The Locations of TBA - Fort Stanton, USA

The Locations of The Burning Ages

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04: Fort Stanton, USA

After 03 - Trondheim, Occupied Norway only dealt with the German side of the plot of Wolf Hunt I thought it would be just fair to turn the tables around this time. The fourth installment of our little series concerns a location solely used on the American side of the plot: Fort Stanton in New Mexico.

This is the beginning of the heyday of the FBI. J.Edgar Hoover has won the Gangster Wars of the 1930s, and the organization he has created now not only deals in the persecution of federal crimes, but with the onset of World War II and the prospect of fascist and communist agitation throughout the Great Depression it also has accumulated the power to see itself as the guardian of national security. Student and political groups have been infiltrated, massive wiretappings are done to suspected agitators and spies, a national database of "enemies" and others to be either deported or interned has been created under Director Hoover's direct management. So it comes as no surprise that when his ever-increasing circle of informants - also placed in other government agencies - receives word of a whole shipment full of possible spies who pose as shipwrecked US sailors the head of the FBI sees it as a surefire way to distinguish himself and cement the idea of the Bureau being vital to the maintenance of national security.

J. Edgar Hoover (left) & Clyde Tolson (right)

Washington, D.C., FBI Headquarters
27 July 1940, late Morning

J. Edgar Hoover looked up from his papers when the door to his office opened and Clyde Tolson, his deputy director, friend and close confidante strode in with a bright smile on his youthful face. Rumors – unfounded ones - made their ways through the halls of power that he and Tolson were more than just good friends and colleagues, and Hoover spent a considerable amount of time and energy on the task of suppressing them by all possible means. That by doing so he unearthed a lot of dirt on quite a number of people which could come in handy at some point in the future was a welcome bonus. But still, with the war in Europe culminating, and the American isolationists gaining in power, he felt he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. There were so many dangerous and subversive individuals on the loose in this country that in the case the US entered the war sabotage and espionage would be uncontrollable. And the only one who seemed to care was he, John Edgar Hoover, and for that he was being met with hostility from all sides. But despite that, his files grew. When the time came, the Bureau would be ready to deal with the danger to the state, whether it came from Nazis, Japs, the communist intelligentsia or some intrepid congressmen.
As such the sight of a boyishly grinning Tolson was an easy way to rise his spirits. “Going by your face Christmas came early this year, Clyde.”
“You could say so, Jay. My man over at the Office of Naval Intelligence just sent me this transcript of a conversation between the vice admiral and a skipper he's been working with for some time. And boy, it's a big catch.” He handed Hoover a brown folder.
The FBI director's eyes raced over the type-written lines, and a broad smile began to appear on his usually reserved face. “Two hundred and forty-seven people?” He whistled.
“Potentially,” Tolson nodded. “But the leader of them clearly isn't who he's pretending to be, and if you look at what that Captain Cornwell had to say about that 'crew'...”
“More than a quarter of them women?” Hoover guffawed. “Has that been corroborated?”
“It's a direct transcript, Jay. Vice Admiral Anderson's told Cornwell to bring them to Norfolk instead of heading to Boston. I guess he hopes the Navy can get a hold of them there. ETA is in four days.”
“Go and dig up what we have on Anderson and that Cornwell guy, Clyde. And then get me Martin Diess on the phone.”
“The congressman?”
“Yes, Clyde. It's time his committee returns me a favor for all the information I've passed them behind the curtain the last years. And then get me the office in Norfolk. Let's prepare a welcoming committee.”
[Full Scene, Chapter 11, Wolf Hunt]

Fort Stanton in the late 19th century.

Sometimes the truth isn't the best defense: who is going to believe you if your story is "We are American sailors from the 21st century, and we are here to offer you our assistance", especially if you are dealing the J.Edgar Hoover's FBI? Hoover smells a big political coup, but since other agencies have already been involed - the Office of Naval Intelligence, for one - he cannot get the detainees under the full authority of the Bureau. A deal is struck: the FBI handles the investigation and questioning of the "sailors". The Army provides the location and the guards. The ONI, having been the first to get in touch with the supposed spies, is always present. To prevent word leaking out before the whole case is watertight a remote location is chosen for holding Captain Flynn and his survivors: Fort Stanton in the mountains of New Mexico. The irony: In World War II it interned both German and Japanese nationals.

To say that Fort Stanton was off the radar would have been the understatement of the century, he thought sourly as he approached the public water dispenser outside a low, flat-topped brick building which housed the showers. Hills covered with dry brush surrounded the flat valley in which the 19th Century settlement lay secluded from the rest of New Mexico. Old colonial wooden houses in bright white paint and stables transformed into storehouses were arrayed around a square parade ground in whose center a high flagpole flew the star spangled banner. East of that, cut off from the fort itself by a cottonwood grove, four rows of six identical wooden barracks each were surrounded by a high barbed wire fence, with two others, more makeshift ones running in between them to keep men and women as far apart as possible. Whoever had thought of the setup certainly had not waited for them to appear. This had been in the making for some time. [Wolf Hunt]

Flynn and his people face a tough time in the hands of their captors. Nobody really believes their story. Several people, confronted with the new reality and the knowledge that they will never see their families again, commit suicide. Others, like Flynn himself, are consciously grinded by the interrogations until he succumbs to the heat, suffering a heat stroke. Only then is the intensity dialed back.

