Wild Blue Ponders: War

By Max Blue

Forged in conflict, the United States of America has been at war in one form or another for over two hundred years, and at peace for just seventeen. Within seventy-eight mostly undeclared wars, over a million souls have sadly perished.

In a historical anthology, novelist Max Blue shares forty-nine chapters from his twelve published novels set against the backdrop of Americas wars. Divided into six parts, Blues stories detail diverse battles that include World War I; the economic war of the Great Depression; World War II; the Civil Rights War, Korean War, and Cold War; academic wars; and the ongoing drug wars that still plague America today. His fascinating tales share a glimpse into a time when President Woodrow Wilson reluctantly led his country into a genocidal European war, thousands of World War I veterans desperately sought ways to survive and feed their families, ships were torpedoed in a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and North Korean troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel to invade South Korea.

Wild Blue Ponders shares a diverse collection of short tales extracted from the works of an American novelist that detail the effects and aftermath of war through the eyes of fictional characters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532025501

Max Blue

Max Blue has been a professional baseball player, a US Navy line officer, and a scientist. He is the author of twelve novels, four baseball books, and forty short tales published as e-books. Max resides with the Luminous Liddy, his wife of sixty-one years, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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Copyright © 2017 Max Blue.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-2551-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2549-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-2550-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017912500

iUniverse rev. date: 09/21/2017

I’ve

dedicated much of my previous published work to my lifetime companion, my wife of sixty-plus years, the classy dame I call the Luminous Liddy. Let this work be no exception. The Luminous Liddy continues to shine.

ALSO BY MAX BLUE

The Baseball Books

2001: God Is Alive and Playing Third Base for the Appleton Papermakers (iUniverse, Writers Club Press)

2009: Phillies Journal 1888–2008 (Strategic Book Publishers)

2011: Philadelphia’s Phillies: Baseball Thrills in Three Centuries (Publish America)

2012: Philadelphia Baseball (Publish America)

The War Novels

2003: For Those in Peril on the Sea (Publish America)

2004: Times (Publish America)

2008: Cold Front Passing Hokkaido (Strategic Book Publishers)

2013: The War Guilt Clause (Tate Publishing)

2015: Tin Can Down: The Cold War (GM Books)

The Bismark Pacheco Adventures (all available as e-books from online bookstore)

2001: Cielito Lindo (iUniverse, Writers Club Press)

2002: Murder at the CAT (iUniverse, Writers Club Press)

2003: Luz Stella’s Tale (iUniverse)

The Civil Rights Novels

2003: Part Two of For Those in Peril on the Sea (Publish America)

2009: Shorty Spooner (Eloquent Book Publishers)

2013: Count (Tate Publishing)

The Academic Novel

2001: Higher Ed (iUniverse, Writers Club Press)

The Young Adult Novel

2001: Giessow’s Cottage Farm (iUniverse, Writers Club Press)

The E-Book Tales (Kindle published)

2013: Fish Tales

2014: Bird Tales

2014: Costa Rica Tales

2014: Philly Tales

2014: South Jersey Tales

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would be remiss if I did not once again give special thanks to my pal Herb Rogoff, who took time from a busy artist’s life to design and execute covers for the novels Times and Shorty Spooner. Also for Times, Herb provided inside art in the form of ten memorable sketches that made the characters come alive on the page. Thank you, friend Herb.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1

