To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [111]
WASHINGTON, D.C.—MAY 12, 1917
The hotel was small, the compact rooms overlooking the Potomac. He had tried keeping to his room, occupying his mind with reading, but the boredom was stifling, his mind rolling in all directions with thoughts of duty, and the amazing lack of urgency he found in every official function he had been invited to attend. He had finally escaped the confines of his small prison, paced slowly now in the hotel lobby, his mood darkening with each turn. He was surprised to learn that he was the only general officer assigned to the specific duty as division commander, and Scott’s prediction had proven to be correct. Already he had begun to feel the oppressive stench of politics from officers who regarded Pershing as a usurper, this commander of a backwoods outpost who had somehow cajoled and manipulated his way past them to secure this new path to certain glory.
“Sir!”
He turned, saw the young man moving toward him, the sun at the man’s back, hiding his face. But the man’s crisp gait was familiar, the stiff posture much like Pershing’s own.
“Lieutenant Patton. Didn’t expect to see you. How is Mr. Ayer?”
Patton saluted him, and Pershing responded, Patton still keeping himself stiffly at attention.
“We are hopeful, sir. Thank you for asking. The family sends you their respects.”
Pershing motioned to a small table in the corner, said, “Let’s sit, Lieutenant. Please tell me of Mr. Ayer’s condition. I know that he is quite elderly.”
“Yes, sir. Nearly ninety. The family is prepared for the worst. Mrs. Ayer is somewhat fragile as well. My wife feels her mother will not outlive Mr. Ayer by very long.”
Pershing nodded, began to feel trapped by the conversation.
“Beatrice . . . Mrs. Patton . . . is well then?”
“Oh, yes, sir. She offers her regards.”
“Thank you. Very kind.”
George Patton had served with Pershing in El Paso, had an extraordinary reputation for rashness that some described as a foolish tendency to place himself in harm’s way. Throughout the misery of the quest to capture Pancho Villa, Patton had led patrols that had come into more violent contact with Villa’s deputies than anyone else in the army. In one of the rare opportunities for an actual fight, Patton had shot and killed one of Pancho Villa’s senior deputies, Julio Cardenas. The confrontation had been one bright spot for Pershing in an otherwise dismal experience, but to Patton, the hard brush with violence had been nothing short of inspirational. He would do anything he could to relive the feeling. It had always been true for young officers, those men who graduated from West Point just at the right time to be thrown into a war. It had happened in the 1840s, the late 1850s, and Pershing knew that it would happen again. Young lieutenants became men facing the guns of the enemy, and when their war ended, the young officers could not tolerate the silent emptiness of peace. In the past such men turned their fiery ambition into legend, the names every soldier knew well: Grant, Longstreet, Jackson, Hancock, Lee. Pershing had seen that same fire in Patton, knew of the young man’s worst fear, a letter Patton had written to his father, confiding to the old man the fear that followed him every day: I wake up at night in a cold sweat imagining that I have lived and done nothing.
Though Patton seemed suited for a command of infantry, Pershing knew that the young man’s own dream was life in the cavalry. In Mexico, cavalry had become motorized, the automobile often carrying men rapidly across vast stretches of wilderness that would have taken far too long on horseback. It was a change Patton had adapted to readily. Despite Patton’s