The Greatest War Stories Never Told

by Rick Beyer

  One problem: there were no wars going on.

  So he turned to a different arena. He traveled to Stockholm to represent the United States at the 1912 Olympics. His event was the Modern Pentathlon, which tested competitors in five military skills: horsemanship, fencing, running, swimming, and shooting.

  The young lieutenant performed excellently in every event except the one he considered his best: pistol shooting. Most of his shots punched holes right inside the bull’s-eye. But for two of his shots, the judges ruled that he missed the target entirely. The officer himself believed the shots were so good they went through one of the earlier bullet holes.

  The gold medal was in the balance. But his argument fell on deaf ears. Instead of finishing first, he finished fifth, his thirst for glory still unquenched.

  But don’t feel too bad for the failed Olympian. He would find glory more than thirty years later, leading the tanks of the Third Army across what Shakespeare once called “The vasty fields of France,” punching holes in the German lines, and making headlines back home. A young lieutenant no more, he would become known as “Old Blood and Guts”—General George S. Patton, finally achieving the fame and plaudits he had sought his entire life.

  It was only four years after competing in the 1912 Olympics that young George Patton got a chance to start making his reputation with the newfangled weapon that would one day make his name famous: the tank.

  Patton, on the right, took pride in the fact that even though he did not medal in the competition, he came in third in the fencing and gave the French army champion his only defeat.

  If scoring had been done in the American manner—ten points for a bull’s-eye, nine for the next ring, and so on—Patton’s shooting would have placed him third for that event and the overall gold medal would have been his. But the Swedish method counted any hit on a target equally, so his numerous bull’s-eyes did him no good, while his alleged misses ruined his score.

  1913

  THE LAST CHARGE

  Remembering the day of days at a place called Gettysburg.

  The fateful charge of Pickett’s Brigade came on July 3, the third day at Gettysburg. With tens of thousands watching in awe, these brave men set off beneath the fierce afternoon sun. A mile of farm fields separated them from the Union soldiers up on Cemetery Ridge, but come what may, they were intent on coming to grips with their enemy.

  Proudly they marched, battle flags waving, a spectacle more dramatic than anyone there had ever seen. As they drew close, the rebel yell broke from their throats.

  The Yankees, crouched behind a stone wall, could wait no longer. Hearts about to burst with emotion, they flung themselves forward to meet the enemy.

  And then everyone hugged and cried.

  Because this was not the Battle of Gettysburg. It was the veterans of Gettysburg, North and South, reenacting the battle fifty years later to the day. The survivors of Pickett’s Charge retraced their steps with canes and crutches, as their Union counterparts and more than a hundred thousand spectators looked on. The very men who in their youth had fought as bitter enemies now united to walk the field of battle in peace.

  The white-haired veterans, many wearing the same uniforms they had fought in fifty years before, exchanged handshakes where they had once exchanged gunfire. Enemies no more.

  “AS THE REBEL YELL BROKE OUT AFTER A HALF CENTURY OF SILENCE . . . A MOAN, A GIGANTIC SIGH, A GASP OF UNBELIEF ROSE FROM THE ONLOOKERS.”

  — PHILIP MEYERS, A SPECTATOR OF THE EVENT

  The battlefield became a field of tents as fifty-three thousand Civil War veterans, Union and Confederate, came to the 1913 Grand Reunion at Gettysburg. It’s almost the exact same number of men who were killed and wounded in the pivotal Civil War battle.

  1913

  FLYING CIRCUS

  An aviation first in the Mexican Revolution?

  Two primitive biplanes made of wood and cloth approached each other early one November morning. The pilots exchanged a few loosely aimed pistol shots and then roared off in different directions.

  It doesn’t sound like much, but it may well have been the first aerial dogfight the world had ever seen.

  The pilots were American mercenaries who had hired themselves out to competing factions in the Mexican Revolution. Former San Francisco newspaper reporter Phil Rader was flying for General Huerta, while lifelong soldier of fortune Dean Lamb was in the pay of General Carranza. Rader had been dropping primitive bombs on Carranza’s forces, and Lamb had gone up to find him.

  Years later, Lamb recalled that when the two planes met, Rader fired first. But it appeared to Lamb that Rader was aiming to miss, so he did the same! (Not that they had much chance of hitting each other, anyway, firing pistols from airplanes.) The two pilots gaily emptied their pistols, reloaded, and made another pass. When it was all done they saluted each other and then went their separate ways.

  During World War I, when the two men served together, Lamb says they shared a few laughs about the whole affair.

  Air combat has become far more deadly in the years since, but it seems to have never completely lost the touch of romance intro-

  Dean Ivan Lamb’s colorful career also included working on the Panama Canal, serving in Britain’s Royal Flying Corps, founding the Honduran Air Force, taking part in several South American revolutions, getting indicted for jewel theft, acting as intelligence officer for the Flying Tigers, and testifying at Alger Hiss’s espionage trial. He was an incurable adventurer who once estimated that he served in thirteen different armies.