1916–1919: World War I

Times

Mary Cady

The Election

Hat In The Ring

The War Guilt Clause

Ludendorff Und Von Hindenburg

St. Mihiel And The Meuse-Argonne

Peggy Schooner

Mother France

Father France

Jena And The Chiliastic Vision

Part 2

1935–1939: The Great Depression

Giessow’s Cottage Farm

Jaybird

Giessow’s Cottage Farm

Phil

Part 3

1941–1945: World War Ii

For Those In Peril On The Sea

Prologue: Boats

Colonel Nishi And The Bbrowns

A New Beginning

Mags

The Moral Meaning Of The Atomic Bomb

The Purpose Of Man’s Existence

China Night

Part 4

1948–1956: Civil Rights War, Korean War, And Cold War

Count

Prologue

A Sewer Of Imbecility

Moderation Has No Place In Birmingham

Risk

Virgil’s Last Bottle

Shorty Spooner

Prologue

Shorty Spooner

Alberta’s Kitchen

Alberta Hatches A Scheme

Cold Front Passing Hokkaido

Showdown

Zeng Ming-Gao

Chang Fong-Ying

Summit Meeting

Tin Can Down

Mickey Michigan And Sunshine Mcgee

Honolulu

Westpac

San Diego Again

Part 5

1965–1985: The Academic Wars

Higher Ed

First And Ten—1965

Dangerous Dan—1967

Be Prepared For Heartbreak—1972

Ensenada—1975

Costa Rica—1985

Part 6

The Drug Wars

Murder At The Cat

Sunday

Monday

Wednesday

Luz Stella’s Tale

Texas Hold ’Em

Dead Meat

Luz Stella’s Tale

Bubba Driver

Wilson Abut

About The Author

INTRODUCTION

As I ponder’d in silence, Returning upon my poems, considering, lingering long, A Phantom arose before me with distrustful aspect, Terrible in beauty, age, and power, The genius of poets of old lands, as to me directing like flame its eyes, With finger pointing to many immortal songs, And menacing voice,

What singest thou? It said, Knows’t thou not there is but one theme for ever-enduring bards? And that is the theme of War, the fortune of battles, The making of perfect soldiers.

Be it so then, I answer’d, I too haughty Shade also sing war and a longer and greater one than any, Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, victory deferr’d and wavering, (Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last) the field the world,

For life and death, for the Body and for the eternal Soul, Lo, I too am come chanting the chant of battles.

I above all promote brave soldiers.

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Walt Whitman chanted the chant and served as a wound dresser in the bloody mayhem of the War between the States.

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Forged in conflict, the United States of America has been at war in one form or another for 223 of the 240 years of its existence. The data from Wikipedia is staggering: 78 wars and 1.354 million deaths, to say nothing of those wounded and missing. Those are doubtlessly underestimated numbers. Forty-two of the wars involved battles with Native Americans, the final one in 1923.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that a twenty-first-century American novelist with an ear for history would find himself writing stories set against the backdrop of one or another of his country’s wars.

The anthology that follows is based on my chapter selection from the 340 chapters available in my twelve published novels. How does one choose? My intent was to select chapters that might stand alone for their entertainment value in the context of the entire novel and at the same time give the reader an idea of where the plot lines of the novel are headed. I chose fifty-five chapters.

The anthology is divided into six parts:

Part 1:1916–1919: World War I

Part 2: 1935–1939: Economic War: The Great Depression

Part 3: 1941–1945: World War II

Part 4: 1948–1956: Civil Rights War, Korean War, and Cold War

Part 5: 1965–1985: Academic Wars

Part 6: Ongoing: Drug Wars

Part 1 of the anthology covers the four years from 1916 to 1919, when President Woodrow Wilson, yielding only to the argument of protecting America’s sacred honor in the face of unrestricted German submarine warfare on American ships, reluctantly led his country into the genocidal European war raging across the 150-mile trench line called the Western Front in northern France. Selections from the novels Times and The War Guilt Clause, seen through the eyes of teenage protagonists Mary Cady, Ted and Ed Frederick, and the feisty Peggy Schooner, bring the reader nose to nose with the mud of Flanders Fields, the terror of the Argonne Forest, the agony of grieving French wives and mothers, and the Paris peace conference frustrations of President Wilson, who drove himself to an early grave in a fruitless personal war against congressional Republicans led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge over his dream, not to say his obsession, of leading the United States into the untested waters of international government in the form of the League of Nations.

Regarding part 2, the author, who was born in 1929, is one of a rapidly diminishing number of Americans who remember the Great Depression of the 1930s, when his mother served plates of food to jobless men on the back steps of the East Peoria, Illinois, home where he lived with his mother, father, and brother, Jaybird. The United States was not engaged in a shooting war, but the country was a long way from peace, with thousands of World War I veterans desperately seeking ways to survive and feed their families. Included in this anthology are chapters from the novel Giessow’s Cottage Farm, which addresses an often overlooked consequence of unrestricted war: the plight of children left behind when fathers go off to fight. What about Phil? What about Crazy Dan, who thinks he’s his father, Phillip Stoltzfus?

