Counterattack

by Scott H Washburn

  “A pleasure to meet, you, Colonel,” replied the major. “Of course I’m technically a liaison to Captain Dolfen, here, but I’m sure we’ll all be working together.”

  “That is the point, isn’t it? To coordinate our ground and aerial forces?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Dolfen. “And my commander wants to send out my squadron the day after tomorrow. Are your fliers going to be ready to support us?”

  “Yes indeed! My boys are champing at the bit to get out there!” replied Selfridge enthusiastically. “We’ve been restricted to training flights on the east side of the river and I can tell you that we’re getting tired of that! But come on, let me show you around!” He grabbed his cap and led the way out of the tent back into the bright sunshine.

  “I have four squadrons in the group,” said Selfridge, waving his hand to take in the whole operation. “With four flights of four aircraft in each squadron, that makes for sixty-four altogether. Of course that’s on paper. There are always aircraft out of service for maintenance or repairs due to accidents - always having accidents. On any given day we can usually put fifty in the air.”

  “Now that I take a closer look at these machines,” said Bridges, “they seem more familiar. I do believe we have something rather like them.”

  Selfridge laughed. “I’m not surprised, Major! This is a British design we are building under license. They’re Burgess-Dunne D.8s, to be exact. A nice aircraft! Faster and a lot more stable than the old Wright Flyers I cut my teeth on. Very easy to fly. We’ve modified them to make two-seaters out of them. We have a gunner in the front with his machine gun and the pilot sits behind him. It can carry a hundred-pound bomb, too.”

  Dolfen studied one of the aircraft sitting close by. It was the same horribly flimsy-looking wood, canvas, and wire contraption like others he’d seen, but the crewmen, instead of being completely in the open, sat inside an enclosed area, like some oversized bathtub or canoe. The motor and propeller was at the rear, right behind the pilot’s seat. But the biggest change from the other models was the fact that the wings were angled back on each side of the center. So instead of just being long rectangles, the wings were shaped like an arrow, or a military rank chevron. It made them look like they were moving fast even when sitting on the ground.

  “How far can they fly, Colonel? How long can they stay in the air?”

  “With extra fuel instead of a bomb, they can go about three hundred miles and stay in the air almost five hours.”

  Dolfen frowned. “So assuming you want to get back, you can’t go more than a hundred and fifty miles from here? That’s going to limit how deeply we can penetrate into enemy territory, sir.”

  “True, although we do have a forward airfield on the other side of the river, so staging from there would give us a few more miles. But, Captain, me and my staff had an idea the other day that I want to run by you.”

  “Sir?”

  “Well, as I understand it, your squadron isn’t just horse cavalry anymore, is it?”

  “No, sir. We have one troop on horses, one on motorcycles, and a troop of ten armored cars. We’ll also have a battery of field guns towed by motor trucks attached to us most of the time.”

  “Good! So that means you’ll also have some supply trucks along? To carry ammunition and food, and gasoline for those motorcycles?”

  “A few…” admitted Dolfen, not much liking where this seemed to be going. Cavalry was supposed to be light and mobile. If you started loading it down with a big supply train…

  “Well, we were thinking that if we sent along a few trucks carrying gasoline and maybe a few spare parts and a mechanic or two, we could set up temporary airstrips wherever there is a flat field to land on…”

  “Plenty of them over there, sir. Flat as a griddle cake all the way to the Rockies.”

  “Exactly!” said Selfridge, smiling. “That way we could follow along with you out to the maximum range of our planes. You could set up a strip and we could land and refuel.”

  “I guess that could work, sir. As long as the trucks don’t break down. Nothing but dirt roads out that way and not very good ones.”

  “Communications will be a critical factor, Colonel,” said Bridges. “How will we coordinate our movements?”

  “A good point, Major. But thanks to you British, that should not be a big problem.”

  “I don’t follow you, sir.”

  “Those wonderful radio transmitters you’ve supplied us with, Major.”

