"Can you whack her up to fifteen?" asked Moorshead. A thin cough ran up the speaking tube. "I think so, sir, but I would prefer to have the engine-room hatches open at first."—Their Lawful Occasions, KIPLING.
Four months before she had been a filthy, black-iron pot, her decks scarred and rotting, her bilges crammed with a rusting jigsaw puzzle made up of parts of every machinery installation formerly on board. The jagged edges of her cylinders leered through the grime of the engine-room in a double row—a huge, abscessed lower jaw throbbing for lack of a dentist. The crippled furniture of the saloons sagged under the staring eyes of the bleared chromo panels in the bulkheads, the ripped cushions spewing dusty horsehair over the torn linoleum.
Now she was in trim gray with a pair of giddy, black destroyers romping along her side by way of camouflage. Her woodwork glistened with much varnish and her cushions smelled of new leather. Down below, the chief was saying hopefully that "she ought to mote—at any rate, she isn't hitting anywhere." Five hundred pink boys, whose overshirts still sat strangely upon unaccustomed shoulders, were watching the stream of khaki coming over the side and sternly resolving that in case they should be seasick, none of the doughboys must be allowed to suspect it. The doughboys were gratefully heaving their packs into the bunks assigned and with clattering mess-kits lining up at the after galley for a much desired supper.
Boatswain's mates began to roar in voices that had not yet acquired a salty raucousness, and flushed second lieutenants began herding the soldiers below and out of sight. The dock suddenly slid away, then the slow throb of the engines showed that the ship was moving. As the sun set, she dropped down the river. That night she was away, slipping out into the dark. Another transport was at work. The navy was putting across another bunch. In the morning, the continent of America was gone, and soldiers and sailors alike strove to keep the startled look out of their eyes and to appear as if going to sea were an old story. Only one man, a mess attendant who not long ago had been cutting cane in the wilds of St. James Parish, was frankly and ostentatiously miserable. He crouched against the rail of the well-deck, and, between paroxysms of sickness and snatches of audible profanity, he busily read a small Bible. Six big troopships waddled along like plump old ladies, their foam-white petticoats close around thick ankles, and ahead sulked the cruiser convoy, like a mad small boy ordered to show the ladies the way to the post office. Youngsters in khaki were buttonholing youngsters in blue and asking many questions. The youngsters in blue, rather than admit that they had never been out over night before themselves, gallantly supplied artistic misinformation. Before night, a new phrase was born. A sergeant had asked him with puzzled face, "Who is that bird who goes around every two hours yelling ‘Feed the whale and look out?'" Thereafter, the wheel of that ship was invariably relieved to shouts of "Feed the whale!" and at least one watch officer (Pelham Bay, ex-Bowdoin, 1919) was heard to gravely pass the word in those terms.
The reputation of the sea has suffered much through human haste. Not content to reach the other side, the average traveller would hurry, hurry, hurry—on the broad, open ocean there is no landmark, no point of departure visible by which one may note his rapid and satisfactory progress. Mrs. Fulano, of Chillicothe, is in haste to reach Paris. Atkins, Bull & Co., Ltd., of Liverpool, are clamoring for their cotton. And so the normal ship takes the great circle course across the broad Atlantic and rushes through day after day of gray skies, whistling gales and spiteful seas. The seagoing recollections of most travellers embrace only a port at each end of the run and a weary stretch of "The roaring forties" between.