  This is the plane Lamb flew, a Curtis Model D Pusher—a plane that surely did not offer a great deal of protection in aerial combat! To reload his pistol, Lamb had to hold the gun between his knees and put the bullets in with one hand while holding on to the stick with the other.

  1914

  LIGHTS! CAMERA! WAR!

  What happens when a commanding general goes into the movie business?

  This is a frame from one of the movies shot of Pancho Villa’s army. Soon after Villa signed his contract, another rebel commander signed his own movie deal for exclusive rights to film his branch of the army. War may be hell, but the movie business is really cutthroat.

  In January of 1914, Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa made headlines, not with a battle or a fiery speech, but with something very different: a movie contract.

  Villa signed a $25,000 contract with Mutual Films giving them exclusive rights to cover his army. According to its terms, all other cameramen were banned from coming on Villa’s campaign, and the general was guaranteed a percentage of the gross.

  All that without an agent.

  Four cameramen were dispatched to join up with Villa’s army. The general obligingly held off an attack on the town of Ojinaga until they got there. He also agreed that if Mutual couldn’t get good enough pictures during actual battles, he would stage them.

  Mutual decided to make a film about Villa’s life, and the general agreed to play himself—even though he was still leading an army in battle! Mutual felt Villa’s sloppy old clothes didn’t come across well on film, so they gave him a snappy new uniform he was happy to wear. When producers complained that executions at dawn were too hard to film, Villa moved the shootings to later in the day, when there was better light. A location manager’s dream.

  One journalist called it “the war waged to make a movie.” In reality, it was Villa’s way of trying to finance his revolution—and generate some good PR. The general was portrayed in Mutual’s movies as a hero until his invasion of the U.S. in 1916. After that he became a first-class villain.

  That’s showbiz.

  “HOW WOULD YOU FEEL TO BE A PARTNER TO A MAN ENGAGED IN KILLING PEOPLE?”

  — MUTUAL FILMS’ HARRY AITKEN, COMMENTING ON THE DEAL

  Villa lost most of his support when he invaded the town of Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916, killing seventeen people. His goal was to prompt a U.S. invasion of Mexico that would anger Mexicans and inspire them to flock to h
is banner. It worked like a charm.

  1914

  THE BATTLE OF THE LUXURY LINERS

  A saga of the high seas with an amazing twist.

  There’s never been a naval engagement quite like it: two top-of-the-line ocean liners duking it out on the high seas. What made it even stranger was this:

  Each ship was disguised as the other.

  The Carmania was a British ocean liner, the Cap Trafalgar a German vessel. At the start of World War I, each ship was commandeered by its respective government and converted into an armed merchant cruiser. Sandbags were stacked up in lieu of armor, and guns bolted to the deck. Two weeks after war was declared, both were ready for military service.

  The Carmania set out on its first war mission from Liverpool, the Cap Trafalgar from Buenos Aires. Each captain knew that his vessel was no match for heavily armored warships, and in the interest of self-preservation, each hit upon the idea of disguising his ship to make it look like an enemy vessel.

  Some strange fate must have been at work, because the two captains each decided to disguise his ship as the other. They made the alterations as they sailed on toward a destiny that must have seemed unimaginably improbable.

  For as luck would have it, the two vessels happened upon each other off the Caribbean island of Trinidad. Each ship saw through the other’s disguise immediately, and the battle commenced. The giant ships dueled for an hour, until the Carmania sent the Cap Trafalgar to the bottom.

  And the battle of the luxury liners was over.

  The battle was fought on the numerically satisfying day of 9/14/1914.

  The Carmania had only two funnels, so the crew had to add a dummy third funnel to make it look like the Cap Trafalgar. The German ship, meanwhile, dismantled one of its forty-foot funnels and repainted the remaining funnels the same color as the Carmania’s.

  1914

  CHRISTMAS TRUCE

  The day the fighting stopped—and a soccer game broke out.

  Many men took snapshots like this one showing themselves posing with enemy soldiers, and sent them home to their families to prove that it really happened. The Christmas fraternization was quickly condemned by generals, and a number of participants were court-martialed.

  Christmas Day 1914 saw millions of young men facing each other in a double line of trenches several hundred yards apart that snaked hundreds of miles across Europe. These soldiers had seen some desperate fighting in the opening months of World War I, and plenty more lay ahead.

  But on this particular day, peace seemed to break out all over.

  In violation of orders, British and German soldiers climbed out of their trenches waving flags of truce and made their way into no-man’s-land to celebrate Christmas with their enemies. Leaving the horror of war behind for one day, they shared Christmas pudding and belted out songs together. They exchanged toasts and traded cigarettes and food. “Most peculiar Christmas I’ve ever spent, and ever likely to” scribbled one British soldier in his diary.

  In one place along the line, German soldiers from Saxony were fraternizing with Scottish Highlanders when one of the Scots brought out a soccer ball. A few minutes later a full-fledged game was under way on the frozen turf of no-man’s-land. Men who had been trying to kill each other just the day before played enthusiastically for more than an hour.

  A German lieutenant, Johannes Niemann, wrote home about the game: “We Germans really roared when a gust of wind revealed that the Scots wore no drawers under their kilts. The game finished with a score of three goals to two in favor of Fritz against Tommy.”

