Grey Tide In The East Read online

  What the German did not know, and Stilwell had no intention of allowing him to learn, was that the American military attaché nurtured a deep abiding and (he had to admit it to himself), almost irrational antipathy for the British, especially for the upper classes. The accent had an effect on Stilwell that was not unlike fingernails scraping a blackboard, hence the irritation.

  Stilwell had no intention of offending the man who was now taking him out to observe the German Army in action against the Russians. Ambassador Gerard had stressed that his bosses in Washington had been putting pressure on him to provide a reliable eyewitness report on the fighting in the East from someone other than a newspaper reporter. Stilwell had other orders as well, these from the War Department, which required him to provide detailed reports on the strengths and weaknesses of the Kaiser’s army in action against the Russians. The cooperative Captain Luettner was apparently doing his best to see that Stilwell would be able to complete his assignments.

  The East Prussian countryside was mostly flat, and the scenery consisted mostly of pine forests alternating with farms and swamps. As they drove in the big staff car down the rutted dirt road accompanied by clouds of dust, Luettner pointed out what Stilwell estimated to be at least twenty thousand men in brown uniforms, sitting or wandering aimlessly around a cow pasture surrounded by some hastily-erected barbed-wire fences. From nearby came the sounds of hammers and saws. Stilwell could see the beginnings of simple wooden buildings and tall guard towers being constructed on a fallow field.

  “These chaps are some of the prisoners we took from the Russian Second Army in the Battles of East Prussia.” This was the name given to the recently concluded four-day battle that had extended over hundreds of kilometres and resulted, according to German dispatches, in the near-total destruction of two Russian field armies.

  “We’re setting them to work building some of those, what do the English call them… ah, ‘concentration camps’,” Luettner shouted over the roar of the automobile engine.

  As it happened, Stilwell was familiar with concentration camps. He had seen them in the Philippines in 1904, during his service in the Philippine Insurrection. The United States Army had found it impossible to contain the insurrectionist’s hit-and-run-guerilla tactics with conventional warfare, so they simply rounded up the civilian population that supported the guerrillas and locked them up. Camps were quickly constructed by stringing barbed wire on wooden posts surrounding an enclosure and putting up few guard towers with machine guns to produce a cheap, instant prison.

  “I am told that these fellows fought like the very devil, even after they were surrounded,” Luettner went on. “Most of them only surrendered when they completely ran out of ammunition.”

  “Is it true that only half of their men had rifles when they went into combat?” Stilwell yelled, clutching a door handle with one hand and the old Philippine Insurrection campaign hat that he invariably wore in the field with the other, as the car bounced through a huge pothole.

  “That is what the battlefield reports say,” the German captain agreed. “Fancy sending your chaps out to fight without weapons! Apparently, the ones without rifles were expected to follow those who had them and arm themselves from the casualties.” He shook his head. “Not that it would have done them much good if they had rifles. There wasn’t enough ammunition for the ones they did have.”

  As they drove, they passed long lines of grey-clad German soldiers marching through the dust toward the front accompanied by big cook wagons pulled by mules, and by caissons and horse-drawn field pieces. The soldiers waved and shouted greetings as the big staff car roared by.

  Luettner pointed to a stand of woods across a field. “The commander of the Russian Second Army, a chap named Samsonov, I believe, shot himself over in that copse of trees after the battle.”

  Stilwell yelled another question. “I also heard that the Russians sent out their orders on the wireless in clear. That can’t be right, can it?” Stilwell had heard this story from Ray Swing after the latter had returned from his trip to the front. Swing had been unable to confirm the truth of the story, and a sceptical Stilwell had voiced doubts that even the Tsar’s generals could be that stupid.

  Luettner smiled and nodded his head. “At first, when our chaps were picking up Ivan’s orders from the air, Intelligence thought it must be some sort of clever ruse. But then we saw that the Russian units were making precisely the movements ordered by the intercepted transmissions, so we knew it was the genuine article. The damned odd thing is that they had codes and codebooks. They simply didn’t use them.”

  German morale seemed to be high, Stilwell observed. Many of the men were singing or laughing as they moved east on the dusty roads. Well, why not? Stilwell thought. It’s a lot more fun when you’re winning.

  “How many prisoners did you end up taking all together?” he asked.

  The German shook his head. “Sorry, old boy. Can’t tell you that.”

  Stilwell nodded with a certain grim satisfaction. The Germans had been a little too cooperative with the American military observer. Suspicious by nature, Stilwell had assumed that eventually he would ask a question that they were not going to answer.

  “Military secret, I suppose,” he grunted.

  Captain Luettner looked at Stilwell in surprise and began to laugh. “Hardly that, old chap. We simply haven’t finished counting them all. Intelligence estimates that we captured most of the First and Second Russian field armies in the battle here. We’ve counted 500,000 of them so far.”

  Luettner chuckled. “What was it that your General Sherman said? ‘They have fought their last man, and even he is running?’ Quite well put, that.”

