Trenton and Philadelphia, calling upon them to issue proclamations that, in punishment of an act of barbarous ma.s.sacre committed by General Wood and the American army, it was hereby ordered that one-half of the hostages previously taken by the Germans in each of these cities (the same to be chosen by lot) should be led forth at noon on October 15th and publicly executed.

At half-past eleven, October 15th, on the Yale University campus, there was a scene of excitement beyond words, although dumb in its tragic expression, when William Howard Taft, who was one of the hostages drawn for execution, finished his farewell address to the students.

"I call on you, my dear friends," he cried with an inspired light in his eyes, "to follow the example of our glorious ancestors, to put aside selfishness and all base motives and rise to your supreme duty as American citizens. Defend this dear land! Save this nation! And, if it be necessary to die, let us die gladly for our country and our children, as those great patriots who fought under Washington and Lincoln were glad to die for us."

With a n.o.ble gesture he turned to the guard of waiting German soldiers.

He was ready.

Deeply moved, but helpless, the great audience of students and professors waited in a silence of rage and shame. They would fain have hurled themselves, unarmed, upon the gleaming line of soldiers that walled the quadrangle, but what would that have availed?

A Prussian colonel of infantry, with many decorations on his breast, stepped to the edge of the platform, glanced at his wrist-watch and said in a high-pitched voice: "Gentlemen of the University, I trust you have carefully read the proclamation of Field Marshal von Kluck. Be sure that any disorder during the execution of hostages that is now to take place will bring swift and terrible punishment upon the city and citizens of New Haven. Gentlemen, I salute you."