Before a visiting correspondent can do anything on the other side he has to report to a censor somewhere. In London the Chief Admiralty Censor was a retired Royal Navy captain and a Sir Knight, but not wearing his uniform or parading his knighthood. He was quartered in an old dark building where Nelson used to hang out in the days before Trafalgar. There was a sign on the door:
DON'T KNOCK. COME IN
He was a good sort, with not a sign about him of that swank which so many of the military caste seem to think it necessary to adopt. He was perfectly willing to pass me on to our naval base and go right ahead with my work; but he did not have charge of the naval base. There was an admiral over there—not an American admiral—who had full charge of our war-ships there. Without his permission not one of them could tie up to a mooring in the harbor. I would have to get his permission even tovisit the base. My very human censor in London said he would cable to him and let me know just as soon as word came.
Awaiting the pleasure of the naval base dictator held me two weeks in London. While waiting I had a look over the city. It was during a period when the moon was ripe for air-raids. There were seven of them in nine nights. My business in life being to see things and then to write about them, I walked the streets during two of them and viewed some of the others from club and hotel windows.
The underground railway stations did a great business while the raids were on; also bomb-proof basements. In a newspaper office, where I used to visit, were precise directions how to get to their bomb-proof cellar. And be sure to take the right one. They had two cellars, but only one was bomb-proof. Shops in the expensive shopping districts had signs up, advertising their bomb-proof cellars and inviting their patrons to make use of them; but the trouble with the shops was that most air-raids took place after they had shut up for the day.
There was a local regulation which said that when an air-raid was on any person at all mightknock at the door of any house he pleased and claim admittance. If he were not admitted at once he could call a policeman, who would have to see that he was admitted. We used to speculate on what would happen if some hobo knocked at the front door of the town house of the Duke of Westminster, say, and demanded of the butler in plush knee-breeches that he be let in.
The chief defense against the Goths was a barrage of guns mounted mostly on the roofs of buildings. An expected air-raid would be announced by policemen running through the streets on bicycles, on their chests and back were signs:AIR RAID ON. They also blew whistles.
The great search-lights would sweep the skies, and by and by there would be a great banging of barrage guns. Bang, bang, bang—that would be the defense guns. Boom! That would be a bomb. Bang, bang, bang, and Boo-oom! The guns fired 3-inch shrapnel. Three miles into the air the shrapnel shells would go! And what goes up has to come down. The next thing would be shrapnel showering into the streets. It seemed to me that I would rather take my chance with the bombs than with the shrapnel. A bomb came down, exploded, andhad done with it; but the shrapnel fell all over the place.
You could see the shrapnel shells bursting high in the air—a beautiful sight—twinkling like big yellow stars, and then fading out. They would look more beautiful if only the pieces of them would stay up there after they burst. I was in Oxford Circus one night when a hatful of shrapnel fell about 20 feet away. One piece was about 5 inches long. Imagine that falling down from a height of 3 miles and hitting a fellow on the head. It would go clear on down through to your toes. Before any American city is raided I hope some chemist will invent a barrage shell which will dissipate all its energy and substance in the bursting. Surely an airplane can be wrecked by concussion.
An Australian soldier and a girl were standing in a doorway near me watching the shells burst. His was that common case—a soldier in London on leave, speculating on where the shrapnel would fall, and becoming peeved as he thought of it. "A hell of a place for a man to come on leave! I came here to get rest and quiet, and I run into this gory mess!"
While waiting the permission of the British authorities I learned that all a correspondent's troubles do not come from foreign censorship. An American newsman had cabled over something which did not please one of our admirals then in London. Meeting that same admiral, I put in a word for my trip to the naval base, thinking that he might warm up and hurry things along for me. He warmed up, but on the side away from me. He recounted the enormous villainy of that newsman, and in conclusion said: "Perhaps, after all, the best way to do is not to allow you newspaper men to send a word at all!"
Such an air of finality! He spoke as though he owned the navy; also the press.
One now and again grows up like that. By taking care not to die, and in the absence of plucking boards, they rise to be admirals. Then side-boys, the bosun's pipes, the 13 guns coming over the side—all this ritual goes to their heads. They get to thinking after a while that the whole business is a tribute to their genius, or valor, or something or other personal. Perhaps all this one needed was a little salve; but I thought it up to some writerto fire a shot across his bows. So I came back with: "That's all very well, sir, about your not allowing a word to be sent, but there may be another point of view. There are 110,000,000 people over in our country, and some of them may not look on our navy as the sole property of its officers. They may want to know what that navy of theirs is doing over here. And perhaps no harm in telling them—or some day they may decide to have no navy at all."
Imagination was not his long suit, so he had no card to follow with. But he did glare.
After two weeks of waiting I got word from my very human London censor that I might leave for the naval base. I left from Euston Station during an air-raid. The station had been darkened hours earlier, and it was a new kind of sport going around that big black place to locate the cloak-room, and after you got the cloak-room to identify your baggage from a big tumbled pile.
