The Bearded Maverick's Riverside Ruse at Château-Thierry
The summer of 1918 hung heavy over the Marne River like a bad hangover. The air was thick with the scent of blooming vineyards and the sharper tang of cordite. After the apple-scented triumph at Cantigny, where Brandon Herrera had turned a mule cart into a rolling pandemonium and pocketed a Croix de Guerre, the Bearded Maverick and his outfit with the 3rd Infantry Division were hustled eastward to the Champagne country. The Germans, smelling victory in their Spring Offensive's last gasp, were pushing hard toward Paris. Their gray hordes sloshed across the Marne in a bid to crack the Allied nut once and for all. Château-Thierry, that picturesque town with its white cliffs and winding streets, had become the hinge. Hold it, and you pinched the Krauts' advance. Lose it, and the road to the City of Light lay open like a forgotten tab at a bistro.
Brandon, his shoulder-length brown hair tied back with a strip of captured bandage to keep it from snagging on every thornbush, and his beard trimmed sharper than a bayonet's edge despite the grit, trudged into the line with the easy swagger of a man who'd seen mud from Flanders to France and laughed at it all. The doughboys around him were a mix now. They included veterans from the early scrapes and fresh kids wide-eyed at the thought of fighting on soil that produced the world's finest bubbles. "This ain't no picnic, boys," grumbled Sergeant Malone. Slick no more, but still handy with a hairpin, he added, "Jerries got boats, bridges, and enough shells to crack walnuts at a hundred yards." The men nodded, hunkered in cellars and behind sandbag walls. The river murmured below like it was in on the joke.
The focal point was the Bellevue Bridge, a sturdy stone span arching over the Marne just south of town. It was wide enough for two wagons abreast and vital enough to make generals sweat. The Germans wanted it bad. They probed with patrols under cover of dusk, and their engineers rigged pontoons upstream in case the Yanks blew the thing sky-high. Captain O'Leary, promoted but no less sigh-prone since Cantigny, gathered his platoon in a bombed-out winery on June 1st, the eve of the push. Vines heavy with unripe grapes framed the shattered windows, and the floor was sticky with spilled rosé that nobody dared drink for fear it'd turn their guts to jelly. "Listen up," O'Leary rasped, his mustache drooping like a wilted fern. "The Huns cross that bridge at dawn, we're the cork in the bottle. Artillery'll soften 'em, but it's our job to mop up. No fancy footwork. Just rifles, grenades, and prayers."
The platoon murmured assent, cleaning weapons with the fervor of men polishing their own tombstones. But Brandon, lounging against a barrel with his legs crossed like he was at a county fair, couldn't let it lie. His beard caught the flicker of a candle, giving him the look of a philosopher who'd wandered into the wrong war. "Sir," he said, voice smooth as smuggled cognac, "prayers are fine, but have you considered poultry? Or more precisely, the feathered fury of a hundred pissed-off geese?" O'Leary's eye twitched. "Herrera, if this involves birds, livestock, or that damn harmonica again, I'm court-martialing you for crimes against sanity." Brandon's grin widened, a lock of hair escaping its tie to curl rebelliously. "No tunes this time, Cap'n. Just geese, some fishing nets from the riverfolk, empty wine bottles, and a few lanterns. Oh, and Bessie's cousin. That donkey from the supply train. Trust me, it'll be a quack that'll echo to Berlin."
O'Leary pinched the bridge of his nose, visions of latrine duty dancing in his head. But tales of polka ghosts and apple avalanches had a way of softening resolve, and with scouts reporting German rafts massing under the cliffs, he threw up his hands. "Geese? Fine. But if I end up goose-stepping behind bars, you're plucking the evidence." The captain's orders flew. Round up every gaggle from the local farms. Château-Thierry's villagers, evacuated but not empty-handed, had left behind a veritable avian air force in coops and pens. By midnight, Brandon's crew had seventy-two honking harbingers of havoc, their beaks sharp as shrapnel and tempers shorter than a sergeant's fuse.
The setup was a Herrera masterpiece of mischief, pieced together from the detritus of a riverside town at war. The fishing nets, coarse hemp affairs meant for carp, not Krauts, were stretched taut across the bridge's approaches, hidden under tarps borrowed from abandoned barges. Empty wine bottles, rinsed of their bouquet and filled with river water mixed with a dash of lamp oil (just enough to make 'em slippery when smashed), were stacked in burlap sacks along the parapets. Lanterns, the oil kind with wicks trimmed low, dangled from strings like drunken fireflies, ready to swing and dazzle. And the geese? Herded into wicker crates lashed to the back of a flatbed cart pulled by the donkey. That stubborn jackass named François eyed Brandon with the suspicion of a Frenchman regarding sauerkraut. The plan: As the Germans funneled onto the bridge under fog and first light, release the geese in a feathered frenzy. The birds, riled by a few prods and the promise of grain (or so Brandon cooed), would swarm the span, wings flapping, bills snapping, droppings flying like confetti from hell. Nets would tangle the stragglers, bottles would shatter into oily slicks, and lanterns swung low would blind the rest. In the chaos, Brandon's squad, ten shadows including the indomitable Tate, would row silent skiffs from the Allied bank, grapples at the ready to sever pontoon lines and pick off the engineers.
