Minor Fictional Characters in the Great War Trilogy

This article lists the various minor fictional characters who appear in The Great War trilogy, a sub-series of the Southern Victory series. These characters are identified by name, but play at best a peripheral role in the series. Most were simply mentioned or had a very brief, unimportant speaking role that did not impact the plot, and never appeared again.

Agamemnon
(Walk in Hell)

Agamemnon was a former hired hand on a plantation owned by Jubal Marberry. Following the Red Rebellion and the establishment of the Congaree Socialist Republic, he served on the revolutionary tribunal that executed his former boss in 1915.

Agrippa
(American Front, WiH)

Agrippa was a Negro employee at the Sloss Steel Foundry at the beginning of the Great War. He and Vespasian worked the night shift in the same positions held by Jefferson Pinkard and Bedford Cunningham during the day. He'd been born before manumission; he was in his thirties when Pinkard first met him.

Agrippa and Vespasian arranged to have Vespasian's cousin Pericles work with Pinkard after Cunningham was called to service in 1915. Unfortunately, Pericles was a Red, and was taken into custody. Months later, Agrippa informed Pinkard that Pericles had been executed for sedition.

Ajax
(WiH)

Ajax was a small boy whose parents worked for Anne Colleton on the Marshlands plantation. When former butler Scipio returned following Colleton's summons, Ajax was dispatched to notify Colleton that Scipio had returned.

Albert
(WiH)

Albert was a sailor in the United States Navy, serving aboard the USS Punishment

In 1916, the Punishment dropped anchor in the Cumberland River, near Clarksville, Tennessee, for R&R. The first who went ashore were crewmen George Enos, Stanley, Albert, and Grover. Not long afterward, a Confederate shell attack destroyed the Punishment, sinking it and killing the entire crew. The four sailors who went ashore were unscathed and the monitor's only survivors.

Private Altrock
(AF)

Altrock was a private under Captain Irving Morrell's command in Sonora at the beginning of the Great War. When Morrell was injured outside of Imuris, Altrock bandaged his leg.

Milo Axelrod
(AF)

Milo Axelrod (d. 1914) was a druggist in Richmond, Virginia. As the Great War began, he found one of his employees, Reggie Bartlett, attending a demonstration at Capitol Square when Bartlett was supposed to be minding the store and fired Bartlett. He was conscripted into the Army shortly thereafter, and stopped a bullet with his face on the Maryland front.

Saul Benveniste
(AF)

Dr. Saul Benveniste treated Jacob Colleton at Marshlands in 1915. knew no way to counteract the damage which poison gas had done to Colleton's lungs, but prescribed morphia to ease his pain. Colleton's sister Anne found Benveniste to look like Judah Benjamin except for being as skinny as Alexander Stephens.

Bjornsen
(WiH)

Bjornsen was a sailor on the USS Ericsson during the Great War. He was on one of the small boats that smuggled guns ashore at Ballybunion in Ireland for the insurgents. On the way, he complained that he felt naked on the sea in such a small boat. When the boat approached its rendezvous, he was more optimistic since he reasoned that if the British had discovered the plot, they would have opened up with hidden field guns, blowing them sky high.

Homer Bradley
(AF)

Homer Bradley was a sailor serving on the Jarvis during the Great War. In 1915, his ship reinforced the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor. He and his buddy Dino Dascoli were on shore leave when they ran into Sam Carsten doing busy work and who explained how the fleet had been suckered out into a trap by the Japanese Navy. The two expressed sympathy to Carsten who was stuck onshore while his ship was in dry dock and then Dascoli asked about having a good time in Pearl. Carsten told the two about Maggie Stevenson.

Ralph Briggs
(AF, WiH)

Ralph Briggs was a C.S. Navy officer during the Great War. He commanded a submersible until 1915, when his boat was sunk and he and his crew were captured by the United States. The U.S. used a fishing boat as a decoy while it towed a submersed submersible.

Briggs was sent to a prison camp in West Virginia. After a period of captivity, Briggs met Reggie Bartlett. Briggs and Bartlett struck up a friendship, and eventually, the two escaped together and reached the C.S. in 1916.

Briggs was given command of another submersible which was sunk by the USS Ericsson before the year was out. He scuttled his boat and was taken prisoner again. Upon learning he had escaped prison once, the US sailors wanted to murder him, though George Enos, who was present when he was captured the first time, spoke up on his behalf and he was taken prisoner again. Roger Kimball often directed scornful remarks at his ill-fated friend's expense.

Bobby Brock
(AF)

Sergeant Bobby Brock was a Confederate cavalryman in Captain Hiram Lincoln's company at the start of the Great War. He commanded Stephen Ramsay's section and took part in the raid on Kingman, Kansas. While destroying a length of railroad track, the company was attacked by US cavalry protecting an armored car. Brock was killed by machine gun fire from the car.

Fred Butcher
(AF, The Center Cannot Hold)

Fred Butcher (b. c. 1869) was a fisherman from Boston, Massachusetts. He served aboard the F/V Ripple with George Enos as first-mate in the beginning of the Great War.

Butcher and the rest of the crew were captured by the Confederate ship Swamp Fox a few months into the war. After some time in the Confederate camps, Butcher and the crew were returned to the United States as part of a prisoner exchange. The crew of the Ripple were taken home on a Spanish vessel, the Padre Junipero Serra.

During the interwar period, Butcher became the successful captain of his own fishing vessel. He hired George Enos Jr. when the latter left school.

Byron
(AF)

Byron was a mechanic in Lt. Jonathan Moss' aeroplane scouting squadron at the start of the Great War. He was often a victim of Lefty, a fellow mechanic, during their ongoing poker games. However, Byron was a diligent mechanic and didn't let this affect his ability to work with Lefty. He and Lefty came running up with a stretcher when Moss made an emergency landing to take his wounded observer Percy Stone to an aid station.