I lit a cigar, and as I did a policeman jumped me for showing a light. Stopping to light it under my hat, a tall, able woman, dragging a trunk by the strap, bowled into me. While wewere in our compartments, the train all made up, there came a banging of barrage guns—bang, bang, bang—with now and then the boo-oom! of a bomb.
While we were waiting there we heard the crash of shrapnel coming through the glass roof. By and by another bunch of shrapnel fell with a fine ringing of metal on the concrete platform alongside the train. No harm done. The raiders passed, the banging and the booming stopped; but there was then no driver and stoker for the train. They had gone with the second load of shrapnel, and we had to wait two hours while they dug up a new crew.
After three and a half hours of deck-pacing on the steamer, and twenty-two hours of sitting up straight in third-class wooden seats, I made the naval base; and late at night though it was, there was a British naval officer at the hotel to let me know I was to report next morning to the British admiral in charge.
This admiral had a reputation in London for having no use for newspaper men. When this staff-officer asked me if I had heard of his admiral before, I told him what I heard in London. "He eats 'em alive," I was told bya big London journalist, and I repeated that now, of course without naming the journalist.
"And what do you think of that?" asked this staff-officer.
"If he tries to eat me alive I hope he chokes," I answered to that. I figured he would tell his chief that, but there had been so much boot-licking done by a couple of writers over there that, for the honor of the craft, I thought somebody ought to have a wallop at these press crushers once in a while.
This admiral is worth a paragraph, because he was a type. He was a capable man up to his limitations; a good executive, a devotee to duty; but he should have lived before printing-presses were invented. Also he, too, lacked imagination.
He was a man who acted as if priding himself on his brusqueness of language. He sat at his flat desk like a pagan image, never looked up, never said aye, no, or go to the devil when I stepped in and wished him "Good morning!"
I told him what I wanted. I wished to cruise with the American destroyers in their U-boat operations.
His answer was a No! Bing! No, sir!
"Whoops!" I said to myself. "I've come more than 4,000 miles, with a fine expense account toCollier's, and I'm turned down before I get going."
I spread before him my credentials—from the department and elsewhere. I spread before him a letter from Colonel Roosevelt, the same in his own handwriting. In France I could have lost my passport and yet got along on that letter. Batteries of inspectors used to sit up and come to life at the sight of a letter in the colonel's own handwriting.
This man did not turn his head to look at what I might have. All the credentials in the world were going to have no influence with him. He repeated his No, putting about seventeen n's in the No!
Then, mildly, I told him that I thought I ought to have something more than a No; that I should have a reason to go with the No. He intimated that he didn't have to give reasons unless he wished to.
I asked him why he should not wish to? Was it not right and fair that he should give a reason? I had come more than 4,000 miles at great expense toCollier's, for one thing. Foranother—and this more important—there was an anxiety among Americans to know something of the doings of our little destroyer flotilla. They had sailed out into the East, been swallowed up in the mists of the Atlantic—that was the last we had seen of them. They were the first of our forces to come in contact with the enemy. Were they doing good work over here, or were they tied up to a dock in some port and their officers and crews roistering ashore?
Still he said No.
Then I went on to tell him what I had told our own archaic type of admiral in London—with additions: that it was possible that we had in the United States a different idea of the navy from what the British public held; that in our own country a lot of people held the notion that the navy was not the property of the officers, not quite so much as it was the property of the people; and that holding that view, these same people thought themselves entitled to know what that navy was doing to back their faith in it. And perhaps it was not the worst policy in the world to tell them what that navy was doing.
Still he said No.
But why?
Well, for one thing (he was disintegrating a little), in the British service they did not allow civilians of any kind to go to sea with their ships in war time. That further—they allowed no reports of their work at sea to appear in the press.
I pointed out that reports of fine deeds were, nevertheless, appearing in the press; that from the London dailies of the week past I had made clippings of such, and if he cared to see them I would show them to him.
"But we allow no civilians to go cruising with ships at sea in war time. And I will not establish a precedent now."
It was the old fetich—precedent. I thought of judges who used to hang men on precedent. He surely had what is called the mediæval mind, with apologies to that same mediæval age.
I pointed out that conditions in our country and his were not the same. That there were hundreds of thousands of officers and men in the British navy; that those officers and men were regularly ashore on liberty or leave; thatthey gossiped, and that hundreds of thousands of officers and men gossiping could pass the word pretty far, especially in a country where there was not a single little hamlet more than 40 miles from tide-water. With us it was different. Our nearest Atlantic port was 3,000 miles from this very naval base; and 3,000 miles farther to the Pacific coast, with no hundreds of thousands of men on liberty ashore. If men like myself were not allowed to tell them something, how were they ever to learn what was doing?
I wound up by telling him he was an autocrat; which disturbed his graven serenity. Autocrat and autocracy were not pleasant-sounding words just then. He snapped his head up, and for the first time looked as if he might be human.