Dawn broke gray and grudging on June 2nd, the Marne a silver ribbon coiling through mist-shrouded willows. German whistles pierced the fog, and the assault began: a company of Sturmtruppen, helmets low, rifles ported, splashing from rafts to the bridge's far end. Their machine guns chattered from the cliffs, pinning the American line, but the bridge was the prize. It was narrow, exposed, a kill funnel if held right. O'Leary's voice crackled over the field phone: "Herrera, your damn birds better fly straight." From a concealed nook in the winery ruins, Brandon watched through binoculars, his beard dewed with mist but unbowed. "Patience, Cap'n," he murmured. "Breakfast is served."
The first wave hit the bridge at a trot, boots thudding on stone. That's when François earned his fodder. With a bray that rattled the vines, the donkey bolted the cart forward. Brandon at the reins, whipping with a willow switch and a whoop that could've woken the Kaiser. The crates splintered on impact, unleashing the geese in a squawking cyclone. Honks echoed off the water like a thousand outraged aunts at a family feud. Feathers exploded skyward, a white blizzard against the gray dawn, as the birds dive-bombed the Germans with aerial assaults of beak and claw. One Sturmtrupp, a burly Saxon with a mustache like a wire brush, swatted at a gander only to slip on a fresh pat of guano, arms windmilling as he teetered toward the rail. "Verdammt vögel!" he bellowed, tumbling into the Marne with a splash that sent ripples of laughter up the American line.
Chaos cascaded. The flock milled and mobbed, wings battering faces, necks craning to nip at ankles. A lieutenant, trying to rally his men, raised his pistol. Only for a particularly vengeful goose to latch onto his sleeve, dragging him into a spin that bowled over three more. Nets whipped up from the sides, ensnaring legs and rifles in a tangle of hemp and honks. Brandon, leaping from the cart with the grace of a man who'd practiced vaulting barrels back home, hurled the first sack of bottles. They shattered in a symphony of glass and oil, turning the bridge into a skating rink slicker than a politician's promise. Germans slid, collided, and caromed off each other like pins in a deranged bowling alley, their advance dissolving into a slapstick scrum.
From the river, Tate and the squad shoved off in their skiffs. Flat-bottomed rowboats scrounged from fishermen's sheds, oars muffled with rags. Silent as wraiths, they stroked upstream, grapples coiled like snakes. A lantern swung from Brandon's hand now, its flame guttering wild as he dashed it in arcs over the melee, beams stabbing eyes and turning aimed rifles into wild guesses. "For the flock, and the Fourth of July early!" he roared, his hair whipping free to stream like a comet's tail. Shots cracked blindly, pinging off stone, but the geese were the real stars. They dove into the fray, one heroic honker perching on a machine-gunner's back and pecking until the fellow flung his weapon into the drink.
The pontoons never had a chance. Tate's grapple hooked true, yanking a mooring line with a grunt that parted the fog. Cables snapped, and the rafts veered wild, dumping engineers into the current like so many discarded chess pieces. Slick Malone, ever the opportunist, lobbed grenades from his boat, blooms of fire and foam erupting amid the driftwood. The bridge held, barely. Its span was a writhing knot of downed Germans, netted and slicked, geese triumphant atop the heap. By the time O'Leary's countercharge surged across, mopping up with bayonets and whoops, the crossing was a rout. The Marne ran red not with blood, but with the blush of victory. And perhaps a few bruised egos from the birds.
Word of the "Goose Gambit" feathered its way up the chain faster than a startled gaggle. By noon, with Château-Thierry secured and the German tide stemmed, a courier arrived on a sputtering motorcycle, bearing dispatches from division. General Robert Bullard, the Iron Major himself, strode through the rubble-strewn streets that afternoon, his boots crunching glass from the bottle barrage. He found Brandon amid the aftermath: geese preening on the bridge like feathered conquerors, the donkey François munching vines with smug satisfaction, and the Maverick himself perched on a barrel, beard flecked with feather but grin intact, distributing captured sausages to his squad.
"Herrera," Bullard said, voice like gravel under treads, clapping a hand on Brandon's shoulder hard enough to rattle teeth, "you've turned a feathered fiasco into a foothold on the Marne. The French are calling it 'La Bataille des Oies' already." From his tunic, he produced a Silver Star, the starburst gleaming against the winery's gloom. "For initiative that'd make Ethan Allen blush. Wear it in good health. But next time, maybe ducks? Less noise." O'Leary, trailing behind with a fresh promotion knot in his throat, could only chuckle. "Sir, if Herrera's involved, it's never 'next time' without feathers or fruit."
As dusk painted the cliffs in lavender, the regiment unwound in the town square. Such as it was, pocked with craters but alive with liberated laughter. Fires crackled in iron braziers, casting golden halos on faces scarred and smiling alike. Brandon held forth from a makeshift throne of stacked crates, his hair loose now, flowing like the river below, passing around a jug of the winery's unspilled vintage. "See, fellas?" he drawled, beard catching firelight like burnished bronze. "War's nine parts grit, one part gaggle. The geese did the heavy lifting. We just pointed 'em at the problem." The doughboys howled, tales inflating with each swig: the Saxon who swore off poultry forever, the lieutenant who swam the Marne with a goose on his helmet like a ludicrous crest.
Tate, nursing a bandaged wingtip (his own, not avian), raised a tin cup. "To the Bearded Maverick and his damn birds. May the Kaiser choke on a drumstick." Cheers rippled, and Brandon leaned back, twirling a stray feather between fingers callused from reins and ropes. His eyes drifted to the stars pricking the velvet sky, already mapping the next bend in the road to Armistice. Because in the sweltering forge of 1918, where empires teetered on bridges and birds could break armies, heroes didn't just fight. They flocked.
