While the great meeting was still in session, a large German airship appeared over Baltimore’s lower basin and, circling slowly at the height of half a mile, proceeded to carry out its mission of frightfulness against the helpless city. More than fifty bombs were dropped that night with terrific explosions. The noble shaft of the Washington Monument was shattered. The City Hall was destroyed, also the Custom House, the Richmond Market, the Walters Art Gallery, one of the buildings of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, with a score of killed and wounded, and the cathedral with fifty killed and wounded.
The whole country was stirred to its depths by this outrage. Angry orators appeared at every street corner, and volunteers stormed the enlisting offices. Within twenty-four hours the business men of Baltimore raised another hundred millions for the city’s defence. Baltimore, never conquered yet, was going to fight harder than ever.
The great question now was how soon the Germans would begin their drive. We knew that the Virginia expedition under General von Mackensen had advanced up the peninsula and had taken Richmond, but every day our aeroplane scouts reported General von Hindenburg’s forces as still stationary south of Philadelphia. Their strategy seemed to be one of waiting until the two armies could strike simultaneously against Washington from the southeast and against Baltimore from the northeast. On the ninth of October this moment seemed to have arrived, and we learned that von Hindenburg, with a hundred thousand men, was advancing towards the Susquehanna in a line that would take him straight to the Maryland metropolis. A two days’ march beyond the river would give the enemy sight of the towers of Baltimore, and how the city had the slightest chance of successful resistance was more than I could understand.
I come now to the battle of the Susquehanna, which my lucky star allowed me to witness in spite of positive orders that war correspondents should not approach the American lines. This happened through the friendship of Vincent Astor, who once more volunteered his machine and his own services in the scouting aeroplane corps. I may add that Mr. Astor had offered his entire fortune, if needed, to equip the nation with the mightiest air force in the world; and that already four thousand craft of various types were in process of construction. With some difficulty, Mr. Astor obtained permission that I accompany him on the express condition that I publish no word touching military operations until after the battle.
On the morning of October 10th we made our first flight, rising from the aerodrome in Druid Hill Park and speeding to the northeast, skirting the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Within half an hour the broad Susquehanna, with its wrecked bridges, lay before us and to the left, on the heights of Port Deposit, we made out the American artillery positions with the main army encamped below. Along the southern bank of the river we saw thousands of American soldiers deepening and widening trenches that had been shallowed out by a score of trench digging machines, huge locomotive ploughs that lumbered along, leaving yellow ditches behind them. There were miles of these ditches cutting through farms and woods, past windmills and red barns and rolling wheat fields, stretching away to the northwest, parallel to the river.
“They’ve done a lot of work here,” said I, impressed by the extent of these operations.
Astor answered with a smile that puzzled me. “They have done more than you dream of, more than any one dreams of,” he said.
“You don’t imagine these trenches are going to stop the Germans, do you?”
He nodded slowly. “Perhaps.”
“But we had trenches like these at Trenton and you know what happened,” I objected.