"We have to be autocratic in war time," he barked.
"Not in everything," I barked back.
Then, and not till then, did he soften. We had a little more conversation, and then he said he wanted that night to think over the unprecedented request. He would let me know next day.
A perfect bigot; and yet there were worse than he. He dared to say what he thought about the rights of his station. Some of his judgments may have been childish, but his convictions were deep and honest. I respected him, and later came to have almost a liking for him.
I have expended many paragraphs in telling of this interview, but it is meant to be more than a statement of one American correspondent. It is meant to explain a point of view which Americans may find it hard work to understand. That admiral in charge of our naval base can be multiplied all the world over. We have them in our own departments.
While waiting the admiral's pleasure I had a look at the port. A fine harbor, a beautiful harbor, but disfigured now by big, ugly war-buildings. The houses of the port set mostly up on terraces. There were several streets, but only one real one in the place, and that ran along the waterside. All the pubs of the port were naturally located on this waterside street, and so no tired seafarer had to walk far to get a drink. Not many of our fellows were to be seen on the streets in daylight; but at night they were plentiful. A couple of movietheatres took care of about three hundred of them; the rest walked the waterside street. There was a port order there that no sailor of ours could stay in a pub after eight in the evening, so at one minute past eight that waterside street looked like a naval parade. For the rest the port offered little or nothing to tempt a man. It was as rainy a place as ever I was in, and the back streets were crowded with children playing. Barefooted, healthy children! If they had not been healthy the weather would surely have killed them off. It was a most moral port, too; too moral for some people, who thought to put a little life into the place by making nightly calls there, and made the nightly calls till a local clergyman protested from the altar, whereupon some muscular young Christians ran the visitors back aboard their train and out of the port's history.
Next day the admiral gave me permission to make a cruise with our destroyers. He seemed to be giving it in the same stubborn fashion that he had at first refused it—as though he saw his duty in so doing. I was told that he said he did not think much of my manners; which, of course, worried me.
I knew quite a few officers in the navy who were commanding destroyers over there. Any one of them, known or unknown to me, was good enough for me as a skipper. No man not ready to take a chance puts in for command of a destroyer over there; and no man not fit is given a command. But I took passage with one that I had cruised with before—the alert, resourceful kind with plenty of nerve. If anything should happen, I knew he would be there with all his crew and his ship had.
What happened while with him and at the naval base I have tried to tell as separate incidents when I can, in the chapters which follow.
We were one of a group of American destroyers convoying a fleet of inbound British merchant steamers.
The messenger handed a radio in to the bridge.
"We are being shelled," said the radio; latitude and longitude followed, as did the name of the ship,J. L. Luckenbach. One of us knew her; an American ship of 6,000 tons or so.
Another radio came: "Shell burst in engine-room. Engineer crippled." S O S signals were no rare thing in those waters, but even so they were never passed up as lacking interest; the skipper waited for action. Pretty soon it came, a signal from the senior officer of our group. The 352—let us give that as the number of our ship—was to proceed at once to the assistance of theLuckenbach.
The skipper's first act was to shake up the second watch-officer, who also happened to be acting as chief engineer of the ship, and to pass him the word to speed the ship up totwenty-five knots. We were steaming at the head of the convoy column at eighteen knots at the time. The first watch-officer, having finished his breakfast and a morning watch, was just then taking a little nap on the port ward-room transom with his clothes and sea-boots still on. The active messenger shook him up too. The two officers made the deck together, one buttoning his blouse over a heavy sweater, the other a sheepskin coat over his blouse.
Word was sent to theLuckenbachthat we were on the way. Within three minutes the radio came back: "Our steam is cut off. How soon can you get here?"
Up through the speaking-tube came a voice just then to say that we were making twenty-five knots. At the same moment our executive officer, who also happened to be the navigator, handed the skipper a slip of paper with the course and distance to theLuckenbach, saying: "That was at nine-fifteen."
It was then nine-seventeen. Down the tube to the engine-room went the order to make what speed she could. Also the skipper said: "She ought to be tearing off twenty-eight soonas she warms up. And she's how far now? Eighty-two miles? Send this radio: 'Stick to it—will be with you within three hours.'"
By this time all hands had an idea of what was doing and all began to brighten up. Men off watch, supposed to be asleep in their cots below, began to stroll up and have a look around decks. Some lingered near the wireless door, and every time the messenger passed they sort of stuck their ears up at him. He was a long-legged lad in rubber boots who took the deck in big strides. His lips never opened, but his eyes talked. The men turned from him with pleased expressions on their faces.
