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Show THE STORY SO FAR: Intelligence Onicer Bennine's warning Uiat 200,000 foreiRn troops were poised In Mexico for an attack on the United Status caused grave concern In army headquarters, but the people branded Che statement as "war mongerlng." Without warning, four large southern cities were attacked -1 -H At. INSTALLMENT ELEVEN from ttw air; Washington was bombed and the President killed. National forces were ordered mobilized, but they were HI prepared for Immediate -action. General Gen-eral Brill, area commander of the army In Texas, reported to General Hague, chief of staff at Washington, that he was being attacked by greatly superior forces. General Hague ordered him to resist the enemy's advance at all costs. Brill hastily prepared plans with the help of General Mole, division commander. com-mander. Suddenly the American outpost was attacked by a strong force crossing cross-ing the Rio Grande. Now continue with the story. ?r nr 7tr w Iff Ttr t its regimental reserve line. A second sec-ond attack launched against that line, if it succeeded, meant inevitable inevita-ble defeat. Into the melee came rushing American reserves, a co-ordinated counter-attack by the 3d Battalion of the 23d and the 2d Battalion of the 9th. They hit with a vigor that halted halt-ed the menacing enemy masses. Their semi-automatics, pouring death as fast as fingers could work triggers, gave to the attacking American battalions the infantry weight of twice their numbers. Van Hassek's men tell back, dug themselves into fox holes, waited. A lull came into the firing. The artillery artil-lery roared on, machine guns, light cannon chattered and boomed. Now the volcanic eruption of battle lost something of its volume. The cries of the stricken could be heard, plaintive plain-tive wails of "First aid!" Van Hassek had lost the first round. He had committed the brash folly of underestimating his enemy. In his haste to blast his way through to San Antonio his conceit had misled mis-led him to disregard sound tactical principles. No matter if the enemy r TP TP subalterns. Benning had served with the 11th for nearly a year until he went to the air corps, from which service he had been snatched for military intelligence duty. Breathlessly Breath-lessly he followed every scrap of available information on the 11th. Benning was picking at his dinner at the Mayflower when there came a final flash on the Boll incident. "You heard this afternoon of the gallant young officer, Captain Boll of our infantry," the broadcaster announced. an-nounced. "Yoii recall that, although wounded in the cheek, he ignored his own wound and saw his men through to the Second Division south of San Antonio." The announcer paused, his voice shook with feeling as he read a brief dispatch from San Antonio that brought the incident of Boll to tragic consummation: "Captain Henry Boll, 11th United States Infantry, died early this evening eve-ning of wounds received in action. Captain Boll collapsed a few minutes min-utes after reaching the hospital and died this evening without having regained re-gained consciousness." For a long time Benning sat looking look-ing across the blur of somber faces in front of him, then he left his unfinished un-finished dinner and went out into the street. The soldier spirit flared into revolt within him against this soft spot of his own present duty when there was a man's role on the border. bor-der. He walked to the Shoreham to get himself in hand. Even Flagwill's assertion that the Coalition spy nest was more dangerous to the country than Van Hassek's present invasion brought him small comfort But he finally reminded himself that he had a job to do and not until he had done it would there be hope of transfer trans-fer back to the line of the Army. Washington, the whole country, was in a state of furor. All day Benning had been shut off from the War Department with its staggering problems, black uncertainties, and crushing workload. T" 17 VT CHAPTER XI Continued In the swift jumble of action Boyn-ton Boyn-ton caught tne fall of wounded men, heard the cries of pain, and the shrill of commanders' whistles, the bark of subalterns above the bellowing bellow-ing artillery. Rifle flashes stabbed the graying dawn as the enemy sprawled to the ground and fired back. Boynton hugged the earth only long enough to satisfy himself that it was an attack wave, not a mere patrol, he had encountered; then he fell back, his men firing intermittently in-termittently as they ran, to the shelter shel-ter of fox holes in the outpost. The outpost line, lightly held, poured lead from its semi-automatics arid machine guns. When it found itself confronted by superior forces, its defenders promptly retreated to the main line of resistance which ran a ragged, irregular line