At that moment, it was all smiles and ceremony, the shipwrights looking on from a perch above that platform. Then, the bottle broken, the ship rolled down the long wood slipway, and into the sea, rocking this way and that, before settling down in the water, ready to be moved to a new dock to be fitted out. She would be finished those four months early, commissioned in February of 1942 instead of June. Lieutenant Commander Richard B. Levin would get the ship, which would have gone right out into the Atlantic for Operation Torch if this timeline had not been altered. Yet now, born to the sea those four months early, the need was in the Pacific, and Levin would take his ship there, completely re-writing the tabular record of movement for this vessel.
Before the destroyer sailed for Panama, a dark car pulled up at the docks and a man appeared in a long grey coat, the collar pulled high against the chilly wind. In his hand he had a bundled package for delivery to the ship’s CO, and in it was a small wooden box and a brief letter. “Please accept this gift as a token of good luck. It was a family heirloom, a favorite keepsake of my grandfather, for which your ship is proudly named. May it gift your ship with a long and interesting life. – Elizabeth Harwood Royal.”
Levin scratched his head as he looked at it, not knowing quite what to make of it. Such things were often the chicken’s feet and rabbits feet of history, he thought, but this one was rather unusual. The fact that it was a personal possession of the ship’s namesake made it quite special—Admiral Austin M. Knight. The gift his granddaughter had delivered to the ship’s keeping had come from a forsaken and faraway place, lost in the foggy veils of the history the Admiral’s life had once helped to write….
* * *
It started a very long time ago, in a place that was strangely woven into the fabric of plane now spinning through the mind of Vladimir Karpov. After the “incident” off Oki island in the Sea of Japan in 1908, Japanese retribution was swift. With Russia’s navy already defeated at the Battle of Tushima Straits, the sudden aggression of yet another Russian ship in the Sea of Japan led to a violent reaction. Thinking the ship had been lurking at Vladivostok, the Japanese moved quickly to seize that port and all of Sakhalin Island, which Japan had long coveted. The treaty ceding the northern segment of that island to the Siberians was nullified, and Japanese troops pushed as far as Okha on the northern tip. Landing in Vladivostok and renaming the place Urajio, they set up a military governorship there, and then used the rail lines to push inland to Khabarovsk.
Yet their conquest of the Primorskiy and Amur Oblast regions was not immediate or ever really complete. The dearth of roads meant that large military formations relied almost entirely on the Trans-Siberian Rail, and the Japanese made gradual progress north, then west around the wide bend of the Amur River, but over a period of many years. The nature of the situation in Siberia quickly saw any semblance of a central government there swept away by the winds of the Russian Revolution. Throughout that long struggle, Siberia remained a wild, lawless land, ruled by Cossack and Tartar Atamans, and other petty warlords.
Hosts from the Urals, Orenburg, the Bakshirs, Yesenis, Siberian Cossacks, Ussuri and Amur tribes, and natives of the Trans-Baikal all began a systematic looting of anything valuable. The grandsons of all these men were now riding with Karpov in his cavalry regiments, under the firm rein of his discipline, but back then, no town or village was ever safe. Passage on any road or the rail lines would often see travelers kidnapped, robbed, beaten, tortured and killed.
There was a sense of heedless depravity in the ranks of the Cossacks, largely instilled by ruthless leaders like Semenoff and Kalmykov, who commandeered train cars and engines, building armored trains that rolled along the long steel lines bringing terror to any town where they paused. So stern were the hands that led these units, that their own soldiers were driven to their tasks with leather whips. Needless to say, life was merciless and cruel, where hardship and deprivation was the norm.