Over There, the international firm of Foch, Haig, Diaz and Pershing were also clamoring for their freight, but they stipulated that the freight should arrive in good condition. Largely on that account, largely because of the unaccustomed hang of those blue overshirts which still carried faintly the whiff of block camphor, and largely because the chances of finding a needle decrease geometrically with the size of the haystack used as wrapping, the east-bound transports let the North Atlantic gales roar themselves out unwitnessed and unwept. And there are few bits of seagoing more homely and kind to the neophyte than the long, lazy stretch between Cape Charles and the Rendezvous. Day followed day, a blaze of sapphire underfoot and turquoise overhead, the brilliant sunshine flooding the entire convoy and warming the stunned enthusiasm of the few unfortunates who found the throb of the screws and the smell of paint and tar disconcerting. On first reading their lookout stations bill (it had been snowing in Gravesend) the soldiers had looked fearfully at the foretop with resolute lips and unconsciously tightened fists. After three or four days, the watch in the crow's nest could usually be seen laboriously scrambling up to his station a good half hour ahead of time, while the watch relieved stayed to swap yarns for another half hour—unless a meal was being served below. A stranger catching a glimpse of any of us at almost any time would have looked around for a passing ship flaunting the President's flag, for we sailed with yards, rail, booms and rigging perpetually manned. Wherever was room to sit and swing one's feet, or even to hang solidly by one knee and one elbow, there for 10 hours a day sat or swung a soldier. A submarine west of the Azores would have been spotted at many times torpedo range. The well-decks and alleys were as packed as the alleys of a Chinese city; but just as a Chinese crowd can open out in mysterious fashion to let through a hurrying palanquin or a trotting coolie with his two swinging baskets, so would the swaying mass of brown flannel open and close behind a pair of perspiring messmen staggering along with a huge food-container or a working party on the run to secure a swinging boom. "Comin' through! Hot stuff!" cleared the gangway as effectually as a traffic squad.
Day followed day in exact routine replica, and it is hard to say who furnished most of the humorous flashes that made each day less monotonous; the soldiers, frankly "at sea," or the sailors to whom each day was a new and glorious draft of pure romance. There was discipline of a very complete sort, but like to no discipline hitherto witnessed by the world in arms. Conversation was the rule, and while orders were quickly obeyed and seldom questioned, they were always commented upon in a fashion that would have filled the soul of Nelson or "Old Jarvey" with unclean dismay. The established method of addressing an officer began with a salute wherein the hand and hatbrim met at a point about abreast the point of the shoulder. Next the hand tilted the hat forward from behind as the fingers scratched in the hair, and the address commenced with a tentative " Why-y-y—" or an explosive "Say!"
The service in the officers' mess-room on morning was most erratic- more so than usual—and all the mess attendants were bubbling with suppressed and gleeful excitement. The senior naval officers ate at a small corner table, and through a long meal filled with inexplicable and exasperating delays, every messboy eyed that table. The commissary officer raged among the pantry plates and the cooks bellowed up the dumb-waiter shaft to "take it away," but the boys continued to act as if they had heard that the circus had come to town. After the meal was over and the dishes were being scrubbed, a loud altercation broke out in the pantry and the commissary officer with fiery eye flew in and demanded explanation. Forty boys hung their heads and giggled. Vitriolic orders finally unsealed the lips of the head boy, "Well, suh, this Hanley and this Jones"—a black hand waved toward the two boys in question—"they made bet whose officeh would eat mos'. Bet a dollah. The navigatah, he et twenty-two flapjacks an' fo' pieces toas'. The doctah, he et se'mteen flapjacks, but he et se'm pieces toas'. Now 'ey don' know who win de bet!"
Another boy had his abandon ship station in the boat by which the captain was slated to take passage. At the daily drill this boy would unconcernedly saunter toward his station and evinced no interest whatever in exerting himself toward getting the boat ready to go over the side. Remonstrance of the boat officer brought a look of genuine surprise. "W'y, the captain, he go in this boat, suh. Ev'ybody, 'ey help git this boat off. Ain' no use f o' me to worry. This boat git away all right. Git away quick ! " "Don't you know," queried the boat officer, "that the captain will be the last man to leave the ship if we're torpedoed?" Mouth and startled eyes flew open. "No, SUH! I didn'. Las' man, huh? Well, if he want me to travel wid 'im, he gotta make bettah arrangements than that!"