Regarding part 3, the novel For Those in Peril on the Sea recalls the Sunday morning in 1941 when Japanese bombers shocked the world by devastating the US fleet at Pearl Harbor, plunging the country into war. The novel puts the reader on the beaches and in the caves of Iwo Jima and Okinawa through the fictional eyes of Booker T. McCan and Flapper Jackson. When World War II ended with atomic bombs exploding over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Booker T. and Flapper find themselves on hospital ships after almost four terrifying days, floating in the Philippine Sea following the torpedoing of their ship, the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis. Flapper’s nurse, Susan Land, becomes his wife.

Next, we get to look, with Flapper Jackson and his lady, Susan Land Jackson, into the troubled mind of Doctor Professor Chancellor Arthur Holly Compton, one of the scientists who contributed to the production of the A-bombs, in the chapter entitled The Purpose of Man’s Existence.

Part 4 of the anthology begins in 1948, a watershed year in US history. In July of that year, almost 172 years to the day after the Declaration of Independence was signed in Philadelphia, the Democratic National Party convened in that historic city to nominate a potential president for the November election. After years of indifference to the plight of Negro citizens, the Democrats included a strong civil rights plank in the party platform. Two chapters from the novel Count, A Sewer of Imbecility and Moderation Has No Place in Birmingham, included in this anthology tell us that in 1948, the states of the old Confederacy might well have preferred to again secede from the Union rather than accept that plank. For the country at large, there was no going back.

The novels Count and Shorty Spooner share the theme of the civil rights struggles in mid-twentieth-century Alabama. Both novels have sections dealing with the fictional concept of a presidential academy at Tuskegee Institute. The character Bernard Riskman is based on the real-life Bayard Rustin, an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights, and is the main focus of the chapter entitled Risk, which finds a place in both novels.

In the novel Shorty Spooner, Miz Alberta, the skillet-wielding cook, skewers her Black Muslim visitor with the question Who say God got a mouth? after he tells her that Elijah Muhammad got his orders straight from the mouth of God. The story of Shorty Spooner exposes the hatred, fear, and distrust of a nation torn apart by racism and reminds us of the white and black individuals who fought to put an end to discrimination.

In June of 1950, the fires of war flared again when North Korean troops, urged on by Communists Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung, crossed the thirty-eighth parallel to invade South Korea. In recent years, the United Nations has deployed so-called peacekeepers to trouble spots around the world, but the forty thousand United Nations troops who charged up those barren Korean hills and suffered through subzero Korean winters carried no such label, nor did the nearly six million US military personnel who logged time in and around that benighted land. America suffered mightily in the three-year hot war, which some pundits called a police action: 36,000 killed and 106,000 wounded. Two million North Korean, South Korean, and Chinese troops died. Civilian casualties were equally horrendous. Included in this anthology is the chapter entitled Korea from the novel Cold Front Passing Hokkaido.

Cold Front Passing Hokkaido is not easy to summarize, with its cast of lusty characters ranging from Kaganovich, the hairy Russian submarine commander, to Soong Ching-ling, Madame Sun Yat-sen, who stood on the platform with Mao Tse-tung when he took power in 1948. The novel introduces Chang Fong-ying, the enchanting Hong Kong shopgirl who stole a United States Seventh Fleet sailor’s heart in 1956 and has nurtured it for sixty-one years and counting. The author, Max Blue, was born sometime in the final decade of the twentieth century.

It was the essence of the Cold War—the 1955 Formosa Strait Crisis. The following is from the back cover of the novel Cold Front Passing Hokkaido:

On the island of Okinawa, twenty-five US Air Force F-100D fighter-bombers sat poised for a retaliatory strike against mainland China. Their payload: twenty-five hydrogen bombs. Witness the years preceding this international showdown from both sides as East meets West, and Lindsay Mae Sawyer, the pregnant wife of an air force officer, finds her fate in this deadly conflict. She must convince Chinese marshal Chu Teh that an attack on Formosa would result in the deaths of millions of people along the Yellow River.

Regarding part 5, the term anthology invokes thoughts of poetry collections. What novelist can resist the hope that his or her prose might be seen to contain elements of poetry that lift the work to a higher level of meaning? It certainly is poetry in the novel Tin Can Down when the old master concludes the Buddhist wedding ceremony by posing this question to the bride and groom: If heaven wishes peace and order for the world, who is there besides you to bring it about?

