“Strike Three! Yer out!” came the cry from behind
the plate, an instant after the horsehide sphere thwacked into the
catcher’s mitt. Lieutenant Commander Emory Coil, USNAS, lowered his bat
from above his shoulder and turned to face the umpire, a square-jawed
Chief Petty Officer from the NAS Montauk Point staff named McGilloway.
“That pitch was a mile outside the plate, Mac! How could it be a strike?”
he said angrily, glaring at the stout but powerful-looking Chief. The
opposing catcher stood quickly and threw the ball back toward the mound,
and Coil noticed a small smile on the man’s face as McGilloway put his
hands on his hips and said, firmly but respectfully, “It looked like a
strike to me, sir.”
Coil opened his mouth to say more, thought better of it, clamped his jaw
shut, and turned away, shaking his head, to begin the walk back to his
team’s bench. The next batter, a Machinist named Randolph from C-5’s
own flight crew, muttered a sympathetic “You was robbed, sir” as he
strode past Coil on his way to the plate, and Coil was certain that the
laughter he could hear coming from the NAS staff’s team bench was at his
expense. Oh well, he thought as he sat down on his team’s bench,
can’t get a hit every time. And if McGilloway was indeed favoring the
staff team’s pitcher with a generous strike zone, something Coil was
increasingly certain of as the game wore on, at least he had the
satisfaction of knowing that the flight and maintenance crew’s team had
already won five of the seven games the two teams had played so far this
spring. Even if we lose today, he thought, we’re well on our way
to winning the series…
It was a fine, sunny Sunday afternoon in May of 1919 at Montauk Point
Naval Air Station, Long Island, New York, and the officers and men who
crewed and maintained the station’s two dirigible airships, C-2 and
C-5, were engaged in ritual baseball combat with the officers and
men of the station’s administrative and maintenance staff. Coil himself,
C-5’s commanding officer, was the oldest man on the “flight” team’s
bench, and he was only 28 years old. The fledging Naval Air Service tended
to attract young, daredevil types, since it took a certain amount of
youthful foolhardiness to pilot a bamboo-and-bailing wire aircraft, or to
climb into the open gondola of a big gasbag filled with explosive
hydrogen. These Sunday baseball games were a great way for men to “let off
steam”, to work out some of the tension inherent in their dangerous work.
But there was another source of tension at Montauk this spring, centered
on the deteriorating international situation. The German Empire, brash and
confident after the defeat of both France & Russia in the Great European
War of 1914-1916, had declared its intention of establishing a “German
presence in the western hemisphere” in order to “safeguard German
commercial and political interests” in the New World. President Theodore
Roosevelt, with the full backing of the United States Congress and indeed
with the support of American public opinion as well, had declared his
government’s intention of enforcing the Monroe Doctrine against any
“German encroachment”.
So everyone at Montauk, indeed everyone in any branch of the United States
armed forces, was aware that they might at any time find themselves in
combat against the Kaiser and his formidable army and fleet. In fact,
well-substantiated rumor had it that the Germans were outfitting a large
expeditionary force back in the Fatherland, intended for “foreign
service”, and it was an open international secret that this force was
bound for the New World, to test America’s resolve.
All these thoughts were in the back of Emory Coil’s
mind as he sat on the bench this May afternoon, enjoying the game and the
sunshine. He had just turned to Zachary Lansdowne, also a Lieutenant
Commander and the CO of the second of Montauk’s two dirigibles, the C-2,
to offer his opinion of the officiating, when both men noticed a big
Indian motorcycle driving at high speed up the NAS access road toward the
command building.
“Looks like dispatches, Zach.” he said with a drawl, “Kinda strange,
dispatches on a Sunday, dontcha think?”
“Yeah. The rider looks to be in a big hurry, too,” said Lansdowne. “I
wonder what’s up.”
Others had noticed the unforeseen arrival as well, including Commander
Jack Richardson, the base commandant, who got up off the opposing team’s
bench and began walking up to the command building to greet the dispatch
rider.
It got harder to concentrate on the game after that, and a few moments
later, after Coil’s team made its third out of the inning and was
preparing to take the field, Commander Richardson was seen hurrying back
toward the diamond with dispatch case in hand. At that everyone just stood
around for a moment to see what the commandant had to say.
As soon as he was within hailing range, Richardson called out in a
breathless voice, “Coil, Lansdowne, get your boys ready to move out! All
your gear and your big gasbags, too!” As if suddenly conscious of his
dignity the Commander slowed down as he neared the cluster of men, caught
his breath, and went on.
“Looks like Kaiser Bill’s on the move, and coming right at us! You and
your boys got orders to head south! You’re going to be the eyes of the
Fleet!” The commandant had a gleam in his eye, and a predatory smile on
his face. “Go give ‘em Hell, boys!” he shouted, as cheers erupted around
the field…
Umpire’s Note: In the “real world”, Lieutenant
Commander Emory Coil, one of the USN’s first airship pilots, flew the
non-rigid dirigible C-5, built by Goodyear, from Montauk Point to St.
Johns, Newfoundland in May of 1919, the longest non-stop flight yet
recorded by a USN airship, some 1050 miles in 25 hours. And in September
1925 Commander Zachary Lansdowne, commanding officer of the USN’s first
rigid airship, the 680-foot Shenandoah, lost his life along with 13 other
members of his crew of 41 when the Shenandoah broke up in flight during a
great thunderstorm over Marietta, Ohio.
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Stockholm Naval Sentinel