Luther Carlsen
(AF)

Luther Carlsen was part of a four man Martin one-decker formation that Lt. Jonathan Moss joined in the autumn of 1915. Carlsen was a big blond handsome man who thought of himself as a wolf with women but who Daniel Dudley, the formation leader said wasn't. When they took to the air the next day, Moss observed that Carlsen was a precise flyer, always exactly where he should be in the formation. During an air-patrol outside of Guelph, Dudley spotted a column of infantrymen marching to the front and ordered the formation to dive and shoot it up. Carlsen and the others did so but his aeroplane was hit by rifle fire from the ground, caught fire and crashed killing him.

Clem
(AF)

Clem was a combat engineer with the U.S. Navy during the Great War. He was wounded in the Sandwich Islands, early in the war, during the successful operation to destroy the British Fort William Rufus.

Colleton (father)
(AF)

Mr Colleton was the owner of Marshlands, a productive South Carolina plantation. At his death in 1909, his sons Tom and Jacob were not yet adults. The old Colleton's daughter Anne took over the running of the plantation, and doubled its productivity.

Combat Engineer
(AF)

During the assault on Fort William Rufus, a combat engineer ordered Sam Carsten to take Clem's place on a fuel hose when the latter was wounded. He told Carsten the hose and several others would let ten thousand gallons of two parts heavy diesel oil and one part gasoline be pumped down the ventilator shafts of the fort. They would then set off explosive charges to blow up the mixture and the fort. When the hose went limp, the engineer placed a small box by the vent and lit a fuse. He then ordered everyone back to the freighter that had carried the petroleum mix. Ten minutes later, that and several other charges went off blowing the concrete roof off the fort destroying it.

Commodus
(AF)

Commodus was a Negro laborer attached to Reggie Bartlett's Army unit during the Great War. He was also a boxer. In 1915, Commdus had a bout with a Negro from the Confederate Marine Corps named Lysis, who'd toured various Army divisions, boxing their champion Negro boxers. Lysis knocked Commodus out in the third round. Bartlett, who'd lost a bet on Commodus, wondered how Lysis would do in a fight with a white man.

Andy Conkling
(WiH)

Andy Conkling was a sailor on the USS Ericsson during the Great War. He bunked on the lower tier of a bunk bed with George Enos above him. Enos was new to the Ericsson so Conkling brought him up to speed on it and the war at sea in general. He had the usual contempt for the in-shore river-monitor fleet which he called the "snapping turtle navy". Enos, who had previously served on one, thought it unfair but didn't argue the point.

Dino Dascoli
(AF)

Dino Dascoli was a sailor serving on the Jarvis during the Great War. In 1915, his ship reinforced the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor. He and his buddy Homer Bradley were on shore leave when they ran into Sam Carsten doing busy work and who explained how the fleet had been suckered out into a trap by the Japanese Navy. The two expressed sympathy to Carsten who was stuck onshore while his ship was in dry dock and then Dascoli asked about having a good time in Pearl. Carsten told the two about Maggie Stevenson.

Moltke Donovan
(WiH)

Lt. Moltke Donovan (d. 1916) replaced Michael Kelly as the deck officer on the USS Punishment during the Great War. While more serious than Kelly, he did recognize the need for sailors to receive shore leave when possible. He granted George Enos a short leave while the Punishment was anchor in the Cumberland River, near Clarksville, Tennessee in 1916. This saved Enos' life since the Punishment was destroyed by a Confederate monitor a few hours later. Donovan was killed in the attack.

Daniel Dudley
(AF, WiH)

Daniel "Dud" Dudley commanded a four man Martin one-decker formation in Captain Shelby Pruitt's squadron when Lt. Jonathan Moss transferred to it in the autumn of 1915. He explained to Moss that the Martin was an overall good aeroplane without many vices but that the interrupter gear sometimes went out of alignment. The first you would know about it was when you shot off your propeller. If that happened, then gliding was your only hope and that the aeroplane was nose-heavy. That had happened to Smitty who failed to land safely and who Moss was replacing.

The formation took to the air for a patrol the next day with Moss in the "tail-end Charlie" position in the formation. When they reached the front, they turned to fly parallel to the lines on the American side since Pruitt had made it clear it was necessary to prevent the Canadians from recovering the interrupter gear from a downed aeroplane. Moss spotted an Avro returning from a scout and broke formation to attack it. With the front-mounted machine gun, Moss found it easier to position himself to fire on the other machine and shot it down.

Phil Eaker
(WiH)

Phil Eaker replaced Zach Whitby when the latter was shot down and killed in 1916. He took part in the battle for Acton by attacking ground troops in their trenches with his Martin one-decker.

Charlie Fixico
(AF)

Charlie Fixico was a chief of the Creek Nation in Sequoyah during the Great War. He eloquently pleaded for Confederate cavalry officer Hiram Lincoln to stay with his men and fight off the US advance on Okmulgee. Lincoln didn't want to dig in, but Fixico created such a scene that Lincoln and his men felt that honor demanded that they stay.

The Confederates and the Creek were able to fight off the advance, and save Okmulgee. However, Fixico was not content long to simply leave things at that. He ordered an attack on US positions around Beggs with the goal of taking back the oil fields. Although Lincoln tried to convince him of the futility of the offensive, Fixico insisted, sending many of his men and the Confederates to their deaths.

Max Fleischmann
(AF, WiH, Blood and Iron)

Max Fleischmann (d. ca. 1918) was a kosher butcher from New York City's tenth ward. His shop was located on Centre Market Place and, although he was a Democrat who voted for Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, he rented the upper level of his shop to the Socialist Party and Herman Bruck. Flora Hamburger was one of the Socialists who worked out of this space prior to her election to Congress. He felt a certain affection for her, after she helped drive off some members of the Soldiers' Circle who harassed Fleischmann. He provided food for the party on election nights. He even bragged that he'd vote for her when she stood for election in 1918.

Max died while Flora was serving in Philadelphia. His son, Sheldon, took over his business.

Fleming
(WiH)

Captain Fleming commanded the USS Ericsson during the Great War. When the CSS Snook launched a torpedo at the Ericsson, Fleming chose to turn the destroyer towards the torpedo's path rather than away. While making it more likely the torpedo would hit, it also placed the Ericsson over its general location if it missed. The torpedo missed and depth-charges from the Ericsson forced the Snook to the surface.

