HONORING THE ENEMY
THE HONOR SERIES BY ROBERT N. MACOMBER
At the Edge of Honor
Point of Honor
Honorable Mention
A Dishonorable Few
An Affair of Honor
A Different Kind of Honor
The Honored Dead
The Darkest Shade of Honor
Honor Bound
Honorable Lies
Honors Rendered
The Assassin’s Honor
An Honorable War
HONORING THE ENEMY
A Captain Peter Wake Novel
ROBERT N. MACOMBER
Naval Institute Press
Annapolis, Maryland
Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road
Annapolis, MD 21402
© 2019 by Robert N. Macomber
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Macomber, Robert N., date, author.
Title: Honoring the enemy : a Captain Peter Wake novel / Robert N. Macomber.
Description: Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, [2019] | Series: Honor series ; 14 | Series: Spanish-American war trilogy ; 2 | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018051297 (print) | LCCN 2018053914 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682474457 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781682474457 (epub) | ISBN 9781682474198 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781682474457 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Spanish-American War, 1898—Fiction. | United States—History, Naval—19th century—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / War & Military. | FICTION / Biographical. | FICTION / Sea Stories. | GSAFD: War stories. | Historical fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3613.A28 (ebook) | LCC PS3613.A28 H676 2019 (print) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018051297
Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
Printed in the United States of America.
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First printing
This novel is respectfully dedicated to the memory of one of the bravest men I’ve ever known:
CAPT. CHARLES K. (CHUCK) CLINGENPEEL (CID/LCSO) (1937–2013)
A soldier, lawman, adventurer, philosopher, mentor, and dear friend who taught me so much, stood by me so often, and made me a much better man.
The man who watches each day’s sunrise with anticipation of a great day ahead, and each day’s sunset with satisfaction of a great day done, can truly be said to live every day of his life to the max.
—F/Sgt Chuck Clingenpeel, December 1976
Contents
An Introductory Word with My Readers
A Note about the Memoirs
Preface
1 The Hotel
2 The Army
3 Breakfast with a Hero
4 The Spreading of Joy
5 Au Revoir, Not Adieu
6 Back in Cuba
7 Isidro
8 The Society of the Night
9 Africa
10 Civilization
11 Reinforcements
12 The Great Man Himself
13 Decisions of War and Love
14 Find a Bigger Mule
15 Council of War
16 The Liberators
17 In the Arena and Daring Great Things
18 The Grand Strategy
19 The Jungle
20 Facing the Elephant
21 The Butcher’s Bill
22 The Road to Santiago
23 A Lovely View of Santiago
24 The Killing Ground
25 Kettle Hill
26 Parker’s Guns
27 Heat of Battle
28 Facing the Sun
29 Perfumed Moonlight
30 A Glorified Lackey
31 The Secret Option
32 The Actor
33 Getting the Lay of the Land
34 An Exquisitely Pleasant Failure
35 Memories of Santiago
36 The Wedding Present
37 Madam Clara
38 Haggling
39 A Dish Best Served Cold
40 Carlito
41 My New Command
42 Sunrise
43 Men in a Tree
44 A Choice of Deaths
45 Sunday Routines
46 A Storm of Steel and Lead
47 The Ultimate Irony
48 Two Degrees
49 Let Us Do This with Dignity
50 Honoring the Enemy
51 Triumphant Glory
52 Reunion and Defiance
53 Living in the Mud No More
54 A Pretty Morning
55 The Woman in White
Acknowledgments
Sources and Notes by Chapter
Bibliography of Research Materials
About the Author
An Introductory Word with My Readers
When writing this fourteenth novel in the Honor Series about Peter Wake, it occurred to me that both new and longtime readers might appreciate a timeline of our fictional hero’s life until this point. It certainly has been far from dull. The source and informational notes arranged by chapter at the back of the novel have even more information on the places and people in the story. Readers who are interested in delving further into this fascinating subject can see my research bibliography, also in the back of the book.
Timeline of Peter Wake’s Life from 1839 to Mid-1898
1839—Peter Wake is born into a seafaring family on the coast of Massachusetts on June 26.
1852—At age thirteen Wake goes to sea in his father’s schooner to learn the coastal cargo trade.
1855—Wake is promoted to schooner mate at age sixteen.
1857—Wake is promoted to command of a schooner at age eighteen.
1861—The Civil War begins. At his father’s plea, Wake remains a draft-exempt merchant marine captain on the New England coast. By 1862 his three older brothers—Luke, John, and Matthew—are already in the Navy and fighting the war.
1863—Wake loses his draft exemption and volunteers for the U.S. Navy. He is stationed at Key West and commissioned an acting master. Given command of a small sailing gunboat, Rosalie, he operates on the Southwest Florida coast and in the Bahamas against blockade-runners and is promoted to acting lieutenant. Irish-born boatswain’s mate Sean Rork joins Rosalie’s crew, and the two men become lifelong best friends (as depicted in At the Edge of Honor—first novel of the Honor Series).
