1920: America's Great War Page 4

  Woodrow Wilson, age sixty-four and the twenty-eighth President of the United States, lay on his back on a large bed. A cot was beside it and that was where Mrs. Wilson apparently slept. Jars of medicines were arrayed on a table. Luke felt embarrassed at invading the Wilsons’ privacy. Blankets covered Woodrow Wilson’s body up to his chin. His eyes were closed, his jaw was slack, and his face was drawn and gray. There was dried spittle on his chin. Martel thought the man in the bed looked worse than awful, but said nothing. Nobody spoke. Everyone was shocked by the president’s condition. Luke stared at the blankets. Were they even moving? Was he breathing?

  Mrs. Wilson gathered her strength. “All right, you’ve seen him. You can also see that he isn’t up to visitors. He must rest and you must leave. Perhaps you can talk to him another day.”

  Doctor Grayson reached a hand out to his Commander in Chief. “Don’t touch him!” Mrs. Wilson shrieked and grabbed for his arm.

  Grayson ignored her and pulled the blanket down to the middle of the president’s chest. He gently placed his hand on the president’s wrist and then his neck. He stood up slowly. His face was pale as he turned to the others.

  “Gentlemen, this man is dead.”

  * * *

  Robert Lansing thought that the only thing worse than finding that Woodrow Wilson was a corpse was the fact that Thomas R. Marshall was next in line to be the President of the United States, and would be so for the next five critical months. Marshall was perhaps the most incompetent vice president in the history of the United States, which, he thought ruefully, was saying a lot. He’d been despised by Wilson, who totally ignored him for two terms. Marshall was shy and insecure, and the only quote ever attributed to him was his deathless comment that “what this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.”

  What the country really needed, Lansing thought bitterly, was a vice president qualified to fill the shoes of the president in the case of disaster. And now disaster was looming. No, he thought sadly, it was present.

  General March and Lieutenant Martel departed, leaving Lansing alone. General March had been dropped off at the War Department and Martel was on his way to a local airstrip. Lansing had his driver take him to the residence of the vice president.

  A moment later, the chief justice arrived and they exchanged grim nods. Lord, thought Lansing as he went up the walk to Marshall’s house, what a strange world we live in.

  To Lansing’s surprise, Vice President Marshall answered it himself and invited them in. Except for the driver who waited patiently in the car, Lansing and Justice White were alone.

  Vice President Marshall looked at the two men in puzzlement as they entered his office. “To what do I owe the honor?”

  “Wilson is dead,” Lansing snapped. “You are now the President of the United States.”

  Marshall staggered back as if struck. “No, no. It can’t be.”

  Let’s get this over with quickly, Lansing thought. The delivery of the message had been intentionally cruel and blunt. Marshall might be a political clown and buffoon but he had a role to play and what was now a farce could not degenerate into tragedy.

  “Which can’t be, Wilson’s death or your being president?” Lansing asked. “The chief justice is here to administer the oath so you can begin immediately administering the affairs of state and leading the nation through the coming war with Germany.”

  Marshall looked wild-eyed with shock and looked like he was about to cry. “War? What in God’s name are you talking about? I know absolutely nothing about war or any crisis and don’t want to. And I most certainly don’t want to be president.”

  “You’re the next in line,” Justice White said sternly, as if talking to a schoolchild. “If you don’t want to be president, you must formally step aside.”

  Marshall took a deep breath, gathered himself, and sat down. “Gentlemen, you have surprised me. No, you have stunned me. I may not be the smartest man in the world, but I do consider myself a fairly honest one and a keen judge of my own character. I know myself and I know that I am utterly unqualified to become president of this wonderful country. If the crisis you speak of is so dire, then I should not even be an interim president until the inauguration next March. At that point you will become president, won’t you, Mr. Lansing?”

