The Conquest of America Part 4

In throwing forward his forces, General Wood used the three lines of railroad that cross Long Island from west to east; and on May 17 his battleline reached from Patchogue through Holtsville to Port Jefferson.

Meantime, the Germans had advanced to a line that extended from East Moriches to Manorville; and on May 18 the first clash came at daybreak in a fierce cavalry engagement fought at Yaphank, in which the enemy were driven back in confusion. It was first blood for the Americans.

This initial success, however, was soon changed to disaster. On May 19 the invaders advanced again, with strengthened lines, under the support of the big guns of their fleet, which stood offsh.o.r.e and, guided by aeroplane observers, rained explosive sh.e.l.ls upon General Wood's right flank with such accuracy that the Americans were forced to withdraw.

Whereupon the Germans, using the famous hook formation that served them so well in their drive across northern France in the summer of 1914, pressed forward relentlessly, the fleet supporting them in a deadly flanking attack upon the American right wing.

On May 20 von Hindenburg established his headquarters at Forest Hills, where, less than a year before, his gallant countryman, the great Fraitzheim, had made an unsuccessful effort to wrest the Davis cup from the American champion and ex-champion, Murray and McLoughlin.

But that was a year ago!

In the morning General Wood's forces continued to retreat, fighting with dogged courage in a costly rear-guard action, and destroying railroads and bridges as they went. The carnage wrought by the German six- and eleven-inch explosive sh.e.l.ls with delayed-action fuses was frightful beyond anything I have ever known. Ten feet into the ground these projectiles would bury themselves before exploding, and then--well, no army could stand against them.

On May 22 General Wood was driven back to his original line of defences from Fort Totten to Valley Stream, where he now prepared to make a last stand to save Brooklyn, which stretched behind him with its peaceful spires and its miles of comfortable homes. Here the Americans were safe from the hideous pounding of the German fleet, and, although their losses in five days amounted to more than six thousand men, these had been replaced by reinforcements of militia from the West and South. There was still hope, especially as the Germans, once they advanced beyond Westbury and its famous polo fields, would come within range of the heavy mortars of Fort Totten and Fort Hamilton, which carried thirteen miles.

That night the German commander, General von Hindenburg, under a flag of truce, called upon the Americans to surrender in order to save the Borough of Brooklyn from destruction.

General Wood refused this demand; and on May 23, at dawn, under cover of his heavy siege-guns, von Hindenburg threw forward his veterans in terrific ma.s.sed attack, striking simultaneously at three points with three army divisions--one in a drive to the right toward Fort Totten, one in a drive to the left toward Fort Hamilton, and one in a drive straight ahead against General Wood's centre and the heart of Brooklyn.

All day the battle lasted--the battle of Brooklyn--with house-to-house fighting and repeated bayonet charges. And at night the invaders, outnumbering the American troops five to one, were everywhere victorious.

The defender's line broke first at Valley Stream, where the Germans, led by the famous Black Hussars, flung themselves furiously with cold steel upon the militiamen and put them to flight. By sundown the Uhlans were galloping, unopposed, along the broad sweep of the Eastern Parkway and parallel streets towards Prospect Park, where the high land offered an admirable site for the German artillery, since it commanded Fort Hamilton from the rear and the entire spread of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

It was now that Field Marshal von Hindenburg and his staff, speeding along the Parkway in dark grey military automobiles, witnessed a famous act of youthful heroism. As they swung across the Plaza to turn into Flatbush Avenue von Hindenburg ordered his chauffeur to slow up so that he might view the Memorial Arch and the MacMonnies statues of our Civil War heroes, and at this moment a sharp burst of rifle fire sounded across Prospect Park.

"What is that?" asked the commander, then he ordered a staff officer to investigate.

It appears that on this fateful morning five thousand American High School lads, from fifteen to eighteen years of age, members of the Athletic League of New York Public Schools, who had been trained in these schools to shoot accurately, had answered the call for volunteers and rallied to the defence of their city. By trolley, subway and ferry they came from all parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Harlem, Staten Island and the Bronx, eager to show what their months of work with subtarget gun machines, practice rods and gallery shooting, also their annual match on the Peekskill Rifle Range, would now avail against the enemy. But when they a.s.sembled on the Prospect Parade Ground, ready to do or die, they found that the entire supply of rifles for their use was one hundred and twenty-five! Seventy-five Krags, thirty Springfields and one hundred and twenty Winchesters, 22-calibre muskets--toys fit for shooting squirrels, and only a small supply of cartridges. The rifles available were issued to such of the boys as had won their badges of sharpshooter and marksman, two boys being a.s.signed to each gun, so that if one was shot the other could go on fighting.

