The business of hunting U-boats is a grim one. The officers and men engaged in it do not like to dwell on the hard side of it. They do like to repeat stories of the humorous side of it.
One of our destroyer commanders over there has a personality that the others like to hang stories onto. He is a quick-thinking, quick-acting man named—well, say Lanahan. He was one day on the bridge of his ship when the lookout shouted: "Periscope!"
"Charge her!" yelled out Lanahan.
Away they went hooked-up for the periscope, which everybody could now see—about 200 yards ahead.
"He's a nervy one—see her stay up!" said the officer of the deck, who was standing beside the wheel, and had glasses on the periscope.And then, hurriedly: "I don't like the looks of her, captain—it looks like a phony periscope to me—as if there was a mine under it!"
"To hell with her—ram her anyway!" snapped Lanahan.
The deck officer had not once taken the glasses off the periscope. Suddenly he let drop his glasses, grabbed the wheel and pulled it hard toward him.
Lanahan had stepped to the wing of the bridge and was leaning far out to get a glimpse of the U-boat. What he saw beneath him as his ship scraped by was not a U-boat, but a great white mine. He watched it slide safely past the bridge, past his quarter, past his stern. Then, turning around, he said gravely to his deck officer:
"You're right—itwasa mine."
There was another young officer—Chisholm call him—who played poker occasionally. He commanded aflivver, which is the service name for the smaller class of destroyers, the 750-ton ones.
In our navy there are plenty of young officers who will tell you that they never builtdestroyers which keep the sea better than that same little flivver class. Young Captain Chisholm of the 323 was one.
One morning, having convoyed a fleet of merchant ships safely up the channel, the 323 was one of a group of destroyers making the best of their way to their base port. Officers and men who have been hunting U-boats for a week or so do not like to linger along the road home; so it was every young captain giving his ship all the steam she could stand and let her belt.
It was breaking white water all around when they started. It grew rougher. Chisholm in the 323 was going along at twenty knots when a poker-playing chum came along in his big 1,000-ton destroyer. Her nose hauled up on the quarter of the 323; up to her beam; up to her bridge. As he passed the 323—and he passed quite close to let all hands view the passing—the poker-playing friend leaned out and megaphoned across:
"What you making, Chiz?"
"Twenty knots!" hailed back Chisholm.
"I am seeing your twenty knots and raising you five!" returned the other, and passed on.
"The boiler-riveted nerve of him!" gasped Chiz. "But let him wait!"
The sea grew yet rougher. The 323 was bouncing pretty lively, but hanging onto her twenty knots. "And at twenty you let her hang if she rolls her crow's nest under!" said Chisholm to his watch-officer, "and I'll betcher we won't be acting rudder to this bunch going into port!"
It was at ten in the morning that the big one had passed them. It was four in the afternoon, and the 323 was still going along at twenty knots when from out of the drizzle ahead her bridge made out the stern and funnels of a destroyer. It was Chiz's poker-playing chum, and his ship was making heavy weather of it. The able little 323 came up to her stern; breasted her waist, her bridge, and as he passed her (and he came quite close to let all hands view the passing), young Captain Chisholm leaned out from his bridge and roared through a long megaphone: "Icallyuh!"
He beat the big one fifty minutes into the naval base.
There are two channels leading into the naval base port—call them West and East.This same Chisholm was one day headed for port in the usual hurry and was already well into the west channel when a signal was whipped out from the signal hill. It was for his ship and it read: "West Channel mined last night by U-boats. Proceed to sea and come in by East Channel."
Chiz did not proceed to sea. All the harbor men who were watching saw him come straight on through the gap in the barrage, and safely on to his mooring. Also all the harbor knew that next morning he had to report to the admiralty and explain.
The story of his explanation was not told by himself. But an officer friend, a great admirer—call him Mac—had gone with him to the admiralty. Here the next day Mac told the story in the smoke-room of the King's Hotel:
"Well, Chiz went and—you know his courtly style—he has his cape over his shoulders—and he salaams and says, 'Good morning, sir.'
"The old man looks up and says like ice: 'You got my signal yesterday afternoon?'
"'I did, sir.'
"'Then why did you not turn back and come in by the other channel?'
"'Sir,' says Chiz, 'may I be allowed a few words?'
"'Very few. What have you to say?'
