Chapter One
Klaxons hooted the call to battle stations. George Enos sprinted along the deck
of the USS Ericsson toward the one-pounder gun near the stern. The destroyer was
rolling and pitching in the heavy swells of an Atlantic winter storm. Freezing
rain made the metal deck slick as a Boston Common ice-skating rink.
Enos ran as confidently as a mountain goat bounding from crag to crag. Ice and
heavy seas were second nature to him. Before the war sucked him into the Navy,
he’d put to sea in fishing boats from Boston’s T Wharf at every
season of the year, and gone through worse weather in craft a lot smaller than
this one. The thick peacoat was warmer than a civilian slicker, too.
Petty Officer Carl Sturtevant and most of his crew were already at the
depth-charge launcher near the one-pounder. The other sailors came rushing up
only moments after Enos took his place at the antiaircraft gun.
He stared every which way, though with the weather so bad he would have been
hard pressed to spot an aeroplane before it crashed on the Ericsson’s
deck. A frigid gust of wind tried to yank off his cap. He grabbed it and jammed
it back in place. Navy barbers kept his br ... read full excerpt from The Great War: Breakthroughs ebook