  “It was Longstreet, at Chickamauga,” Stilwell replied tonelessly. He was stunned by the scope of the German victory. Half a million prisoners taken in one battle? It was almost unbelievable, yet everything about Luettner’s manner indicated that the man was telling him nothing but the unvarnished truth. Stilwell wondered if the Russians could halt the Germans this side of Moscow after such a catastrophe. It also occurred to him that the United States had better not get involved in a war with Germany anytime soon; the U.S. Army as presently constituted was a long way from being ready to take on this foe.

  Luettner turned right off the main road and onto a narrow side road that ran up a hill to the right. The road was bordered by a thick growth of pines and underbrush that was impenetrable to the eye.

  “Say, I thought we were going to watch a river crossing,” Stilwell protested. “The front’s that way, isn’t it?” he asked, pointing east, the direction they had been travelling.

  The German smiled. “And we will get an excellent view of it from up on this hill. I have orders not to let you get too close to the fighting. Imagine the fuss if you were killed! The French newspapers would be screaming tomorrow that the boches had assassinated the American military attaché. My dear fellow, you must see that that wouldn’t do at all.”

  Stilwell could see the logic in this, but he still wanted to get closer to the action. “I know for a fact that you let the newspaper boys get closer than this,” he grumbled.

  “Ah, but news reporters are not official representatives of the American government, are they?” Luettner asked. “You can see, I think, how that would make a difference, at least from my government’s point of view.”

  Seeing that it was pointless to argue, Stilwell reluctantly subsided.

  Luettner pulled the car off the road and into a small clearing. There was an opening in the foliage in the direction of the front, and Stilwell could see that the hill’s elevation gave an excellent view of miles of the East Prussian countryside spread out below.

  “Never fear, old man,” said Luettner, as he went into the trunk of the car and pulled out some black metal poles that proved to be a tripod stand. He set up the stand, went back to the trunk and brought out an enormous pair of periscope-style German field glasses, which he secured to the stand with a screw.

 
“There you are,” he said, gesturing at the field glasses. “You’ll have a better view of the crossing operation than the divisional commander himself.”

  From up on the elevation Stilwell could now hear the distant thumps of the German artillery pounding the Russian positions on the other side of the not very wide river.

  “That’s the Niemen River over there,” volunteered Luettner, now peering through another, smaller pair of glasses, before Stilwell could ask. “You can see what’s left of the old bridge over on the left. Ivan demolished it yesterday when he retreated through here.”

  Stilwell could see the ruins of a small suspension bridge whose main span formed a downward angle, with the vertex collapsed in the river.

  “Some of General Kluck’s lads will be putting in the attack,” Luettner continued. “It looks as if we got here just in time for the show.”

  Stilwell turned his glasses on the Russian positions. He was unimpressed by what he saw of the defensive preparations. The shallow trenches occupied by the infantry afforded almost no protection from the heavy German shelling. There was no counter-battery fire from the Russian artillery. The latter seemed to have very few guns of their own (mostly French 75s, according to information Stilwell had been given), and these few were out-ranged by the heavier German howitzers and other field guns. He speculated that most of Russian field pieces had probably been lost in the disaster two days earlier.

  As he watched, the remaining Russian batteries began limbering up the guns, harnessing the horses and pulling out. They were not leaving any too soon. He saw a German shell explode in the midst of one of the Russian batteries, dismounting two guns and knocking over several men who served them.

  He surveyed the near bank of the Niemen. The wind carried the faint popping sounds of the German rifle and machine gun fire and the feeble Russian response up to the hill. Masses of the grey-clad Germans were pouring heavy small arms fire on the Russians about a quarter-mile away from them on the opposite side of the river.

  He now saw groups of soldiers rushing from out of the pines near the river, carrying boats. Stilwell estimated that the boats were about 15 feet long. Each one was being carried by eight men. They swarmed into the water, leaping into the boats and paddling furiously across the river under Russian fire. One or two soldiers in each boat were shooting back at the far bank as their fellows propelled the assault craft.

  The Russian fire seemed to have little effect on the attackers. Stilwell judged that the heavy volleys of small arms fire from the German side of the river combined with shelling by the German artillery had effectively suppressed the defenders’ counter-fire. In what seemed like only a few moments, the German boats were beaching on the far bank, and the assault troops were scrambling out of the boats and moving on the Russian positions.

  A Russian officer on horseback appeared, waving his sword over his head and trotting back and forth behind the infantry, trying to encourage his men, and making himself a huge target for the German riflemen. The American estimated the officer’s life expectancy at about twenty seconds and, sure enough, almost immediately he and his horse were knocked down by German sharpshooters. A man on horseback was just too big a target on the modern battlefield where the infantry was armed with rifles. Every army on Earth should have learned that lesson from the American Civil War, but evidently the word had not yet reached some members of the Russian officer corps.

