There followed busy hours on Grand Island as we made ready for the crisis. About midnight, five hundred Germans, true to their vow, landed at various points, and crept forward through the darkness, carrying their bombs. As they reached a circle a thousand yards from the huge hangar shed they passed unwittingly two hundred youthful riflemen who had dug themselves in under snow and branches and were waiting, thrilling for the word that would show what American boys can do for their country. Two hundred American boys on the thousand yard circle! A hundred American soldiers with rifles and machine guns at the hangar! And the Germans between!
We had learned from Ryerson that the enemy would make their rush at two o’clock in the morning, the signal being a siren shriek from the Canadian shore, so at a quarter before two, knowing that the Germans were surely in the trap, Colonel Kilbourne gave the word, and, suddenly, a dozen search-lights swept the darkness with pitiless glare. American rifles spoke from behind log shelters, Maxims rattled their deadly blast, and the Germans, caught between two fires, fled in confusion, dropping their bombs. As they approached the thousand-yard line they found new enemies blocking their way, keen-eyed youths whose bullets went true to the mark. And the end of it was, leaving aside dead and wounded, that two hundred Buffalo schoolboys made prisoners of the three hundred and fifty German veterans!
And the great seven-million dollar air-ship America, with all her radio mysteries, was left unharmed, ready to sail forth the next night, New Year’s Eve, and make her attack upon the superdreadnought Wilhelm II, on January 1, 1922. I prayed that this would be a happier year for the United States than 1921 had been.
CHAPTER XXIV. — NOVEL ATTACK OF AMERICAN AIRSHIP UPON GERMAN SUPER-DREADNOUGHT
I come now to the period of my great adventures beginning on New Year’s Day, 1922, when I sailed from Buffalo aboard the airship America on her expedition against the German fleet. For the first time in my modest career I found myself a figure of nation-wide interest, not through any particular merit or bravery of my own, but by reason of a series of fortunate accidents. I may say that I became a hero in spite of myself.
In recognition of the service I had rendered in helping to save the great airship from German spies, I had been granted permission, at General Wood’s recommendation, to sail as a passenger aboard this dreadnought of the skies and to personally witness her novel attack with torpedoes lowered from the airship and steered from the height of a mile or two by radio control. Never before had a newspaper correspondent received such a privilege and I was greatly elated, not realising what extraordinary perils I was to face in this discharge of my duty.
I was furthermore privileged to be present at a meeting of the Committee of Twenty-one held on the morning of January 1st, 1922, at the Hotel Lenox in Buffalo. Various details of our airship expedition were discussed and there was revealed to me an important change in the America’s strategy which I will come to presently.
Surveying the general military situation, John Wanamaker read reports showing extraordinary progress in military preparedness all over the country, especially in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where the women, recently victorious in their suffrage fight, were able to make their patriotic zeal felt in aggressive legislation. Strange to say, American wives and mothers were the leaders in urging compulsory physical and military training, a year of it, on the Swiss plan, for all American young men of twenty and a month of it every five years afterwards for all men up to fifty.