The slowly encroaching Japanese presence centered on the major towns along the Trans-Siberian Rail, with Chita being the largest outpost as that line approached the Trans-Baikal region. Soon they had all of 70,000 troops in Siberia, and no intention of leaving. Yet in the early years, they had made an uneasy truce with the Cossack hordes. On the one hand, they saw the disorder these warlords created as a means of preventing any unified central government from arising in Siberia to oppose them. On the other hand, the terror caused by the Atamans had other ramifications. There was wanton raping, looting, beating, and torture. Villages were razed and young men were killed, strung up from trees, with hot iron rods driven through their ears. They were bound hand and foot with a necklace of heavy stones tied to the their necks before being thrown from railway bridges into icy lakes. All this disorder and depravity eventually came to the attention of President Truman, a distasteful shadow looming over another ‘issue’ concerning Siberia.
Vladivostok, now Urajio, offered a Pacific port for the shipment of goods bound for the Tsar, and at one time, considerable stocks of ammunition and other war supplies had been sent there, and to Murmansk, in the hope of securing Russian support in WWI against Germany. Many of the railroad cars now serving the line had come from the US, and the warlords were stealing them at will. When the revolution swept the Tsar from power, and the nation began to fragment into warring factions struggling to control Russia’s vast territories, the US saw their “investment’ in the Tsar as a bitter loss—or was it? Much of that ammunition still lay in massive stockpiles near Vladivostok, and the rolling stock they had delivered was all still there, even if it had been commandeered. The Japanese kept a careful eye on the ammunition depots, though the American Ambassador in Tokyo made it known that the United States considered those stocks as American property, and soon dispatched several armored cruisers, and two regiments of infantry, to look after US interests in Siberia.
The Japanese were not happy to see these warships appear, and less happy at the prospect of foreign troops landing. By this time, however, Admiral Kolchak had emerged from the chaos of the revolution, setting up a fledgling government in Omsk and declaring himself the Supreme Leader of all Russia. The Bolsheviks continued to war with him, until another figure named Ivan Volkov emerged in Orenburg, rallying dissenting elements of the White movement there by overthrowing Denikin. With so many Whites going over to his banners, Kolchack’s position was seriously weakened, eventually forcing him to retreat from Omsk and re-center his nascent government at Irkutsk. Meanwhile, Ivan Volkov extended his influence down into Kazakhstan and the Caucasus, where The Terek and Kuban Hosts joined his movement. They tried to recruit the “Kolchakaya,” those tribes loyal to Kolchak in the west, but this effort only solidified the lines of control near Omsk, where a temporary no man’s land of a border zone was established.
Seeing Kolchak as the only means of diplomatically gaining access to the region, the US courted him to allow US troops on Siberian soil. While Japan, with the loose allegiance of the Cossack Atamans, actually controlled the Trans-Siberian Rail as far as Chita, the Americans still appeared one day, intent on landing at Vladivostok. They had timed their arrival to coincide with a major demonstration by a faction in the city posing as a Red Cadre, which began to go on a rampage in the Chinese quarter near the port. Small arms fire was deliberately directed at the US warships anchored out in the Golden Horn Bay, and the pretext for an American landing was soon well in hand, no matter what the Japanese thought about it.
Admiral Austin M. Knight was Commander of the US Asiatic Fleet at that time, his flag planted on the armored cruiser Washington. Along with the USS South Dakota, and USS Brooklyn, the Americans had a good deal of muscle on hand for the landing operation. The first two ships each had four 10-inch guns and another sixteen 6-inchers. The Brooklyn had eight 8-inch guns with a secondary battery of twelve 5-inch guns. Considering that the Japanese had only one cruiser and two lighter destroyers at the harbor that day, the American flotilla possessed a considerable edge in firepower.
A
careful and sensible man, Knight had been anticipating turning over command of the Asiatic Fleet to Admiral Gleaves soon so he could retire, but that had not yet happened in these altered events. The stream of causality was slowly deviating from the path where it once flowed, with minor variations gradually beginning to appear. Yet, in the face of this dangerous tripwire situation, Knight knew he had to be very cautious.