There was a little steel shelter built on to the chart house to port. It was for the protection of the forward gun crew, who had to be ready for action at any minute. Men standing by for action and not getting it legitimately, try to get it in some other way. So they used to burn up their spare energy in arguing. It did not matter what the argument was about—the President, Roosevelt, the Kaiser, the world series—any subject would do so long as it would grow into an argument. The rest of the crew could hear them—threatening to busteach other's eyes out—clear to the skid deck sometimes. But now all quiet here, and soon they were edging out of their igloo and calling down to the fellows on the main deck: "That right about a ship being shelled by a sub? Yes. Well!" They went down to their shelter smiling at one another.
Ship's cooks, who rarely wander far from their cosey galley stoves, began to show on deck; ward-room stewards came out on deck; a gang black-painting a tank hatch—they all slipped over to the rail and, leaning as far out as they could and not fall overboard, had long looks ahead. And then they all turned to see what 352's smoke-stacks were doing. There was great hope there.
The black smoke was getting blacker and heavier. They were sure feeding the oil to her. The chief came up the engine-room ladder. An old petty officer waylaid him. Doing well, was she, sir?—She was. Hem! About how well, sir?—Damn' well. She was kicking out twenty-eight—twenty-eight good—and picking up.
Twenty-eight and picking up? And the best she showed in her builders' trial wastwenty-nine-one! What d'y' know about her? Some little old packet, hah?
It was a fine day, the one fine day of the trip, a rarely fine day for this part of the northern ocean at this time of year. It was cloudy, but it was calm. There was a long, easy swell on, but no sea to make her dive or pitch. The swell, when she got going in good shape, set her to swinging a little, but that did not hurt. A destroyer just naturally likes to swing a little.
Swinging along she went, rolling one rail down and then the other, but not making it hard to stand almost anywhere around deck, except that when you went aft there was a drive of air that lifted you maybe a little faster than you started out to go. Swinging along she went, a long, easy swing, carrying a long white swash to either side of her, vibrating a thousand to the minute on her fantail, streaming out a long white and pale-blue wake for as far as we could see, and just clear of her taffrail piling up the finest little hill of clear white boiling water.
Twenty-nine, they say, she was making, and still picking up. What! Thirty? And a little moreleft in her? What d'y' know—some little baby, hah?
Another radio came to the bridge: "A shell below our water-line. Settling, but still afloat and still fighting."
"Good work. Stick to it," they said on the bridge, and wondered whether it was the skipper or the radio man who was framing the messages. He had the dramatic instinct, whoever he was.
Perhaps twenty minutes later came: "Water in our engine-room."
And then: "Fire in our forehold, but will not surrender. Look for our boats."
And: "They are now shooting at our antennæ."
Radios to the bridge are not posted up for the crew to gossip over, but there was no keeping that last one under cover.
"Shelling their attenay? Well, the mortifying dogs! Whatever you do, don't let 'em get your attenay, old bucket."
Our thirty-knot clip was eating up the road. We were getting near the spot. The canvas caps came off the guns, and the gun crews were told to load and stand by. A chief gunner'smate was told to make ready his torpedo-tubes. He was a famous torpedo-man. He would stay up all night with an ailing gyro or hydrostatic piston and not even ask to sleep in next morning for a reward, and he had a record of making nothing but hits at torpedo-practice. But he had been glum all the trip. He had stayed past the legal hour on liberty the last time in, and the shore patrol had come along and scooped him up. A court-martial was coming to him and so he had been glum; but not now. He went around decks smiling, with a little steel thing that looked like a wrist-bag but wasn't. It held the keys to the magazines.
Pretty soon he had torpedo-tubes swinging inboard and outboard, and between every pair of tubes a man sitting up in an iron seat that looked like the kind that goes with a McCormick reaper, which all helped the gunner's mate to feel better. He stopped ten seconds to tell the story of the new gun-crew man who was sent up the yard to the storekeeper for a pair of spurs to ride the torpedo-tubes with.
There were four guns, one forward, one aft, and two in the waist. They had been slushed down with vaseline to keep the salt-water rust off; now they were swabbing the greaseoff. Grease on the outside of a gun does not affect the shooting of the inside, but a gun ought naturally to look slick going into action.
Our thirty-knot clip was eating up the road.Our thirty-knot clip was eating up the road. We were getting near the spot.ToList
Our thirty-knot clip was eating up the road. We were getting near the spot.ToList
Trainers and pointers stood beside their loaded guns, and other members of the gun crew held up shells, the noses of the shells stuck into the deck mat and the butts resting against the young chests of the gun crews as they stood in line. There was a nineteen-year-old lad who, when I knew him two years before, was doing boy's work in the Collier bookbindery. Now he was a gun-captain standing handy to his little pet and trying not to look too proud when he peeked up toward where I was.
The foretop reported smoke on the horizon ahead. That would be on theLuckenbach. And where she was the U-boat was. The forward gun was trained a point to right of the smoke.
One senior watch-officer, now in the foretop, called down that he could now see the ship. Smoke was coming out of her hull. Soon he reported shells splashing alongside of her. Those would be from the U-boat. Soon we all could see the ship from the bridge.