Alfred Forbes
(AF)

Alfred Forbes was an art aficionado from Charleston, South Carolina. In 1914, he attended an exhibition of post-impressionist European art at Marshlands Plantation. He was interested in the works of Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, and Georges Braque. He was also openly scornful of American and German culture, and regretted that the leading Central Powers nations were too formidable to be laughed off. He and Anne Colleton, sponsor of the exhibition, commiserated on the recent defeat the United States Navy had dealt the Royal Navy in the Sandwich Islands.

Otherwise, Forbes attempted to attract Colleton to himself sexually by a pseudo-intellectual expansion on a theme of contrasts. For her part, Colleton found Forbes to be a dandy (though of course she would not be so rude as to say so), wondered how he had managed to evade military service at the outset of the Great War, and, though she did concede that he was a good-looking man, easily resisted his charms. Forbes eventually gave up his attempts at seduction and moved on to other pursuits.

Foulkes
(AF)

Foulkes was a lieutenant under Captain Irving Morrell's command in Sonora at the beginning of the Great War. In the ambush outside Imuris, Foulkes remained with Morrell in the center.

Elijah Franklin
(AF)

Captain Elijah Franklin commanded Lt. Jonathan Moss' aeroplane scouting squadron at the beginning of the Great War. When the squadron switched from one man Curtiss Super Hudson pusher scouts to two man Wright-17 tractors, he defended the change to his outraged pilots. He pointed out the Wright had superior cruise, climb and dive speeds which matched the British Avro 504s they were facing. Also, the job of scouting was getting more complicated with the addition of a camera so having the observer do the documentation of the enemy formations while the pilot concentrated on flying made both more effective. The pilots were still reluctant to depend on observers for defense since they were the ones with the machine guns but had no choice but to accept the new machines.

Lt. Moss was assigned Percy Stone as his observer. Despite the joke of the names, the two worked well together until Stone was wounded in aerial combat. Moss was grounded due to lacking an observer and Captain Franklin agreed to his transfer to a squadron of new one man Martin one-deckers when the opportunity arose.

Gilbert
(WiH)

Colonel Gilbert was an officer on the United States General Staff. He bore a passing resemblance to Franz Joseph, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. When the offensive against the Mormon Uprising in 1916 proved particularly bloody because of the Mormons' use of landmines, Gilbert was openly contemptuous of the strategist behind the plan, Major Irving Morrell.

Gilray
(AF)

Dr. Gilray was a Protestant clergyman from Richmond, Virginia. In 1912 he published Collection of Christian Hymns. The cover of this book was used by Cassius at Marshlands in 1914 to conceal forbidden socialist literature.

Clem Goebel
(AF)

Clem Goebel was a citizen of Covington, Kentucky when it was a part of the Confederate States. He was involved in wholesale goods, and mourned the costs the Great War would impose on his business. He considered leaving Covington before the war started, on advice from his cousin Morton, and warned Cincinnatus to do the same, heedless of the limitations Cincinnatus lived under as a black man. While Goebel didn't help Cincinnatus load merchandise into his truck, he did give him a Dr. Hopper.

Morton Goebel
(AF)

Morton Goebel was a citizen of Lexington, Kentucky when it was still part of the Confederate States. He warned his cousin Clem to leave the city of Covington before the Great War started.

Griselda
(AF)

Griselda (b. 1896) was a maid who worked for Anne Colleton at the Marshlands estate. According to Scipio who managed the household staff, she was fairly lazy and wasn't above playing practical jokes on the butler. After a rebuke, he decided to have her fired to which she retorted that she was going to get a job in a factory which would pay better than Colleton ever would. Cherry asked Scipio if she could come out from the fields and take her place to which he agreed. She was then able to use her position to keep Jacob Colleton distracted whilst the Red Rebellion fermented on the plantation.

Grover
(WiH)

Grover was a sailor in the United States Navy, serving aboard the USS Punishment

In 1916, the Punishment dropped anchor in the Cumberland River, near Clarksville, Tennessee, for R&R. The first who went ashore were crewmen George Enos, Stanley, Albert, and Grover. As they rowed to shore, Grover made a good-natured complaint about Enos' luck at poker where he had drawn three cards and came up with a flush. Not long afterward, a Confederate shell attack destroyed the Punishment, sinking it and killing the entire crew. The four sailors who went ashore were unscathed and the monitor's only survivors.

Jonathan Y. Henrickson
(WiH)

Lieutenant Commander Jonathan Y. Henrickson was the Chief Purchasing Officer on board the USS Dakota during the Great War. As such, he was responsible for buying and storing supplies such as rations when the Dakota sailed on patrol. On one extended patrol guarding the Sandwich Islands, fresh food had run out and the cooks in the mess were reduced to preparing preserved food. One especially vile dinner of herrings in mustard sauce led to a near riot in a mess hall. Some unidentified sailors took revenge by sneaking a pot of herring to Henrickson's cabin and pouring it out on his bedding, clothing and other possessions. Henrickson interviewed any number of sailors, trying to catch them out by asking them what they thought of the herrings and mustard, and hoping that the culprits would praise it to divert attention. None fell for the ploy, giving truthful answers of disliking the food or as Henrickson put it "damn sailors are too damn sly".

Heintzelman
(WiH)

Heintzelman was a US soldier during the Great War. He was stationed in Kentucky in 1916. He and his comrade Vasilievsky followed Murray's lead and refused to work with Cincinnatus, arguing that he was doing "white man's work" by driving. Their superior, Lt. Straubing, directly ordered them to work and threatened them with court-martial, before storming from the warehouse. Heintzelman and his colleagues thought that they'd bluffed their superior, but instead he returned with MPs and ordered all three arrested for insubordination.

Virgil Hobson
(AF)

Virgil Hobson delivered the Charleston Mercury, a newspaper read by Anne Colleton. He carried this particular newspaper, as well as a crop of others, by mule to the Marshlands estate. He was an alcoholic, and it fell to Scipio to deal with him as part of the butler's household duties.