"'Sir,' says Chiz, 'I have been trained to believe that the one word a naval officer should not know is fear. In our navy, sir, we reverence the tradition of your own Admiral Nelson, who at the siege of Copenhagen put his glass to his blind eye and said: "I see no signal to withdraw!" and continued the fighting to a victory.'
"'Have you a blind eye, too?'
"'My sight is good, thanking you, sir, for inquiring, but in my own navy we also have the tradition of Admiral Farragut, who at Mobile Bay said: "Damn the torpedoes—go on!" and his fleet went on to victory. And there was Admiral Dewey, who said: "Damn the mines!" at Manilla, and went on to victory.'
"'What are you coming at?' roars the old man. 'Did you get my signal?'
"'I did, sir. And my first instinct—the instinct of all our naval officers—is to obey all orders of our superiors, sir. But I was wellinto that channel when I got the signal, sir. And as I have said, sir, my first instinct was to obey orders. But also I stop and reflect, for I have also been trained to believe that hasty judgments work many evils, sir, and I consider and find myself saying to my deck officer: "This ship, Mac, is 300 feet long, and under her stern there are two big propellers. If ever we turn this 300-foot ship in this channel with those two propellers churning and there's any loose German mines around, there won't be a blamed one of 'em she'll miss. But if I keep her straight on, there's a chance. So hell's afire!" I says to Mac—"there's only one thing for us to do now and that is to keep straight on!" And I kept straight on, sir—and, I beg leave to report it now, sir—we made our mooring safely.'
"And that's all there was to that," concluded Mac.
There was a long silence in the smoke-room when Mac had done, and then a voice asked: "If Chiz had gone to sea and come in by the other channel—it was almost dark at the time—he would have been too late to make the barrage, wouldn't he?"
"He sure would," said Mac.
"Which would mean that he would be kept turning his wheels over outside the net all night?"
"He sure would."
"As it was, he got in in plenty of time for that little game up-stairs last night?"
"He was in a little game," admitted Mac.
Another silence, and then another voice: "Well, poker or no poker, Chiz's dope on that damn-the-torpedo stuff isn't the worst in the world!"
The incident reported in the previous chapter was not young Chisholm's first interview with the British admiral.
Mac went on to tell how when, after his first cruise, Chiz came to the naval base to report. He had heard that the old fellow in charge believed that the Lord made the earth for admirals, especially British admirals, but beyond that he knew nothing of his peculiarities.
However, after his cruise, Chiz went whistling up the hill to report. By and by he was admitted to the presence of the admiral, who was seated at a flat desk in the middle of the room, gazing straight ahead.
The old chap looked pretty frosty. Chiz waited a moment, then ventured a cheery "Good morning, sir."
The face at the desk did not even turn to look at him, but the thin lips almost opened and a rasping voice said: "Got anything to say to me?"
Chiz was one of the sociable souls, and hewould have liked to sit down and talk in an informal way of several little sea things that he thought were fairly interesting. But he had not been asked even to sit down, and the voice froze him. So, "Why, no sir, nothing special to report," was all he could find to say.
"H-m. Nothing to say? Then why waste my time or your own? Might as well get out, hadn't you?"
Chiz got out.
"An American lieutenant-commander in this place must rate about seven numbers below a yellow dog," said Chiz to Mac when he came out.
Chiz had four days in port (Mac is still telling the story) after that cruise, and two days after his visit to the hill there was a cricket-match between a team from our flotilla and a team from theirs. The idea was for all hands to forget rank for a while, get into the game, and so cement the entente between the two nations.
Chiz was picked for one of our team, and you all know what a husky he is, and what he used to do with a baseball-bat. There aren't many who ever hit 'em any further or oftener than Chiz on the old Annapolis ball-field. Hewas one of the first of our fellows to go to bat. He's standing there—in the box, or whatever they call it, waiting for one to his liking; and looking around the field wondering where he will place it when he gets one to his liking. And as he looks he spies his friend the admiral, playing what we'd call left field. And just beyond the admiral the ground sloped away for a hundred yards or so.