The foretop then reported the U-boat. She was almost dead ahead. She could not be seen from the bridge, but, directed by the foretop, the gun was trained on the horizon dead ahead; 11,000 yards was the range. The gun was one of the latest type—only a 4-inch—but a great little gun just the same.
"Train and fire," said the skipper. Bo-o-m! it went, flame and smoke. We could not see the splash from the bridge, nor could they in the foretop. It probably dropped beyond the submarine, which soon we could see—a pretty big fellow she looked with two guns. She had been shelling the ship even while we were running up, and as our first shot boomed out she let go another shell. We expected her to send a couple our way—she probably carried bigger guns than we did—but she did not; she let go another at the steamer. "Maybe at the antennæ," said a chief quartermaster on the bridge.
We shortened our range. The gun was trained and ready for firing when a sea rolled up on us. The ocean was smooth enough, but the swell was still on—a long swell of the kind that does not sputter, but walk right up andannounce their arrival by arriving. This long blue swell rolled up to our bow.
We were doing thirty knots and at thirty knots a little ship doesn't need a masthead sea to get action. We went into it head first. It came right on over our bow, over our foc'sle head, over the forward gun. The shield to the forward gun stood probably six feet above the foc'sle deck. That wave rolled right over the gun-shield.
There was a C. P. O. standing quite close to the shield. He grabbed a vertical rod on the outside of the shield, and just managed to hook in the fingers of one hand. The sea, all white and solid, rolled over the gun and the shield. The C. P. O. was swept off his feet, but he was a stubborn one and hung on. Behind him was the officer in charge of the firing. When he saw that sea rolling up there was nothing near but the C. P. O., so he grabbed the C. P. O. with both hands around the waist. He too was swept off his feet, but he hung on—to the C. P. O. They both floated flat out on the white roller, and the white roller went smash-o! up against the chart house.
The chart house was just under the bridge,and the glass windows had been taken out from the bridge railing so that they would not be smashed by the concussion of the forward gun. We were leaning out of these open spaces, just getting ready to laugh at the people below when, swabbo! up the side of the chart house and through the open spaces and into our open mouths came the wash of the sea.
Another wave followed that one, but not quite so high. As soon as it passed the forward gun was trained and fired. We had been making great leaps ahead all this time—the range now was under 9,000 yards. The foretop reported it short.
The U-boat was still there. We still expected her to send one our way. But nothing doing for us. She sent another shell toward the steamer. The steamer had quit firing. No use. The U-boat had simply taken position beyond range of the steamer's guns and leisurely as she pleased was shelling her. Our third shell landed close to the sub. And then down she went and wasted no time at it. Before we could train and fire again she was gone.
The sub, as we learned later, had landed fifteen shells into the steamer and woundednine of her people, of whom three were of the bluejacket gun crew.
One young bluejacket had been hit twice. He was carrying a shell to the gun when he caught the second one—a piece of flying shell in his shoulder. He laid his own shell on the deck to see how about it, and got hit again; this time in what our navy calls the stern sheets. That made him mad. He shook his fist toward the sub. "No damn' German's going to hit me three times and get away with it." He grabbed his shell off the deck and slammed it into the gun-breech. "Hand it to 'em, Joe!" he yelled to the gun-pointer. Joe did his best, but he didn't have the gun—the shot splashed where most of them had, about half a mile short of the sub.
Still pouring the black smoke out of our funnels, we leaped toward theLuckenbachand hailed her through the megaphone when we breasted her. She hailed back that she had water in her afterhold and fire in her forehold, and gave us the number of her wounded. Two of the three wounded bluejackets were injured seriously. We could see them stretched out under the gun.
We were steaming around theLuckenbachat twenty knots while we were hailing: this in case the sub took it in her head to pop up again and catch us slowed down. We did slow down and stop when it came time to clear away a whale-boat and send it over to the steamer with our senior watch-officer and the surgeon, with the needful surgical supplies.
We continued to steam circles around the steamer all the time they were aboard, with our lookouts keeping eyes skinned for the U-boat. By her manner of shelling the steamer after he had opened fire our skipper judged she was a tough one. She did show once while we were circling theLuckenbach. Her periscope popped up about a mile abeam of us. It may have popped up again—it was getting to be a nice little choppy sea good for sub work and no saying that it was not—but we only sighted it once, and then it did not linger.
The sea was growing lumpy when the whale-boat came bouncing back with our senior officer. It was right about theLuckenbachhaving nine injured, but all would get well. The doctor was looking after them. She was a cotton steamer. The kid who had been hit twice wasall right. He was walking around deck with his cap over his port ear and proud as Billy-be-Damn'—three times wounded by German shell fire and got away with it!
The fire in the forehold? Most of it was from two old mattresses—at least that was all he found.
"Did you put the fire out?"
"Yes, sir. The steamer's crew were too tired to do any more hustling around to put any fire out, so we got out a hose and put it out."
"How about that bulkhead?" asked the skipper. "He hailed that he didn't think it would stand the strain of steaming."