Flynn and his crew would be housed in barracks similar
to these, segregated by gender.

The news of the captain's collapse had everyone in a tizzy in the 'men's camp' part of Fort Stanton, but there was nothing they effectively could do, and the summer heat kept them all dozy anyways. Sure, there always seemed to be a soft breeze coming down the rolling hills west of the old fort, but for people used to spending twenty-four hours a day in air-conditioned premises it was a sheer miracle that only a handful of them had suffered the same fate as Steven Flynn, Commander Bryan Pattinson thought glumly as he hurried from one shadow to another. He knew he ought to be angry and concerned, especially since he considered the captain to be a good friend given the boundaries of rank and position. Rumor had it he would be fine – and he better be, given the kind of talk he had heard inside the camp after the news had gotten out of Flynn's heat stroke -, but apparently the people grilling them here had come to the conclusion to gear down their merry inquisition. He just wondered how the women were doing in their part of the barbed-wire limited camp. [Wolf Hunt]

Racism and sexism in that day and age are a lot closer to the surface of the discourse than what the 21st Century Americans are used to. To make matters worse, even many of the designations a person of the 1940s would consider very polite - Negro, for example - would be completely inacceptable to "Uptimers". And there are, of course, instances of real racism, even though I didn't want to go overboard with them like other works of alternate history have done *cough* Axis of Time *cough*.

However, lateron, as it becomes increasingly clear that Flynn, Pattinson and the others are telling the truth (and can produce proof for their story), the purpose of Fort Stanton begins to change: while they are still interned their, they are no longer prisoners per se and receive a fair and, in fact, preferential treatment. With the possibilities of future knowledge and new technologies on the table, work begins to turn the location into a secret research & development outpost.

A picture of what might become of Fort Stanton following
the realization that Flynn and his people are a walking
treasure trove of knowledge.

“Quite a sight, ain't it?” Sam Cornwell mused as he stood in the shadow of a small group of cedar trees atop the ridge that ran a couple hundred yards north of the old frontier settlement in the New Mexico desert. He was not alone. Walter Stratton Anderson, the head of the Office of Naval Intelligence, having replaced his white military dress uniform with a nondescript sample of civilian clothes, stood beside him, as did Steven Flynn, the former captain of USS Halsey. A couple of guards from the camp had climbed the ridge together with them but kept themselves at a respectful distance.

“Looks more like an anthill to me,” the uptimer grumbled. Trailers and flatbed trucks seemed to be rumbling in from the rough dirt road from the west by the minute, adding even more to the already confusing activity down below, obfuscating visibility from the group's vantage point as each newcomer drew a long cloud of dust behind him. Dozens of cranes and bulldozers and members of the Army Corps of Engineers from nearby Fort Huachuca hurrying about were indeed leaving the impression of an anthill. Flynn had also noticed a number of civilian contractors from the nearby town of Sierra Vista working on the spot. There were easily six or seven hundred people at work down there. [Wolf Hunt]

Fort Stanton also serves as the sets up of one of the deeper plots for the following novels: Like every good butterfly effect, involving an ambitious young congressman first with the investigations, and later the decision to foment a relationship between him and the America First movement will have repercussions down the line.

Congressman Martin Dies, Jr. (Age 40). His career
will take a different turn that it did historically.

Representative Martin Dies, Jr. of the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities stared through the see-through mirror, watching the g-man do his work. “He’s grilling that guy quite impressively, ain’t he?” he quipped, a cigarette hanging loosely from the corner of his mouth. He did not really expect the man next to him to give him an answer, and truth be told, he did not care. This whole affair was a godsend, a political treasure trove! Two hundred and fifty damn Nazi spies, and Hoover had given him direct access to them and all the files. If he played this right, he could maneuver himself to positions of power he had never thought of as so far!

Patience, Martin, he told himself, patience. He had to play his cards right with this one. Maybe if he spun the whole affair into a direction that helped the President get reelected in the fall…? Still, he would have to change his position on FDR’s New Deal policies, again, this time in favor of them. But if there was one thing that was as certain as the ‘Amen’ at Sunday mass it was that Roosevelt remembered the people who supported him. And with a story like that Dies was pretty sure he could choose the kind of favors he wanted… [Wolf Hunt]

This concludes our little peek into what happens at Fort Stanton, the fourth location of "The Locations of The Burning Ages". I hope you enjoyed it! See you again for the fifth and last installment of our little series: 05 - Berlin, Nazi Germany.

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