Wars to End All Wars: Alternate Tales from the Trenches Page 9

  He could not see the torpedo that, after so many misses, exploded under the Goeben’s stern and jammed one of her rudders. But he saw the sag of her bow toward the Cape, and he knew what that meant.

  “Dear God,” he said softly. “She’s going to hit the rocks.”

  “Admiral?” The face bent over his looked worried; Cradock tried to point and managed only a weak flap of his hand. But they looked . . . as the Goeben yawed in the current, her bow swinging more and more to port, into the rocks that had claimed, over thousands of years, that many ships and more.

  Another half mile and she would have been well beyond Cape Malea, with sea room to recover from steering problems. Instead, her remaining steam and the current dragged her abraded hull along the rocks, and the destroyers fired their last torpedoes into her. With a vast exhalation of steam, like the last breath of a dying whale, the Goeben settled uneasily, rolling onto her side.

  August 8, aboard H.M.S. Black Prince

  Cradock lay sweating in his bandages in the captain’s cabin, more than a little amazed that he was alive. Too many were not. Warrior gone with all hands. Defence sunk, and only 117 of her crew recovered. Six of eight destroyers . . . Scorpion and Racoon were still afloat, but of the others only a very few hands had survived. Only 83 of the Germans, Admiral Souchon not among them. Black Prince and Duke of Edinburgh were both in need of major repairs, unable to do more than limp back to Malta. Admiral Milne had already expressed his displeasure with the loss of so many ships and men, and, as he had put it, “reckless disregard of his duty to his superior.” He foresaw that Milne would take credit for the success, and condemn the method by which it had been achieved. Like Codrington at Navarino, he would be censured for having exceeded his orders, while the Admiralty shed no tears over the vanquished enemy. Well, they would have retired a one-legged admiral anyway. A tap at his door introduced yet another problem.

  “Sir.” Wray stood before him like a small boy before a headmaster.

  “Captain Wray,” Cradock said mildly.

  “I was . . . wrong, sir.”

  “It happens to all of us,” Cradock said. “I’ve been wrong many times.”

  “But—”

  But he wanted to know what Cradock would say about him, in his official reports.

  “Captain Wray, I never finished telling you the story of that hunter,” he said. A long pause; Wray looked haggard, a What now? expression. “I sold him,” Cradock said. “To a man who wanted a good hack.” Wray seemed to shrink within his uniform. “Have some tea,” Cradock offered, seeing that the message had been received.

  “Nothing can change the nature born in its blood,” he said, quoting a Greek poet, most apt for this ocean. “Neither cunning fox, nor loud lion.” Nor coward, though he would not say that. He could take no pleasure in Wray’s humiliation, but in the Navy there were no excuses. That was the great tradition.

  * * *

  The Royal Navy’s failure to keep the German battle cruiser Goeben from reaching Constantinople in the early days of WWI caused repercussions still being felt today, and led to the prolongation of the war, the collapse of the Tsarist government due to lack of supply through the Mediterranean into Russia’s Black Sea ports, and the meteoric rise of Arab nationalism in the post-war period. That failure rested on the shoulders of Admiral Milne, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, who ignored orders to seek out the Goeben and sink it, and his subordinate Admiral Troubridge, commander of the Adriatic Squadron, a man who could not bring himself to exceed Milne’s orders. But suppose another officer had shown such initiative and courage at the risk of his career? I gave Admiral Christopher Cradock, equal in rank to Troubridge and a much bolder commander, the chance to try it.

  Elizabeth Moon

  Elizabeth Moon grew up on the Texas-Mexico border, a voracious reader and early writer. She has published twenty-six novels in both science fiction and fantasy, including Compton Crook Award winner Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, Hugo-nominated Remnant Population, and Nebula Award winner The Speed of Dark (also nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award), as well as three short-fiction collections including Moon Flights (2007), and the e-book collection Tales of Paksworld (fall 2014). She has degrees in history and biology, and served three years active duty in the USMC. Her most recent novel is Crown of Renewal, May 2014, the fifth and final volume of Paladin’s Legacy. When not writing fiction she likes to wander around taking pictures of wildlife and native plants, knit colorful socks, spend too much time online (she insists it’s all research), sing with a choir, and laugh.

