CHAPTER IV
INVASION OF LONG ISLAND AND THE BATTLE OF BROOKLYN
To meet this desperate situation and the enemy's greatly superior forces,General Wood decided not to advance against the Germans, but to intrenchhis army across the western end of Long Island, with his left flankresting on Fort Totten, near Bayside, and his nine-mile front extendingthrough Creedmore, Rosedale, and Valley Stream, where his right flankwould be guarded from sea attack by the big guns of Fort Hancock on SandyHook, which would hold the German fleet at a distance.
Any military strategist will agree that this was the only course for theAmerican commander to pursue under the circumstances; but unfortunatelypopular clamour will often have its way in republics, and in this case aviolent three days' gale--which arrived providentially, according to someof the newspapers--gave an appearance of reason to the general demand.
This gale interfered seriously with the German landing operations,--infact, it wrecked one of their supply-ships,--and, in consequence, suchstrong political pressure was brought to bear upon the President thatorders came from Washington to General Wood that he advance his armyagainst the invaders and drive them into the sea. The General made a fewremarks not for publication, and obeyed. As he told me afterward, it isdoubtful whether the result would have been different in any event.
In throwing forward his forces, General Wood used the three lines ofrailroad that cross Long Island from west to east; and on May 17 hisbattleline reached from Patchogue through Holtsville to Port Jefferson.Meantime, the Germans had advanced to a line that extended from EastMoriches to Manorville; and on May 18 the first clash came at daybreak ina fierce cavalry engagement fought at Yaphank, in which the enemy weredriven back in confusion. It was first blood for the Americans.
This initial success, however, was soon changed to disaster. On May 19the invaders advanced again, with strengthened lines, under the supportof the big guns of their fleet, which stood offshore and, guided byaeroplane observers, rained explosive shells upon General Wood's rightflank with such accuracy that the Americans were forced to withdraw.Whereupon the Germans, using the famous hook formation that served themso well in their drive across northern France in the summer of 1914,pressed forward relentlessly, the fleet supporting them in a deadlyflanking attack upon the American right wing.
On May 20 von Hindenburg established his headquarters at Forest Hills,where, less than a year before, his gallant countryman, the greatFraitzheim, had made an unsuccessful effort to wrest the Davis cup fromthe American champion and ex-champion, Murray and McLoughlin.
But that was a year ago!
In the morning General Wood's forces continued to retreat, fighting withdogged courage in a costly rear-guard action, and destroying railroadsand bridges as they went. The carnage wrought by the German six- andeleven-inch explosive shells with delayed-action fuses was frightfulbeyond anything I have ever known. Ten feet into the ground theseprojectiles would bury themselves before exploding, and then--well, noarmy could stand against them.
On May 22 General Wood was driven back to his original line of defencesfrom Fort Totten to Valley Stream, where he now prepared to make a laststand to save Brooklyn, which stretched behind him with its peacefulspires and its miles of comfortable homes. Here the Americans were safefrom the hideous pounding of the German fleet, and, although their lossesin five days amounted to more than six thousand men, these had beenreplaced by reinforcements of militia from the West and South. There wasstill hope, especially as the Germans, once they advanced beyond Westburyand its famous polo fields, would come within range of the heavy mortarsof Fort Totten and Fort Hamilton, which carried thirteen miles.
That night the German commander, General von Hindenburg, under a flag oftruce, called upon the Americans to surrender in order to save theBorough of Brooklyn from destruction.
General Wood refused this demand; and on May 23, at dawn, under cover ofhis heavy siege-guns, von Hindenburg threw forward his veterans interrific massed attack, striking simultaneously at three points withthree army divisions--one in a drive to the right toward Fort Totten, onein a drive to the left toward Fort Hamilton, and one in a drive straightahead against General Wood's centre and the heart of Brooklyn.
All day the battle lasted--the battle of Brooklyn--with house-to-housefighting and repeated bayonet charges. And at night the invaders,outnumbering the American troops five to one, were everywhere victorious.The defender's line broke first at Valley Stream, where the Germans, ledby the famous Black Hussars, flung themselves furiously with cold steelupon the militiamen and put them to flight. By sundown the Uhlans weregalloping, unopposed, along the broad sweep of the Eastern Parkway andparallel streets towards Prospect Park, where the high land offered anadmirable site for the German artillery, since it commanded Fort Hamiltonfrom the rear and the entire spread of Brooklyn and Manhattan.
It was now that Field Marshal von Hindenburg and his staff, speedingalong the Parkway in dark grey military automobiles, witnessed a famousact of youthful heroism. As they swung across the Plaza to turn intoFlatbush Avenue von Hindenburg ordered his chauffeur to slow up so thathe might view the Memorial Arch and the MacMonnies statues of our CivilWar heroes, and at this moment a sharp burst of rifle fire sounded acrossProspect Park.
"What is that?" asked the commander, then he ordered a staff officer toinvestigate.