  “Oh, those things. Can’t say I know much about them, Colonel.”

  “They’re marvelous! They have a range of hundreds of miles, batteries which last almost forever, and they don’t weigh ten pounds. We’ve got one for each flight leader and more back here at headquarters. You have some with your squadron, too, don’t you, Captain?”

  “A few, yes, sir. We’re still learning how to use them properly. I’ve only got a few men who can send and understand the Morse.”

  “True, they’re just spark-gap transmitters, but with practice we should be able to tell you what we can see and you should be able to call us when you need help. And that’s what this first mission is going to be, isn’t it? Just practice?”

  “More than that, sir,” said Dolfen. “We’ll be out there in territory where there are Martians. My orders are that if we find the enemy and have a reasonable chance of beating them, we are to attack.”

  “Well that sounds like fun, Captain! My boys are itching to take a crack at the bastards.”

  “Pardon me for asking, Colonel,” said Bridges. “But do you really think these machines can survive to get close enough to hurt a Martian tripod? I’ve seen them in action and they’re not easy to destroy.”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” replied Selfridge. Some of the joviality left his face and he nodded. “A lot of us are going to get killed, I’m sure. But if we can take some of them with us, it will be worthwhile, right, Captain?”

  “Yes, sir. And I’m thinking that if we can coordinate what we do, my troopers attacking at the same time as your fliers, we might give them so much to worry about that they can’t stop us.”

  “Yes. That was exactly my thought, too. I was there at the Battle of Prewitt, just like you, remember. The enemy tripods are nasty customers, but they can only fire at one thing at a time. If they are engaged with your cavalry and armored cars and field guns and then my boys come flying in, well, we could overwhelm them.”

  “Sounds good… in theory, Colonel,” said Bridges.

  “Well, that’s what we are here for, isn’t it? To put the theory into practice? Let’s go back to my office and we’ll take a look at the maps and plan out our operation.”

  * * * * *

  August, 1911, Memphis, Tennessee

  “All right, let’s try it again. Slowly let out your breath and then squeeze the trigger.” Rebecca Harding stepped back and watched Abigail LaPlace struggling with her rifle. The weapon, a Springfield 1903, was really too large and heavy for the girl, but when Becca had been put in charge of the marksmanship instructions, she’d insisted that they use the standard army rifles. Abigail shifted the sling on her arm and took aim. Becca gritted her teeth at the way the rifle’s muzzle was drifting around. It settled down to near-immobility and Becca’s hopes rose, but then the girl’s whole body seemed to twitch and the gun went off with a bang. Becca didn’t need to use her field glasses to check the target to know it had been a clean miss, but she said: “Better. Keep at it.” Actually it had been better, at least the girl had kept her eyes open this time.

  Abigail, and all the other women around her, were part of a ‘militia’ organization which styled itself the ‘Memphis Women’s Volunteer Sharpshooters’. While they were from Memphis, and they were women, and they were surely volunteers, they had a long way to go, in Rebecca’s opinion, to earn the ‘sharpshooter’ part of their title. Their unofficial nickname was the ‘Memphis Belles’ and that seemed a far more accurate description to Becca. Theoretically, there were
over a hundred members of the company, most from the finest families of Memphis, but it was rare for more than thirty of them to show up at a meeting at the same time. There were about that many here today.

  She walked down the firing line to where the next shooter, a much older woman, was methodically working the action of her rifle. Loading and firing with confidence, a considerable pile of empty brass was accumulating around her feet. “You’re doing well, Mrs. Halberstam.”

  “Please, Becca, you can call me Sarah,” said the woman, opening the bolt and lowering the rifle so the butt was on the ground. “And thank you.”

  “You’ve obviously done a lot of shooting, ma’am.”

  “Some. Bird hunting, mostly. Never with one of these, though,” she said, waving a hand at the Springfield. “It’s got quite a kick.”

  “Yes, but we need some real power to hurt the Martians.”

  Halberstam smiled skeptically. “Not going to hurt one of those tripod machines, even with one of these from what I’ve heard.”