"Maybe so, sir, but I don't agree with him. I don't see how that bulkhead's going to cave in with all those bales of cotton jammed up against it. What the most of them over there are suffering from is the reaction from that three hours of shelling—everything was looking pretty blue to them, sir."
"Can he make steam?"
"Yes, sir. Their engineer has two ribs busted in and a piece of shrapnel in his neck and part of his foot shot away. But he's all right. He was lying down when I first sawhim, cursing the Germans blue. Then he says: 'Put me on my feet, men.' A couple of oilers put him on his feet. I thought he was going to give orders to make steam, but he only wanted to be stood up so as he could curse the Germans a little better. Lying down interfered with his wind. He rolled it out in one steady stream for ten minutes. He was an Italian, or maybe a Spaniard, and his English wasn't perfect, but he could talk like hell. He's all right. He'll get steam up, sir."
By and by they did make steam and begin to move on a course our skipper wigwagged to them. The skipper left the surgeon aboard, and at twenty knots the 352 steamed more circles around the steamer, all lookouts meanwhile skinning their eyes afresh for signs of the sub. We could make out a lot of smoke on the southern horizon. It was the convoy we had left in the morning. An hour later theLuckenbachfound her legs.
Our cripple broke no records for speed, but she was making revolutions, and by five o'clock we rejoined the convoy with her alongside.
So here is an eight hours' log for the 352: At nine in the morning she was responding toS O S-ing ninety miles away; at five in the afternoon we had her tucked away for the night in the column.
The tall quartermaster came up on the bridge to stand his watch. We were in our regular position, at the head of the column at twenty knots. He looked back at the fleet. "There you are, Lucky Bag. They must have had you checked up and counted in, a big ship and a three-million-dollar cargo, this morning, and here you are to-night—one they didn't get."
Every American destroyer over here rates a young surgeon. What some of these surgeons don't know about seagoing can be found in about six hundred pages of Knight's "Modern Seamanship," but that does not matter much. Let them look after the casualties; there are capable young naval officers to look after the seagoing end.
Most of these young surgeons have a taste for adventure. If they had not, they would not be over here. The 352 drew one, born and raised in a Southern State. Before coming over here he had viewed the Atlantic once or twice from a distance, which did not quite content him. His ancestors must have crossed that same Atlantic to get to America, and somewhere within him was a high-pitched string that vibrated to every thrill of that same ocean now.
He used to speak of these things in the smoking-room of the King's Hotel here, which is where every destroyer officer comes at leastonce between cruises to get a—cup of coffee. He would have liked to make a few sea voyages when he was a little younger, but if a fellow is ever going to amount to anything he has to settle down sometime and become a respectable member of society—so his folks were always saying, and so he took up medicine. He liked his profession. A doctor can do a heap of good in a suffering world—especially if people will only let him. But so many people want a young doctor to be experienced before they ever will call him in! "Get experience," they say; and not a doggone one in a dozen'll ever give a fellow any chance to get the experience. "What the most of 'em want is for some one else to give us the experience." He did as well as the next young doctor, but at times he would grow almost melancholy sitting before the smoking-room fire telling of his waiting for business in his home town.
He was not at all melancholy by nature. He could keep the ward-room mess ringing with darky stories on a quiet night in port. His messmates called him Doc; and when the ship was at sea they were all glad to see him on the bridge studying things out. He had plenty oftime for that. In two cruises his only cases were one quartermaster, who got hove across the bridge and broke his nose, and a gunner's mate who broke his leg by being bounced out of his bunk one windy night. They were a disgustingly healthy lot, these destroyer crews.
But he felt pleased just to be out to sea. These high hills of moving water sure did give a little ship heaps of action sometimes. He would watch them from the bridge. He would watch the officer of the watch too, and the man at the wheel, and the lookouts with their eyes skinned for U-boats, and the signal quartermasters balanced on the flying bridge and sending their messages in a jumping sea-way. He would go down to the chart house with the navigator and stand by to pass him dividers and parallels. He would stop to sigh when he thought that if somebody had only tipped him off in time he might have gone to Annapolis and right now be a young naval officer dashing around on one of these same destroyers. Still, being a surgeon on one of them wasn't too bad. If they had a battle or anything, a ship's doctor wasn't going to be too far away.
It was in his third cruise that the 352 gotthe S O S which resulted in the rescue of the big steamer spoken of. There had been other S O S's—any number of them—but this time there was something doing for our young doctor. When she signalled that nine of her people had been wounded by shell and shrapnel fire, and the 352's skipper ordered a deck officer and a whale-boat away, he also told Doc to break out his medical gear and go along. Doc already had his surgical gear ready; from the first word of the shelling he had gone below, and now everything was laid out ready for action on the ward-room transom.