Roger Hodges
(AF)

Roger Hodges (d. 1914) was a West Virginian who served with Chester Martin at the beginning of the Great War. He was killed in action against the Confederates at Catawba Mountain early in the war after he got caught up in a trip wire and was riddled by bullets.

Jerome Hotchkiss
(WiH)

Jerome Hotchkiss (d. 1916) was a Major in the Confederate States Army. At some point he lost his left hand and it was replaced with a hook. He was assigned to fight the Red Rebellion in 1915 and attempted to put down the nascent Congaree Socialist Republic. When plantation owner Anne Colleton attempted to return to Marshlands, he turned her away, confiscating her car in the name of the CSA. He also parleyed with Scipio over a prisoner exchange.

During the death throes of the Republic, an escaping Scipio, who had found a chicken in the swamps, ran into Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss demanded that Scipio turn the chicken over to him. Scipio agreed, but then Hotchkiss recognized Scipio as the man he parleyed with months earlier. Before Hotchkiss could draw his firearm, Scipio brained him with a rock, knocking him to the ground and then proceeded to beat him over the head repeatedly until Hotchkiss was dead.

Jake Hoyland
(AF)

Jake Hoyland was a first lieutenant under Captain Irving Morrell's command in Sonora at the beginning of the Great War. Hoyland was born and raised in Michigan. Morrell didn't think much of Hoyland, figuring that he might one day make captain, but no higher. In the ambush outside Imuris, Hoyland covered Morrell's left flank.

Tom Innis
(AF)

Tom Innis was part of a four man Martin one-decker formation that Lt. Jonathan Moss joined in the autumn of 1915. When they took to the air the next day, Moss observed that Innis was all over the place rather than fixed in formation. Moss couldn't decide if it was because Innis was sloppy or imaginative so reserved judgment.

Unlike most pilots, Innis would deal with his hangover after a night of drinking by having a brandy with a raw egg in it followed by coffee rather than the more usual aspirin and coffee.

In 1916, the Canadians and British launched a surprise counter-attack with barrels of their own. This sent the U.S. ground forces into headlong retreat. Innis and his flightmates tried to stem the tide by attacking men on the ground. They were subject to ground fire and Innis' Martin was hit and caught fire. He tried to fly back and managed to cross to the U.S. side of the line. The Martin settled down onto a grassy meadow but it nosed down into a shell hole and flipped killing Innis.

Island
(AF)

Island (d. October 1915) was a Negro resident of the Confederate States. He was part of the socialist conspiracy at the Colletons' Marshlands plantation, along with Cassius, Cherry and the reluctant Scipio. When the rebellion began in 1915, Island attempted to kill, but was instead killed by, the crippled Jacob Colleton.

Heber Louis Jackson
(WiH)

Heber Louis Jackson (d. 1915?), was a high ranking member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He took part in the Mormon uprising of 1914, but by 1915, he was the only senior member left, making him the de-facto president. Realizing that his situation was hopeless, Jackson surrendered to General Alonzo Kent at Tabernacle Park in the town of Ogden. After surrendering, he was taken into custody and charged with treason for rising against the United States. This was typically a capital crime.

Johansen
(WiH)

Johansen was a cook on the USS Dakota. During an extended patrol guarding the Sandwich Islands, Johansen and his fellow cooks served herring in mustard sauce along with sauerkraut and hard rolls. The sailors were displeased and made their displeasure well known. Sam Carsten pointed at the pot and asked Johansen if he had a sick cat. Tilden Winters suggested a cook had diarrhea. Johansen defended himself claiming he would say "I told you so" when Carsten came back for seconds.

Jonah
(AF)

Jonah was a black worker from Marshlands. In the early days of the Great War, he fled the plantation owned by Anne Colleton for Columbia to get a job in one of the factories since white manpower was in short supply. While on the plantation, he was linked to another worker named Letitia, who left with him.

Pete Jonas
(AF)

Pete Jonas was a shell jerker at the starboard bow five-inch gun aboard the USS Dakota. In 1915, he was aboard when the Dakota sailed out of Pearl Harbor to hunt for an enemy fleet that had launched a scouting aeroplane. He got into an argument with Luke Hoskins, another shell jerker, over whose aeroplane it was. Jonas maintained it was English while Hoskins claimed it was Japanese. Lt. Commander Grady initially didn't know, stopping the argument but then the two started arguing over how much of the fleet had sortied out after the enemy fleet. Grady later confirmed it was Japanese, much to Hoskins' glee and Jonas' disgust.

Joseph
(AF)

Joseph and his wife (b. early 1860s) were art lovers who visited the modern art exhibit at Marshlands. They eagerly discussed a Pablo Picasso painting, which the Mrs. found a subject of endless wonder, but which Joseph figured must need special eyesight to appreciate. Joseph had only a right arm. Anne Colleton wondered whether his left had been lost in the Second Mexican War or a peacetime accident.

Michael Kelly
(WiH)

Lt. Michael Kelly (d. 1916) was the deck officer on the USS Punishment during the Great War. He was relatively easygoing with his subordinate sailors realizing the call-up for the war made the tight-knit professional force a minority. When George Enos boarded and asked what was going on, Kent gave a brief explanation of the Red Rebellion by the Confederate negros and how the Punishment was going to attack C.S. troops while they were distracted.

Kelly was pleasantly surprised by the care Enos took in maintaining his deck machine gun and complemented him on it. He was killed by a shell fragment during a ship to ship battle on the Mississippi in 1916.

Harvey Kemmel
(AF)

Harvey Kemmel was US Navy sailor at the outbreak of the Great War. In 1915, he was assigned to pose as a fisherman on board the F/V Spray. The fishing boat was being used to decoy Confederate commerce raiders while towing an underwater submersible. A Midwesterner, Kemmel had never been a fisherman and found the work appallingly hard.

Alonzo Kent
(WiH)

Alonzo Kent was a major general in the United States Army. He was critical in subduing the Mormon uprising of 1915, and became the military governor of Utah when martial law was imposed.