of trenches and centers of resistance over a front of ten thousand yards. Van Hassek's infantry, in waves of men that reached across the whole front, struck the main line of resistance just as visibility exposed the attack. Colonel Hail of the 9th, observing the attack from a vantage-point, expected ex-pected nothing more than that. Later, Lat-er, when Van Hassek's scheme of maneuver had cut a critical hole into the division's vitals, the whole force of the frontal attack would come rushing in to mop up with firepower and bayonets. The 9th's Garand rifles, light machine ma-chine guns, 37-millimeter cannon, and small mortars poured all their hot fury into the surging assault. One enemy wave after another melted melt-ed into dead and wounded, but only to be replaced by living waves that poured relentlessly on. Half an hour of furious fighting passed before Colonel Hail accepted the evidence of his own eyes. "My God, the fools are going to penetrate our center!" he roared. Astride the Laredo-San Antonio highway, Van Hassek's infantry drove ahead while successive waves of men melted across open terrain where there was little benefit of cover. cov-er. Desperately the enemy commanders com-manders fed in reserves from their superior hordes of men out of which they could pay the red costs of their error in underestimating an enemy who had not been expected to offer serious resistance here. What Van Hassek's infantry lost to their slower bolt-action rifles they made up by auxiliary arms, light machine guns, mortars of many calibers, cal-ibers, light and heavy tanks, superiority superi-ority of artillery. Shrapnel, mortars, mor-tars, and musketry now beat down on the American centers of resistance resist-ance with the red convolutions of some Satanic scourge escaped from hell Van Hassek's men burst ahead until Boynton could see the distended distend-ed eyes and gaping, grimacing terror ter-ror of their faces, as they bared themselves to a death against whicb they did not dare turn their backs. The enemy poured on into Boyn-ton's Boyn-ton's strong-point. Boynton became aware that the survivors of his men were breaking, stubbornly fighting with bayonets, grenades, and musketry mus-ketry as they fell back. Now he saw enemy tanks rolling in on his men, tanks whose steel armor deflected the regiment's ancient 37-millime-. ter guns that were being used until the new anti-tank guns could be reduced re-duced from paper models to actual weanons. Rnvnton turned to rally Official reassurance was being fed out over the radio to those sections of the country outside the immediate immedi-ate reach of Van Hassek's invasion. They were told there was no immediate imme-diate danger of new air raids. The Army was pushing through its interception inter-ception nets and extending its intelligence in-telligence service' to bring timely warning well in advance of any future fu-ture raid. New Orleans, Galveston, and other oth-er cities were being organized against air raids that could not be circumvented for the time being. It was a matter of avoiding crowds, of getting underground against demolition dem-olition bombs and gas. People who could leave those cities were urged to take refuge in towns and hamlets ham-lets until the danger could be brought under control, although tens of thousands needed no such warning warn-ing and were pouring into the country coun-try with such of their effects as they could carry along. In New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Phila-delphia, Baltimore, and other great centers of population, organization against air attacks had been feverishly fever-ishly undertaken. The Middle West and West were told there was no present need for alarm. However, some highly alarming, if unconfirmed, uncon-firmed, reports of a mysterious brewing of mischief in the Orient, had the coast cities on edge. Mobilization of the four existent Regular Army and eighteen Nation- The enemy tanks rolling in. had done the same thing by making a stand, the next move now was up to Van Hassek. At the division command post, General Mole had slept through the morning preparation fire. Only by vigorously shaking him had his aide been able to rouse him out of his sleep. Dosing himself with strong coffee, Mole coolly watched the development de-velopment of attack., The Van Hassek Has-sek strategy had a right to suppose that the Second would hold lightly and run off to successive delaying positions. Anxiously, Mole and his staff scanned information as it came in over the field wires and from observation obser-vation planes. Van Hassek's tortuous tortu-ous columns still were moving up from Laredo. But no fresh movement move-ment of reserves was located in the immediate American front. Both the Brownsville and Eagle Pass columns col-umns were several hours' travel from striking range of