Over to the ship they went, all hands in life-vests, and while the deck officer of the 352 was cross-questioning the captain and engineer, and looking around to see how much damage had been done and so on, Doc was rigging up an operating-table between the chart house and the chart deck rail, slinging the table in sort of hammock style so that when the ship rolled she would not roll his patients overboard.
Doc was no mean little operator. The great danger to most of the wounded men was of infection. One after the other, he had his casesup, asked about four questions, had about four looks, and went to it. No knowing that the U-boat might pop up again and try a few more shells, or that a bulkhead would not give way, or a boiler blow up when they tried to make steam below. No knowing; no.
Up they came to his swinging table, where Doc took a probe, poked into the wound, wrapped cotton around the probe, soaked it in iodine, jabbed it in, twisted it around, swabbed it out, dressed it down, slapped the patient on the chest, said "Next," and did it all over again.
"Next! You'd think it was a blessed barber's shop," Doc heard one of them say. Only he was an officer—by the back of his head Doc knew it—some of them would have told him what they thought of his rapid-fire action. But it was no time for canoodling—it was war, and they were all rated as grown men and so able to stand a few little painful touches.
One terribly wounded patient gave him worry. On him Doc worked with great care. He was working on him, all the others being attended to, when the 352's deck officer came to say that he was going back to the destroyerto report. "The captain of this ship wants to abandon her," said the deck officer.
"Abandon ship and we will never be able to get this man I got here now off her—not in this sea, sir," said Doc. "And if he's left alone for two hours, he'll sure die."
"I'll signal what the skipper says." The officer went off with his crew in the whale-boat, leaving a hospital steward and a signal quartermaster to stay with the doctor.
Doc was working away on his hard case when his quartermaster came to say that the 352 had signalled that they were to stay aboard and that the steamer was to get under way and steer a course south half east magnetic.
The doctor, without looking up, said: "All right."
"Shall I tell the steamer's captain, sir?"
This time Doc looked up. "Why, of course, tell him. Why not? Why do you ask me that?"
"You are the ranking naval officer aboard here, sir. I take orders from you now, sir."
For about four seconds Doc neglected his patient. That was so; so he was.
"Yes, tell the captain."
The quartermaster ran up the bridge ladder. Doc gazed over the chart-rail down to the deck, up and around on the ship. "Doggone!" he breathed. "I am the ranking—I'm the only naval officer present." Then he shook his head and bent to his patient. He might have the rank, but the last thing he was going to do was to butt in on any regular ship's officers.
The disabled ship went on to her new course, south half east magnetic, with the destroyer steaming twenty-knot circles around her. And late in the afternoon they made the convoy. By night she was tucked in the rear of twenty other ships, the doctor and his emergency staff still aboard. They were to remain aboard until the steamer made port.
That same night something happened. On the steamer they did not know just what it was. They saw a column of white, a column of black—those who happened to be looking—another column of white, from the big ship of the fleet. And then dark came. There were radios flying about, but they were code messages and the radio man could not decode them because the first thing the steamer captain had done that morning when it looked as thoughthe U-boat was going to make them take to the boats was to heave the code-books overboard. In the morning they would know.
Morning came, but with it not a ship in sight. Of twenty ships and a group of destroyers the night before, not one now. It was his signal-officer who thought it out first. "U-boats thick last night, sir, and the convoy must 'a' got orders to disperse or else change course," he said to the doctor.
"That sounds like good dope to me too." He turned to the steamer's captain. "Where were you bound, sir?"
"To Havre."
The doctor could see nothing else but to proceed to Havre, and on a zigzag course. The old captain did not know about the zigzagging; he had never done any zigzagging and did not know why he should now—besides, it mixed his reckoning all up.
The doctor said he would fix the zigzagging part of it, and, telling his hospital steward to have a special eye out for the very sick man, went into the chart house and proceeded to explain the zigzagging stuff. He paused to recall all he had ever learned while elbowingthe 352's navigator over the chart-table; also the answers he had got to his questions while so doing.
You steer 45 degrees off the course you really want to make for so many minutes and then you steer 90 degrees from that for the same number of minutes back toward the course you really want to make—see, so—and that gives so many minutes to the good—see. That was one way.
"How many minutes?" asked the captain.
Doc had to stop and think that over. "Twice the square of the total minutes—no, no. Take twice the sum of the squares of the minutes on the two legs—and get the square root and then you have the hypothenuse of the two sides of the triangle; that is, you have the number of minutes' steaming you make good on your real course."
The old skipper knew nothing of square roots or hypothenuses or anything that looked like 'em, and he had always laid his course out by compass points.
"All right," said Doc, and after a while laid out the zigzag courses in compass points.
The old fellow did not quite like it, so all that day Doc alternated between his badpatient and the bridge to keep the skipper reassured about the zigzagging. Also he urged the crew to have a special watch out for U-boats.
That night Doc and the seasoned signal quartermaster stood alternate watches on the bridge. Doc would take a nap; the quartermaster would take a nap; between them they were figuring to keep a sort of official navy lookout. There were ship's crew men on the lookout too, but the reaction from the shelling had set in. Doc used to find them asleep in the bridge wings.