Lieutenant Koenig
(AF)

Koenig was a lieutenant under Captain Irving Morrell's command in Sonora at the beginning of the Great War. In the ambush outside Imuris, Koenig covered Morrell's right flank.

Thad Krazewski
(WiH)

Thad Krazewski replaced Orville Thornley in the four man flight Lt. Jonathan Moss belonged to. Moss didn't get to know him well as he was promoted to Captain and transferred to a training squadron to train on the new Wright two-decker.

Clyde Landis
(WiH)

Captain Clyde Landis served in the U.S. Army during the Great War on the Ontario front. In 1916 the army was advancing on Acton when Lt. Jonathan Moss successfully dead-stick landed his Martin one-decker on a dirt road near Landis' trenches. He took charge of Moss and saw to his return to his aerodrome the next day.

Pierre Lapin
(AF)

Pierre Lapin (d 1914) was a Quebecois lieutenant in the Canadian Army during the Great War. Lapin set up a strongpoint on Arthur McGregor's farm to resist the United States Army's march on Rosenfeld, Manitoba at the beginning of the war. Lapin and all his men were killed when the strongpoint was destroyed by US forces.

Literary comment
His name translates as Peter Rabbit.

Lefty
(AF)

Lefty was a mechanic in Lt. Jonathan Moss' aeroplane scouting squadron at the start of the Great War. An excellent poker player, Moss quickly learned to be wary in any game he was involved in. However, Lefty was a diligent mechanic and pulled his weight in the squadron. Lefty also fleeced the new observers at poker when they joined the squadron. Percy Stone, Moss' observer, lost repeatedly to Lefty despite Moss' warnings but attributed this to his Socialist tendencies to redistribute the wealth. When Stone was wounded during a mission, Lefty rushed up to the landed aeroplane with a stretcher, telling Moss that Stone couldn't die, he still had money that Lefty needed to win. Later, Lefty answered the telephone call reporting that Stone was expected to survive. With Moss lacking an observer, he was grounded until he was transferred to a squadron of new one man Martin one-deckers. Lefty drove Moss to the new airfield and gave him a special pair of dice that would give him a run of sevens if he got into a hot game of craps. Lefty assured him he never needed such dice himself since he depended on skill, implying Moss lacked it.

Letitia
(AF)

Letitia was a black worker from Marshlands. In the early days of the Great War, she fled the plantation owned by Anne Colleton for Columbia to get a job in one of the textile plants since white manpower was in short supply. While on the plantation, she was linked to another hand named Jonah. He left Marshlands with her.

Morton P. Lewis
(Breakthroughs)

Morton P. Lewis was a pharmacist's mate aboard the USS Dakota in the last year of the Great War. He routinely provided Sam Carsten with zinc oxide during Carsten's time aboard, to soothe Carsten's notorious sun-based skin ailment.

John Liholiho
(WiH)

John Liholiho (d. 1917) was a Sandwich Islands man who encountered US sailors Sam Carsten and Vic Crosetti after the U.S. conquered the Islands. As his father had been an assistant minister for sugar production in the British administration, Liholiho had received a more "English" education, even speaking with an English accent.

Carsten and Crosetti first saw Liholiho surfing while they were on leave in August 1916. Despite Crosetti's impatience to get on with their leave, Carsten talked with Liholiho for a time about British vs. U.S. rule, and the nature of race relations and occupation, with Liholiho being quite tactful in his interactions with the two Americans. After the conversation ended, Crossetti became convinced that Liholiho might be a British spy, but Carsten didn't quite believe it. However, when both sailors were en route to Chile, they reconsidered and decided to send a letter to the authorities, recommending Liholiho be investigated.

Liholiho was a British spy. He was investigated, arrested, and sentenced to death. Carsten and Crossetti learned of this in February 1917. Both were promoted from Seaman First Class to Petty Officer Third Class for helping to catch him.

Malcolm Lockerby
(AF)

Malcolm Lockerby was a sergeant in the Canadian Royal Winnipeg Rifles, the "Little Black Devils". Early in 1915, Lockerby undertook a solo mission to sabotage a rail line used by the U.S. military. In the snowy darkness, Lockerby skied right over his target, and found his way to the McGregor farm, where he received tea and a moment of respite before he returned to his mission.

Lysis
(AF)

Lysis was a Negro laborer attached to a Confederate Marine unit during the Great War. He was also a boxer. In 1915, Lysis toured various Army divisions, boxing their champion Negro boxers. During such a match, Lysis battled Commodus, who was attached to Reggie Bartlett's division, knocking him out in the third round. Bartlett had bet on Commodus. During the fight, he briefly wondered how Lysis would do in a fight with a white man.

Governor MacFarlane
(WiH)

MacFarlane was Governor of New York during the Great War. A staunch Democrat, MacFarlane appointed his friend Daniel Miller to represent New York City's heavily Socialist Lower East Side in the United States House of Representatives following the sudden death of Myron Zuckerman in 1916.

Mantarakis (father)
(WiH)

Mr. Mantarakis, a Greek immigrant, sold grape leaves stuffed with spicy meat and rice on the streets of Philadelphia. In October 1915, Major Irving Morrell purchased three of his examples. As Morrell paused to eat his meal, a fat, middle aged civilian with a Soldiers' Circle badge shouted "Get the hell out of here, you stinking wog! This is a white man's town!" Morrell calmly told the retired veteran to leave the Greek alone, but the heckler insisted that the grocer should not be a citizen. The Greek proudly stated, in broken English, that his own son Paul was a sergeant in the Army, and that the heckler had probably never got beyond private. The fat man slunk away. Captain John Abell, standing beside Morrell, shared his disgust with the heckler's actions.

Demetrios Mantarakis
(AF)

Demetrios, a cousin of U.S. soldier Paul Mantarakis, worked on the Philadelphia wharf. His illness, contracted from walking around with wet feet, was a cautionary tale to Paul.