Consider the case of Jonnie West. From his cabin on the plains of Oklahoma, Jonnie—the "h" still awaiting him in the school which he had never attended—went to Guthrie to hunt for a job. The most prosperous-appearing individual in sight was a grand big man with lots of gold on his sleeves. Him Jonnie approached, hat in hand, and asked for employment. He got it. Another man in blue and gold put Jonnie through a very embarrassing 15 minutes, then they gave him a paper to sign. "Go say good-bye to your friends and be at the station for the 4 o'clock train," he was told. Hmm! This queer new job involved a journey. Better and better. He was at the station half an hour ahead of time. Observe him now, just inside the door of the commissary officer's room, hat twisting in nervous yellow hands and a great trouble stammering on his lips. He likes the navy, Jonnie does, but somehow he does not seem to succeed in pleasing every one. Three times has Jonnie been on the report, and the last time he has been warned in ominous terms. He does not want to be fired, he wants to re-enlist when his time is up for four more years. And he don't want to be in no brig when we get to where the fightin' is. He finally understands wherein he has offended —those officers' berths are to be made up before inspection, not after, and his cleaning work will be lighter and his officers much better pleased if he empties the wash water before it runs over on the deck. But he still lingers in the doorway, and after several false starts unbosoms himself to the effect that he wants to take leave in April, if he can. Unless he has money, he can't. And if he draws his money, he will have none in April. "So if I come ask you fo' my money, suh, will you be so good as to kindly tell me to go to hell, suh?"
Before the week is out, we are living in a new world; a world as strange to old-timers as to neophytes, a world of cheerful compromise and concession to circumstances which nevertheless keeps bright the apparently unattainable ideal. From dawn until dark somewhere about the ship you will find a weary party of those in authority, with spot-lights peering for "food under bunks" or "sputum behind radiator." All day long the beat of the thrashing propellers synchronizes with a monotonous thump, thump, thump of feet as a company of soldiers runs around the deck for exercise. There is room for but one company to run, and we have many companies with us. The running stops for three-quarters of an hour daily when the bugles wail, "All hands abandon ship!" and the naval boats'-crews, mustered and stationed in two minutes, stare incuriously at gang after gang of soldiers pouring up the ladder to the singsong of "Raft 56! No Absentees! Up that ladder out of the way, please!" Then the bugles sound "Secure" and "Retreat" and within five minutes it starts again, "thump, thump, thump!" At 3.30 the carpenter's gang appear from the compartment of shavings wherein they habitually lurk, and there is heard over the ship the slamming of airports and a hammering as the lightbaffles are nailed over the doorways. The sun drops and in an instant the familiar outlines of the smallest compartments and narrowest passages disappear in almost tangible darkness. Here and there a faint blue glow far down the bulkhead makes a barely visible spot to point out the way. Junior staff officers foregather with the carpenter and dispute as to who has the middle watch, and from dark till dawn, through the dense blackness of the decks outside, one of them is continually wandering, looking for a tiny shred of visible light. This is part of the day's work that is taken very seriously. To the last private we know how far the coal of a cigarette may be seen under favorable circumstances. The writer was once told by a sentry: "You must either go in or take off that watch, sir. I can see the dial shining."
Everything is queerly changed in that blue light. At dinner the butter looks like tomato jelly and the pork chops take on an odd, unburied aspect. One peers closely to see whether his glass holds water, lemonade or cold tea. But so strong is human ability to adjust itself to circumstances that the men at first obliged to grope along with outstretched hands are soon playing cards and even reading by the blue lights. It is not difficult after learning to watch the shape and not the color of the cards, for black or red, they all look green.
At dinner in the mess room, a voice rings out of a dark corner over the clatter of groping forks and conversation. We know it is the chaplain, from the sprightly and insinuating way that he shouts, "MAY I have your attention one moment, please? Tonight in this room at 8, Douglas Fairbanks in 'Soldiers of Fortune' and a Mack Sennett comedy. At 7, in Hatch No. 4, Mary Pickford in ‘M'liss' and a Kay-Bee feature! " An army officer at the next table is heard to say half to himself, "So this is the war zone!"
The talk over the coffee is as different from any former seagoing as the blue lights are different. Old regulars and ex-merchantmen, starting from common ground of Yangtse pilots or Cape Cod currents, are talking themselves into a new and genuine respect for each other. Youngsters from Pelham follow the swinging argument across the world from Rio Branco to Kennedy Road and keep a machine-gun fire of questions going.