Chiz hefts his bat—and you know those cricket-bats, what they look like and how they feel after you've been used to meeting fast ones with a narrow baseball-bat. They are wide and heavy and springy. Chiz doesn't pay any attention to three or four balls that come along, except to fend them away from the wicket with his wide cricket-bat. He knew what he wanted, and by and by he got one—one about knee-high with a little incurve to it. Chiz sets himself and swings and whale-O it goes, over the old admiral's head and down the slope beyond.
Chiz makes all the runs the law allows—six, I think it is—and he's sitting resting on the wide part of his cricket-bat before the admiral even shows the top of his head over thehill with the ball. When he does and heaves it about half-way to the pitcher, or bowler, or whatever they call him, he's out of breath.
Chiz sets himself for another one knee-high with an inshoot, and when he gets one he whales it again, and away trots the admiral on another hunt down the hill. And Chiz makes six more runs before they even see the top of the admiral's head over the brow of the hill.
The third time, and the fourth time, Chiz sets for a knee-high one with an inshoot to it, and the third time and the fourth time he belts it over the old fellow's head and down the long slope. But on the fourth time the old fellow doesn't throw the ball in. He walks in with it and he calls in the high official umpires, or whoever they are in charge, and they have a conference, and the next thing they call the game off. By this time, doubtless (so the word was passed), the American officers have caught the idea of the game, and next time there would be a real game and so on.
But there was no next game. However, next day Chiz puts out to sea, and when he's into port again he calls up on the hill as per instructions. And by and by he is passed againinto the presence, who is sitting just as before at the flat desk in the middle of the room, and gazing straight before him.
This time Chiz doesn't speak, not even to say; "Good morning, sir." And the graven image at the desk doesn't speak either, and there's a silence for maybe a minute, and then the old fellow barks out: "What are you standing there for? You wish to see me?" And Chiz barks out in his turn: "No, sir, I don't wish to see you."
"You do not wish to see me? Then what are you doing here?"
And Chiz cracks out: "I'm here because your orders compel me to be here, sir."
Zowie!—that straightened the old boy up. He took a look at Chiz, and he says, after a while and almost pleasantly: "Have a chair."
And Chiz has a chair, and they have a talk, and after that Chiz finds him a lot easier to get along with. Chiz says now that the old fellow isn't such a terrible chap—not after you get onto his curves.
When we first came over (Mac is still speaking), most of the topsiders over here were strong for theentente stuff, and a good thing, too—why not?
Our fellows were mostly strong for it, too—two or three so strong that it was hard to tell whether they were Americans or something else—even their accents.
And, as I say, most of the officers of our own over here were for it—most of them. But you can't rid everybody overnight of long-inherited notions. There was one chap we used to meet, and he sure was the most patronizing thing!
Now, we know we haven't the biggest navy in the world, but as far as it goes we think it is pretty good. As good as anybody's, man for man, and ship for ship—but let that pass.
This chap, who never could see anything in our navy, came in here one day. He wasn't bad. He was just one of those naturally foolish ones who thought he was a little brighter than his company. The topsiders would be working night and day to create good feeling, and he was the kind would come along and break up the show—not exactly meaning to.
This was in the hotel bar here, where a bunch of us were easing off after a hard cruise,when he comes along. He doesn't like the names of our destroyers. In his navy there was significance in the names they gave to a class of ships.
"TakeViper,Adder,Moccasin, and so on—they suggest things y' know. Dangerous to meddle with and all that sort of thing, y' know. But your people name your ships after men evidently—David Jones,Conyngham,McDonough. I say, who are they—Presidents or senators or that sort, or what?"
Lanahan was there—the hell-with-her-ram-her-anyway Lanahan—and we all just naturally turned him over to Lanahan, who had west-of-Ireland forebears, and never did believe in letting any Englishman put anything across—nothing like that anyway.
"You never read much, I take it, of our history?" says Lanahan.
"Your history? My dear chap, I had hard work keeping up with my own."
"No doubt. But you've heard of the American Revolution?"
"I dessay I have—Oh, yes, I have!"
"Well, you spoke of Jones. If you mean John Paul, then there was a naval fight onetime in the North Sea—theSerapisand theBonhomme Richard."
"I say, old chap, I didn't mention John Paul Jones.David Jonesis the name of your destroyer out in the harbor now."