Max Blue issued himself a poetic license and let it run free in the novel Higher Ed. Edward Appleton is nearly seven feet tall and is the president of Lawt Sidney (anagram alert) University. Among the seven Sidney U. board members are Grumpy Marcus Elay (Yale spelled backward); Feliz Gonzalez, a crane operator on the San Diego docks; and Doc Rivera, head veterinarian at the Tijuana Bull Ring. Higher Ed has his hands full dealing with deans, such as Dangerous Dan Stonewood, who recites Robert Service ballads (The Shooting of Dan McGrew) in his head during faculty meetings. But besides all the satirical zaniness, the novel Higher Ed offers thoughts on some serious issues facing modern society, including extramarital affairs; scientific fraud; and bioethical questions relating to abortion, euthanasia, and aging.

Most would not think of limericks as poetry, but sometimes they are. Blue’s novels are peppered with limericks, no doubt fallout from the 1,500 or so limericks oozing from his baseball pen documenting the Philadelphia Phillies’ poetry-in-action championship seasons of 2008–2010.

Blue’s brain harbors a limerick locker. Consider the day Max and Liddy reported for duty at the Costa Rican Center for Tropical Agriculture (see the novel Murder at the CAT):

Hola, Amigos

Liddy jumped in with both feet,

Eager to meet and to greet

Every Tico and Tica.

Her goal was to seek a

New friend with a viewpoint offbeat.

Max wrote ten limericks for the introduction to Wild Blue Ponders and settled on the following:

Ponder This

Is the Blue Man so wild

He can find his stuff filed

In a drawer of his life

Next to his sixty-year wife,

Who, ’pon reading this, looked up and smiled?

PART 1

1916–1919: World War I

TIMES

If we do not know courage, we cannot accomplish our purpose, and this age is an age that looks forward, not backward, which rejects the standard of national selfishness that once governed the counsels of nations, and demands that they shall give way to a new order of things in which the only questions will be, Is it right? Is it just? Is it in the interest of mankind?

—Woodrow Wilson

CHAPTER 3 OF TIMES

Mary Cady

In October 1916, America’s East Coast shipping lanes swarmed with ships carrying everything from babies to bombs and steaming everywhere from Liverpool to Long Island. In the first week of October, the Times listed more than one hundred arrivals and departures at Lower Manhattan piers.

On Friday, October 6, a German U-boat had rendezvoused with a US submarine off Block Island and been escorted to Newport, Rhode Island, where the boat’s commander, thirty-two-year-old Hans Rose, had delivered a letter for Count von Berndtorff, the German ambassador in Washington.

Two days later, that same giant German submarine rose out of the dark sea at 0430 to intercept the American steamer Kansan, which was bound for St. Nazaire and Genoa by way of Boston. The ship was stopped by shots across the bow three miles south of the Nantucket lightship. The Kansan was carrying 6,500 tons of iron and steel intended for use in manufacturing munitions for the Allies. In Boston, she was to pick up a cargo of horses for the Allies. A youthful German officer boarded the Kansan and escorted the chief officer, carrying the ship’s papers, to the sub. The Kansan was allowed to proceed, as the United States, in 1916, was not at war with Germany.

At 0530, the British freighter West Point was torpedoed, and it sank near the Nantucket lightship.

At 0800, the British freighter Strathdene was torpedoed, and it sank; the crew was taken aboard the lightship Nantucket Shoals.

At 0900, the neutral Norwegian freighter Christian Knudsen was torpedoed, and it sank.

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Sixteen-year-old Mary Cady stood on the boat deck of the British passenger liner Stephano as the gray old lady eased away from the dock at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and made her cautious and seemingly reluctant way to the harbor entrance. It was as if the tired ship resented its latest foray into the angry North Atlantic Ocean. It was the final six-hundred-mile leg of the exhausting sea journey from Portsmouth to New York, which was more than three thousand miles total. She was carrying a pitiful fifty passengers, a far cry from happier days before the war, when she’d regularly carried several hundred eager travelers to the warm Mediterranean for holiday excursions.