either flank. Casualty reports came in, roughly computed, by noon. One hundred and seven officers, most lieutenants. Nineteen hundred men. A fifth of his command gone, many of them officers offi-cers and men with whom he had served through long years of peace. But discipline held up, and a stern, stubborn fighting spirit pervaded the ranks. That word came from the commanders of infantry who had taken the brunt of the losses, it came from the artillery regiments which were still being pounded by long-range artillery. Against odds of men and weapons weap-ons there remained the valor of a manpower that could be conquered only in death, or lawful order of retreat. ( his men, giving to his voice the full strength of his lungs. I "Up and at 'em!" be cried. "To I hell with the swine!" . His voice rose above the storm. i A second time he raised his voice, then he staggered drunkenly, spun half around, and fell as conscious-Bess conscious-Bess snapped from his brain and his life snuffed out. Having committed themselves to this folly of frontal attack, the Van Hassek commanders fed In reserve after reserve regardless of cost in their determination to break through i with as little delay as possible. Once they succeeded in driving a wedge deep enough into the American center, cen-ter, they knew that the whole American Ameri-can sector would roll up in a chaos I of defeated regiments. al Guard mlantry aivisiuus was i-ported i-ported sixty per cent complete. The Third Army was to concentrate in Texas as rapidly as possible, but the War Department refused to give out military details. No censorship of military news had been clamped down as yet and the press was printing, print-ing, without restriction, whatever news it could get. Benning ordered an elaborate dinner din-ner at the Shoreham. Though he had no appetite, he made a pretext of eating while he kept under observation ob-servation those who came and went. Before starting on his rounds, Benning had stationed Lieutenant Jones, an Intelligence assistant, on guard over the Massachusetts Avenue Ave-nue apartment of Mme Pujol, with whom Boggio had dined and danced on the capital. Jones' instructions were to hold Boggio under close observation ob-servation and let Benning know as quickly as possible if the Italian appeared. ap-peared. Seven-thirty o'clock passed, the Chief of Staff of the Army would soon be on the air in a nation-wide hookup. New dispatches came in from San Antonio. Flash "Bombers reported approaching ap-proaching New Orleans, Galveston, and Houston. The Government's intercept in-tercept nets and intelligence service will give prompt advance warning if any planes fly north of Texas. Everyone Ev-eryone is urged to remain calm." Several persons got up from table at this news and anxiously left the room. Others kept determinedly m their seats, a few affected nonchalant noncha-lant composure. Into the d.nmg-room d.nmg-room at this moment came Fmcke, his face lined in a surly scowl. He sat down at a table across the room from Benning. i JO BE COXTIM ED) CHAPTER XII As succeeding battle reports from the Texas front poured into Washington Wash-ington over the radio, Captain Benning Ben-ning was assailed by growing restlessness rest-lessness at his own inaction in the face of momentous events. Throughout Through-out the day he had lolled about the cafes along Connecticut Avenue looking for the Van Hassek staff spies, Fincke and Boggio. Evening found him holding the bag- That red welter of the 11th Infantry's In-fantry's retreat from Laredo had been reported tn meager but graphic detaU along with the heroic stand of the 5th and 12th Cavalry Regiments. Captain Boll's achievement in piloting pi-loting his men through the storm of Van Hassek's air attacks had stirred the country. Benning and Boll had been classmates class-mates at the Military Academy, had gone to the 11th Infantry together as But to accomplish this, Van Hassek's Has-sek's infantry must drive through succeeding lines. Capturing one, they faced another equally resistant resist-ant What the Americans lacked in auxiliary weapons they made up by their unshakable fighting spirit, a discipline hard as steel that put men through the terrors of battle and turned a deaf ear to impulses of Bight and surrender. Even succeeding succeed-ing waves of tanks failed to terrorize ' them or drive them out of position. All the advantages of auxiliary weapons failed to avail. One surging mass of enemy infantry in-fantry engulfed the right of the 23d, and left of the 9th Infantry, late in the forenoon. Now the storm rose to new heights of desperation as Van Hassek's infantry sought to break on through. Five hundred yards the invader progressed, swamping one strong-point strong-point after another. The Second's main line was threatened by a wedge that would force it back to ( |