Jubal Marberry
(AF, WiH)

Jubal Marberry (d. 1915) was an aged plantation owner who was captured by members of the Congaree Socialist Republic and tried as an "exploiter of the proletariat". Following a very brief trial in a kangaroo court, Cassius, Cherry, Scipio and Marberry's former plantation hand Agamemnon found Marberry guilty, and ordered his execution. Before his execution, he informed the tribunal that whatever they did to him, they would be "hung higher than Haman" when caught. Marberry himself was shot to death.

Stanley McClintock
(AF)

Lt. Stanley McClintock was a pilot of a Curtiss Super Hudson during the early part of the Great War. He flew as Lt. Jonathan Moss' left wingman when the Canadians forced the scouts to fly in formation rather than in lone reconnaissance missions. For reasons only known to himself, McClintock affected a waxed mustache with spiky, upturned ends that would do for an imperial Balkans nobleman. When the squadron switched to Wright-17s, McClintock was one of several pilots to object to the new, tractor model since it depended on the observer to man a machine gun rather mount it on the nose for the pilot to use.

Sherwood McKenna
(WiH)

Sherwood McKenna (d. 1916) was a sailor on the USS Punishment during the Great War. He and Wayne Pitchess befriended George Enos when he joined the crew and became the third man in the three tier bunk bed they used. The two filled in Enos on how the Punishment didn't usually engage Confederate monitors but instead bombarded enemy land positions in support of the U.S. Army. McKenna added that the armor on the Punishment would "laugh off" the shells from Confederate three-inch field guns. McKenna was killed in 1916 when the Punishment was destroyed by a Confederate monitor.

Mehitabel
(WiH)

Mehitabel was a colored woman who sold herself to American sailors on the banks of the Cumberland River outside Clarksville, Tennessee. One day she sashayed into Othello's barbecue joint and teased him and the four sailors, asking if he had left them any money for her services. He had and George Enos left the shack to walk to her crib. Before they reached it, Enos heard shells screaming in and dropped to the ground. The shells landed on his ship, the USS Punishment, destroying it but leaving Enos and Mehitabel unharmed.

Miller
(AF)

Miller was Lord Lyons' driver when he served as British minister to the United States. On 4 November 1862, Miller drove Lord Lyons to the White House when the minister sought to offer Britain's help to mediate a peace between the U.S. and the Confederate States.

Daniel Miller
(WiH)

Daniel Miller was an obscure New York City lawyer and Democrat when his friend, Governor MacFarlane, appointed him to serve the late Myron Zuckerman's unexpired Congressional term in the United States House of Representatives in 1916. He was soundly defeated by Socialist candidate Flora Hamburger in a general election later that year.

Murray
(WiH)

Murray was US soldier during the Great War. He was stationed in Kentucky in 1916. He and his comrades Vasilievsky and Heintzelman refused to work with Cincinnatus, arguing that he was doing "white man's work" by driving. Their superior, Lt. Straubing, directly ordered them to work and threatened them with court-martial, before storming from the warehouse. Murray and his colleagues thought that they'd bluffed their superior, but instead he returned with MPs and ordered all three arrested for insubordination.

Nelson
(AF)

Lt. Nelson was a pilot of a Curtiss Super Hudson during the early part of the Great War. He flew as part of Lt. Jonathan Moss' four man formation when the Canadians forced the scouts to fly in formation for self-defense rather than in lone reconnaissance missions. On one such mission Nelson's aeroplane engine failed to start and so Moss flew the mission one man short. Fortunately, the three pilots did not meet up with a formation of Canadians and returned to the airfield safely.

Othello
(WiH)

Othello ran an impromptu barbecue joint in a shack on the banks of the Cumberland River outside Clarksville, Tennessee. He set up when U.S. Navy monitors started anchoring in the area. He boasted to George Enos, Stanley, Albert, and Grover that his barbecue was the best outside The Kentucky Smoke House which meant nothing to George. Having shore leave to eat, drink moonshine and lay with prostitutes like Mehitabel did save the four when their ship, the USS Punishment, was destroyed by Confederate shelling.

Dom Pedro IV of Brazil
(B)

Dom Pedro IV was the Emperor of Brazil during the Great War. Through most of the war, he kept his country neutral, although both sides actively courted him. In 1917, when it was clear that the Central Powers had the upper-hand, Dom Pedro declared war on the Entente. Brazil's entry into the war bottled-up Argentina, and cut off a valuable supply line to Britain, which helped to accelerate the Entente's capitulation.

Pericles
(AF, WiH)

Pericles (d. November 1, 1915) was a Negro employee at the Sloss Steel Foundry at the beginning of the Great War, and a cousin of Vespasian. Jefferson Pinkard found Pericles to be quite a good worker. Unfortunately, Pericles was a Red, and was taken into custody. Months later, a worker named Agrippa informed Pinkard that Pericles had been executed for sedition.

Lucas Phelps
(AF)

Lucas "Luke" Phelps (d. January 1915) worked on the fishing trawler Ripple out of Boston, Massachusetts with George Enos before and during the Great War. He and the rest of the crew of the Rippled were captured by the Confederate States and placed in a prisoner of war camp in 1914. While a prisoner, he repeatedly insulted and heckled the prison guards. One guard shot him in anger after Phelps claimed he visualized a toilet bowl as the guard's face.

Wayne Pitchess
(WiH)

Wayne Pitchess (d. 1916) was a sailor on the USS Punishment during the Great War. He had been a Connecticut fisherman before the war and had enlisted during peacetime since he made a poor living at fishing. As he wryly admitted, he hadn't considered being blown up, which became possible with the war. He and Sherwood McKenna befriended George Enos when he joined the crew and became the third man in the three tier bunk bed they used. The two filled in Enos on how the Punishment didn't usually engage Confederate monitors but instead bombarded enemy land positions in support of the U.S. Army. Pitchess was killed in 1916 when the Punishment was destroyed by a Confederate monitor.

Congressman Potts
(WiH)

Congressman Potts was a Socialist member of the United States House of Representatives from Brooklyn during the Great War. In 1916, he was walking through Philadelphia with his friend and colleague Myron Zuckerman when Zuckerman tripped on a staircase and fell to his death.

