War in the Air

On a sunny summer morning, exactly thirty years after the first German fleet had taken to the air, an old man, taking a little boy with him, went in search of a lost hen among the ruins of Bunhill and on toward the broken spires of the Crystal Palace. He wasn't really that old, he wasn't even sixty-three yet, but all the shoveling and pitchforking and weeding and mucking and being out in the air in wet clothes had bent his back into an arch. In addition, he had lost almost all his teeth, and this had a devastating effect on his digestion, and consequently on his complexion and character. In features and expression he looked remarkably like old Thomas Smallways, the man who had once been Sir Peter Bone's coachman, and naturally so, for the old man was his son, Tom Smallways, formerly the proprietor of the greengrocer's shop under the pillar of the High Street monorail at Bunhill. Only the greengrocers were no more, and Tom lived in one of the abandoned mansions, near the very vacant lot where his vegetable garden had once been and where he still worked diligently. He and his wife lived upstairs, and in the He and his wife lived upstairs, and in the living room and dining room, where the wide glass doors led out onto the lawn, Jessica, now a skinny, wrinkled, balding old woman, but still businesslike and energetic, now kept three cows and a lot of clueless chickens.

Tom and Jessica were members of a small community of one hundred and fifty souls, made up of accidental arrivals and returning refugees who had settled here, trying to adjust to the new conditions after the panic and famine and pestilence that had followed the war. Having returned from their wanderings and hiding in various shelters, they settled in their native town and engaged in an arduous struggle with nature for food, which was now the main preoccupation of their lives. Absorbed in this struggle, they lived quietly and peacefully, especially after Mr. Wilkes, the commissioner for the sale of houses, was drowned in a pond near the ruined factory because, driven by a former thirst for greed, he had attempted to demand title deeds from them, and had behaved like an experienced chicanery (it was not murder at all; it was merely that those who had dipped him in the pond for educational purposes had delayed the operation for an extra ten minutes).

Small communities, still living with memories of better times, united and established the simplest laws and obeyed the herbalist or the priest in everything. For the world again felt the need of religion, of something to bind it into communities. In Bunhill this duty was entrusted to an aged Baptist preacher. His religion was simple and suited them. In his teaching, the good beginning called the Word waged an endless battle against a diabolical obsession called the "Harlot of Babylon" (or the Catholic Church) and a certain evil spirit called Alcohol. Alcohol had long since become a purely abstract concept, having nothing to do with material objects; it was not connected with the bottles of wine or whisky which were sometimes found in the rich mansions of London, and such finds were the only holidays Bunhill now knew. The priest preached on Sundays, but on weekdays he was an amiable and good-natured old man, famous for his strange habit of washing his hands, or even his face, every day, and for his skill in stabbing pigs. He served Sunday lunches in the old church in Buckingham Road, and his congregation came there in outfits that were oddly reminiscent of the urban fashions of the early twentieth century. All the men, without exception, wore surcoats, cylinders, and white shirts, though many were barefoot. Tom stood out favorably from the crowd on these ceremonial occasions, for he wore a cylinder wrapped in gold lace, and green pants and a surtoute that he had taken from a skeleton found in the basement of the local branch of a London bank. All the women, even Jessica, appeared in jackets and hats of incredible size, lavishly trimmed with artificial flowers and feathers of exotic birds, which were available in unlimited quantities in the stores at the north end of the town; and the children (there were few children, for most of the newborns in Bunhill died of obscure diseases before they had lived a few days) wore the same costumes, only appropriately shortened.

This was the festive dress of the Ban-hill people, a curious remnant of the refinement of the Age of Science. On weekdays they looked slovenly and strange: they wrapped themselves in dirty rags of canvas, red paper, and sackcloth, and in scraps of rugs and even old curtains, and walked barefoot, or in rough wooden sandals.

It must be understood that these were townspeople who had suddenly found themselves in the position of medieval peasants, but who did not have the uncomplicated knowledge and experience of the latter. In many respects they were astonishingly helpless and incapable of doing anything. They did not know how to weave; even when they had cloth, they could sew almost nothing for themselves, and when they needed clothes, they had to get them from the rapidly melting stocks buried under the surrounding ruins. They had lost all the rudimentary skills they had once possessed, and the skills instilled by civilization were rendered useless when it was discovered that sewers, running water, stores, and the like were no longer in existence. Their food preparation was more than primitive, building fires in the rusted fireplaces of their former living rooms because the cook stoves consumed too much fuel. None of them had the slightest idea how bread was baked, how beer was brewed, how pots were soldered. The burlap and similar rough fabrics they used for weekday clothes, and their habit of tucking rags and straw under them for warmth, and then girding themselves with rope, gave them a very strange, packaged look, and as Tom had taken his little nephew to look for chicken on a weekday, that was the way they were dressed.