Mary Cady was from England. She wondered at the unlikely circumstances that had brought her to where she stood—facing a stiff offshore breeze, her mind in a whirl from conflicting emotions of grief, anger, excitement, and apprehension. Mary had two brothers with Haig’s third army, manning the trenches in the most dangerous place in the world, the Ypres Salient in southern Belgium. Beyond that, except for her aunt, Winnie Strathclyde, with whom she was traveling, she had no one at all. On the fifty-fifth day of the third year of the war, both her mother and her father had been killed when a German zeppelin stealthily crossed the channel near Dover and, in the dark of night, began dropping bombs, some of which exploded in places where innocent, peace-loving people lived.

Four days before reaching Halifax, Mary had received the telegram reporting the death of her parents. She had prepared for the deaths of her brothers, not of her parents. She was there hanging on to the Stephano’s rusty railing because her parents had insisted she take the opportunity to go to America as a nanny for Mrs. Strathclyde’s new baby. They’d convinced her that England was a dangerous place, and one of the questions resounding in Mary’s pretty head was whether they’d had any idea how dangerous. Dangerous enough for them to die? When she asked herself the question, it triggered a blinding anger at the evil Huns who’d done that monstrous thing—killed her mum and her dad. Soon enough—she felt it in her bones—they would kill her lovely brothers, Tommy and Ian, as well. The normally mild-mannered Mary suddenly found herself screaming at the top of her voice, releasing the pent-up rage that had been building these past several days. The sound blew back into her face, which was wet with tears.

Mary was too young to be a motor driver, which she would have liked to be. With so many men off in uniform, women were needed for all kinds of war work, and Mary wanted to do her share, but there she was, bobbing up and down on the deck of a forlorn ship on a forlorn voyage to a land that appeared to be unconcerned that people were dying in defense of freedom. Mary was not immediately aware that her anger was beginning to overcome her grief. Abruptly, she turned from the rail and headed for the cabin, where Mrs. Strathclyde sat with the sleeping baby.

I have to go back to England, she announced as she entered the cabin.

Mrs. Strathclyde eyed Mary with a pain-faced grimace and held an index finger to her lips while nodding toward the sleeping baby in a corner crib.

Mary continued in a loud whisper. I have to go back to England.

Mrs. Strathclyde sighed. To England, she said.

I have to go back, Mary repeated. I have to do my part.

But, Mary, you are doing your part. How could I manage without you?

It was not hard for Mary to see the truth in this argument. She marveled at the helplessness of her aunt Winnie. How indeed could she manage? Mary did all the dirty work, and there was no end to it with baby Vanessa. Aunt Winnie could not manage without her—that was a certainty. Yet Mary knew that soon enough, this life would not be enough for her. She had to do something to help defeat the cruel Germans who had turned her world inside out and upside down.

I— Mary started to say she wanted to fight the Germans but stopped when she realized how silly it would sound. She looked at her aunt Winnie. Would it be possible to wean Aunt Winnie from her? Not any time soon, she was afraid. Aunt Winnie, she said, you must find someone else—I have to return. England needs me.

Mrs. Strathclyde winced at this outlandish statement from her pretty niece, who was not quite seventeen years old. Mary was high-spirited like her mother; Mrs. Strathclyde knew this, but to say what Mary had just said? Well!

Mary, my child. Mrs. Strathclyde patted Mary’s arm. Why don’t we have some tea?

Mary and Aunt Winnie were unaware of the danger as they passed the Nantucket Shoals lightship hard to starboard on the pleasant Sunday afternoon, less than a day away from their final destination. After all the difficult days at sea, at last the water was calm, and the sun was warm. Mary was on deck for an early-morning stroll.

Suddenly, the war was upon them—an ominous, dark shape ascended to the surface close enough for Mary to see men climb down from a conning tower, unveil a deck gun, swing it around, and point it at what looked to her like the exact spot where she stood on the deck of the Stephano. Then, as she watched in growing alarm, a tongue of flame leaped from the barrel of the deck gun, followed in seconds by a towering geyser of sea water erupting just beyond the Stephano’s bow.