Altogether, it is a very new world, and far removed from the docks a few days—or was it months ?—in the past; a world where the souring of the yeast barrels is a hideous tragedy, the phonograph the greatest of man's inventions and the omission of one's compartment from the daily blacklist of the inspection report as great a triumph as being elected President.
It has frequently been stated with much heat by old-style militarists that there is no such thing as esprit de corps possible among untrained or partially trained new levies. We are proving every day that that is not so. The sailors carry around in their hearts as great a certainty that we are going to be torpedoed and as great a wonderment as to how they will behave themselves in emergency as any of the soldiers. But the soldiers have a right to worry. Their job is not a seagoing one—a man whose business is with shrapnel and bayonet may be excused for audibly dreading a deep-water bath and a long voyage under oars. With us it is different, and the honor of the navy is gallantly upheld in the fine air of amused toleration and caustic remarks of the bluejackets. "That water looks pretty darned cold," speculates a doughboy. "Hope we don't get a bath we ain't lookin' for." "At any rate," replies Jack, "it's clean water nobody ever used before. Not like the trench-water you'll sleep in all next year." On the other hand, there is fierce jealousy between the army units on board. At any small slip made by a national army man, the militiamen and regulars shake their heads. "Maybe you can get by with that in the national army," they croak, "but WE'D never stand for it." The reply is rather startling, for the national army man immediately comes back with, "Yah, draft evader!" The specialists make the most of their slightly different position. A big man with knotty hands is talking of the glories of his regiment of engineers. " No," he exults, "we aren't conscripts. Neither are we militiamen," this with fine scorn. "We're all selected men for our jobs." A lean, deeply burned lad, whose bent legs obviously miss the cow-pony upon whose back he was brought up, takes this seriously: "I'm a militiaman," he drawls, " and you're selected right now, you son of a gun!" and his fist thumps on the big man's jaw. Every day the wisdom of the "Old Cattle Man" becomes apparent as concerns his statement of the different kinds of courage, that a man afraid of a gun may be cool and unruffled before a knife. There is one officer in France who wears on his tunic the valor cross, in recognition of the sheer cold-blooded daring he showed in assisting the wounded under fire. And yet that man, when he travelled with us, unsatisfied with the factor of safety furnished by a life-preserver, wore, all across the broad Atlantic, the inflated inner tube of a motor-cycle tire wrapped in a figure of eight around his body; and through the war zone not only never slept, but spent the night in the rigging, as high up as he could climb!
One morning we awake with a sense that something is different. There is a lazy swing to the ship and the engines dawdle along without their customary business-like pulsing. Suddenly the suspicion of a sound, hardly more than a sullen jar, quivers along the bulkheads. Again comes the sound, a little louder as the wind veers slightly. GUNS! Once out on deck we look around in bewilderment for the other ships of the convoy. There is our yoke-mate, though at an unusually great distance; but the others can only be located after sweeping the horizon—two far ahead, two far astern. As we stare, a flash leaps from the side of the distant cruiser and a smudge of white spray shows for an instant where the shell has struck. Astern of our mate something is troubling the water, something that rises and falls like the porpoises that have played around us since we passed Bermuda, but that sticks up like the back of no porpoise we have seen. The convoy is having target practice! We will soon be peppering that plunging spar that our sister ship is towing for our benefit.