A short man, he barely stood but five and a half feet tall, round faced, squarish chin, and fair of complexion, with thinning grey hair parted in the middle, and a thick charcoal mustache. He was a well experienced man, prim and proper, with no button ever out of place on his uniform jacket. His book, Modern Seamanship, would demonstrate the methodical focus he brought to sea, and become a bible among seamen in both commercial and naval fleets for decades.
In drafting a speech on preparedness for war the previous year, he wrote: “It has been well said that the world stands aside for the man who knows where he is going.” His was a habit and instinct for command that had hardened like frozen seawater from many tributaries: thoroughness, proper systems, logical reasoning, and timely decisions. In this case, however, he did not really know where this journey to Siberia would take him. As the sound of distant gunfire rumbled through the night, he could feel that events were on the edge of a knife. Then, when bullets snapped off the hull of the USS South Dakota, he decided to act. Knight made his first daring move.
Signals flags were raised on the halyards, and lamps flickered out his orders. While the main body of the first regiment of US troops was still in the Sea of Japan, Admiral Knight decided to send in the four companies of US Marines now riding at anchor on his ships. Captains Barry, Reynolds, Wheeler and Johnson would take to the long boats and form their companies near the harbor quays. Already the sound of fighting and gunfire was drawing near, and then a column of trucks pulled up, crowded with Japanese infantry who brandished their rifles threateningly at the US Marines.
Captain Barry of 1st Company looked to his first Lieutenant, a man with a famous name and ancestor, Edgar Allen Poe. ‘Lieutenant Poe,” he said sternly. “See what those men want.”
Poe saluted, walking briskly forward, fearless, and looking for any man among the Japanese who looked to be decorated as an officer. He spied a squat man with shoulder pauldrons, and took him to be the commander of this contingent, and the two men exchanged some hard words, first at odds with the language barrier, until an interpreter intervened on the Japanese side.
“You have no business here,” said the Japanese Colonel. “Leave immediately.”
“I’m afraid that is impossible,” said Poe. “The interests of the United States are involved, and I have orders to answer this threat and secure the peace here to preserve and protect the property of the United States Government.”
“I tell you your country has no interest here. None! You must leave immediately!”
Poe took a look over his shoulder, seeing the Marines standing in tense lines on the quay, and then he caught the gleam of moonlight off one of the long 10-inch guns on the South Dakota. “See that,” he pointed. “The United States presently has over 40,000 tons of war fighting steel at anchor in that bay, and you are now looking at four companies of United States Marines. The Commander in Chief of the United States Asiatic Fleet is standing right there, on the bridge of that ship, and he had given me specific orders, which I fully intend to carry out. Now then… If you attempt to impede me in any way, you will thereby set your government and nation in opposition to the United States, and this, sir, will become the first battlefield of the war you so thoughtlessly chose to begin.”
Chapter 26
A tense moment ensued, broken by the sudden resonant clang of a bell on the USS Washington. It seemed to underscore the warning implicit in the Lieutenant’s words, and slowly, the forward main gun turret on that ship rotated shoreward with ominous intent. Poe’s blood was up, one hand tensely on the haft of a sabre, the other on the butt of his sidearm. In his mind the verse of his distant second cousin rambled with an urgent beat… ‘Brazen Bells, What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night, How they scream out their affright!’
Saying nothing more, Lieutenant Poe turned and strode boldly back to the ranks of the Marines. He saluted crisply to Captain Barry. “Sir,” he said forcefully. “I have given fair warning, and believe I have made our intentions perfectly clear. With your permission, I will lead the company forward.”
Captain Barry raised his chin, a gleam in his eye, the bells on the Washington now being answer by those of the South Dakota. “Lieutenant,” he said firmly. “You may proceed.”
Poe, nodded, a half smile on his lips, and then sharply drew his sabre. “Company—Atten-hut!”
The Marines snapped to attention, their voiced loud in response as they did so.
“First Company…. Fix Bayonets!”