1864—Wake chases Union deserters from the Dry Tortugas to French-occupied Mexico. Later he marries Linda Donahue at Key West, with Rork as best man. Wake is engaged in amphibious operations against Confederates in Florida (as depicted in Point of Honor).
1865—Wake’s daughter Useppa is born at Useppa Island. After the tumultuous end of the Civil War in Florida and Cuba, Wake is sent to hunt down ex-Confederates in Puerto Rico (as depicted in Honorable Mention).
1867—When volunteer officers are dismissed, Wake decides to stay in the Navy and is commissioned a regular lieutenant. He is one of the few officers in the Navy who haven’t graduated from the Naval Academy. His son, Sean, is born at Pensacola Naval Station.
1869—While on a mission against a renegade American former naval officer off the coast of Panama, Wake relieves his captain of duty and is charged with mutiny. He is subsequently acquitted of the charge, but his reputation is permanently tarnished (as depicted in A Dishonorable Few).
1874—While Wake is involved in questionable activities in Spain and Italy, he is saved by Jesuits from further disrepute when a beautiful French woman enters his life. He later rescues the woman and other French civilians in Africa and is awarded the Legion of Honor by France and promoted to lieutenant commander (as depicted in An Affair of Honor).
1880—Wake embarks on his first espionage mission during the South American War of the Pacific and further cements his relationship with the Jesuits. He is awarded his second foreign medal, the Order of the Sun, by Peru. Before Wake can return home, his beloved wife, Linda, dies of cancer. He sinks into depression but then plunges into his work, helping to form the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) (as depicted in A Different Kind of Honor).
1883—On an espionage mission into French Indo-China, Wake befriends King Norodom of Cambodia, is awarded the Royal Order of Cambodia, and is promoted to commander. Wake and Rork buy Patricio Island in Southwest Florida and build bungalows there for use when they are on annual leave (as depicted in The Honored Dead).
1886—Wake meets young Theodore Roosevelt and Cuban patriot José Martí in New York City as he begins an espionage mission against the Spanish in Havana, Tampa, and Key West. His deadly twelve-year struggle against the Spanish secret police begins, as well as friendships with Martí and Roosevelt (as depicted in The Darkest Shade of Honor).
1888—A search for a lady friend’s missing son in the Bahamas and Haiti becomes a love affair and an espionage mission ending in a perilous escape. Wake’s relationship with the Russian secret service begins. His marriage proposal rejected by his lover, Wake falls back into depression and focuses on his work (as depicted in Honor Bound). During a mission to rescue ONI’s Cuban operatives from Spanish custody in Havana, Wake uses an introduction through Martí to forge a relationship with the Freemasons. Barely escaping the Spanish secret police in Cuba, he manages to save the lives of the men he was sent to find and liberate (as depicted in Honorable Lies).
1889—Wake is sent to the South Pacific on an espionage mission to prevent a war between Germany and America at Samoa. He is awarded the Royal Order of Kalakaua by the Kingdom of Hawaii and gains the gratitude of President Grover Cleveland but is ashamed of the sordid methods he felt forced to use in Samoa (as depicted in Honors Rendered).
1890—Wake learns that his 1888 love affair produced a daughter, Patricia, who is growing up in Illinois with her maternal aunt after her mother died in childbirth. Wake leaves ONI espionage work and thankfully returns to sea in command of a small cruiser. This same year, his son, Sean, graduates from the U.S. Naval Academy as a commissioned officer.
1892—Wake has a love affair in Washington, D.C., with Maria Ana Maura of Spain and is brought back into espionage work on a counter-assassination mission in Mexico and Florida. He saves Martí’s life and returns to sea in command of another warship (as depicted in The Assassin’s Honor).
1893—In April, Wake is promoted to captain and Rork to the newly established rank of chief boatswain’s mate. In May, Wake marries Maria, and his daughter Useppa marries her Cuban fiancé, Mario Cano, in a double wedding ceremony in Key West (as depicted in The Assassin’s Honor).
1895—Wake’s dear friend José Martí is killed in action while fighting the Spanish at Dos Rios in eastern Cuba on May 19.
1897—Wake ends seven years of sea duty with orders to be the special assistant to the young new assistant secretary of the Navy, his longtime friend Theodore Roosevelt. Together they ready the Navy for the looming war against Spain.
1898—Roosevelt sends Wake inside Cuba on an espionage mission against the Spanish during the tense confrontation before the Spanish-American War begins. He is in Havana Harbor when Maine explodes, and later that night kills his longtime nemesis, Colonel Isidro Marrón, the head of the Spanish secret police. After war is declared several months later, Wake leads a daring coastal raid against the enemy in Cuba. Afterward he is unofficially shunned for employing shockingly brutal tactics against the Spanish to accomplish the mission, save the lives of his men, and get them all home. Wounded during the mission, he convalesces in Tampa, nursed by his wife, Maria (as depicted in the first novel of the Honor Series trilogy about the Spanish-American War, An Honorable War).