  On the Cheap

  * * *

  Dan Bieger

  Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness.

  Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness.

  Sun Tzu, 512 BCE

  A dank and dreary day precedes a dank and dreary night. This is 1920 Dublin, after all, and late in October, the 25th. The Brazen Face, the elder statesman of Irish pubs in service since the end of the 12th Century, runs appropriately modest, a small battalion of customers on a Monday night. At a table situated against the wall in the middle of the first bar room, three men ply their pints. The chap doing most of the talking, clad in staid coat and tie offset by a blazing kerchief in the pocket, speaks with a drawl distinct from his companions though clearly blending with the surrounds. He wears spectacles, large, round, and brown. On top his hair has thinned but, on his upper lip, the chevron defies critique. His presence boasts equal parts inspiration, imitation, and imagination. His mid-tenor voice delivers sentences in short bursts, never more than five words at a time. He calls himself Jimmy Choice. He is, as always, who he wants to be.

  This being the day it is; the recent war being what it was, Jimmy is not surprised to be asked about his wartime service. Every Irishman has a wartime service; well, every Irishman worth his salt has an answer ready when asked ‘What did you do in the war?’ Today, when it’s a reporter who’s asking, isn’t that all the more reason to give answer?

  “I served with the mostly unpublicized, Not-Royal-At-All Dublin Fey Detachment.” With that Jimmy strikes as heroic a pose a sitting man may achieve and recites just loud enough for his companions to hear: “We Fey, we happy Fey, we wee band of Others.”

  Across the table from Jimmy sits a man of apparent equal age and costume. This man, V.A. Yates is blessed with wild, unruly hair flopping this way and that as if it has been wind blown all his life and this night is no better nor worse. Also bespectacled, his personality makes itself known in his choice of tie, a big bow as if he’s a present wrapped and ready for opening. His voice tends toward the stentorian, an unrepentant public speaker forever behind the dais.

  Digesting Jimmy’s response, V.A. looks at the reporter. “It’s as I almost wrote: the worst lack all conviction, while the best are full of pastoral insensibility, or something like that. I dinna have me secretary with me.” With that, he turns to Jimmy with an engaging smile: “Lead on, McDuffy.”

  Before Jimmy can comply, the reporter erupts with another question: “Wait, now, wait! Yer claiming to be Fey, is that the right of it?”

  An impatient smile accompanies Jimmy’s. “I can but answer a single question at a time, lad. So, let’s be on with it, yes? Yes! As I was reportin’ to your honors, our wee band found our own selves supportin’ the Royal Dublin Fussbudgets.”

  “You mean Fusiliers?” the reporter says.

  “I mean what I say, lad. Sure an’ they referred to their own selves by some such. We just call them as we see them. Now, be holdin’ your tongue while I am recountin’ this history. More interruptions an’ I’ll be needin’ another round of this fine stout we’re havin’ an’ you’ll be buyin’ as I’ll not pay good money for that porter your own self be drinkin’. It’s an insult to Irish manhood, it is an’ there’s no two waifs about it.”

  As if recalling a particularly pertinent stanza, V.A. adds: “That’s all we know for truth.”

  The reporter recognizes Yates’ bel
oved drinking song, smiles his recognition but ignores the remark, directing his prompt to Jimmy: “The Not-Royal-At-All Dublin Fey Detachment? I’ve never heard the like.”

  “Of course, you haven’t, laddy. Can’t be havin’ others takin’ up limelight already assigned to yer very own Sergeant Cork.”

  Stunned, the reporter cannot help himself: “Yer not suggesting, are you, that your detachment”—you can hear the suspicion in his pronunciation of detachment—“supported the 16th?”

  “Well, then, you have it down as pat as history can be, do you not? I’ll jist be havin’ another stout if you please an’ then, I’ll be turnin’ this discussion over to our fine Mr. Yates, who I’ve had the pleasure to know since he was nothin’ more than a sucklin’ child bein’ toted about these selfsame streets of Dublin.”

  He cannot help himself. The reporter asks another question. “But, yer the same age as Mr. Yates, here.”

  The men share a smile. Then, V.A. says: “Walk a mile in this man’s shoes and tell me, then, how many years you’ve tread.”

