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.
He lurched forward to the smoking crater. There was nothing. He looked about and saw pieces of cloth on the ground and bits of things that were red. He screamed, and this time he could hear it.
On board the
Gazelle,
the German captain called a cease-fire. The mob on the shore was no longer a threat. The lifeboats were on the sand and the soldiers already disembarking and fanning out in open skirmish formation. He peered through his telescope at the lifeless bodies on the beach and elsewhere, ignoring the fleeing survivors who were fast disappearing into the nearby woods. Search as he might, he could not see any weapons. His heart filled with a sickened dread. There had to be weapons. Dear God, there had to be weapons. Please.
Patrick Mahan stretched his six-foot body on the stiff cot. After so many years in the military, he still found it difficult to get comfortable on one of the damned things. He was surprised that he had slept at all, but he obviously had.
The clock on the wall told him it was six in the morning of Monday, June 3, 1901. He remembered that he was in the war room on the second level of the White House.
He stood up, and his rustling alerted a servant, who came in with a bowl of water and a cloth to refresh him. Equally important, he directed him to the little room down the hall where he could relieve the suddenly intense pressures on his bladder and bowels. The same servant told him they had taken the liberty of cleaning and pressing the uniforms and clothing in his baggage.
Mind and body clear, he changed into a uniform and sipped a cup of coffee. He had to admit that the service was excellent; he could easily get used to staying at the White House. If only they provided something better than cots.
He turned at the sound of footsteps. Teddy Roosevelt entered, his face grim. “I hope you slept well.” When Patrick assured him he had, Roosevelt continued. “It appears things are happening. The phone lines to New York came up a few moments ago, and the New York papers are saying there’ve been fires and explosions in both the city and the harbor. They also say a number of strange ships have been sighted either in or approaching the harbor.”
Roosevelt stared at the silent phones and telegraph in the war room. “Of course, no one thought to tell us first.” He sighed. “Perhaps they assumed we already knew. After all, we are the government. By the way, I have not told McKinley. Let the man rest while he can. That is also why I didn’t waken you.”
“What about landings?”
“Nothing yet. Thank God.”
There was a clatter of footsteps on the stairs and a half-dozen soldiers entered the room with a young and very nervous lieutenant. Roosevelt waved off a salute and the men took up stations by the communications equipment. “One of Captain Hedges’s ideas,” explained Roosevelt. “He also sent a platoon of infantry to provide additional security for the White House. Other units are being quietly scattered throughout the city. The ones here will be housed in the conservatory for the time being and simply be a standby reserve.”
Stand by for what? Patrick thought. Before he could comment, the phone rang and was answered by one of the young soldiers, who listened and appeared to spasm slightly before gaining control of himself.
“Sir,” he said, directing his comment to the vice president, “the caller is saying that unknown soldiers are landing on beaches along the south shore of Long Island. He also says there’s been a lot of fighting and many casualties. He’s also heard something about a massacre somewhere.”
William McKinley chose that moment to enter the room. The information appeared to stagger him, and Roosevelt grabbed his arm. Patrick was shocked by McKinley’s appearance. The man who was so imposing a physical specimen that he had been described by some as a statue now appeared to have lost all color and life. The vibrant, angry man of yesterday seemed but a shell. Patrick quickly recalled that McKinley had served in the Union army in the Civil War as well as having been commander in chief during the Spanish war, so this was his third war. And this for an old man who professed an abhorrence and hatred of violence.
Roosevelt took McKinley to a chair and tried to make him comfortable. It was questionable whether he succeeded.
From that point on, the day became a blur. Calls and telegrams poured in, confirming the worst. Soldiers, now positively identified as German, had indeed landed on Long Island and were advancing along the shore toward the Brooklyn side of New York, where a flotilla of German warships was now in plain sight. Behind them were scores of merchant ships and liners, all obviously full of soldiers and materiel.
Governor Odell called out the National Guard at about ten in the morning and reported that a handful of German nationals had been taken into custody and were being charged with sabotage. The governor also asked where the hell the rest of the American army was.
McKinley sipped a glass of water. Some of his color seemed to be returning. “It is a good question, is it not? What do we have that can assist them?”
Roosevelt shook his head. “Nothing. Not a damned thing. There may have been a navy ship or two in the harbor, but I doubt it. There is no army post of any size within hundreds of miles, and the coastal fortifications appear to have been either taken by surprise or blown up by saboteurs. Of course,” he added ruefully, “our coastal forts were a farce anyhow.”
About noon, Secretary of State John Hay arrived, along with Lt. Gen. Nelson Miles, the commanding general of the U.S. Army.
General Miles was a vain and bristly man who had a deserved reputation of presuming slights at the drop of a hat. John Hay, on the other hand, was a courtly gentleman who had begun his government service decades before as the assistant personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. He accepted his introduction to Patrick with a warming grace, whereas Miles simply glared. Hay, at sixty-three, was a year older than Miles.
“John,” said McKinley to his secretary of state. “Should we have expected this? Why have we been so surprised?”
“In all my life, sir, I have never been so totally shocked. I thought I had seen all manner of strange things when dealing with the Germans, but this tops them all. I knew they were upset with us for insisting that they stay out of the Western Hemisphere, but never, never did anyone at the State Department even remotely anticipate what they are doing! And they have us so helpless!” He turned to Miles. “Have they not?”
Miles looked as though he had swallowed something sour. As commanding general, he surely took the question as a rebuke. “Totally,” he said finally. “The state militias and the National Guard are all there is. Even if they succeed in making contact with the Germans, they will be defeated. They have had little training and less in the way of necessary equipment. No, gentlemen, the bulk of our regular army, such as it is, is well away from New York.”