"Well, you've been to Bunhill at last, Teddy" said old Tom, starting up the conversation and slowing his step, as soon as they had moved away enough that Jessica could not hear them.

New York in the year of the German attack was the greatest, the richest, in many respects the most magnificent, and in some respects the most vicious city the world had ever known. It was the true "City of the Scientific and Commercial Age," with all its grandeur and power, its indomitable lust for profit and social chaos, It had long since eclipsed London and taken from it the proud title of "Modern Babylon," had become the financial center of the world, the center of commerce, the center of amusement, and had been compared to the apocalyptic cities of the ancient prophets. It absorbed the wealth of its continent as Rome once absorbed the wealth of the Mediterranean, as Babylon absorbed the wealth of the East. In its streets one could find striking contrasts of luxury and abject poverty, civilization and barbarism. In one quarter the marble palaces, flooded with light, in a necklace of electric lights, drowned in flowers, went upward, dissolving in its marvelous twilight; in the other, in the incomprehensible cramped, dark cellars, of which the government wanted to know nothing, huddled a multilingual mob, sinister and desperate.

For generations, New York had thought of war only as something very distant, reflected in prices and providing the newspapers with sensational headlines and pictures. New Yorkers, perhaps even more than the British, were convinced that war was impossible on their soil. Here they shared the delusion of all North America. They were as safe for themselves as spectators at a bullfight: they may have bet money on its outcome, but that was the end of the risk. And the average American borrowed his ideas about war from descriptions of past wars as an exciting and romantic adventure. He saw war the same way he saw history: through a rainbow haze - sanitized and warningly cleansed of all its indispensable nastiness.

The German air fleet reached New York before the news of the American defeat at sea. It reached New York toward evening, and was first noticed by observers at Ocean Grove and Long Branch. The air craft, traveling at great speed, appeared suddenly over the sea from the south and quickly disappeared in a northwesterly direction. The flagship passed almost directly over the observation post at Sandy Hook, at the same time gaining altitude rapidly, and in a few minutes afterward New York was shaken by the thunder of the guns stationed on Staten Island. Some of these guns, especially two of them - those mounted at Gifford and on Beacon Hill above Matawan - were particularly accurate. whole fleet immediately began a sharp ascent and passed without any misadventure to an altitude of twelve thousand feet above the now harmless guns. The airships, without slowing down, formed a crane wedge, apex toward the city, with the flagship at the head.

Five attack ships dived down through the twilight, one toward the East River Navy Yard, one toward City Hall, two toward the skyscrapers of Wall Street and Broadway, and one toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Separated from their fellows, they quickly and smoothly passed the dangerous firing zone and found themselves under the protection of the city buildings. At the sight of this, all the cars in the streets stopped as if by magic, and the lights of the city, which had begun to glow, went out again. It was the municipality that came back to life, got on the phone with the Federal Command and took measures for defense.

*The first loss of life was the result of the panic and crush on the Brooklyn Bridge caused by the approach of the air craft.

After the traffic in the streets had ceased, an unusual silence descended upon New York, the ominous volleys of the useless guns on the surrounding hills becoming clearer and clearer. At last they too fell silent. It was the beginning of negotiations again. The men sat in the darkness and twisted the knobs of the silenced telephones in vain. Then, in the wary silence, there was a deafening rumble - it was the collapse of the Brooklyn Bridge. Rifles rattled at the Navy Yard, bombs rang out on Wall Street and near City Hall. New York didn't know what to do, he didn't understand anything. New York strained his eyes in the darkness and listened to these distant sounds until they finally died down as suddenly as they had appeared.

"What's going on?" - The men questioned in vain.

The incomprehensible silence lasted for quite a long time, and the New Yorkers who looked out of the windows of the upper floors suddenly saw the dark hulks of German air-ships passing slowly and silently very near them. Then the electric lights came back on and the shouts of the evening newspaper sellers resounded in the streets.

The vast and motley population bought these newspapers and learned what had happened: there had been a battle and New York had raised the white flag....*

"We have surrendered. Oh really?" - That was roughly their reaction to the first messages. And then anger and shame began to stir in their souls.

The papers that came out about 1 a.m. gave no details of the terms of New York's surrender, nor did they give any information about the brief skirmish that preceded the surrender. Subsequent issues filled this gap. They printed a detailed account of the obligation to supply the German air ships with provisions, to replenish the explosives expended in the battle of New York and in the defeat of the North Atlantic Fleet, to pay a colossal forty million dollars in contributions, and to hand over to the Germans the entire fleet in the East River. There were also more and more detailed descriptions of how City Hall and the Navy Yards had been razed from the air, and gradually New Yorkers realized what those brief moments of deafening explosions had meant. They read of casualties torn to pieces, of loyal soldiers who fought that brief battle without any hope of success, amid indescribable destruction, of flags lowered by weeping men.

