“Then that’s our objective,” said Roosevelt decisively. “If we can capture that hill and knock out the machine guns, we’ll have made a positive contribution to the battle that even that Woodrow Wilson will be forced to acknowledge.” The famed Roosevelt grin spread across his face. “We’ll show him that the dodo may be dead, but the Rough Riders are very much alive.” He paused. “Gather the men, Hank. I want to speak to them before we leave.”
McCoy did as he was told, and Roosevelt emerged from his tent some ten minutes later to address the assembled Rough Riders.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “tomorrow morning we will meet the enemy on the battlefield.”
A cheer arose from the ranks.
“It has been suggested that modern warfare deals only in masses and logistics, that there is no room left for heroism, that the only glory remaining to men of action is upon the sporting fields. I tell you that this is a lie. We matter! Honor and courage are not outmoded virtues, but are the very ideals that make us great as individuals and as a nation. Tomorrow, we will prove it in terms that our detractors and our enemies will both understand.” He paused, and then saluted them. “Saddle up — and may God be with us!”
They reached the outskirts of the battlefield, moving silently with hooves and harnesses muffled, just before sunrise. Even McCoy, who had seen action in Mexico, was unprepared for the sight that awaited them.
The mud was littered with corpses as far as the eye could see in the dim light of the false dawn. The odor of death and decay permeated the moist, cold morning air. Thousands of bodies lay there in the pouring rain, many of them grotesquely swollen. Here and there they had virtually exploded, either when punctured by bullets or when the walls of the abdominal cavities collapsed. Attempts had been made during the previous month to drag them back off the battlefield, but there was simply no place left to put them. There was almost total silence, as the men in both trenches began preparing for another day of bloodletting.
Roosevelt reined his horse to a halt and surveyed the carnage. Still more corpses were hung up on barbed wire, and more than a handful of bodies attached to the wire still moved feebly. The rain pelted down, turning the plain between the enemy trenches into a brown, gooey slop.
“My God, Hank!” murmured Roosevelt.
“It’s pretty awful,” agreed McCoy.
“This is not what civilized men do to each other,” said Roosevelt, stunned by the sight before his eyes. “This isn’t war, Hank — it’s butchery!”
“It’s what war has become.”
“How long have these two lines been facing each other?”
“More than a month, sir.”
Roosevelt stared, transfixed, at the sea of mud.
“A month to cross a quarter mile of this?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“How many lives have been lost trying to cross this strip of land?”
McCoy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe eighty thousand, maybe a little more.”
Roosevelt shook his head. “Why, in God’s name? Who cares about it? What purpose does it serve?”
McCoy had no answer, and the two men sat in silence for another moment, surveying the battlefield.
“This is madness!” said Roosevelt at last. “Why doesn’t Pershing simply march around it?”
“That’s a question for a general to answer, Mr. President,” said McCoy. “Me, I’m just a captain.”
“We can’t continue to lose American boys for this!” said Roosevelt furiously. “Where is that machine gun encampment, Hank?”
McCoy pointed to a small rise about three hundred yards distant.
“And the main German lines?”
“Their first row of trenches are in line with the hill.”
“Have we tried to take the hill before?”
“I can’t imagine that we haven’t, sir,” said McCoy. “As long as they control it, they’ll mow our men down like sitting ducks in a shooting gallery.” He paused. “The problem is the mud. The average infantryman can’t reach the hill in less than two minutes, probably closer to three — and until you’ve seen them in action, you can’t believe the damage these guns can do in that amount of time.”
“So as long as the hill remains in German hands, this is a war of attrition.”
McCoy sighed. “It’s been a war of attrition for three years, sir.”
Roosevelt sat and stared at the hill for another few minutes, then turned back to McCoy.
“What are our chances, Hank?”
McCoy shrugged. “If it was dry, I’d say we had a chance to take them out…”
“But it’s not.”
“No, it’s not,” echoed McCoy.
“Can we do it?”
“I don’t know, sir. Certainly not without heavy casualties.”
“How heavy?”
“Very heavy.”
“I need a number,” said Roosevelt.
McCoy looked him in the eye. “Ninety percent — if we’re lucky.”
Roosevelt stared at the hill again. “They predicted fifty percent casualties at San Juan Hill,” he said. “We had to charge up a much steeper slope in the face of enemy machine gun fire. Nobody thought we had a chance — but I did it, Hank, and I did it alone. I charged up that hill and knocked out the machine gun nest myself, and then the rest of my men followed me.”
“The circumstances were different then, Mr. President,” said McCoy. “The terrain offered cover and solid footing, and you were facing Cuban peasants who had been conscripted into service, not battle-hardened professional German soldiers.”
“I know, I know,” said Roosevelt. “But if we knock those machine guns out, how many American lives can we save today?”
“I don’t know,” admitted McCoy. “Maybe ten thousand, maybe none. It’s possible that the Germans are dug in so securely that they can beat back any American charge even without the use of those machine guns.”
“But at least it would prolong some American lives,” persisted Roosevelt.
“By a couple of minutes.”
“It would give them a chance to reach the German bunkers.”
“I don’t know.”
“More of a chance than if they had to face machine gun fire from the hill.”
“What do you want me to say, Mr. President?” asked McCoy. “That if we throw away our lives charging the hill that we’ll have done something glorious and affected the outcome of the battle? I just don’t know!”
“We came here to help win a war, Hank. Before I send my men into battle, I have to know that it will make a difference.”
“I can’t give you any guarantees, sir. We came to fight a war, all right. But look around you, Mr. President — this isn’t the war we came to fight. They’ve changed the rules on us.”
“There are hundreds of thousands of American boys in the trenches who didn’t come to fight this kind of war,” answered Roosevelt. “In less than an hour, most of them are going to charge across this sea of mud into a barrage of machine gun fire. If we can’t shorten the war, then perhaps we can at least lengthen their lives.”
“At the cost of our own.”
“We are idealists and adventurers, Hank — perhaps the last this world will ever see. We knew what we were coming here to do.” He paused. “Those boys are here because of speeches and decisions that politicians have made, myself included. Left to their own devices, they’d go home to be with their families. Left to ours, we’d find another cause to fight for.”
“This isn’t a cause, Mr. President,” said McCoy. “It’s a slaughter.”