As Honoring the Enemy begins we find Wake back in the thick of the Spanish-American War, somewhat recovered from his recent wounds. But instead of the ship command he deserves and expects, Wake is ordered to assist the U.S. Army’s woefully unprepared and inept V Corps staff at Tampa in planning the invasion of Cuba.
A Note about the Memoirs
Peter Wake wrote his memoirs so his family and friends would know the truth of what had happened in his career. They are thus written with unusual candor and personal details. His descriptions and opinions of people may not be considered sensitive and tolerant in our modern age, but Wake was remarkably liberal for his time. His political assessments of personalities and events were frequently at odds with the norm back then but have proven to be uncannily prescient with our hundred-year hindsight.
The turn of the century was full of momentous events whose consequences dictated world history for the next ninety years. They changed all of us.
Robert N. Macomber
The Boat House
St. James, Pine Island
Florida
Preface
This is a memoir of men—and one very brave woman, my wife—in the midst of war. My goal in recounting my experiences in Cuba is to educate the next generation about what war is really like, for they must not make the same miscalculations when facing future confrontations. The most egregious error is supposing that we Americans have exclusive possession of the moral high ground and physical courage. In modern warfare, the cost of that sort of naïveté is measured in the blood of thousands.
With startling rapidity, the onset of combat operations changes long-assumed facts. Military plans never evolve as intended. Equipment never operates as expected. The enemy is never as incompetent, or as invincible, as previously assessed to be. Fellow countrymen and foreign allies turn out to be far less capable than they were thought to be. Even Mother Nature enters the scenario. She is the great equalizer, not caring a damn about nationality or military status or politicians’ bombast. Tropical terrain, weather, and disease thwart momentum and crush morale.
Such was the situation in the jungles of eastern Cuba that summer of 1898. Within minutes of blundering ashore, the Americans discovered all their prior assumptions were false. Like the sand on Daiquiri’s beach at flood tide, those comfortable notions disappeared—replaced by the rude reality of Cuba’s incessant heat, humidity, rain, disease, and insects. That was the first day. Soon afterward the Americans learned in detail about the enemy’s Mauser rifles and Krupp artillery.
I was there from the very beginning. I endured the two most significant battles of the war and witnessed the victories that made the United States of America a world power. Back home, the nation rejoiced. But I knew how very close to a humiliating defeat we actually were.
The Spanish didn’t have the luxury of arrogance in Cuba. They’d been fighting there for too long. All they had left was courage and skill. I saw it close up. And as the battles ground on, I found myself respecting and even honoring our enemy.
This volume of my memoirs tells why. Though written ten years after the events it describes, I still shudder at the memories of those days and nights in Cuba. It is my hope that future generations take these lessons to heart.
The next time we face a modern foe, we might not be so lucky.
Rear Adm. Peter Wake, USN
Special Naval Aide to the President
Washington, D.C.
13 September 1908
HONORING THE ENEMY
1
The Hotel
U.S. Army V Corps Headquarters, Tampa Bay Hotel, Tampa, Florida 5:45 a.m., Monday, 6 June 1898
THE TAMPA BAY HOTEL, Florida’s premier tropical resort, is normally closed for the summer, when to
urists tended to avoid the entire state. Built in 1892 and owned by railroad and real estate mogul Henry Plant, the hotel made a lot of money in the winter season. In 1898 it also made a lot of money in the summer, for war came to Tampa, and the shiny brass of the U.S. Army moved into the Tampa Bay Hotel.
The hotel’s hot, musty rooms were now full of hobnobbing newspaper reporters, harried Army staff functionaries, serious-faced senior officers, and smiling politicians, along with a few insistent wives who regretted their decision to come to Florida in early summer. As I walked through the deserted public rooms at a quarter of six that June morning, not one of them was in sight. A general atmosphere of easygoing indolence pervaded everything. The place even smelled closed for business.
As I crossed the lobby I saw one man calmly noticing everything—Joseph Herrings. It didn’t surprise me that he was there at that hour. He might turn up anywhere, at any time. A reporter for a German-language newspaper in New York, Herrings wrote about the Army’s true military readiness and skills in articles that were disturbingly accurate. He cast a knowing smirk toward me before looking down and scratching something in his notepad.
My footsteps echoed loudly on the polished floor of the empty hallway leading to the Army staff offices. With every step my anger increased. The hotel was headquarters for an entire Army corps about to embark on a large-scale seaborne invasion of enemy territory—the first for the U.S. Army since the Mexican-American War half a century earlier. The lives of 17,000 American soldiers—and more important, my life—depended on what the various generals inside that hotel decided, if and when they ever got around to it.
I strode past the drowsy sentry, a less than impressive volunteer from Illinois, and entered the anteroom of the commanding general’s office. I found it silent, too. Only one man was in sight, a smooth-faced lieutenant who seemed startled by my intrusion. He also appeared to have just arrived and was setting a glass of tea down on his desk. The ice shavings in it were an extravagance for which the resort was famous. Savor it now, son, I thought, for there won’t be any ice in Cuba.
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