"It was pitiful," said General George W. Wingate, President of the League, who was directing their movements, "to see the grief of those brave boys as they heard the German guns approaching and realised that they had nothing to fight with. Five thousand trained riflemen and no rifles!"

Nearer and nearer came the flanking force of the invading host and presently it reached the outskirts of this beautiful park, which with hill and lake and greensward covers five hundred acres in the heart of Brooklyn. A few boys were deployed as skirmishers along the eastern edge of the Park, but the ma.s.s occupied hastily dug trenches near the monument to the Maryland troops on Lookout Hill and the bra.s.s tablet that commemorate the battle of Long Island. At these historic points for half an hour they made a stand against a Bavarian regiment that advanced slowly under cover of artillery fire, not realising that they were sweeping to death a crowd of almost unarmed schoolboys.

Even so the Americans did deadly execution until their ammunition was practically exhausted. Then, seeing the situation hopeless, the head coaches, Emanuel Haug, John A. C. Collins, Donald D. Smith and Paul B. Mann, called for volunteers to hold the monument with the few remaining cartridges, while the rest of the boys retreated. Hundreds clamoured for this desperate honour, and finally the coaches selected seventy of those who had qualified as sharpshooters to remain and face almost certain death, among these being: Jack Condon of the Morris High School, J.

Vernet (Manual Training), Lynn Briggs (Erasmus), Isaac Smith (Curtis), Charles Mason (Commercial), C. Anthony (Bryant), J. Rosenfeld (Stuyvesant), V. Doran (Flushing), M. Marnash (Eastern District), F.

Scanlon (Bushwick), Winthrop F. Foskett (De Witt Clinton), and Richard Humphries (Jamaica).

Such was the situation when Field Marshal von Hindenburg dashed up in his motor car. Seventy young American patriots on top of Lookout Hill, with their last rounds of toy ammunition, were holding back a German regiment while their comrades fled for their lives. And surely they would have been a martyred seventy, since the Bavarians were about to charge in full force, had not von Hindenburg taken in the situation at a glance and shouted:

"Halt! It is not fitting that a German regiment shall use its strength against a handful of boys. Let them guard their monument! March on!"

Meantime, to the east and north of the city the battle raged and terror spread among the populace. All eyes were fixed on New York as a haven of refuge and, by the bridge, ferry and tunnel, hundreds of thousands made their escape from Brooklyn.

The three great bridges stretching their giant black arms across the river were literally packed with people--fathers, mothers, children, all on foot, for the trolleys were hopelessly blocked. A man told me afterwards that it took him seven hours to cross with his wife and their two little girls.

Other swarms hovered about the tunnel entrances and stormed the ferry-boats at their slips. Every raft in the harbour carried its load.

The Pennsylvania and Erie ferries from the other side of Manhattan, the Staten Island boats, the Coney Island and other excursion steamers, struggled through the press of sea traffic and I heard that three of these vessels sank of their own weight. Here and there, hardly discernible among the larger craft, were the small boats, life-boats, canoes, anything and everything that would float, each bearing its little group to a precarious safety on Manhattan Island.

Meantime, Fort Totten and Fort Hamilton had been taken from the rear by overwhelming forces, and their mortars had been used to silence the guns of Fort Schuyler and Fort Wadsworth. In this emergency, seeing the situation hopeless, General Wood withdrew his forces in good order under cover of a rear-guard action between the Uhlans and the United States colored cavalry, and, hurrying before him the crowds of fleeing civilians, marched his troops in three divisions across the Brooklyn Bridge, leaving Brooklyn in flames behind him. Then facing inexorable necessity, he ordered his engineers to blow up these three beautiful spans that had cost hundreds of millions, and to flood the subways between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Seen through the darkness at the moment of its ruin the vast steel structure of the Brooklyn Bridge, with its dim arches and filaments, was like a thing of exquisite lace. In shreds it fell, a tangled, twisted, tragically wrecked piece of magnificence.

CHAPTER V

GENERAL VON HINDENBURG TEACHES NEW YORK CITY A LESSON

On May 24, 1921, the situation of New York City was seen to be desperate, and most of the newspapers, even those that had clamoured loudest for resistance and boasted of American valour and resourcefulness, now admitted that the metropolis must submit to a German occupation.