"David Jones? Let me see. Why, sure, David Jones was a New England parson who boarded around among the God-fearing neighbors for his keep on week-days and preached the wrath of God and hell-fire for his cash wage—five pound a year—on Sundays. He was a devout man. If thy finger offend thee, cut it off. But a sort of muscular Christian, too. If thy enemy cross thee, go out and whale the livers and lights out of him—same as we're trying to do to the U-boats now.
"Well David lived in the shadow of the church till he was thirty-seven years of age. Then the Revolution broke, and David, in whose veins flowed the blood of old Covenanters, took a running long jump into it. He started in as deck-hand or, perhaps, it was cook's helper, but there was salt in his veins too, and rapidly he learned his trade. And soon rose in his new profession until he was master of his own ship, and, as master, raisingthe devil among the coasters which used to cruise out of Maritime Province ports in those days. The captures he made of vessels loaded with hay and potatoes, and so on, materially reduced the high cost of living for New England folks in those days.
"Conyngham? He was a young American lad who did not come of any particularly good old stock, meaning that he did not come from Massachusetts or Virginia probably. He went to sea as a midshipman on an American sloop-of-war. And he turned out to be some little middy. Ensign, lieutenant, commander—man, he just ran up the ladder of naval rank. And got a ship of his own—a fine, young, able sloop-of-war, and with this sloop-of-war he would run out from the French channel ports and harry the English coast and English shipping. Never heard of him? No? Well, well!—and he so famous in his day that King George put up a reward of 1,000 pounds for his capture dead or alive. But they never captured him.
"And Barry? He was the Wexford boy who captured 200 English prizes more or less in the West Indies. Paul Jones trained under Barry before he had a ship of his own.And McDonough? He—but am I boring you?"
"No, no—it is very interesting."
"I am glad. Well, McDonough was the commodore who fought the battle of Lake Champlain against your people. He opened that battle with prayers for the living and closed it with prayers for the dead. You want to watch out for those fellows who pray when they go to war. Their technic is sometimes pretty good. Their spirit is always good. While Mac was looking over the booty after that fight, a funny thing happened. He——"
"I say, old chap, it's all very interesting, exceedingly interesting, but what d'y' say to another little nip before I go? I've got to run along to see the chief now. What will you have to drink?"
"Sure. A nip of Irish, if you please. And here"—Lanahan held up his glass—"here's to the memory of dead heroes—may they always be preferred to crawling reptiles when it comes to naming our fighting ships!"
After the other fellow had gone Lanahan turned to us. "Say, fellows, I know I got Paul Jones and Barry and McDonough right,but how near was I on Davey Jones and Conyngham? Something tells me I got their histories mixed."
This admiral, of whom our fellows used to spin the yarns, was a unique character. He lacked imagination, and he had the manner of a rat-terrier toward people not of his own kind; but he was one good executive.
Devotion to duty—conscience—those were his beacon lights. He had been known, when the minister of the local church wasn't up to standard, to walk into the pulpit, and deliver the sermon himself. Before he came to take command of this coast district the U-boats had been raising Cain there. There was a fleet of steam-trawlers handled by their old fishing captains and crews, whose special duty it was to sweep up the waters just outside the harbor for mines. It was at that time a dangerous business, but it was also monotonous. It was a duty most easy to evade.
Who was to say they had not swept up? No cove at a naval base five hundred miles away, that was sure! Even if mines were found there after they reported it swept clear, what would that prove? The Huns werelaying mines all the time, weren't they? So—war days are hard enough anyway—why not ease up now and again?
They eased up. Many a snug little place there was along the coast where a crew could go ashore and have a pleasant time for a day or two. There were reports to fill out, but what were reports? Ship a clerk in the crew and who would know? Surely not some aide at the naval base who spent his busiest hours taking the admiral's niece to tea fights!
The British public will probably stand more from their lawfully ordained rulers than any other public on earth. They stood for a good many ships being mined on that coast before they began to ask the why of it.
The powers returned with facts and figures, percentage tables, and so on, of ships departing and ships arriving; proving clearly that the number of ships lost was no more than was to be expected. Whereupon the British public took to writing letters to the press. British politicians take letters to the press seriously; a new man, the admiral we have been talking of, was sent to take charge of the district.