Shelby Pruitt
(AF)

Captain Shelby "Hardshell" Pruitt commanded a squadron of new Martin one-deckers on the Southern Ontario front in the autumn of 1915 when Lt. Jonathan Moss transferred to it. He assigned Moss to a four aeroplane formation led by Daniel Dudley along with Tom Innis and Luther Carlsen. Captain Pruitt sent the formation up the next day with Moss as "tail-end Charlie" in the diamond formation. On a later mission, Carlsen was shot down by ground fire and killed in the crash. The survivors reported to Captain Pruitt who told them to head off to the officers' club and that he wasn't sending them up the next day, a polite way of telling them to get drunk and sleep it off.

In 1916, Moss shot down a British biplane. When he and his flightmates reported to Captain Pruitt, he congratulated Moss. He then checked some papers and dismissed Moss with the implication that the other three were in trouble. In reality the four conspired to set up a surprise party for Moss since this kill made him an Ace. The surprise was even greater since Moss lost track of his kills. As Pruitt put it Moss was "the unintentional ace".

Later that year, Pruitt was promoted to Major and shortly thereafter presented Moss with Captain's twin bars. Moss and Dudley had both been promoted and were being reassigned to train on Wright two-deckers. Dudley's paperwork had been fouled-up and Moss was due to leave shortly so Pruitt informed him privately. In any case, as Moss packed up his essentials in his tent, Dudley arrived to do the same. It seemed that Pruitt decided he couldn't keep Dudley's promotion a secret so informed him too.

Hampton Ready
(B)

Hampton Ready (d. 1917) commanded the submersible CSS Bonito, during closing years of the Great War. Bonito operated in the in the same patrol square as the CSS Bonefish. In 1916, he and his wife, Katie, celebrated the birth of their first daughter. Six months later, in the Spring of 1917, while Ready was operating in the Atlantic, he attacked a US convoy and sank a freighter. Unfortunately his boat was detected and severely crippled. Forced to the surface, Ready quickly opened the hatch and threw out the boats papers, weighted in a sack. As he did this, he was shot in the head by George Enos, manning the one-pounder gun on the USS Ericsson. The U.S. Navy initially reported that they'd sunk the Bonefish, a report that amused the commander of the Bonefish, Roger Kimball.

Katie Ready
(B)

Katie Ready was the wife of Confederate submersible commander Hampton Ready. She and Hampton welcomed their first child, a daughter, in 1916. In 1917, Hampton was killed when his submersible, the CSS Bonito was sunk by the USS Ericsson.

Aaron Rosenblum
(B)

Aaron Rosenblum was a haberdasher and tailor in St. Matthews, South Carolina. In 1917 Anne Colleton came to Rosenblum's shop to purchase a half dozen pairs of stout trousers for herself to hunt Reds in the swamps of the Congaree. At first Rosenblum thought the purchase was for her brother and was scandalized to learn she wanted them for herself. However, as commonly occurred, he did what she wanted.

Rosenblum spoke with strange accent, half Low Country drawl, half guttural Yiddish, that never failed to amuse Colleton, although she succeeded in hiding her smile.

Stinky Salley
(WiH-B)

Christopher "Stinky" Salley was in the same unit of the Confederate Army as Jefferson Pinkard. He'd been a clerk in civilian life, and was fussily precise. Their sergeant gave Salley the moniker of "Stinky" because he had evaded bath call one evening. He was quite testy about the nickname. He fought the Red Rebellion in Georgia, and then fought in Texas, until he was wounded in the left hand in January 1917. The wound was serious enough to get him out of the fighting, but by no means serious enough to cause permanent damage.

Willem Schoonhoven
(AF)

Willem Schoonhoven was US Navy sailor at the outbreak of the Great War. In 1915, he was assigned to pose as a fisherman on board the F/V Spray. The fishing boat was being used to decoy Confederate commerce raiders while towing an underwater submersible. He was the first to spot the Confederate submersible that the towed Bluefin eventually torpedoed.

Wendell Schmitt
(WiH)

Wendell Schmitt was a high ranking member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He was appointed commander of all military forces of the Nation of Deseret, and led his make-shift army in the Mormon uprising of 1914, but by 1915, his forces had reached their limit and were unable to resist the arms of the US Army. Along with what remained of the Desert leadership, he surrendered to General Alonzo Kent at Tabernacle Park in the town of Ogden. When he listened to the harsh terms laid down by the US, he warned General Kent that he would sow the seed of future hatred and bloodshed. Kent chose to ignore him, and after surrendering, Schmitt was taken into custody and charged with treason against the United States.

Emmanuel Sellars
(AF)

Emmanuel Sellars was Confederate President Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of War at the beginning of the Great War. He was present in Richmond when Wilson officially announced that the C.S. would support the Entente in the coming war. Reggie Bartlett saw Sellars from a distance, giving order to various troops. Bartlett feared that Sellars was demanding the troops forcefully control the crowd. Instead, Sellars ordered the troops to fire into the air to force the crowd to pay heed to Wilson.

Sellars was a portly man with a beard similar to King George V's.

Stanley
(WiH)

Stanley was a sailor in the United States Navy, serving aboard the USS Punishment

In 1916, the Punishment dropped anchor in the Cumberland River, near Clarksville, Tennessee, for R&R. The first who went ashore were crewmen George Enos, Stanley, Albert, and Grover. Not long afterward, a Confederate shell attack destroyed the Punishment, sinking it and killing the entire crew. The four sailors who went ashore were unscathed and the monitor's only survivors.

Lou Stein
(WiH)

Lou Stein was the foreman of a repair crew on the USS Dakota during the Great War. After the Battle of the Three Navies, he was in charge of repairing the number-four sponson of the ship's secondary armament. They were having difficulty with the gun mount so Commander Grady assigned Sam Carsten, a loader on another gun, to help. Carsten tried to trouble-shoot the problem with Stein indicating they had already tried each suggestion. Finally Carsten borrowed a flashlight from Stein and went below the gun mount through a door to examine the hydraulics. He didn't see anything wrong until he thought to close the door where he found a shell fragment lodged in the armored line. Mordecai, one of the repairmen, removed the fragment with a cutting torch, solving the problem.

