War, Flu, and Alcohol
September 25, 1918.
Military trucks, red crosses painted stark and clear on either side, rumbled toward the Western Front. They ground their way across fields, mud, and the scars of artillery shells until they reached a quiet stretch of road and began to slow.
The engine coughed and shuddered as if catching its breath. The driver killed the ignition and stepped down.
"Let's take a break."
"Christ, my ass bone is killing me."
They had been driving since morning. The trucks were low on fuel; the men were hungry. From canvas bags they pulled out their rations—hard cheese, fruit, bread.
Drift chewed methodically, watching his companion twist his waist and roll his neck, face twisted in a grimace. The kid was eighteen that year. Not even draft age, yet he had forged his birth date just to volunteer. A real oddball.
"Be honest. You regret not staying home?"
"Not even a little. This is life experience. You don't learn this in school."
"You sure you need to learn it? Sometimes it's better to die without knowing certain things."
War was one of those things. The odds of dying were lower for them than for the infantry, but Drift had still watched comrades vanish in a shellburst, truck and all. He had seen too many bodies so mangled that limbs were indistinguishable from wreckage.
"These days it all feels like a dream, doesn't it?"
"I think that sometimes too. Maybe we're already dead and this is hell. If this isn't hell, what is?"
Having roughly finished his meal, Drift stuck a cigarette between his lips. His companion did the same, then began sketching on the canvas tarp covering the truck bed.
"You're diligent."
"It's the one thing I'm good at. You should try drawing too, Corporal Drift."
"Not my hobby."
To Drift's eye the kid's skill wasn't half bad. In a hellish war zone those drawings were a genuine comfort. Exhausted soldiers still managed a smile whenever they saw the cheerful pictures on the trucks.
"What'll you do when the war's over?"
"Hmm. Maybe get a job at a magazine or a newspaper. I want to be a cartoonist like Thomas Nast."
Thomas Nast had been a mid-to-late nineteenth-century caricaturist who skewered politicians in Harper's Weekly. He was famous for taking down the corrupt Tammany Hall boss William "Boss" Tweed, and he had also created the modern image of Santa Claus.
Of course Drift had no idea who Nast was. Raised in the back alleys of Hell's Kitchen, the only thing he knew was the gangs. His sole pleasure these days was trading letters with the boys back home and hearing the latest news.
The Boss even started a magazine and a newspaper, they said.
He couldn't understand why a gang would bother with that, but who could ever guess what the Boss was thinking? One thing was certain: the Boss's business sense was every bit as sharp as his personal combat ability.
Something occurred to Drift.
"Disney. When the war's over and you get to New York, look me up. I'll introduce you to a magazine and a newspaper."
"Whoa, what's the name?"
"What was it again… I'll tell you later. I'll handle the fuel. You just keep drawing."
"Whoa, thank you! You're the best, Corporal Drift!"
While Drift topped off the truck, Disney finished a smiling soldier's face on the left-side canvas cover.
Then engine noise drifted in from the distance. Other trucks were coming—friend or foe, better not wait around to find out.
"We move. Now."
"Yes, sir!"
Corporal Drift of the Union Gang. Private Walt Disney, who had falsified his papers to volunteer. Both were serving with the American army, hauling supplies for the Red Cross.
October 1918. The Argonne Forest, France.
Early in the war the Germans had seized the forest and turned the whole of it into a defensive fortress. Roughly a week earlier the Allies had launched the massive Meuse-Argonne Offensive, and ferocious fighting had raged ever since.
KRA-KOOM!
KRA-KOOM!
"Artillery to the front! Germans and snipers on the flanks!"
"Damn it. We're completely surrounded."
The Charlevaux Ravine. Major Charles Whittlesey ground his teeth as he surveyed the battlefield. One axis of their position had been shattered by shellfire; neither advance nor retreat was simple.
The French troops who had been with them had fallen back under a massive German counterattack. Other American divisions were likewise pinned in place. To make matters worse, their rear liaison had been shot and all communication was cut.
The strength of Whittlesey's 77th Division dwindled by the hour.
"Captain Holderman! There's no other way! Take men and punch a hole through to the supply line for food and ammo!"
"Yes, sir!"
Captain Holderman attacked one German axis and tried to break through, only to be thrown back with catastrophic losses. He returned having lost more than half his force.
"Damn it! You wasted good men—what the hell were you doing?!"
Whittlesey was furious, but the fault was not solely the captain's. The situation was simply that bad.
He ordered the survivors into defensive positions and concentrated on weathering the German assaults.
Two mornings later, a reconnaissance party from the 77th Division set out to scout new routes. The soldiers looked wretched—uniforms torn, faces caked with dust and mud. Their heavy boots were soaked through; every step felt like walking barefoot through a swamp.
"This is complete shit. Gavin, how about we just stop? You gonna keep going till you actually see the bullets flying?"
"What are you talking about. We still have farther to go toward their lines. We at least need to map the local terrain."
"Yeah, and then what? We're holed up and can't move anyway."
"Antonio. Shut up and walk. That guy never stops running his mouth."
They were more than unit mates—they were neighborhood boys. The 77th Division itself was packed with men from Manhattan's Lower East Side: poor Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants, and among them more than a few gangsters.
"Fuck off. We're already surrounded on every side. Why the hell do we need to go say hello to the goddamn Ger—"
A long, rising whistle.
KRA-KOOOOOM!
"I told you we should stop!"
"That's weird. No way the Germans are already this close."
"Cut the crap and fall back. Now!"
The scouts spun around and raced for their own lines, dodging incoming shells.
By the time Gavin and the others made it back, their own position was under concentrated fire. Then came Whittlesey's surreal announcement: friendly artillery was shelling them. Absurd—yet after a year of war, entirely believable. With the lines a chaotic mess of friend and foe and the radios dead, positive identification was impossible.