Those of us in blue have been waiting for this day to show "Sister Susie." how much better off we are than she. She has 6-inch guns of which she has bragged, but they are old ones. Ours are only fives, but such fives as few ships can boast. Bran new, and as we like to say, "The shootingest guns for their size ever made." The guns'-crews, transferred to us en bloc from a cruiser, all before-the-war veterans, swagger about the poop and forecastle, busily putting a final grooming on their already speck-less pets. To the soldiers swarming over the rigging and the raft-nests it seems an interminable time before we begin; and never before has lookout duty been so popular. So many soldiers are claiming that it is their watch in the wing-stations of the fire-control platform that the control officers, range-finder and telephone gangs have to shoulder their way to their posts. But at last we are ready, and the stem swings around as the helmsman sings out his course monotonously. The whistle bellows and the red flag is broken out; and before the sound has died or the flag is fairly shaken out a forward gun cracks spitefully. The shell hits a little short, but to the unaccustomed eyes of the troops it has apparently buried that bobbing spar entirely and they cheer enthusiastically. The next is an over—a bad one. The third is very close, and thereafter shell after shell tears up the water so close that we wonder that no splinters fly. There is a moment's pause before the last shot and as it strikes, a solid log from the target-float flies up. The soldiers yell and pound each other's backs, and a signalman scrambles up to "Sister Susie's" platform and begins to semaphore. All over the ship bluejackets spell out his message aloud for the benefit of the crowding doughboys: "You—shoot—too—well. Why—destroy—my— target?" And the cheering breaks out afresh. Target practice is finished all too soon, and we romp out to get into formation again. But after that day the soldiers look less gloomily at the "pretty darned cold" water. They can now see visions of a conning-tower leaping into the sunshine as did that target raft. Not all the trumps are in Fritz's hand.
Imperceptibly we begin to tighten up. The sea gradually becomes less blue and turns to a troubled gray-green with whitecaps here and there, and crashes away from under our forefoot in a way that suggests added speed. Someone figures out we must be nearing the Azores—that we are close to the barred zone. Bluejackets have less to say as they hurry by knots of questioning soldiers. The ship begins to pitch and twist a little. We are beginning to get the channel chop. One morning the order is passed that "beginning to-morrow, all hands will remain fully dressed and will wear or carry their life-preservers at all times." This begins to look like business.
Through one night of rain-squalls and whistling gusts, the naval lookouts are peering through the dark with a new and vivid interest. All through the night little knots of passenger officers straggle around the decks, staring at the whitecaps that wink and disappear through the blackness, even those least accustomed to the sea feeling pleased that the waves are rising. It is uncomfortable, perhaps, but the higher the seas, the harder it will be for Fritz. The lookouts report many things that night, nothing they can definitely name, but a shape or disturbed water—something that looks alive. Then suddenly the faint flash of a blinker-tube snaps through the rain, then another and another. The destroyers are here! Those who are about the decks in the gray, dripping dawn see the cruiser that has led us across spin on her heel, shake a few more revolutions out of her impatient engines and head back along our trail—going home for another convoy. And as the light grows, one after another the flotilla appears, formless and indistinct in their wild war-paint, scrambling over the whipped wave-crests and sinking out of sight in the troughs, scurrying here and there around and ahead and astern of us like busy, questing terriers. Very tiny they look—incredibly tiny to be out in such a sea—but very self-assured and competent. In long swooping zigzags two search the sea far ahead. On both sides of the convoy others nose here and there, so that, however we are heading, there is always at least one destroyer between us and the swaying horizon. Astern, two more trot back and forth, back and forth, dancing like corks across our boiling wake. Our own engines are singing a new tune in a booming bass that makes the whole ship quiver. Our new-world feeling of isolation vanishes with a jerk. We are in the big world again, the real world. Just a little way over there is France, and we are now, now in the danger zone. Fritz may be watching our smoke from the horizon even now.