He got down to business. He fitted out a30-knot despatch-boat and away he went! All along that coast he pounced in on little harbors where mine-sweepers should be found working outside, but where he found them working mostly inside at little sociable gatherings where there was a dance or the like going on in front and a little something nourishing to drink in back. Our stern and efficient admiral lit into them like a gull into a school of herring. Out by their gills he hauled them, and pretty soon the B. P. began to read less of percentages and more of results.
One of the first results was that some trawler skippers lost their jobs, and new skippers took their places. This was at the time that rewards of five pounds or so were offered the skippers bringing a mine into port.
That five pounds looked pretty good to one of the new skippers; and when one night at a pub a discharged skipper confided to him where there was a nest of German mines, out he goes into the gray dawn to be there first. He's there first, and sure enough it's a grand little spot for mines. He hooks into one, lashes it under his quarter and goes scooting back to harbor, which happens to be the naval base.
Proudly and noisily he steamed along, shouting to everybody he met of his good luck, and asking the course to the admiral's ship. Everybody he met gave him the course and also the full width of the channel as he passed. He ran alongside the flag-ship, hailing loudly for the admiral as he steamed up.
The admiral was not on board, but his aide was, and the aide came on to have a look over the side. He saw the mine bouncing up and down between the mine-sweeper's quarter and his own ship's side. Shove off—"get away from us!" yelled the aide. "Suppose you press one of those little feelers and blow us all to pieces—get away, I tell you!"
The mine-sweeper skipper looked up—"Feelers, sir?"—and then looked down at the mine. "Feelers, sir? Oh-h, you mean them little 'orns stickin' out on 'er? Bly-mee, sir, I thought I'd knocked 'em all hoff afore I lashed her alongside. But 'ave no fear, sir, there's only two of 'em left, and I'll bloomin' well soon"—he reaches for an oar and went bouncing aft—"bloomin' well soon knock them hoff, too, sir!"
One day last summer a group of our destroyers were sent across the Atlantic. It was a night-and-day strain for all hands—watching out for raiders, watching out for U-boats, watching out for everything, and grabbing snatches of sleep when they could.
Arriving at their naval base, every skipper of the little fleet felt pretty well used up. But every worth-while skipper thinks first of his men. One we have in mind passed the word to his crew that whoever cared to take a run ashore to stretch his legs and forget sea things for a while, why—to go to it. And stay till morning quarters if they wished.
As fast as they could clean up and shift into shore clothes they were going over the side. Our young captain felt then that perhaps there was a little something coming to himself; so he turned in, and he was logging great things in the sleeping line when the anchor watch, whowas also a signal quartermaster, woke him up with:
"Signal from the admiralty, sir."
"Read it."
The S. Q. M. read it—an order to proceed at once to an oil dock and take oil.
It was nine o'clock at night when our skipper had come to moorings. It was now one in the morning, and he knew he could have slept for another week; however, orders were to oil up.
He turned out and mustered what remained aboard of his crew. There were about a dozen. He sent three to the fire-room, three to the engine-room, one here, another there, himself took the wheel, and with his signal quartermaster acting as a sort of officer of the deck, set out to find the oil dock.
He had never seen that harbor before that night, but he sheered close in to every ship's anchor light he saw and hailed for the course to the oil dock. Most of them did not know, but one now and then passed him a word or two, and so he bumped along and by and by made the oil dock.
Officers who have business with it will tell you that the naval organization of the Britishis pretty complete. Our young skipper found everything ready for him now. Men ashore made fast his lines, connected up his pipes, filled his tanks—all in good order. Sister destroyers were oiling up with him, and with tanks filled they all bumped their way back to moorings, again without sinking anything along the way.
It was then daylight, and right after breakfast they all had to report to the admiralty, so no use trying to sleep any more. Arrived at the admiralty, the officer in command complimented them on their safe run across, and then went on to say that of course they had had a trying passage, and naturally their ships, especially engines and boilers, would have to be overhauled—all very natural and proper—and of course the needful time for overhauling, and for officers and crew—two, three, four days, whatever it was—would be granted; but (they knew the need) the question was: How long before they would be ready to go to sea?
The young destroyer commanders had discussed that and other possibilities in the reception-room outside, so when the senior of the group looked from one to the other of hiscolleagues they had only to nod, for him to turn to the admiral and say:
"We are ready now, sir."
Which remark should become one of the historic remarks of this war.