Whittlesey's men were on the northern slope of the ravine. Other American batteries simply did not know that and were pounding their own people.
Whittlesey turned to their only remaining means of communication—carrier pigeons—and fastened an encrypted note to a bird's leg.
77th Division is along the road parallel to 276.4. Our own artillery is dropping a barrage directly on us. Stop.
As a precaution he sent several birds carrying the same message. Most were shot down or died before they reached safety.
"This is our last hope."
He tied the note to the leg of a pigeon named Cher Ami and cast her into the sky.
With a furious flurry of wings Cher Ami cleared the trees and climbed. Some time later she reached the battery that had been shelling their own men—shot through the breast, one eye blinded, one leg hanging by a single tendon. The officer who read the note shouted:
"Medic!"
Ridiculous as it sounded, that pigeon stopped the friendly fire on the 77th. In recognition of her service the medics were ordered to spare no effort saving Cher Ami.
Meanwhile, the moment the American barrage lifted, the Germans attacked with uncanny timing. Bullets whipped past; bayonets fixed, German infantry came charging.
"Motherfuckers!"
"Hold the line! Nowhere left to run!"
"If I die, I'm taking at least one German with me!"
Gavin, Teddy, and David—Union members all—pressed their backs together and plunged into the melee.
"They don't have the numbers either!"
"Just hold a little longer and they'll pull back. Stay strong!"
Don't charge out like a blind animal. And a bayonet fight doesn't have to be one-on-one. Fight with men whose backs you can trust.
Those words, drilled into them by the Boss, had kept them alive this long on the front. Looking at it now, the Boss was wasting his talent. The battlefield was where he truly belonged. The United States should have dragged him here by force if necessary.
At last the Germans withdrew. The 77th's strength had dwindled again. Morale was crumbling, disease was spreading, ammunition was nearly gone, and the food was finished. Supply drops floated serenely down—into enemy lines.
"Strip the dead for supplies!"
They unwound bandages from corpses and rewrapped them around the wounded. To get water meant risking another German attack.
For three more days they held on. Men were taken prisoner, cut down by bullets, or simply died of sickness.
Under a night sky thick with stars, Gavin pulled off his gas mask. The latest issue, received just before the big push, caught the moonlight; the engraved motto stood out clearly.
Free your body
Gavin traced the letters with a finger and asked quietly:
"You think it's true?"
"What is?"
"That this goddamn war is almost over."
"Who knows. If he's wrong… nothing we can do about it. But the Boss said it. I believe him."
The American and French armies were throwing everything they had into shattering the German defensive lines. One million two hundred thousand American troops, another eight hundred thousand French. What would the world look like when this battle ended?
A voice cut through the mood.
"War's got a long way to go. And what is your Boss, some kind of fortune-teller? You actually believe that horseshit?"
"Shut your mouth."
"Lovett, that name isn't yours to throw around. You meet the Boss, you'll change your tune."
"Yeah, right. And for the record, kids, I'm a gang boss too. You have any idea how many boys I had under me?"
William Lovett. Nowhere near the White Hand Gang in stature, but until the draft he had run his own outfit in Brooklyn.
"I'm surviving this and taking Brooklyn. Dinny Meehan? Don't make me laugh. Anyway, you boys just keep playing house with your fortune-teller Boss back on the LES."
"Idiot. When we get back we're taking all of New York. Lovett, the best spot left for you will be somewhere in one of our units."
"Fuck you."
They had known each other since Camp Upton, but the relationship had never been warm. Even among Irish, the East River kept Manhattan and Brooklyn gangs locked in rivalry. As if to mock them both, an Italian gangster called out:
"Pathetic. We could all be dead tomorrow and you're still arguing over territory."
"Hey, this is the only way to feel alive. Have a drink."
To endure the extreme stress of shellfire, mud, trenches, and encirclement, the American army issued a small ration of whiskey.
In the Meuse-Argonne Offensive—already producing staggering casualties—the 77th Division, surrounded and cut off by the Germans, became known as the Lost Battalion. From October 2nd to the 8th they fought their way free.
Of the nine companies of the 77th Division that had been surrounded during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, only 194 men came out alive. The toll was brutal: of 554 men, 197 were killed, 150 missing or taken prisoner, and just 194 survived.
"Gavin, Teddy, David, Drift… you think they're all okay?" Leo asked from the sofa, newspaper in hand.
What was I supposed to say? I chewed a strip of jerky and answered:
"If they held on, they'll be home soon. The war's entering its final stretch."
Of course no newspaper said any such thing. Nowhere in the war coverage did the word "armistice" even appear. But to put the finishing stroke on the Hundred Days Offensive that had begun on the Western Front, America had thrown 1.2 million men into Meuse-Argonne. Internal collapse, famine, the Spanish flu—Germany simply no longer had the strength to endure every calamity at once.
I was sick of the endless war columns. I turned the page and found the Spanish flu dominating the next spread.
Roa and Liam were stuck at home too because of the unprecedented pandemic. Maybe that was why Roa's sleep-talking had been getting longer every night.
I turned another page. Headlines from the temperance crusaders—practically brainwashing the public—sat beside more interesting ones.
The conditions for ratifying the Eighteenth Amendment—Prohibition—were nearly complete. All that remained was drafting the detailed enforcement regulations: when, how, and to what degree the law would take effect. In short, the question had shifted from "Could this really happen?" to "It's actually happening." Leo's reaction proved it.
"Whoa. Just like you said—Prohibition's really going through. What's my old man gonna do?"
He sneered at his alcoholic father, shoulders shaking with laughter. That was the moment Cale, who handled unit operations, walked into the office.
"Boss. New job just came in."
Someone had used a newsstand to write out an order form and make contact with the Union.