  “There’s brave and then there’s just plain stupid,” he muttered to himself. How could an officer lead his men if he was a casualty? he asked himself. You had to risk your neck sometimes, sure, but in this case the Russian officer had sacrificed his life for nothing, and now there was no one left to lead the defence of the position or to organise an orderly withdrawal, which was soon going to be necessary. His men were left to their own devices.

  The Russians were already wavering before their gallant but foolhardy officer was killed. Soon, the brown-clad defenders began emerging from their earthworks, waving white rags tied on the ends of sticks or rifles, throwing down their weapons and putting their hands in the air. Others further back were abandoning their shallow trenches and running into the woods behind the position.

  “These fellows aren’t exactly fighting to the last man, are they Captain?” Stilwell commented, watching the rout.

  “Perhaps their morale is not quite what it was a few days ago,” the German suggested. “Then too, they very likely had their best men in the frontline divisions, and most of them were captured or killed, so what remains may not be …” he hesitated.

  “Not their first team, shall we say?” Stilwell finished for him.

  “Ah, they’re bringing up the pontoons,” Luettner said, pointing.

  Stilwell saw a line of trucks pull up to a low point on the riverbank near the ruined bridge. The Germans began sliding the pontoons, which looked like long, flat-prowed fishing boats, off the backs of the trucks and dragging them down to the river. As he watched, the boats were drawn into the Niemen and rapidly connected together with ropes or cables (he could not see which) side by side, creating a line of floats extending out into the river. In almost no time, the bridge of boats had reached the opposite bank of the river, and soldiers on the near side began laying wooden planks over the pontoons to create a walkway. They were followed by engineers who secured the planks to the pontoons and to neighbouring planks. Almost before the last piece of wood was secured in place on the far side of the Niemen, columns of spike-helmeted soldiers were marching across the newly completed bridge. Stilwell pulled his watch from his pocket and stared at it. The whole operation, he saw, from the initial river crossing to a defended far bank, to the completion of the pontoon bridge, had only taken two hours.

  “I trust you’ve seen enough for your report, Captain Stilwell,” Luettner said. “Suppose we pop over to First Army Headquarters and I introduce you to General von Kluck. I should think that he would want to hear your impressions of the river crossing operation.”

  As they drove away, Stilwell reflected that unless the Russian Army could put up a better fight than they had done so far in East Prussia, they might discover that the war with Germany was lost almost before it began.

  Chapter Seven: OFF TUNISIA, SEPTEMBER 2, 1914

  Sub-Lieutenant King-Hall heard the distant thump of guns while he was still at breakfast. He immediately dropped a fork still bearing a piece of fried sausage to clatter on his plate, and rose, gulping down the last mouthful of eggs.

  Snatching his hat from the table, he left the officer’s mess and rushed out into the passageway, before he remembered being told as a cadet back at the Royal Naval Academy that “an officer should always give the men an impression of calm, most particularly when he is excited himself.” He took a deep breath, settled his hat on his head, and walked in what he thought of as a measured but expedient pace to his duty station as junior watch officer on the bridge of the H.M.S. Southampton, lately of the Royal Navy’s First Light Cruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet, now on detached duty with the Mediterranean Fleet. This was the 21-year-old King-Hall’s first shipboard assignment, and he was eager, not to say anxious, to do well in it. King-Hall’s family had a long tradition of service in the Royal Navy, which created high expectations for him. He was certain that his father, Admiral Sir George Fowler King-Hall, was reading his son’s fitness reports almost as soon as they were filed.

  Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that his pace was more expedient than measured, and when he reached the bridge after rapidly ascending the steel ladders from two decks below, the young Sub-Lieutenant found that he was breathing a little harder than he would have liked.

  Commodore Tyrwhitt, commander of the light cruiser squadron, was on the bridge already, talking to the Southampton’s skipper, Captain Goodenough. Tyrwhitt smiled at King-Hall as the latter saluted the squadron’s commanding officer and announced a trifle breathlessly, “Sub-Lieutenant King-Hall reporting for duty, sir.”

  “If you were worried th
at you would be late, Mr. King-Hall, I have good news for you,” said Tyrwhitt, returning the salute and consulting his watch. “You are in fact early, by six minutes to be precise.” Captain Goodenough and the ship’s Executive Officer, Lieutenant Commander Summers allowed themselves a brief grin before returning to their duties.

  This was almost a standing joke between the Commodore and his most junior officer. Since he had come aboard Southampton in February (a day earlier than required by his orders), King-Hall had reported early for duty every day without exception.

  “Yes, sir,” King-Hall replied. The joke was really one-sided. The young Sub-Lieutenant saw nothing particularly amusing about being prompt for duty. “I thought I heard some shooting while I was having breakfast.”

  Lieutenant-Commander Summers was peering out to sea at the Allied fleet. He responded without lowering his binoculars. “It seems that the French commander here wants a fight,” he said. “Admiral Souchon sent the usual torpedo boat with the parley flag to the port, but before it could get near the harbour, someone in the old fort put two shots across his bow and the boat turned back.”