Mary was strangely unafraid—she looked toward the bridge, where she saw men moving quickly back and forth in what appeared to be a frenzy of uncertainty. She looked off to her right to confirm what she had noted shortly before—they were in sight of land, in sight of America. They were being attacked by an alien submarine within sight of America. Was it possible? The ship continued to move ahead as though determined to ignore the intrusion. Mary wondered how it was possible to ignore a shot fired across the bow. The next shot was impossible to ignore—it tore off a large section of the Stephano’s bow in a deafening explosion that sent Mary, terrified, screaming along the deck toward the afterpart of the ship. She didn’t get far before a shard of hot metal felled her, bleeding and dazed, to the deck.

What happened next was only a misty background to Mary’s shock and pain. The ship’s doctor, old like all the crew, dispensed the opinion that even though she had suffered a broken right arm above the elbow, it could have been worse. Mary was a casualty to be sure, but the difference between a painful convalescence and a coffin near her parents had been a matter of only a few inches.

Mary eased back into consciousness to the sound of water slapping against the side of the lifeboat she found herself in. She also heard the unhappy cries of Aunt Winnie’s baby, Vanessa. The remainder of the boat’s twenty-five occupants, all but five of them women, were oddly quiet in the late-afternoon dusk as Mary opened her eyes. When she raised her head from the lap of Aunt Winnie to see what everyone was looking at, she soon learned why they were quiet. The Stephano was sinking—and in a most inglorious way. A crew from the U-53 had directed the Stephano’s passengers and crew to man the lifeboats, and then they had opened the ship’s sea valves. There would be no final dramatic slipping below the waves bow or stern first for the Stephano. It took four hours for the water to fill the holds to the point where at last she could float no more, and she settled with a final sigh at the bottom of Nantucket Sound.

A sharp pain shot through Mary’s right arm. The doctor had bandaged the flesh wound and immobilized the arm in a tight sling, but there had been no time, and indeed no facilities, for treating the broken humerus. Mary groaned.

Mrs. Strathclyde shifted her position on the wooden seat of the wide lifeboat, trying to make her wounded niece more comfortable. Mrs. Strathclyde was making a valiant—and, up to this point, successful—effort to be brave. There, there, my child, she said. Try to rest. She wanted to say something comforting, but there was no comfort to offer. She looked entreatingly to Dr. Walker, who was facing them on the opposite seat, but for the moment, the crusty medic offered only some blasphemous oaths directed at the cruel Saxons who had put them in this unimaginable predicament.

Bloody blighters, he fumed. Warring on women and children. Work of the devil! May they be cursed to hell! I faced the Russians in the Crimea and the Boers in darkest Africa, criminals all, but this? This is intolerable. Sodding savages! Huns! The doctor was shouting.

Mrs. Strathclyde and the other women huddled on their seats in the suddenly cool evening air, hoping a voice of calm reason would arise to quiet the intemperate ragings of the angry doctor and, more importantly, offer a path to safety. His outburst might have helped relieve tensions building in himself, but it was of little use to the frightened women currently facing a night at sea in a splintery wooden boat they hoped would be as good as its name—a lifeboat.

Ahoy, the boat! a megaphoned voice called out. The Erickson happened upon them so quickly they had barely become aware of the destroyer’s presence before it was coasting to a near stop and hailing them over a narrowing span of water. It was the US Navy to the rescue. Mary was mercifully unconscious and would require treatment for trauma, shock, and exposure. When she awoke in a Newport hospital more than twenty-four hours later, she had no recollection of anything beyond the blinding pain she’d experienced when the metal fragment struck her down.

After Captain Rose dispensed with the Stephano, in spite of the arrival of two British warships, he continued his rampage by sinking two more freighters before retiring from the scene.

At 2000, he sank the neutral Dutch freighter Bloomersdijk.

At 2130, he torpedoed and sank the British freighter Kingston.

The Monday morning headline in the New York Times shouted, Swift Harvest of Victims Follows the Visit of U-53 to Newport.

On that fine October Sunday, with New England hardwoods ablaze in riotous fall colors, the sea was calm off Nantucket. Drifting lifeboats held frightened passengers; tales of high-seas adventure were born; and miraculously, no one died. When the New York Stock Exchange opened on Monday morning, Wall Street brokers were swamped as $500 million was stricken from market values in fifteen minutes of frenzied trading.