Very few even of those who ran the war zone regularly retain any cohesive recollections of it. Days and nights are merged in the memory into an interminable, yet somehow short, period of vibrant alertness, a steadily increasing tension. How many days and nights it lasted we know only from the ship's log. In retrospect it would seem something less than 24 hours that was spent zigzagging among the careering destroyers, except that the recollection of the feel of our clothing is so vivid. The wettest and most exhausting duty could never in 24 hours cause wool, kapok and oilskin to grow so solidly to the skin, to become so unpleasantly an integral part of ourselves. We have bragged in the past of the soft weave of the knitted "socks from sister," but now every yarn and every stitch prints itself deep into the indignant skin. If we weren't so excited, so masculinely happy, we would be horribly miserable. This is the part of the game we were afraid would be too much for us—we have wondered how we would stand the gruelling discomfort. We find we can stand it very well, especially when we contemplate how much worse we'd feel if we were running the zone in one of those crazy, bedizened little cockboats of the escort. So we weary ourselves unduly through our fear of missing something. We watch the sea till our eyes ache with stinging spray or glaring sun. We stiffen to attention like a scenting hound when a lookout reports "Object in the water, sir!" and only partially relax with relief and disappointment when the destroyer who has dashed off to investigate finds only a floating spar or a patch of weed. When we sit down to eat, we find with amazement that we are very tired. When we lie down to sleep, we do so with ears strained; and when we finally drop into a dreamless, druglike coma, we are still straining our ears. The clang of a dropped slice-bar in the fireroom brings us instantly awake and abnormally sentient. And will any of us ever forget the time when the weary striker in the radio room, after being relieved, went to sleep where he sat and leaned against the button of the general alarm gong? That sudden and unexpected clamor caused a cold dinner for most of us, but we were all glad it happened, for as we found on checking up, the last soldier was at his abandon ship station in two minutes and a half. Snappy, I guess. No sign of a panic, either. Curiously enough, it is the wakeful nights that seem short, while the days drag interminably. Our eyes have learned an uncanny trick of seeing all around our heads, and what they see stands out with stereoscopic clarity and brilliance. There is so much and yet so absolutely nothing to see.
One morning the convoy splits in two, the three biggest ships veering away to the northward while we continue on our course. St. Nazaire it is—that point is settled. And we ought to be there TO-MORROW. "Get by to-night, get by forever," remarks the boatswain, and then with instant mental association, "Do they have hot and cold water in French bathrooms?"
To-morrow comes, and with it the lee of the land. The wind has died with the sea, and so placid is the air and water that it seems that the coast must be visible. We breakfast, muster and clean house, and for once, it being the last day, those in authority dispense with spot-lights, and cease harassing compartment cleaners. By the end of the morning, most of us have finished our chores, and with life preservers unfastened are basking in the sun and watching for the land, eyes shining with anticipation from faces pallid with sleeplessness. We have "got by" the last night out and are beginning to relax just a little.
The siren of the ship to port screams insanely and a stern gun thrashes a shell into the water off her quarter. Bugles burst into a nasal chatter and all hands jump to battle stations. The line of soldiers on the booms begin to shout and point at a swirl in the water, as the destroyers leap like live things and race for the spot where the shell has fallen. Even in their sudden mad hurry, their cool-headed plan is shown, for while one jumps in full cry right at the trouble-spot, the others whisk a smoke screen across our stern. The leading destroyer whizzes on, then turns sharply, and as she turns, the tortured water cracks and roars with the burst of the depth bomb she has dropped. Back over the same ground she flies, and again looses a bomb, spinning on her heel to slam three quick shots into the smother of the explosion. Then head up and tail erect, she slips back into her place in formation, leaving a coal-burner that has apparently broken all records getting down off the horizon to sniff around questioningly at her leisure. An army officer who through the long voyage has had many tales to tell looks, at his watch regretfully. 'Just 11 minutes," he explodes, "and that fellow over there had more fun than I ever had in my whole life!" At that moment, a long yell comes from aloft of "Land ho!" and we turn' to see the gray shoulder of Belle Isle lifting above the horizon. Our cup of bliss is full. What does it matter to us that subsequent investigation seems to make of our submarine merely a floating spar and our naval battle just a little swank from the destroyer's skipper? To us, there is nothing more needed. We have had a brush with Fritz, we have seen his tin fish rent to bits, and yonder in plain sight is FRANCE! That night the anchor rattles protestingly down into French mud and the ship is strangely still, for everybody, scrubbed to the blood, has climbed precipitately between the sheets and is fathoms deep in sleep.
Very strange and empty and enormous the ship felt on the way home, and in spite of the snarling gales of the northern route we took, it was a clean and shining transport that raised the coast of the United States. One could notice as the first liberty party swung up the docks to catch the subway for Manhattan that their overshirts fit; and in their faces was the calmness of men who have proved themselves. There was no more speculation and secret doubt. "Leave it to us," those faces seemed to say. "Bring on your doughboys as fast as you can make 'em. We'll put 'em across." And they did.