  In the silence that follows the reporter sips his porter, thinking one supposes, and then, as if to confirm your suspicions, he blurts, “Well, then, you must be Fey!”

  Looking at V.A., Jimmy says: “Not the story I was tellin’, is it, friend? Take it as you please.”

  Addressing the reporter in his best professorial style, V.A. intones: “For I come, this human child to the porter and the stout,” V.A. says, “with a faery, hand in hand.”

  No better for this answer, the reporter throws up his hands in defeat. “My apologies to you both. I’ll do better, restrain meself from out-of-hand questions. I will! I swear on me sainted mother’s gravestone.”

  The men consider his promise, nod wryly, and Jimmy continues. “We band of Others diluted our numbers fer the effort. One went off to abet the 36th, one stayed with the Other French women we ’ad journeyed oe’r land an’ sea to entertain, one disappeared an’ has yet to be heard from so our thought is the lad found some British unit an’ lost his own self in their madness. As stated, I joined the Fussbudgets in the nick of time as they were determined to fashion a sally on the morrow. Makin’ my own self into a nondescript Blue Cap, I stood about gleanin’ the plan an’ the destructions being spread by the officers. Straight off, let me advise you that I knew my own self to be a rather poor sort of infantryman lackin’ trainin’, discipline, an’ motivation. Whatever skills I owned lay not in that direction. Still, I had come with full intent of abettin’ the boys, and slippin’ off were no trouble so I slipped. Then, I took me a look o’er the trench.

  “The scene awaitin’ me eyes was not much different than the trench in which I stood an’ very much as reported in all the better poetry of our time. The trash, the wire, the bits of uniform, the stench, the mud, the blood, an’ the fear. Not unexpected, you know, but a bit off-putting jist the same. It came to me that across that madness they was pro’bly a crowd of German soldiers lookin’ out at me, an’ for me, an’ through me.

  “It seemed to me they pro’bly owned the very same fear I had the misfortune to be entertainin’. So, I sez to my own self that, lad, it’s time to test your kettle. No two waifs about it, you must cross the barren waste an’ see what’s what an’, consequent, do yer own thing. Tis the best of who you be.” Jimmy stopped to consider what he had just said. “Folk do tell me I tend to the dramatic.

  “Decidin’ is actin’ or the other way ’round. No matter as it works out the same. As if I were a wee dog slinkin’ my way through the chaos, I crossed that no man’s land, passed through the Hun line, an’ went lookin’ fer strategy amongst the Boche trains. By now, the Chinaman’s thoughts on such matters were makin’ the rounds in the higher ups thinkin’ so it wasn’t all that rare that someone such as my own self had heard their musin’s an’, even though Mr. Yates will roundly deny the possibility, I read a book. I looked therefore fer the way, the weather, the terrain, the leadership, an’ the discipline.

  “Havin’ already experienced the way, the weather, an’ the terrain, I thought to examine the remainin’ factors. I’d have reconnoitered the areas as a dog would but some cooks took to gazin’ at me with particular odd speculation, which naturally encouraged me into a new guise. Runnin’ from cooks, I encountered an officer comin’ up from the line, wrapped in thought, unaware Brock’s Benefit to be en route. I canna state with any authority the guns was aimed at the Boche trains but I’d rather believe it so. If they was after the German trench, well, they was a mite off in their calculations which dinna bode well fer the next day’s festivities. The worst laid plans o’ Fey an’ man can sometimes grow by unexpected means an’ here we have a prime example. A fortunate miss left this unfortunate Leutnant laying dumbfounded on the ground at me feet. Bein’ inclined to take advantage of situations as they are, I assisted the man in his undressin’. Well, he weren’t awake for the strippin’ an’ I did leave him his underclothes. If he didn’t freeze to death before he woke his self, then he’d have some explainin’ to do for his betters but that weren’t me own problem, now, were it?