Even the women among the public officials and political leaders were inclined to a policy of nonresistance. General Wood was urged to surrender the city and avoid the horrors of bombardment; but the commander replied that his first duty was to defend the territory of the United States, and that every day he could keep the enemy isolated on Long Island was a day gained for the permanent defences that were frantically organising all over the country.

It was vital, too, that the immense stores of gold and specie in the vaults of the Federal Reserve and other great New York banks should be safely transported to Chicago.

All day and all night, automobile trucks, operated under orders from William G. McAdoo, Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank, loaded with millions and millions of gold, pa.s.sed unprotected and almost unheeded through the crowded section between Wall Street and the Grand Central Station. The people stared at them dumbly. They knew what was going on.

They knew they could have a fortune by reaching out their hands. But at this moment, with their eternities in their eyes, they had no thought of gold. Hour after hour the work went on. Finally, subway trains and street cars were pressed into service as treasure-carriers.

By night $800,000,000 had started West and the next morning Chicago was the financial capital of America.

At midnight General Wood gave final orders for resistance to the last gun and the last man; and, when early the next morning the German general again sent officers with a flag of truce demanding the surrender of Manhattan Island, Wood's reply was a firm refusal. He tried, however, to gain time in negotiations; and a few hours later I accompanied a delegation of American staff officers with counter-proposals across the East River in a launch. I can see von Hindenburg now, in his high boots and military coat, as he received the American officers at the foot of the shattered Brooklyn Bridge. A square ma.s.sive head with close-cropped white hair, brushed straight back from a broad forehead. And sad searching eyes--wonderful eyes.

"Then you refuse to surrender? You think you can fight?" the Field Marshal demanded.

At which the ranking American officer, stung by his arrogance, declared that they certainly did think they could fight, and would prove it.

"Ah! So!" said von Hindenburg, and he glanced at a gun crew who were loading a half-ton projectile into an 11.1-inch siege-gun that stood on the pavement. "Which is the Woolworth Building?" he asked, pointing across the river.

"The tallest one, Excellency--the one with the Gothic lines and gilded cornices," replied one of his officers.

"Ah, yes, of course. I recognise it from the pictures. It's beautiful.

Gentlemen,"--he addressed the American officers,--"I am offering twenty-dollar gold pieces to this gun crew if they bring down that tower with a single shot. Now, then, careful!...

"Ready!"

We covered our ears as the shot crashed forth, and a moment later the most costly and graceful tower in the world seemed to stagger on its base. Then, as the thousand-pound sh.e.l.l, striking at the twenty-seventh story, exploded deep inside, clouds of yellow smoke poured out through the crumbling walls, and the huge length of twenty-four stories above the jagged wound swayed slowly toward the east, and fell as one piece, flinging its thousands of tons of stone and steel straight across the width of Broadway, and down upon the grimy old Post Office Building opposite.

_"Sehr gut!"_ nodded von Hindenburg. "It's amusing to see them fall.

Suppose we try another? What's that one to the left?"

"The Singer Building, Excellency," answered the officer.

"Good! Are you ready?"

Then the tragedy was repeated, and six hundred more were added to the death toll, as the great tower crumbled to earth.

"Now, gentlemen,"--von Hindenburg turned again to the American officers with a tiger gleam in his eyes,--"you see what we have done with two shots to two of your tallest and finest buildings. At this time to-morrow, with G.o.d's help, we shall have a dozen guns along this bank of the river, ready for whatever may be necessary. And two of our _Pa.r.s.evals_, each carrying a ton of dynamite, will float over New York City. I give you until twelve o'clock to-morrow to decide whether you will resist or capitulate. At twelve o'clock we begin firing."

Our instructions were to return at once in the launch by the shortest route to the Battery, where automobiles were waiting to take us to General Wood's headquarters in the Metropolitan Tower. I can close my eyes to-day and see once more those pictures of terror and despair that were spread before us as we whirled through the crowded streets behind the crashing hoofs of a cavalry escort. The people knew who we were, where we had been, and they feared what our message might be.

Broadway, of course, was impa.s.sable where the ma.s.s of red brick from the Singer Building filled the great canyon as if a glacier had spread over the region, or as if the lava from a man-made Aetna had choked this great thoroughfare.