  “No, probably not,” admitted Rebecca. “So what’re you doin’ here?”

  “What are you?”

  She shrugged. “Felt like I needed to be doin’ something!”

  “You’re a nurse aren’t you? That’s surely doing something.”

  “I guess, so. But after two years of it, it doesn’t seem… enough.”

  The older woman nodded. “You want to hit back at ‘em. Hurt them yourself.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Killing one wasn’t enough?”

  Rebecca winced. She wished she’d never shown anyone the newspaper clipping she’d gotten from a local paper which recounted her exploits back in the first days of the war when she’d killed the pilot of a wrecked Martian tripod. But without that she’d never have been let into the group. It was for the upper crust and Becca was literally from the wrong side of the tracks these days. But the newspaper had done the trick and the group’s leader, a formidable woman named Theodora Oswald, had been overjoyed to welcome Becca into the organization. She was the uppermost of the upper crust in Memphis, it seemed, and clearly her family had a lot of money. They owned a huge estate outside of town and it was now the headquarters for the sharpshooters. There was a shooting range and a drill field set up and plenty of colored servants to provide drinks when necessary. And she - or perhaps her husband - clearly had political pull, too. The fact that a hundred Springfields and fifty thousand rounds of ammunition had magically appeared at her mansion proved that.

  “One was just a start,” said Becca eventually. “We need to kill ‘em all.”

  “Yes, it surely seems that way. Well, back to work.” Halberstam raised the rifle and slid a cartridge into the breech. The Springfields had a five round magazine, but for safety reasons, Rebecca insisted that they load and fire individual rounds.

  She continued her inspection of the shooters. Some, like Halberstam, weren’t bad, and some, like Abigail, were probably hopeless, and most - as she’d feared when she first heard about this group—thought it was some sort of social club rather than a military organization. They clearly took far more interest in their sporty uniforms than they did in drill or marksmanship. The uniforms were ridiculous: buckskin jackets with a dangling fringe on the bottom and down each arm, billowy pantaloons tucked into calf-high boots, and a jaunty hat with a feather. Becca refused to wear it and stuck to her nurse’s uniform.

  She reached the end of the firing line and looked over to the ‘parade ground’ where Sam Jones was teaching the other half of today’s group the rudiments of the manual of arms and the basic marching steps. Or trying to, anyway. His charges showed all the discipline of a flock of chickens. Sam was an enigma to her. When she’d first seen him, he was a bearded, raging scarecrow, rescued from the Martian fortress near Gallup, New Mexico. He’d been a part of General Sumner’s army and was captured when it was destroyed in the first battle with the invaders. Rescued, he’d refused to go back with the army - or give his right name - and had attached himself to Rebecca’s hospital unit. He was nervous like a skittish horse. But he had volunteered to help her out here and his knowledge of the drill showed that he’d probably been with an infantry unit. He would disappear for days at a time, but so far had always come back.

  She turned to go back down the line, when Mrs. Oswald appeared with several servants bearing pitchers of lemonade. She declared the day’s efforts at an end and called all the ladies together for refreshments. Becca shook her head; they hadn’t been at this for more than an hour. Of course, it was very hot. The women and girls clustered around… chattering about nothing in particular as far as Becca could tell. They seemed like nice people, but few of them appeared to have a clue of what the war was really like or about.

  Oswald made some sort of speech and blathered on for quite some time before Becca could make her escape. She promised to come again next week. She rode her horse, Ninny, back toward Memphis, Sam walking beside her. “So how’d they do today?” she asked. “You able to teach ‘em anything?”

  “Not really. Like tryin’ to herd cats. Pointless.”

  “So why you bothering?”

  “Same reason as you: beats sitting around doin’ nothing during our off-hours. Gets me out of camp. And some of ‘em are kind of cute.”

  Becca chuckled. “Can’t say I noticed. But yeah, it probably is pointless. In a fight, none of them will be worth spit.”

