The crack of batons echoed through the dry coastal wind as smoke drifted between shipyard cranes like ghosts of war yet to come.
Norfolk was aflame, not from foreign bombs, but from American voices.
Angry, desperate, betrayed.
They'd been striking for three weeks.
Welders, riveters, pipe-fitters, men who knew how to hold a torch and hammer, who'd built the very bones of the American fleet now limping home from the Pacific.
They hadn't started with violence. Just silence. Pickets. Signs.
Lines of union men standing shoulder to shoulder along the shipyard gates, chanting for fair pay, for safe conditions, for a promise not broken.
Now they were met by police in riot gear.
"In the name of national security..."
That phrase had been uttered again and again in the halls of Washington.
Executive Order 9843 had given the President sweeping authority to "guarantee uninterrupted war production" and to "disperse domestic threats to operational military capacity."