  “Me own problem were to learn his unit. While traipsin’ toward the lines, it occurred to me as how I could’ve asked the man. If’n I’d had me the presence of mind I could’ve waited till he found his senses an’ asked him lots o’ things sech as the nature of the leadership an’ the discipline of the troops. Hindsight were no help in the present instance so I jist followed the path he’d been on an’ hoped for the best. The best turns out to be a Unteroffizier, what you an’ me would call a Corporal, an’ he steps up to me reportin’. ‘The soldats was hearin’ rustlin’ and bustlin’,’ he says official like, ‘and he was thinkin’ ’bout how an attack must be formin’ up.’ Lookin’ round I see a pair of machinegewehr set up on the left an’ a light gun on the right. I quick counted thirty or so Huns mannin’ the line between the guns. Stallin’ fer time, I asked the corporal what he was plannin’ to do? The man gaped.

  “Really, he gaped.

  “Almost the funniest thing I’ve seen, this poor man standin’ there gapin’ at me as if I were out of me friggin’ gourd. He mumbles somethin’ like ‘Beg pardon, Herr Leutnant?’ an’ my memory kicks in a wee bit, somethin’ ’bout German discipline. Theirs weren’t to reason why but jist get their butts blowed to smithereens on order. Probly a more poetic way o’ sayin’ that, but that’d be Mr. Yates’ bailiwick, not mine.”

  V.A. acknowledged the truth of the statement while dismissing his apparent role: “Oi, but I’ll leave such worries to Tennyson and Kipling.”

  “I unnerstan’,” Jimmy continued, “he were waitin’ on me own self to be issuin’ orders, me bein’ an officer an’ all. So, I took to concoctin’ instructions. ‘You tell the soldats mannin’ our guns,’ I says, ‘to mark their lanes o’ fire. We’ll be needin’ strict adherence to those lanes; no wanderin’ all about at targets of opportunity. Strict fire discipline. Same way, we keep the riflemen firin’ their lanes. We lay down a sheet of lead the likes of which no Tommy can work his way on to us.’”

  The reporter interrupted with: “You talked with yer brogue, did ya?”

  “Of course, not, idjit! A shifter plays his role to the very tee of it. Been at this longer than you been breathin’, lad. Don’t even suspicion I’d give a poor performance.

  “Where were I now? Givin’ orders, yes? Well, I watch him get to it, movin’ up an’ down the line. He finishes the turn an’ I call him back. ‘Here’s the thing, now, corporal,’ I says with me best officer bearin’, ‘when the Tommies start comin’ at us, we keep fightin’ till we can’t fight no more. It might be them Tommies overrun us. They won’t if’n we keep our discipline. If’n they do, we’ll deal with that then. In the meantime, you remind the men I’ll shoot any of them what thinks about leavin’ his post. An’ you, too, corporal, you be ready to shoot “em, too. We is German infantry an’ we don’t run.’

  “The corporal has that look what says he ain’t all that certain he’s will
in’ to shoot his own soldiers but he don’t say. He just mumbles a half hearted ‘jawohl, herr leutnant’ an’ turns back to checkin’ the men. Good enough fer me. I take a position middle back of the trench an’ sets me self down. A long wait waited.

  “Along about midnight Brock’s Benefit resumed its rainin’ down on us. The smart thing fer me to do would’ve been to move up to the front of the trench with the other Huns but I kept me station. Didn’t want familiarity nor close inspection of my carriage. Fer certain, I looked like the Leutnant but, just as certain, I didn’t act like the man. Dinna have enough study time fer that.

  “Just before daylight, one of the Huns starts screamin’ he can see movement. The corporal tells him to get his stupid head down. If he don’t, one of them Gott Verdammten snipers gonna bite his head off. The man complied an’ the corporal goes to his spot, raises up an’ takes a look fer himself. He comes down screamin’ the Tommies was comin’ an’ every body better start killin’ some of them afore they get to killin’ us. He looks at me an’ I nod approval but I don’t move. The barrage lifts but the noise level don’t. Between the Tommies an’ us, the crack of guns is deafenin’. Sometimes, a body gets accustomed to continuous noise but this weren’t one o’ them times. Tryin’ to think of somethin’ to do or say took all the concentration a man could muster. Yellin’ orders were useless. The best communication were hand signals an’ kicks in the rump. I let the corporal do the communicatin’.

  “Across the front it came to us, sneakin’ into consciousness, them Irish lads was singin’. Odd it were, the song they sang, being British writ an’ published, but the lines fit the scene so well, I sat there jist a smilin’.

  “‘We’re not so old in the Army List, but we’re not so new in the ring.