  Their way took them along the river where thousands of men were at work constructing fortifications. The Mississippi Line, as it was being called, had been little more than the river itself when Becca and the battered remains of the army’s II Corps - plus a huge number of refugees - had straggled across the bridge into Memphis fifteen months earlier. They’d marched all the way from Santa Fe, each day fearing that the Martians would appear to finish them off. But they’d made it across the river – barely - and the Martians had pretty much left them alone ever since.

  No one could explain why the enemy had gone dormant for so long, but no one was really complaining. The respite had given them a chance to build some real defenses along the river. They’d started with the cities and towns; places like New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Natchez, Vicksburg, and Memphis. Then on up the river to Cairo, St. Louis, Davenport, and Minneapolis. Each place had been turned into a fortress bristling with cannons. At first these had just been in earthworks, but now those were being replaced with massive concrete walls high enough that a Martian machine couldn’t get across. More and bigger guns were being mounted, too. And now they were extending the concrete walls, creeping along the river, north and south from each fortress. Given time, they could link them all together in a – hopefully - unbreakable barrier.

  “Those monsters are gonna have a heck of a time getting across here!” said Becca, pointing at the works.

  “The river is over a thousand miles long, Becca,” replied Sam. “It’ll take years to make it all look like this.”

  “Maybe so, but there’s a lot of swampland along it too. And they’ve got gunboats patrolling. We can hurt ‘em anywhere they try.”

  “I hope so.”

  But Becca wasn’t all that interested in the defenses. Just holding them back wasn’t good enough. They needed to be driven out! Driven back! Wiped out! No one seemed to be saying much about that.

  “Someday,” she muttered to herself. “Someday we’ll kill them all.”

  * * * * *

  August, 1911, Rock Creek Park, Maryland

  “Come on, Leonard! This is bully, isn’t it?”

  Lieutenant General Leonard Wood, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, watched the President of the United States disappear around a bend in the trail ahead of him and spurred his horse to catch up. He glanced behind and saw that the President’s military aide, Major Archie Butt, and the squad of escorting cavalry had fallen far behind.

  Wood had spent a large chunk of his youth riding in far more rugged locations than Rock Creek Park, so galloping at full speed dow
n the easy paths here didn’t bother him. The object of his pursuit, Theodore Roosevelt, was an equally experienced horseman and was probably in no danger, but the thought of some freak accident befalling the President sent a chill down his spine in spite of the summer heat.

  He sighed in relief when he caught sight of Roosevelt again and saw that he had reined in his horse and was halted next to the creek, in a little glen. Wood slowed as he came up beside him. “You shouldn’t ride off alone like that, Theodore,” said Wood, knowing his scolding was pointless.

  “Oh, I know, Leonard,” laughed Roosevelt. “The woods are just crawling with Martian assassins!” He waved his hands at the luxuriant greenery. Shafts of sunshine penetrated the canopy overhead, producing shifting patterns of light and shadow. It was a beautiful spot.

  “There aren’t any Martians around here,” admitted Wood, “but there could be assassins of the two-legged variety.”

  “Oh, tosh! Who would want to kill me?”

  Wood didn’t answer, but the tiny twitch in the President’s eye told him that he knew that there were lunatics around who did wish him harm. Prior to the Martian landings, Roosevelt had been one of the most popular Presidents in American history. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion the people had rallied around him and his popularity rose to new heights. But that was nearly three years ago, and the war was going on and on. There had been terrible defeats and damn few victories. Millions of Americans had been driven from their homes and even those who had not been directly affected were being asked to make more and more sacrifices. Yes, there were people angry enough, or crazy enough, to do the unthinkable. After all, Roosevelt had first become President because of an unthinkable act—in a time of peace and prosperity.

  Major Butt and the escort finally caught up and formed a perimeter around Wood and Roosevelt. The President dismounted and gave the reins of his horse to one of the troopers. He stretched and strolled toward the creek. Wood groaned silently. He’s not going to…? Yes, he is. Damn it.