  Douglas answered. “He will. With the elected president dead, the vice president elect will become the president and will be sworn in for a four-year term, but not until March. Whoever he appoints as secretary of state will be the next in succession as there is no constitutional provision to appoint or elect a new vice president. Marshall, your term of office will be extremely brief, only five months. Then you can retire with honor back to Indiana.”

  Marshall shook his head. “If the country still exists, that is. Why are the Germans going to go to war with us?”

  Lansing sighed. As secretary of state he had researched the contradictory and sometimes bizarre behavior of the Kaiser. Experts said that the Kaiser had been born with an arm that was withered because it had become entangled in his umbilical cord. This gave him feelings of inferiority. How could he be a warrior king with a withered arm? The arm even made it difficult for him to ride a horse, a task he had ultimately mastered through force of will. Other experts said that the Kaiser had also been born with the umbilical tube around his neck, and this had caused a lack of oxygen to his brain, damaging him.

  The result was that the Kaiser, now sixty-one, saw that he only had a few more years to ensure his legacy as a conqueror. He’d defeated France, England, and Russia, and only the United States remained.

  Lansing was exhausted and exasperated. “They are going to war with us because they are Germans and that’s what they do. Also because they are the strongest nation on the planet and they wish to expand their strength and their empire, and because they despise us for thwarting their ambitions in Europe and in the Pacific. The Kaiser and his government feel Wilson’s intervention ended the war in Europe too soon. And also because the Kaiser is a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. I might also add that the world’s growing need for oil is frightening the Kaiser. His warships require it and Germany has none. However, there is sufficient oil in California to fuel the German fleet’s needs for quite some time.”

  Lansing felt sorry for the vice president.

  “And if I decline to take the oath?”

  “Simply declining would precipitate a constitutional crisis,” Chief Justice White said. “You would have to formally step aside, at which time the current secretary of state, Mr. Lansing, will become president until he is sworn in for a four-year term in March by virtue of the fact that he is also the vice president elect.”

  “And Congress will not object?” Marshall inquired.

  “I do not believe they will,” Lansing said. “The Constitution says that Congress has to appoint a president in the event that neither the president nor the vice president are able to serve. The most recent legislation has identified the secretary of state as the third in line.”

  Marshall was not a stupid man and now understood the true meaning of their visit. He smiled at Lansing. “And you believe you are a better and more qualified man than I am?”

  “In all honesty, Mr. Marshall, I do,” said Lansing.

  Marshall shook his head sadly. “And in all honesty, so do I.” He took a piece of paper from a credenza and began to write. “I assume, Mr. Chief Justice, that you are here to ensure that all is honest and aboveboard?”

  “Indeed.”

  Marshall finished and handed the paper to Justice White. “I presume this is satisfactory.”

  White glanced at it. “It is.” He signed his name as witness.

  Marshall nodded sadly, “So much for my ambitions. Every little boy says he wants to grow up and be president of the United States, and if I do what you want, I will go down as the first and doubtless only man in our history who passed on the honor.”

  Marshall laughed harshly. “And the dove was quite cunning, wasn’t he? Wilso
n probably knew he wouldn’t live out his next term, so he selected someone far more qualified than me to be the next in line. The only thing he didn’t count on was dying before the inauguration in March. Wilson was a stubborn, willful, hateful man who despised me and now he has given me this last insult to endure. Well, damn him, I will not play his game, dead or not.”

  Lansing put his hand on Marshall’s shoulder. “By resigning you will be honored in history as an example of an honest and virtuous man.”

  Marshall smiled appreciatively. “And you will go down as the man who finagled himself into the most miserable job in the world while I go and smoke a good five-cent cigar.”

  CHAPTER 3

  A few days later, Luke Martel was so exhausted he could hardly stand as General Hunter Liggett read the messages from Washington. They included endorsement letters from Lansing and March along with the actual translated message stating that the Germans were going to invade. A copy of the original German text was included in case anyone on Liggett’s staff wished to question the interpretation.

