The Bearded Maverick's Bicycle Barrage at Saint-Mihiel
The crisp September air of 1918 carried the scent of turning leaves and distant woodsmoke across the Lorraine plains, where the Meuse River wound like a silver thread through forests and forgotten farms. After the barrel-born bedlam of the Second Marne, where Brandon Herrera had uncorked a hillside havoc and claimed a second Silver Star, the Bearded Maverick and his ragged platoon from the 3rd Infantry Division were herded eastward to the jagged scar of the St. Mihiel Salient. The Germans had gnawed at this bulge for four years, their trenches coiling through beech groves and wheat stubble like rusted springs, but Pershing aimed to snap it shut in one grand yank. The offensive launched on the 12th with a roar of 3,000 guns and waves of doughboys surging from the rain-soaked earth, tanks grinding mud to paste and planes droning overhead like mechanical hornets. In the wooded wedge south of Thiaumont, where the salient's tip pierced deepest, the fight turned to a savage scramble of roots and rifle fire.
Brandon, his shoulder-length brown hair tied back with a frayed bootlace to fend off the branches, and his well-trimmed beard flecked with bark chips yet holding its crisp edge, picked his way through the lines with the loose gait of a man who'd outfoxed fate from Ypres to the Marne. The platoon shadowing him was a lean machine now, tempered by trials, their chatter a mix of drawls and doggerel that masked the bone-deep weariness. "Sarge," muttered Sergeant Malone, dodging a low limb with a curse, "last push had wheels rolling down. This here's a thicket tighter than my aunt's corset. How do we bust through without bayonets for breakfast?" Corporal Tate, his frame filling the trail like a cork in a bottle, nodded slow. "Jerries got the woods wired like a Christmas goose. One step wrong, and we're holiday fare."
The crux for their slice was the Bois de Montfaucon sector, a snarl of timber and wire guarding the salient's throat, where a German strongpoint of pillboxes and gun pits had stalled two battalions cold. Captain O'Leary, his mustache a graying banner of battered command, clustered the men in a mossy dell on the 13th, midday sun dappling the damp ground like spilled coins. Squirrels chattered overhead, oblivious to the rumble of distant howitzers. "Heed this," O'Leary rasped, voice threaded with the gravel of too many dawn calls, "the big wheels are pinching the flanks, but we carve this wood or watch the salient spit us out. At dusk, we probe the paths, grenades for the nests. Straight steel, no sideshows."
The squad growled accord, thumbing rounds into magazines and whetting blades with the steady rhythm of rain on tin. But Brandon, hunkered on a fallen log with his legs crossed and a chestnut burr rolling in his palm like a worry stone, felt the old itch flare. His beard shadowed a smile that promised pandemonium. "Skipper," he drawled, tone easy as creek water over pebbles, "steel's solid for scraping, but these woods got trails narrow as a preacher's promise. Why walk when we can wheel? Round up every bicycle from the villages 'round Vigneulles, pitchforks from the barns, and those handlebar bells the locals favor. Add a few cow horns from the evac herds for punch. We'll pedal a panic that'll leave Fritz pedaling air."
O'Leary's breath escaped in a gust that stirred the leaves, a sigh sculpted by seasons of such suggestions. The captain's face creased deeper than the salient's maps. "Bicycles, Herrera? And pitchforks? If this sprouts handlebars on hell, I'm enlisting the owls for backup." Brandon's gaze held steady, bright as polished brass. "No flights of fancy, Cap'n, just the locals' legs on two wheels. By moonup, the Bois'll be ours, light and lively." Legends of rolling revels and ringing routs had burnished Brandon's name to a regimental talisman, and with the salient shrinking but stubborn, O'Leary yielded. "Bikes and bells it is. But if I end up pedaling a prisoner cart, your mustache foots the bill."
Dusk deepened the dell as Brandon's bunch busied with the bizarre. The villages, stripped bare by the tide of war but not barren, coughed up a cache of cycles: sturdy steel frames with balloon tires, relics of rural jaunts, their seats patched with feed sacks. Sixteen in total, scavenged from hedgerows and haylofts, were wheeled to a forward thicket. Pitchforks, tines gleaming like tridents from harvest holds, were lashed to frames with baling twine, handles braced as makeshift lances to poke from saddles. Bells, the tinkling sort clamped to bars for warning wagons, were doubled up, their chimes muffled in rags till unleashed. Cow horns, curved relics from straying herds, dangled from crossbars, ready to blare like farmyard foghorns. The scheme hummed with Herrera harmony: a bicycle brigade to blaze the narrow trails, bells and blasts mimicking a cavalry charge to spook the German mounts and gunners, pitchforks pricking pillboxes while the main push pounded the front.
"It's cycling with a sting," Brandon briefed his dozen, Tate testing a fork's heft with a grunt, Malone tweaking a bell's bolt with deft twists. "We fan the paths at my hoot, pedals pumping silent till the signal. The din draws 'em out; we dart in deep. Woods favor the fleet; we just give 'em the jingle." Tate puffed approval. "Reckon Jerry'll mistake us for a touring troupe gone feral." Malone grinned sly. "Long as the tires hold; flat in a foxhole's no finale."