It appears that on this fateful morning five thousand American HighSchool lads, from fifteen to eighteen years of age, members of theAthletic League of New York Public Schools, who had been trained in theseschools to shoot accurately, had answered the call for volunteers andrallied to the defence of their city. By trolley, subway and ferry theycame from all parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Harlem, Staten Island and theBronx, eager to show what their months of work with subtarget gunmachines, practice rods and gallery shooting, also their annual match onthe Peekskill Rifle Range, would now avail against the enemy. But whenthey assembled on the Prospect Parade Ground, ready to do or die, theyfound that the entire supply of rifles for their use was one hundred andtwenty-five! Seventy-five Krags, thirty Springfields and one hundred andtwenty Winchesters, 22-calibre muskets--toys fit for shooting squirrels,and only a small supply of cartridges. The rifles available were issuedto such of the boys as had won their badges of sharpshooter and marksman,two boys being assigned to each gun, so that if one was shot the othercould go on fighting.
"It was pitiful," said General George W. Wingate, President of theLeague, who was directing their movements, "to see the grief of thosebrave boys as they heard the German guns approaching and realised thatthey had nothing to fight with. Five thousand trained riflemen and norifles!"
Nearer and nearer came the flanking force of the invading host andpresently it reached the outskirts of this beautiful park, which withhill and lake and greensward covers five hundred acres in the heart ofBrooklyn. A few boys were deployed as skirmishers along the eastern edgeof the Park, but the mass occupied hastily dug trenches near the monumentto the Maryland troops on Lookout Hill and the brass tablet thatcommemorate the battle of Long Island. At these historic points for halfan hour they made a stand against a Bavarian regiment that advancedslowly under cover of artillery fire, not realising that they weresweeping to death a crowd of almost unarmed schoolboys.
Even so the Americans did deadly execution until their ammunition waspractically exhausted. Then, seeing the situation hopeless, the headcoaches, Emanuel Haug, John A. C. Collins, Donald D. Smith and PaulB. Mann, called for volunteers to hold the monument with the few remainingcartridges, while the rest of the boys retreated. Hundreds clamoured forthis desperate honour, and finally the coaches selected seventy of thosewho had qualified as sharpshooters to remain and face almost certaindeath, among these being: Jack Condon of the Morris High School, J.Vernet (Manual Training), Lynn Briggs (Erasmus), Isaac Smith (Curtis),Charles Mason (Commercial), C. Anthony (Bryant), J. Rosenfeld(Stuyvesant), V. Doran (Flushing), M. Marnash (Eastern District), F.Scanlon (Bushwick), Winthrop F. Foskett (
De Witt Clinton), and RichardHumphries (Jamaica).
Such was the situation when Field Marshal von Hindenburg dashed up in hismotor car. Seventy young American patriots on top of Lookout Hill, withtheir last rounds of toy ammunition, were holding back a German regimentwhile their comrades fled for their lives. And surely they would havebeen a martyred seventy, since the Bavarians were about to charge in fullforce, had not von Hindenburg taken in the situation at a glance andshouted:
"Halt! It is not fitting that a German regiment shall use its strengthagainst a handful of boys. Let them guard their monument! March on!"
Meantime, to the east and north of the city the battle raged and terrorspread among the populace. All eyes were fixed on New York as a haven ofrefuge and, by the bridge, ferry and tunnel, hundreds of thousands madetheir escape from Brooklyn.
The three great bridges stretching their giant black arms across theriver were literally packed with people--fathers, mothers, children, allon foot, for the trolleys were hopelessly blocked. A man told meafterwards that it took him seven hours to cross with his wife and theirtwo little girls.
Other swarms hovered about the tunnel entrances and stormed theferry-boats at their slips. Every raft in the harbour carried its load.The Pennsylvania and Erie ferries from the other side of Manhattan, theStaten Island boats, the Coney Island and other excursion steamers,struggled through the press of sea traffic and I heard that three ofthese vessels sank of their own weight. Here and there, hardlydiscernible among the larger craft, were the small boats, life-boats,canoes, anything and everything that would float, each bearing its littlegroup to a precarious safety on Manhattan Island.
Meantime, Fort Totten and Fort Hamilton had been taken from the rear byoverwhelming forces, and their mortars had been used to silence the gunsof Fort Schuyler and Fort Wadsworth. In this emergency, seeing thesituation hopeless, General Wood withdrew his forces in good order undercover of a rear-guard action between the Uhlans and the United Statescolored cavalry, and, hurrying before him the crowds of fleeingcivilians, marched his troops in three divisions across the BrooklynBridge, leaving Brooklyn in flames behind him. Then facing inexorablenecessity, he ordered his engineers to blow up these three beautifulspans that had cost hundreds of millions, and to flood the subwaysbetween Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Seen through the darkness at the moment of its ruin the vast steelstructure of the Brooklyn Bridge, with its dim arches and filaments, waslike a thing of exquisite lace. In shreds it fell, a tangled, twisted,tragically wrecked piece of magnificence.
Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D. Page 7