The night glittered with steel, a coiled, sinuous movement in the ranks, as though a long, scaled dragon was rousing itself from troubled sleep and seething with a terrible anger. “Sergeants forward. At the quick step, and follow me!” The Lieutenant turned, the blade of his sabre on his shoulder, his pistol drawn in his other hand. He started off at a trot, and the Marines moved as one thing, chests, shoulders, thick armed men, their legs tramping out a steady rhythm as they went, the gleam of light rippling over the cold steel of those bayonets, the deep voices of the sergeants urging them on. All the while those bells were singing in the bay… “Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells. How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour…’
For one brief moment a canvas tarp was thrown back on one of the trucks, revealing two men squatting behind a machinegun. Then the Japanese Colonel waved a hand, beckoning the truck to move forward from the position where it was blocking the way. The engine sputtered to life, and the clutch jerked as the truck lurched forward, just as Lieutenant Poe and the leading edge of that long column of iron faced Marines came tramping up. As if to acknowledge the wise decision of his adversary, Poe shouted out an order.
“Marines! Eyes… right!”
Thick necks turned, chins high, and the company pounded on by, the sound of their heavy footfalls hard on the stone an concrete as they moved into the city. They were going in to restore order, and now the whistles of the other Marine companies behind them animated those troops, and no one in the city ever forgot that moment. They had suffered the chaos of disorder, the lawless rampage of brigands and bullies, the hard hand of the Japanese, and the terror of the Atamans. Now, that one night, the hard steady tramp of those leather soled boots on the pavement timed out the uncompromising beat of a new order.
Out on the weather deck off the bridge on the USS Washington, Admiral Knight had witnessed the entire scene through his binoculars. It always started this way, he thought. The old men get a notion in their thick, grey heads, the young men get an order, and events are written into the history that can never be undone. Another poet, Omar Khayyam, would capture the sentiment perfectly when he wrote: “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”
Speaking again as an ambassador from the US Naval War College, Admiral Knight would say: “The wonderful thing about youth is that it has, to some slight extent, the power to shape the future. The melancholy thing about age is that it cannot change a single feature of the past.” Yet in war, the old were too often tasked with the spending of youth, and the shedding of young blood in that effort to shape the uncertain future. As to the fixed an unalterable nature of the past, Admiral Knight would soon go ashore in the sinuous wake of those columns of Marines, and would learn that was not entirely the case.
The Marines would quickly put down the demonstration of the Red Cadre, which soon melted into the night. They would stand as a kind of local constabulary in the city for months, with more tense moments as they sought to ascert
ain the location and size of the ammunition stockpiles the US had delivered. They would ride the rails to Khabarovsk, and up around the Amur River, dueling with the Atamans. Two full Regiments of the Army and volunteers from several other units would form the A.E.F., or the American Expeditionary Force, and they would stay for two long years. Yet like so many other American interventions, this temporary incursion would have no real long lasting effect on the political situation in Siberia. Japan moved three battleships to Urajio, bolstered her garrison troops there, quietly tolerated the Americans while secretly bribing the Atamans to cause them difficulties. In time, the US troops were pulled out, and went home.
Admiral Knight’s opening move in Siberia would not carry the board in favor of the Americans, which soon forgot the affair, being possessed with a much more important intervention in Europe’s terrible First World War. Yet something had happened in that incident that would matter a good deal, that very night when the Admiral came ashore to join those Marines. He was welcomed by a local Mayor, seeking allies and eager to befriend anyone who might bolster his sagging authority in the face of Japanese occupation. Exchanging gifts in greeting, Knight proffered a box of cigars, and received in turn a basket of fresh baked bread, goat cheese and mushrooms.
“May it bring you good luck,” said the Mayor through an interpreter, a British reporter who had been in the city for some months. “And may it gift you with a long and interesting life.”
It was not until he had returned to the Washington, handing the basket off to the ship’s cook, that the Admiral was disturbed in his stateroom by a quiet knock.
“Come,” he said, wondering if there was trouble ashore, but instead surprised to see the cook.
Knight's Move (Kirov Series Book 21) Page 22