In these strange nightly broadcasts also appeared the first short telegrams from Europe, announcing the loss of the fleet-the very same North Atlantic Fleet of which New York had always been so proud, so much cared for. Slowly, hour by hour, public consciousness awoke, and gradually a sense of wounded pride and bewilderment swept over everyone. America was facing disaster. With inexplicable anger replacing bewilderment, New York made the discovery that it was a defeated city with the victor in control.

All it took was for people to realize this, and immediately outrage and protest, like a flame, engulfed everyone.

"We do not agree," was all they said. - We have been betrayed!" The people took up these words, they were passed from mouth to mouth; at every crossroads, under lanterns dimmed in the light of dawn, orators spoke freely, urging the spirit of America to rise, making everyone realize that the shame of his native city was his shame.

At first this rage was manifested in isolated shouts, in street eloquence, and in newspaper innuendo; but in the morning American flags were already flying in some places over the buildings, and their number was increasing.

Eventually, on a street adjacent to Columbia University, events took a serious turn. The captain of the aircraft assigned to watch the area descended, apparently to snag a rope loop and tear down the flag flying over Morgan Hall. But at that moment rifle and revolver shots rang out from the upper windows of a large apartment building that stood between the University and Riverside Drive.

Most of the gunners missed, but two or three bullets did penetrate the gas compartments, and one even shattered the arm of a soldier on the front platform. A sentry standing on the lower gallery immediately returned fire, and a machine gun placed on the eagle's shield gave a burst, after which no further shots were fired. The ship rose and signaled the flag officer and the municipality, and detachments of the police and people's militia were immediately dispatched to the scene, and the incident was thus terminated.

But this was immediately followed by the desperate antics of a group of young New Yorkers who, in a fit of reckless patriotism, sped unnoticed in several cars up Beacon Hill and set about constructing an improvised fort around the long-range gun that had been erected there. Its crew had remained in place, but had been ordered to cease firing immediately after the surrender, and were now only helplessly indignant-unless, of course, the arrival of the unexpected allies pleased the gunners. According to them, the guns had not been allowed to show their worth, and they were eager to prove their words in action. Under the guidance of the newcomers, they dug a trench around the gun, built a bunker, and constructed a rather unreliable shelter of roofing iron.

They were already loading their gun when they were spotted by the air ship Preyssen, and the shell they had time to fire before the bombs dropped from the ship blew them and their makeshift fort to pieces exploded in the central gas compartment of the Bingen, knocking it out of action and forcing it to sink on Staten Island. The loss of gas was considerable, and the ship collapsed into the trees, covering them like a canopy with its emptied shell. No fire, however, broke out, and the crew hastily engaged in repairs. The Germans behaved with a confidence bordering on carelessness. Most set about mending the ruptured shell, while a few went to the side of the road in search of the gas line and were soon seized by a hostile mob. Several houses stood nearby, the occupants of which very soon changed from unfriendly curiosity to hostile action. In this era the police supervision of the large and multilingual population of Staten Island had been lax, and literally every dwelling had a firearm. These were now put into action, and after two or three misses one of the soldiers engaged in the mending was shot in the leg. After this the Germans gave up repairing the shell and, taking cover behind trees, began to shoot back.

At the sound of the shooting, Preissen and Kiel immediately arrived and with a few hand grenades quickly destroyed all the houses for a mile around. Quite a number of civilian American men, women and children were killed, and the attackers retreated. For a while, under the cover of two ships, the mending went on quietly. But as soon as they returned to their posts, a firefight broke out around the defeated "Bingen" again, which lasted all day and finally turned into a real battle in the evening.

About eight o'clock an armed mob attacked the "Bingen" and after a desperate, disorderly fight killed its entire crew.

In both of these cases, the Germans' predicament was due to the fact that they were unable to land sufficient forces from the airships; in fact, they could not land any forces at all. Air craft were not at all suitable for the transfer of landing parties, and their crews were only just enough to maneuver in the air and fight from there. They could inflict immeasurable damage; they could summarily extract a surrender from any organized government, but they were incapable of disarming, much less occupying, surrendered territories.

The destruction of the town hall, post office, and other central nerve centers of the city had hopelessly disrupted the interaction of parts of the government apparatus. Streetcars and trains stood up, telephone communications broke down and worked only occasionally. The Germans struck a blow to the head, and the head, stunned, obeyed them, but the body ceased to obey it. Everywhere the local authorities and officials, left to themselves, took up arms and, succumbing to the general mood, began to display national flags together with everyone else.