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The New York Times was a morning newspaper published every day of the year and available at newsstands all around the five boroughs for one cent on weekdays and Saturdays and five cents for the 116-page Sunday Times. Fifteen-year-olds Ted and Ed, the Frederick twins, worked for the Times from eleven o’clock at night until five in the morning, when the paper was put to bed. Ted and Ed were the blood of the Times, carrying the oxygen of the copy from the lungs and brains of the writers to the hearts of the editors and from there to the muscles of the printers. It was also their job to provide the Times’ stomachs with fuel: coffee, doughnuts, and sandwiches from nearby delicatessens, delivered according to a prearranged schedule throughout the night to appreciative Times staffers.

When Ted and Ed reported for work on Sunday evening, they found an agitated Times theater critic standing on a table while waving a sheet of paper and shouting, Do they think we will stand by meekly and allow them to carry out unrestricted submarine warfare in our territorial waters? Do they think that because the World’s Series is going on, we might not notice? They must be mad!

From desks and typewriters all around the room, people gathered to learn about the mind-numbing outrage and be the first Americans to confront the chilling prospect that although they were wrapped in their comfortable oceans, the genocidal European war was coming to America with the suddenness of a slap in the face and the certainty of a sunset.

Norman, for God’s sake, get down off that table, and try to control yourself. A calm voice rose from the press of people surrounding the table. It was the city editor, who was agitated like all the others but determined to preserve decorum—the Times’ dignity was threatened.

Does anyone here honestly believe that the United States of America can allow alien forces to carry out violent acts within sight of our shores? Norman said. "This is not right! We must protect our citizens! The sacred honor of our country is at stake! Our president is a cowardly disgrace—the Lusitania, the Sussex, and now this. Wilson wrings his hands and talks of peace without victory, and the Republicans give us Charles Evans Hughes instead of Colonel Roosevelt. Where is our big stick?"

The city editor waved a sheet of paper and said, A Columbia law professor says the Nantucket sinkings were legal under international law.

What has that got to do with anything? Norman sputtered. Who cares what a Columbia law professor says? Do you mean to tell me you think the Germans have any regard for international law? And what kind of a law allows defenseless ships to be torpedoed on the high seas? The only law that means anything is the law of the jungle—kill or be killed. We must go to war against Germany, and we must do it without hesitation—to delay is to risk the lives of our citizens and our standing among nations. If we do not act, we lose the respect of the world. We will be mocked and ridiculed. Where is our pride?

The city editor shook his head. Norman, Norman, he said. We are a newspaper. It is our job to report the news. What would you have us do? Form our own army? Print a private declaration of war? Be sensible, Norman; write a review, have a bagel, watch a ball game, take in a show, and stop reading the headlines.

Norman saw concern begin to fade from the upturned faces—he was about to lose his audience. He tried one more time. No, wait. This is important. How do we all feel about this? He scanned the faces; his gaze settled on Ed. You, Ed—you’re of fighting age. Would you go to war to save the honor of the country?

Ed had barely heard the arguments; he was still brooding over the tight loss of game one. He became aware that people were looking at him. What? he asked, looking up at Norman.

Norman repeated his question. Would you go to war to save the honor of the country?

Ed looked at Ted before answering with a question of his own. Is this more important than the World’s Series? he asked.

The people laughed, happy to have the tension relieved. They began to disperse and return to their desks. Norman, the theater critic, threw his handful of papers into the air in disgust. You’re all sheep! he shouted. You’ll be sorry! He continued to shout, but nobody listened.

CHAPTER 9 OF TIMES

The Election

It was election night, Tuesday, November 7, 1916. The weather in New York had turned springlike, the temperature was in the high fifties, and the forecast called for fair and warm weather. Times Square was jammed with people—more than a hundred thousand, it was estimated. New Yorkers loved a contest, and judging by the turnout, they loved a presidential election even more than a World’s Series. Baseball was a metaphor for life, but politics was life. In 1916, with much of the world already at war, there was a feeling that the fate of the nation hung on the results of this election—it was seen as an unofficial referendum to decide the question Should the country plunge into the European war? A vote for Wilson was a no, and a vote for Hughes was a yes.

The Times had correspondents fanned out over the country to report the results by telegraph and telephone. The returns would be reported there in Manhattan in the the Times’ usual inimitable fashion. Two circles of