  The next day, the impromptu truce ended as quickly as it began . . . and the men who had celebrated together returned to the ugly job of killing each other.

  The soccer game, of course, had no referee; but the men on both sides took a perverse pride in playing precisely according to the rules.

  One Welsh regiment manning the trenches received a barrel of beer from the Germans facing them as a Christmas present.

  “FANCY A GERMAN SHAKING YOUR FLAPPER . . . AND THEN A FEW DAYS LATER TRYING TO PLUG YOU.”

  — HERBERT SMITH, FIFTH BATTERY, ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY

  1917

  THE BLACK SWALLOW OF DEATH

  He was the first African-American military pilot . . . and so much more.

  Gene Bullard’s last job was working as an elevator operator in New York’s RCA Building. He probably had the most amazing résumé of any elevator operator in history.

  Born the grandson of a slave in 1894, he stowed away on a ship to Europe when he was just ten. He started prizefighting at age sixteen, and when World War I broke out, he joined the French Foreign Legion. His infantry unit was known as the “Swallows of Death.”

  Bullard saw two years of action at the front, and was badly wounded at the Battle of Verdun. While recuperating, he volunteered for the French Air Service. In 1917 he became the world’s first black combat pilot. Involved in countless air skirmishes, he had one confirmed kill and another unconfirmed one.

  After the war he became a well-known character in Paris. He took drumming lessons to get in on the jazz craze, and got a job as a band leader at Zelli’s Zig Zag bar in Montmartre. Later he owned a club himself. But his days of military service weren’t over.

  In 1939, Bullard was recruited to gather information for French intelligence. When the Germans invaded in 1940, he picked up a rifle to fight for his adopted homeland, and was severely wounded. He was smuggled out of Europe and returned to the United States.

  Gene Bullard of Columbus, Georgia, won more than fifteen medals for his service to France. In 1954, when the French were relighting the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, who did they give that honor to?

  An elevator operator from New York.

  In 1960 Bullard was made a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. His other decorations included the Croix de Guerre, Croix de La France Libre, Medaille Militaire, Cross of the French Flying Corps, Croix de Combattants, Medaille Inter-Alliée, Medaille L’Etoille Rouge, and Medaille de la Victoire.

  In his first dog-fight, Bullard shot down a German Fokker, then barely made it back to Allied lines before his engine died and he crash-landed. When he got back to base, mechanics counted seventy-eight bullet holes in his Spad airplane.

  Bullard saw his whole life as a fight against discrimination. He emblazoned his plane with the motto “Tout le sang qui coule est rouge!” — “All blood runs red.” When the United States entered the war in 1917, Bullard tried to join the U.S. Army Air Corps, but was turned down because of his race.

  1917

  ONE AGAINST WAR

  America’s most passionate and persistent pacifist.

  Jeanette Rankin was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. A Republican from Montana, she vowed to represent women and children all over the country.

  Rankin was sworn in on April 2, 1917. Just four days later, the House faced a historic vote on whether or not to declare war against Germany.

  Rankin voted no.

  “I want to stand behind my country,” she said, “but I cannot vote for war.” Her decision resulted in a barrage of criticism. The New York Times said it was “final proof of the feminine incapacity for straight reasoning.” Rankin was defeated at the next election.

  After more than twenty years working as a lobbyist for peace, Rankin was elected to a second term in 1940. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, Rankin faced another vote on a declaration of war.

  Once again, she voted no. That made her the only member of Congress to vote against war with Japan, and the only one to vote against U.S. entry into both World War I and World War II. “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else,” she said. Unfriendly epithets rained on her from all quarters. She was called a “skunk,” a “traitor,” and a “Nazi.” Again her vote led to her defeat at the polls.

  No one ever called Jeanette Rankin a flip-flopper. In 1968, at the age of eighty-seven,
she led a march on Washington to oppose what she called the “ruthless slaughter” in Vietnam. At the end of her life she was asked if she would have done anything differently. “Yes,” she said. “I would have been nastier.”

  After Rankin’s vote against war with Japan in 1941, she was confronted in the halls of Congress by a mob of press, politicians, and angry protestors. She barricaded herself into a phone booth and called Capitol Hill security, who fought their way through the crowd and escorted her safely to her office.

  Rankin was elected to Congress before women in much of the country could vote. Montana passed a female suffrage law in 1914, but women in most states couldn’t vote until ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, in 1920.

  The Rankin campaign of 1917 was an early pioneer in the use of “phone banks” to get out the vote. According to a New York Times report the day after the election, “Her friends telephoned to practically everyone in the state who had a telephone . . . and greeted whoever answered the telephone with a cheery ‘Good morning. Have you voted for Jeanette Rankin?’ ”

  1921

  THE FEMALE LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

  The audacious Englishwoman who drew the borders of modern Iraq.

  Gertrude Bell was a Victorian woman who did things women just weren’t supposed to do. Eschewing the idea of a proper marriage and quiet life in England, she made the Middle East her passion. It was among the Bedouin that she truly felt at home.