George Washington's Ghost

‘In the last war we put troops ashore at San Francisco, scared the life out of the enemy. They sued for peace after that. This time around they are stronger, they have better aircraft, and an army that doesn’t turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble. Moreover, they’ve made their plans for the long run; we haven’t, so we too, must now play the long game. Back home they will allow themselves to get distracted by the inhabitants of the Greater Antilles but the Cubans, Hispanics and Dominicans are nothing without the wealth, industry, oil of the southern Caribbean and the ideological, not theocratic motivation of the Mexicans. The Mexicans are the real enemy in this war and we must never take our eye off the ball!”

Unfortunately, that was not the way the East Coast New England media was reporting the war. The popular call was to invade Hispaniola or Cuba and supposedly ‘cut the Triple Alliance in half!’ As for the collapse of the whole eastern flank – effectively, the line of the Rio Grande – it was a case of lions being led by mules! Everybody from the Governor in Philadelphia to the Prime Minister in London was being blamed for the ‘woeful state of colonial defences in New England’, the ‘obsolescence of the Royal Navy’s big ships and the inept, brainless tactics of the admirals.’

Remember Brave Achilles was the mantra of the Colonial Legislatures of the First Thirteen; if only the ‘great men’ in Government House and at Fleet Headquarters in Norfolk had a tiny fraction of the pluck and never-say-die spirit of the men of the

Achilles, all would be well in the blink of an eye!

And as for the Navy’s hugely expensive new fleet aircraft carriers; the first time they had seen action their squadrons had been decimated and one of them had very nearly been destroyed by ‘a single mine’.

A mine…

Nobody was brave enough to say the ‘S’ word.

The battlecruiser Indomitable had been torpedoed by enemy destroyers, it seemed; not the submersible that one of her escorts had rammed!

In retrospect, Alex now realised he had just been a kid in the last war, wet behind the ears and lucky to live through it. In the process he had learned to fly – really fly – and developed a psychological carapace it was likely he was going to need in the coming months, and if things went badly, years.

Up here on Long Island the war was an awfully long way away. Legislators were still discussing the proposed colony by colony reintroduction of the draft. Wisely, the Governor was giving the First Thirteen the opportunity to exert their ‘colonial responsibilities’ as well as their ‘colonial rights’ before he mandated conscription across the board. Presently, the unemployed, and in the view of the armed services, far too many ‘unemployable’ men were only trickling through recruitment centres, their numbers padded out by returning veterans and the odd patriot. It was not good enough. Volunteers from the sparsely-populated Canadian dominions were not going to fill the gaps in the line, nor, in the short-term were troops from the Old Country, or India, Africa or Australasia. Worse, the rout in the South West had finally proven that the poorly trained local militias and the understrength, ill-equipped and poorly-trained formations parsimoniously supplied by the East Coast colonies were no substitute for professionals such as the regular troops of the Indian and British Armies.

The catastrophe of Mobile Bay was no kind of rallying cry.

Likewise, the saving of the Ulysses.

The Navy had thus far managed to keep secret the flight of its last major warship in the Gulf of México, the cruiser Devonshire, which after disengaging from the action off Mobile Bay had had to flee from yet another rag-tag fleet of old ironclads and smaller, relatively modern frigates and destroyers, finally escaping into the, where it was dodging Triple Alliance hunting groups somewhere southeast of Jamaica as, with her magazines nearly empty and her bunkers running low, she crept eastward to rendezvous with friendly forces.

When Alex had left Norfolk the two cruisers and five destroyers had been departing harbour to reinforce the Fifth Cruiser Squadron already on station waiting to meet, or in extremis, to enter the Caribbean to aid the Devonshire.

Leonora sat on the step and took her son back, rearranging his shawl. Alex settled beside her and together they stared at the car parked beyond the bushes, which were swaying gently in the breeze.

“I think about what happened to Abe,” she confessed suddenly. “I don’t know what I’d do if the same thing happened to you.”

Alex tried not to think overlong about his youngest brother’s fate. Missing meant dead most times; and Abe had been missing a long time now. He thought about that day he had visited Kate in Norfolk. She had been in denial. Perhaps, that was the best way to be?

“I’m indestructible.”

“No, that’s the trouble. You’re a tough guy but you’re not indestructible.”