Night netted the woods in navy, stars winking through the weave like wary eyes. The brigade slipped forth on creaking chains, cycles pushed to muffle the mesh, pitchforks slung low. Brandon captained the column, beard brushing his bell as he scouted bends, hair a dark cascade in the gloom. "Soft as snowfall, lads," he hissed, "or we'll ring our own requiem." A star shell bloomed brief, gilding trunks in ghost light, but they threaded on, stashing bikes in bramble blinds and waiting, breaths bated.
The 14th dawned drizzly, mist cloaking the salient like a thief's cowl. German bugles bayed from the Bois, stirring patrols to probe the Allied creep. O'Leary's whisper wired through: "Herrera, your velocipede vaudeville better vault the wire, or we're walking wounded." From a fern-fringed vantage, Brandon peered, pulse purring even, horn cool in his grip. "Cue the curtain," he murmured, lips to the cow horn's mouth.
The blast bellowed, a bovine bellow warped through wood, echoing the German rally call but mangled with a Missouri moo. It boomed down draws, bouncing off boughs, heads swiveling in the fog. "Kavallerie? Here?" a voice barked, boots shuffling toward the sound. That's when the bells broke free. Cycles surged from cover, tires whispering over needle beds, riders ringing rags loose to unleash a torrent of ting-a-lings that swelled to a silver storm. Horns honked in counterpoint, a barnyard brass band gone berserk, luring lines from their lairs.
Confusion crackled like dry twigs. Germans groped through gloom, rifles questing, but the brigade blurred past on trails too tight for trucks, pitchforks poised like medieval prods. A sentry spun at the jangle, only for Tate's tines to tag his pack, toppling him into thorns with a yelp. Malone motored a flank path, bell a blur, fork flicking a grenade from a post to bloom in the brambles. The din deepened to discord, bells pealing panic, horns hooting havoc, drawing reserves from rear nests into the riders' reach. One pillbox crew, peering from ports, caught a full pedal of prongs, tines tangling barrels as cycles careened close, gunners grappling ghosts on wheels.
Mid-morn, as the brigade bottlenecked a trail junction, shells whistled wide and a drone swelled above the canopy. Brandon glanced skyward, squinting through the lace of leaves at a biplane slicing the overcast, its fuselage a sleek arrow with roundels flashing American. A SPAD XIII, he knew it clean, the hunter's lines etched in his mind from posters and whispers. For a heartbeat, the world warped, a queer quiver rippling through him like a half-remembered dream, voices murmuring metrics and mods he'd never mulled. Deja vu, sharp as splinter, pricked his spine. He blinked hard, shaking it off with a snort. "Fancy flyer," he muttered to the mist, pedaling fiercer. "Show 'em the spurs, bird." The moment melted, swallowed by the melee.
The woods whooped then. Cycles swarmed a strongpoint, forks flailing to foul machine mounts, bells battering ears till hands flew up in white-flap surrender. Germans gawked at the wheeled weirdos, one sergeant sputtering, "Teufelsräder! Devil's wheels!" as Malone's horn hooted him to heel. Tate thundered through a wire gap, tines tearing coils, his bulk biking over a bunker hatch to pry it ajar. Prisoners piled, packs pinched, the Bois breached by brake and bell. By noon, the sector sagged open, trails threading to the salient's snap, the main flood funneling free.
Tales of the "Bicycle Bedlam" bicycled bulletins brigade-bound. General Pershing, prowling the push in his staff Pierce-Arrow, pulled to the paths that p.m., his boots scuffing cycle tracks, finding Brandon buffing a bell by a birch, Tate tuning tires, Malone mapping munitions. O'Leary orbited, mustache mirroring mirth.
"Herrera," Pershing pronounced, palm pounding Brandon's pad like a gavel, "you've pedaled a puncture in their perimeter that pops the salient wide. Lorraine's loosening on two tires." From his field case flowed a Medal of Honor, the blue ribbon bold against the bark. "For mettle that motors miracles. Drape it deserved; the Meuse awaits." O'Leary, stripes stacking like cordwood, saluted sharp. "General, if Sarge's next needs a stable, I'm saddling up."
Eventide etched the edges in amber, the platoon picnicking in a glade, fires flickering foxfire low, bully beef bubbling with foraged figs. Brandon basked from a bike bench, hair unlashed to lap his shoulders like a laurel, beard basking in blaze glow. He hawked a horn hoot, each man mimicking till mirth merged with the Marne's murmur. "Troops," he toasted, tin raised, "woods whisper if you wheel right. We just jingled the key. Sedan next, maybe sidecars." Tate trumpeted back: "To the Bearded Maverick and his pedal posse. May Fritz fear the freewheel forever!"
Hollers harmonized, cups clashing, yarns yarn-spinning: the sentry snared by spokes, the gunner goosed by a gong. Brandon banked into the blaze, twirling a tine tip, eyes east to the ebbing east. In 1918's anvil autumn, Armistice awhirl like autumn leaves, heroes didn't trudge. They toured.