At this time—at the gates to the North Sea, the English Channel, the Irish coast—the U-boats were collecting frightful toll. In the Mediterranean they were running wild. Five ships from one convoy in one day—three of them big P. & O. liners—was one of their records in the Eastern Mediterranean.
To the natural question, Why haven't you checked them? almost any young British naval officer felt like saying: "Check 'em? Try it yourself and check 'em! You go out there and keep your ship zigzagging full speed night and day for three years and see how you like it! Go out there in rough weather and fog with not a minute's let-up, and see if you get to where the fall of a bucket of a dark night will make you jump three feet in the air or not! Our ships were not built, and our chaps were not trained, to beat their rotten game."
So things were when our fellows took hold, and hearing no word from them for a long timeand then but a meagre one, it may be that many a citizen on this side was saying to himself:
"Well, they're gone, that little flotilla, swallowed up in the mists of the Atlantic, and that is all we know about them. And now I wonder what they're doing over there? Are they doing great work or are they tied up to a dock at the naval base, and their officers and crews roistering ashore?"
I can say from several weeks' observation later that they were not doing too much roistering ashore. Before leaving this side I found no evidence that anybody in Washington wished to suppress the record of what that little fleet was doing. Secretary Daniels and Chairman Creel of the Committee on Public Information believed with me that our little fellows over there were doing things worth recording. This fact is set down here because many people last summer believed there was too much suppression of the news of our fighting forces; and suspicion of suppression breeds distrust. Our fellows perhaps were not doing well. If they were doing well, wouldn't we be told more?
But they have ideas of their own on these matters over on the other side, and it is the other side which has most to say of what shall or shall not be given out for publication. In a previous chapter I have reported the answer of the British admiral in charge to my request to be allowed to cruise on an American destroyer. The reply was a flat and immediate: "No." They did not allow British writers on British ships; why should they allow an American writer on an American ship?
It had to be explained that despite what they allowed or did not allow, English papers did publish praiseful items about the deeds of the British navy; and even if they did not publish such items, conditions governing publicity in the United States and the British Isles were not equal. The British navy was a tremendous one and it was operating just off their own shores; officers and men were regularly going ashore by the thousands and to their friends and families, if to nobody else, they talked of what was going on; and it does not take long for thousands of bluejackets to spread the gossip in a country where no spot in it is more than forty miles from tide-water, whereasour nearest Atlantic ports were three thousand miles from our base of operations in Europe, and it was another three thousand miles to our west coast.
It also had to be pumped into the admiralty over there that possibly the American and British publics did not hold to quite the same ideas about their respective navies. It was possible that the 110,000,000 people of the United States looked on our navy as not altogether the property of the officers and men in it; possibly our 110,000,000 people over here looked on the navy as their navy, that they had a right to know something of what it was doing; and so (this item had to be pointed out to one of our own topside officers, too) as that same public were paying the bills of the navy, no harm perhaps to let them in on a few things or, this being the twentieth century, they might take it into their heads some day to have no navy at all.
It took the foregoing talk and something more before I could get the permission of the British Admiralty to cruise on one of our own destroyers over there. This isn't so much a criticism of the British Admiralty as to showthat their point of view differs from ours; and to show that it was not Washington which was holding up news of our navy over there.
As to what they have been doing! They have been doing great work. I cruised over there on one of our destroyers. She was five years old, yet one day during an 85-mile run to answer an S O S call she exceeded her builder's trial by half a knot. Incidentally, she saved a merchantman which had been shelled for four hours by a U-boat and her $3,000,000 cargo; also she ran the U-boat under—one of the new big U-boats with two 5.9 deck guns. On the same day two other destroyers of our group took from a sinking liner 503 passengers without the loss of a life. One of these destroyers lashed herself to the sinking ship the more quickly to get them off; and as the liner went down our little ship had to use her emergency steam to get away in time. A fourth destroyer of ours got the U-boat which sank the liner. That was the record of one little group of destroyers in one day; and it is detailed here because the writer happened to be present when these things happened.
When our fellows first went over they had tolearn a few things from the British. We had first to get rid of some childish ideas about depth charges. We brought over a toy size of 50 to 60 pounds. They showed us a man's size one—300 pounds of T N T, a contraption looking so much like a galvanized iron ash-barrel with flattened sides that they call them "ash-cans."