  Liggett was sixty-three, hugely fat and slow moving, which some mistook for mental slowness, or even stupidity. They were wrong. Liggett was a man of great dignity, and a solid general with a keen and lively intellect.

  He was also a man of some compassion. “For God’s sake, Lieutenant, sit down.”

  “I may fall asleep if I do, sir.”

  “I’ll wake you if I need to.”

  Two days and two sleepless nights in a series of frail and open biplanes, either rented from civilians or owned by the Signal Corps, had left Martel physically and emotionally drained. Nor had he had a moment to freshen up. He’d been met at the little airstrip outside San Francisco by a corporal driving, of all things, a motorcycle with a side car. More wind in my face, he thought, but this time with the added joy of bugs in my teeth.

  A telegram from March to Liggett had directed the general to see to it that Martel be picked up and delivered to him as soon as possible. So, after thousands of miles in an open cockpit in air that was bone-chillingly cold, he had finally arrived in San Francisco and the office of Major General Hunter Liggett.

  He was somewhat gratified to find that his innocuous telegram and phone call to Ike and Patton warning them of a sudden storm from the south had been passed on to Uncle Fox and Uncle Hunter as he’d requested.

  “I presume you have read this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is that vomit on your uniform?”

  “It is, sir. Two days in an airplane with utterly insane pilots will do that and I didn’t always make it over the side when we hit an air pocket or a storm. However, sir, there are parts of several states that have been thoroughly decorated by me, or desecrated if you prefer. The secretary of state and General March said it was urgent and that the full text could not be entrusted to the telegraph.”

  Liggett set the messages on his desk. “They were, of course, correct. Are you aware that Lansing is now the president?” Martel was not. It had all transpired while he was in the air.

  Liggett lifted his bulk from his chair. “Martel, I want you to go to your quarters, clean up, and get some sleep. After that, you will report here for assignment as God knows what. I have a feeling events are going to begin moving very quickly and we will all need clear heads.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But I do envy you, Martel. I would dearly love to go up in an airplane, but I very much doubt there’s one strong enough to hold me. Now get the hell out of here and come back in a more useful state. And by the way, Uncle Fox and Uncle Hunter commend you on a job well done.”

  * * *

  The Germans were not the sort of ally Mexican President Venustiano Carranza would have chosen, but then, beggars could not be choosers. He had needed help in the long and bloody civil war fighting the forces of his rival, Alvaro Obregon, and, in return for some small favors, Germany was more than pleased to comply. The Germans arrived, routed Obregon’s forces and imposed a peace of sorts.

  Now there were hundreds of thousands of German soldiers, engineers, and businessmen in Mexico, and her ports were choked with German warships and transports. Vera Cruz on the east coast and Mazatlan on the west now played host to powerful German Navy squadrons. Mountains of supplies had been moving westward. German efficiency was both incredible and frightening. The border with the United States was essentially frozen, and foreign travelers, especially Americans, were only allowed access to certain areas of Mexico.

  The despised Monroe Doctrine of the equally despised United States was just so much historical rubbish. He had contempt for the arrogance of the U.S. in thinking they could dictate the foreign policy of Mexico and other nations. In his opinion, the Americans felt that way because they were filled with brown-skinned people instead of white.

  Carranza’s enemies and some of his friends thought he had made a pact with the devil, and perhaps he had. But Mexico was now united and would be a powerful nation once her lost provinces were returned. He was going to take a tremendous risk, but the rewards would be worth it. Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona would again be part of Mexico. California would belong to Germany and that was an annoyance, but Carranza was pragmatic. At age sixty-one, he was mature enough to know he could not have everything.

  A positive side effect would be Carranza’s armies finally crushing the tens of thousands of armed Mexican refugees now in the United States. These were the remnants of Obregon’s forces, and they had to be destroyed in order to ensure Carranza’s view of Mexico’s future. This would be bloody but necessary.