Maggie Stevenson
(AF; Return Engagement)

Maggie Stevenson (b. ca 1890) was the undisputed queen of Honolulu's women of easy virtue during the Great War. It was her practice to promenade in a translucent Sandwich Islands holoku dress where soldiers and sailors congregated as advertisement. At the time she charged $30 when the going rate was three and gave satisfaction for the money. Her establishment was a half timbered English-styled house with customers lining up at a staircase in back. An armed guard would collect the fee then allow the customer upstairs where a second armed guard would direct him to one of four Pullman compartment sized rooms. Inside would be a couch and washstand where the customer would wait until Stevenson would come in through a second door. She would service him and then move on to the next room while the customer dressed and left via a second staircase.

She managed to hold onto her money and invest it wisely. She ended up owning half of Hotel Street by the outbreak of the Second Great War. Her business card said she was a caterer which was true since her operation catered to every appetite.

In 1941 Sam Carsten happened to pass Stevenson on Hotel Street and recognized her, calling out her name in surprise. This amused Stevenson and the two chatted briefly. Stevenson gave Carsten her card with "Anything" written on the back and invited him to present it at the Oceanview which she owned. Carsten did so and to his surprise was treated as though he were an admiral and not a lieutenant.

Percy Stone
(AF)

Percy Stone was assigned as Lt. Jonathan Moss' observer when Moss' squadron changed over to the two man Wright-17. Stone had owned a small photography studio prior to the outbreak of the Great War so it was no surprise the Army had made him a photo-observer for the Wright. Nevertheless, Stone had wanted to become a pilot but had settled for observer when his superiors threatened to make him an infantryman. While Moss had been reluctant to switch over to the Wright since he would be forced to depend on the observer for defense because the machine gun could not be nose mounted on the tractor type aeroplane, Stone worked out quite well.

Stone and Moss found that there was difficulty in speaking between the two while airborne. The engine noise and the slip-stream of airflow made comprehension difficult. The two came up with the idea of using pitot rubber tubing with funnels on both ends as speaking tubes. Each would place a funnel on an ear with the flight helmet holding it in place and the other end with their partner to shout in. When they tried it, the tubes worked well but they were jumped by a formation of Avros. Stone tried to fight them off but was hit by machine gun fire. They were saved by a flight of American aeroplanes and Moss returned to the airfield. Stone was rushed off by Lefty and Byron, a pair of mechanics, to an aid station where he was found to have a collapsed lung and heavy loss of blood but was expected to survive.

In 1916, now Captain Moss reported to a training field just outside London, Ontario where he was surprised to be assigned to a tent with a healthy Stone also training to pilot a Wright two-decker.

Orville Thornley
(WiH)

Orville Thornley replaced Tom Innis in the four man flight Lt. Jonathan Moss belonged to. Moss had moved up to Innis' position in the formation behind flight leader Daniel Dudley with Thornley as tail-end Charlie. He didn't last long, as a Sopwith Pup attacked the flight. The four pilots scattered but the Pup concentrated on Thornley, shooting him down and killing him.

Angelina Tresca
(AF)

Angelina Tresca (d. April 22, 1915) was the sister of Maria Tresca. The two were members of the Socialist Party of the United States, and worked at the Party's New York Fourteenth Ward headquarters along with Flora Hamburger. Angela was killed at the Remembrance Day riot of 1915, when a stray bullet hit her in the chest. The shooter was never caught.

Flora Hamburger invoked Angela's memory when making speeches during her political career.

Vasilievsky
(WiH)

Vasilievsky was US soldier during the Great War. He was stationed in Kentucky in 1916. He and his comrade Heintzelman followed Murray's lead and refused to work with Cincinnatus, arguing that he was doing "white man's work" by driving. Their superior, Lt. Straubing, directly ordered them to work and threatened them with court-martial, before storming from the warehouse. Vasilevsky and his colleagues thought that they'd bluffed their superior, but instead he returned with MPs and ordered all three arrested for insubordination.

Zach Whitby
(AF, WiH)

Lt. Zach Whitby (d. December 1915) was an American pilot during the Great War. He reported to Captain Shelby Pruitt's squadron in the fall of 1915 as the replacement for Luther Carlsen who had been shot down and killed the previous day.

Late in 1915, he and the three others in his flight spotted an Avro in a straight photographic observation run. Daniel Dudley, the flight leader, signaled them to attack but the flight was immediately ambushed by other Avros. Whitby was shot down and killed in the initial attack, although his colleagues avenged him by shooting down most of the attacking Avros.

Sid Williamson
(AF)

Sid Williamson (c. 1890 - December 1914) was a worker at the Sloss Steel Foundry. He was known for his extremely short sentences. One day, a huge crucible overturned, burning most of his body. He died within a week.

Winter
(WiH)

Mr. Winter (b. 1861) was foreman at the factory where Sylvia Enos and Isabella Antonelli worked. He walked with a limp from the Second Mexican War. He gave Antonelli bereavement leave when her husband was killed in the fighting in Canada in 1916. His wife Priscilla had a few years prior, and he let Sylvia Enos know that he was available, though not as crudely as he might have done. Still, Sylvia found this advance unwelcome.

Tilden Winters
(WiH)

Tilden Winters was a sailor on the USS Dakota during the Great War. On an extended patrol defending the Sandwich Islands, the cooks served a vile dinner of herring in mustard sauce. Winters was vocal on his displeasure which gave his friend Sam Carsten an idea for revenge. Winters would continue to berate the cooks and in the confusion Carsten and Vic Crosetti would steal a pot of herring. They would then take the pot to Lt. Cmdr. Henrickson's cabin (he being the purchasing officer responsible) and pour it out.

The plan worked. Winters caused a near riot and Carsten and Crosetti delivered the pot to Henrickson. Neither were seen and no one in the mess hall noticed them stealing the pot. Henrickson interviewed a number of sailors including Carsten but no one gave the game away.