These ash-cans do not have actually to hit the U-boat; to explode one anywhere near is enough. When our fellows let go one of them, the ship has to be going 25 knots to be safe. One of our destroyers was making 11 knots one night—the best she could do under the weather conditions—and an ash-can was washed overboard by a heavy sea. Our destroyer's stern came so near to being blown off that her crew thought sure she was gone; she had to feel the rest of the way most carefully to port.
This U-boat hunting has been found so wearing on men's nerves that the British Admiralty has a law that our destroyers must remain in port after every cruise for periods that average about two-thirds of their time at sea. Once our destroyers are back to port and tied up to moorings, a U-boat might come up andsink a ship at the harbor entrance and our fellows not allowed to up-steam and at 'em. It was only after a hard experience against U-boats that they evolved this law to save men from breaking down.
It is a dangerous, hard service on one of the roughest coasts in the world—a coast where for seven months or so in the year wind and sea and strong cross tides seem to be their daily diet; a service where for days on a stretch it is nothing at all for destroyer crews not to be able to take a meal sitting down, not even in chairs lashed to stanchions and one arm free hooked around a stanchion; a service where officers live jammed up in the eyes of the ship and never think at sea of taking off their clothes, and where they sleep (when they do sleep) mostly by snatches on chart-house or ward-room transoms.
And for watches: eight hours in every twenty-four, night and day watching of their convoy, of their colleagues, of periscopes. (The prospect of collision with their close-packed convoy and themselves is a bad chance in itself.) On a destroyer convoying ships the officer of the deck has to stand with one eye to thecompass ordering, say, two hundred changes of course in every hour. And one watch-officer of every destroyer has the extra job of acting as chief engineer of the ship; and when a watch-officer had to go aboard a torpedoed ship, or to go in the crow's nest in a critical time, to spend hours, it may be, the time so spent is in addition to his regular eight hours.
If he is the executive officer he must also act as navigator; and as it is important to know just where the ship is any moment of the day or night, the navigator does not figure on sleep in any long stretches. About twenty waking hours out of twenty-four is his portion. As for the skipper: Every single waking hour of his is a heavy strain. I went to sea with the commander of the alert, intense type. Most of them are of that type, but this one particularly so, with eyes, ears, nerves, and brain working always at full power. Three hours in twenty-four was a pretty good lay-off for him.
Lively? Our destroyers are about 11½ times as long as they are wide; which does not mean that they cannot keep the sea. They can keep the sea. Put one of them stern-on toa 90-mile breeze and all the sea to go with it, give her 5 or 6 knots an hour head of steam, and she will stay there till the ocean is blown dry. But they are engined out of all proportion to their tonnage, with their great weight of machinery deep down; which means that they roll. Oh, but they do roll! Whoopo—down and back like that! Most any of them will make a complete roll inside of six seconds. Ours was a 5¼-second one. When she got to rolling right, she would snap a careless sailor overboard as quickly as you could snap a bug off the end of a whalebone cane. There is one over there which rolled 73 degrees—and came back.
Take one of them when she is hiking along at 20 knots, rolling from 45 to 50 degrees, and just about filling the whale-boat swinging to the skid deck davits as she rolls! See one dive and take a sea over her fo'c's'le head and smash in her chart-house bulkhead maybe! Their outer skin is only 3/16 of an inch thick. See that thin skin give to the sea like a lace fan to a breeze! Watch the deck crawl till sometimes the deck-plates buckle up into V-shaped ridges! See them with the seassloshing up their low freeboard and over their narrow decks, so that men have to make use of a sort of trolley line to get about. A man is aft and has to go forward, say. He hooks onto a rope loop, the same hanging from a fore-and-aft taut steel line about seven feet above deck, and when her stern rises he lifts his feet and shoots and fetches up Bam!—up against the fo'c's'le break. He is forward and wants to go aft—he hooks onto the loop, waits for her bow to rise, lets himself go and there he is—back to her skid deck.
That sounds like rough work. Sometimes it gets rougher than that, and then you hear of the wireless operator who was held in his radio shack for forty hours. He got pretty hungry, but he preferred the hunger to coming out and being washed overboard.