  Carranza had just completed a conference with the long-serving ambassador from Berlin, Heinrich von Eckardt, and the details were finalized. The Mexican Army would thrust north towards San Antonio after first taking Laredo. They’d both laughed at the idea of the Alamo falling again, although Carranza had laughed without humor. The damned Texans considered the Alamo a holy place. He would crush its every stone into dust when it was recaptured.

  A second, smaller, attack would take Brownsville, while other Mexican units moved into Arizona and New Mexico. The Germans would attack with overwhelming force into California and move as far north as they wished.

  Some of the bushy-bearded Carranza’s advisors warned him that Mexico was vulnerable to counterattacks by the Yanquis since Texas was much closer and easier to reach than California. Von Eckardt had soothed Carranza. The Americans would be far more concerned about California. He said there was enmity between Texas and the rest of the United States. Once the American military was crushed in the Pacific, a peace treaty would be signed that would guaranty Mexican sovereignty over her reacquired territories.

  And Venustiano Carranzo would a hero to all of Mexico, indeed, all of Central and Latin America.

  * * *

  Meetings of the farmers, ranchers, and townspeople were often a bore. But this one had taken on an air of urgency. The two dead men discovered by Kirsten Biel hadn’t been the only bodies discovered. Ten others had been found the same day and it was supposed that still more lay rotting somewhere out in the barren land.

  The small settlement named Raleigh was located ten miles north of the Mexican border and proudly called itself a town. With feet firmly planted in two centuries, Raleigh had one gas station, two blacksmith shops, and a stable. It also had a city hall, a bank, a small hotel, a couple of stores, and two churches—one Lutheran and one Methodist. A Catholic church that catered mainly to those of Mexican descent was a couple of miles out of town, where the Lutherans and Methodists said it belonged. A railroad line heading north originated in the town, and there was a loading platform, although it had been months since anyone had seen a train.

  The name of Raleigh had been chosen by a real estate developer who thought he could get rich attracting Americans to the southern edge of California. The developer had gone broke, but Raleigh remained.

  The telephone hadn’t yet reached Raleigh, although there were a couple of ham radio operators. Interio
r plumbing was considered far more important than the telephone, and even that was in short supply.

  Kirsten let her cousin drive the Model T. She could drive better than he, but she knew it would irk him if she insisted. This day she dressed more demurely in a long blue dress. Hemlines were coming up, but why shock the very conservative people of Raleigh? She did tell Leonard that she intended to speak her mind at the meeting if she thought it appropriate. Leonard laughed and wondered aloud just how on earth he could stop her. Ella stayed behind to mind the ranch. Functions like this didn’t interest her, and she didn’t think they should interest Kirsten. Kirsten thought she was afraid of them.

  Roy Olson chaired the meeting. As the largest landowner in the area and the unofficial mayor of Raleigh, he felt it was his right and no one disagreed with him. A big man in his late forties, he stood and called for silence.

  “Folks, I don’t think anybody’s gonna argue when I say we have a problem that’s getting out of control. The Mexican civil war has spilled over the border and now involves us. We’ve sent letters and telegrams to the Federal government in San Francisco and to Governor Stephens in Sacramento, but they all say they can do nothing about it. Therefore, it’s up to us to do something ourselves before the Carranza forces start attacking us instead of just the refugees. I think it’s only a matter of time before that happens.”

  There were nods of agreement. Opinion held that Carranza was a bloodthirsty dictator who’d stop at nothing. “What are you proposing?” he was asked.

  “Armed patrols,” Olson said.

  Kirsten stood. “And what will they do, Roy? Will they fight Carranza’s army or will they fight the refugees and send them back? And what if Carranza’s Germans decide to help him out?”

  Olson flushed. He was used to making pronouncements, not having discussions. “The purpose of the patrols would be to protect our property and our lives, and not to go about fighting anybody unless, of course, attacked. And I don’t think there’s any chance of the Germans coming across the border.”