But let a machinist's mate tell you in his own way of the night he was standing a fire-room watch—this with all due respect to the chart-house bulkhead, the trolley line, the buckling decks, and the radio operator who was confined—this night he was on watch in the fire-room. Was it rough? He thought so. When he looked down at his feet, there werethe fire-room deck-plates folding in and out like a concertina.
Destroyer crews do not loaf overmuch around deck. They can't. They live below decks mostly, strapped in when it is rough to a stretch of canvas laced to four pieces of iron pipe, set on an angle down against the ship's sides, and called a bunk. Even strapped in so they are sometimes, when she has a good streak on, hove out into the passageways. It was a young doctor of the flotilla who said that, except for their broken arms and legs, his ship's crew were disgustingly healthy.
Our officers over there volunteer for this service, and for every one who went, there were a dozen who wanted to go. And there is a lot of difference between men who go to a duty because they are ordered to go, and men who go because they want to go. These officers and men—there is no beating them, except by blowing them off the face of the waters. And even then they are not always beaten. One of our destroyers was cut down one night by collision. (With so many ships being crowded into a small steaming area, collisions are sure to happen.) All hands had to take to therafts in a hurry. It was about two in the morning, one of those summer nights in the North when the light comes early. They watched her going under. Her deck settled level with the sea, and as it did so a young irrepressible one sang out: "What do you say, fellows, to having a race around the old girl before she flops under?" Away they started, four or five gangs of them, paddling their life rafts with their hands around the sinking ship at two in the morning.
That is youth; and there is no beating youth. We have had stories of our soldiers singing a song that has become very popular since we entered the war. We have been told of them singing it under the most varying conditions: as they camped on the granite blocks of the Hoboken water-front; as they climbed over the gangways of ships bound across; debarking from ships in European ports; singing it from behind the drawn shades of coaches rolling across France. There were even those who sang it while waiting to step into the life-boats on a torpedoed troop-ship; but for light-hearted courage has any one beaten that destroyer lad who was torpedoed one night last winter?
When the torpedo struck his ship the two depth charges astern were exploded also. Two 300-pound charges of T N T they were. The little ship seemed to be lifted out of the water. There was just time to throw over a few life rafts and take a high dive after the rafts. There was no time to get an S O S message away before the ship went down; so there they were—a November night in northern waters, more than half their crew known to be dead, their ship sunk, no other ship near and no hope of one coming near. It was about as tough a case as men could be expected to face and hope to live. But there was a boy there—he was jouncing up and down in the water to keep warm, and jouncing up and down he was singing (from out of the dark they heard him), singing cheerfully:
"O boy, O boy, where do we go from here!"
It is the thing spoken of in the early part of this book. Material is a great thing; but personnel has it beaten a dozen ways. Paul Jones with his capable seagoers in his little sloop-of-war could raise the devil with the enemy. Paul Jones with a line of battleships and fortycrews of men without spirit would not have caused them ten minutes' loss of sleep. That singing lad in northern waters was worth a dozen guns.
Our destroyers went over there at a time when the U-boats were sinking more tonnage in one month than Great Britain was building in four; and because of U-boat activities the loss of ships in the usual marine ways was far beyond normal. To the weary British our fellows brought a fresh vigor, a new aggressiveness.
Only half a dozen were in that first group, but other groups followed, and groups are still following. They have not driven the U-boats from under the seas, but they have made it possible for merchant ships to live in that part of the ocean they are covering.
Somebody has broken into print somewhere to say that Germany has trouble getting U-boat crews; that men have to be driven into U-boats to man them. What a queer idea of human courage people who say such things have! There are always volunteers, probably always will be—plenty of volunteers for any dangerous service. If the U-boat crews werethe kind that have to be driven to sea, there would be no great harm in them. But they are not that kind. They have courage, and they have skill, and because they have courage and skill they are dangerous.
After a year of the U-boat drive England saw a danger of being some day starved out; and with England starved out, our army might as well have stayed on this side last summer; but though the drive is still on, England is not yet starved out, for much of which comfort they can thank the officers and men of our little destroyer flotilla.
At a time when England was worn and weary with the U-boat game, our fellows went over to hearten them up; and they are still heartening them up; and, besides heartening them up, they are getting the U-boats regularly. How many they are getting I could not say, even if I knew; but one of our vice-admirals has publicly stated that they once got five in one day. And with malice toward none, let us hope for more days like it.