Just before dawn of the second morning Doc saw a shadow looming on their starboard bow. He had another look. It was another steamer—a big one. She was drawing nearer. "See that?" he called to the man at the wheel.
"See what?" sort of drowsed out the man at the wheel.
The trusty quartermaster from the 352 was getting a wink under the bridge-rail. Doc yelled to him, at the same time grabbing up the megaphone and roaring into the night air: "Where you-all going? Where the devil you-all going? Can't you-all see where you're going? Keep off—keep off."
"Can'tyousee where you're going?—keep off yourself."
By that time the signal quartermaster was awake and bounding across the bridge. He grabbed the wheel and began to spin it around. The ship's bow turned. Doc saw the big hulk go by him in the dark.
"Good work," said Doc. "How'd you spot him so quick?"
"I didn't spot him, sir. I don't see him yet. I went by the sound of his voice."
"Special little angel perched up aloft to look out for Jack when at sea—" sang Doc. "I thought that was a nursery rhyme. Now I know it's true. Between you and me, quartermaster, we'll get this ship to port yet."
They finished that night and the next day without seeing anything or having anything happen. Nothing except the argument about the forward compartment.
Among the shells which had come aboard the steamer was one which had punched a fine big hole in her bow. The ship's crew had put a plug there which worked all right till the ship took to rolling, which it did this day. The hole was just at the water-line. Before they knewanything about it there was the plug gone and the water up to a man's knees in the forward compartment. Doc said it should be stopped.
The old skipper wanted to know who was going to stop it. His crew? No, sir. He wouldn't ask any of 'em to go down there—besides, they wouldn't go. They were all used up since the battle with the U-boat. It made no difference if the ship sank. He'd had so much trouble that trip anyway that he wasn't too sure he wouldn't just as soon see her sink. He wasn't too sure they wouldn't all be better off in the boats. The U-boat had ordered them into the boats, and, only the destroyer had come along when it did, they would 'a' taken to the boats, and then they'd 'a' been picked up and no more watches or ships or holes in the for'ard compartment to worry about.
There was nothing left but for Doc to call for volunteers from among the gun crew. They were bluejackets, and their only complaint on the trip had been that the U-boat's guns had outranged their guns. They volunteered in a body—even the three wounded members. Doc took all the sound ones and went downinto the forward compartment with a mattress and some scantling he found in the hold. The water was by then about up to the men's waists. It was hard, cold work, but they got it done—the mattress stuffed into the hole and the scantling shoring it up. It still leaked, but not much—a little auxiliary steam in there at intervals did not quite keep her dried out, but it kept her head above water, so that was all right. All that day she was a lone steamer plugging her halting way over a wide sea. Seven knots was her speed, and all hands tickled to be making that because of weak places showing from time to time in her steam department—damages by shell fire which they did not appreciate properly at first.
They were nearing the coast of France. They would have to make a landfall soon, and running without lights, as they were, made things hard, so the old skipper began to talk to Doc. If the doctor didn't mind, he would take full charge of the ship himself. She was a big ship with a three-million-dollar cargo, and if anything happened her, the owners would naturally look to him, the master, for it.
Doc thought it was a pretty cool way to washout all record of what his little force had done, but he also recognized the old fellow's position. "It sounds reasonable," said Doc, "but I think you ought to give me an idea of what you're going to do."
"There's been no sun for a sight these two days, but we were here"—he made a new dot over an old one on the chart—"and logging so many knots to-day noon we ought to be"—he made another dot—"about here now."
"How about the tides?"
"The tides? Oh, yes! Well, I don't know about the tides. You see, I never made a port in France before."
"You didn't?"
There was a coast chart-book in the rack. Doc took it down and began to read it. He made regular trips down to see how his wounded patient was getting on, but always hurried back to his coast chart-book. Interesting things in chart-books—he used to read them aboard the destroyer.
That night the first mate came up on the bridge. Doc asked him what kind of a light he expected to pick up. The mate told him. Doc thought he was wrong, and said so.
Well, that was the light the old man had said they would make. Where was he now? Asleep, and Lord knows he needed it.
Doc did not wake him up. He had argued enough with him, but he didn't think the old man had allowed for the tides, and if anything happened there would be no more arguments—he would just assert his rank and take charge of the ship.
Doc went below, gave his worst wounded patient a night potion and saw him to sleep. He also went down to see the chief engineer, who had been wounded three times—once in the head. The Doc talked to him awhile—he was inclined to rave—gave him a half-grain jolt of morphine and saw him to sleep. He told the signal quartermaster that he had better have a nap before he dropped in his tracks.
"But the night-watches, sir?"
"We'll leave the night-watches to the ship's crew and Providence. The watch may sleep on the job, but the Lord won't—at least I hope not. Anyway, I know I'm doggone tired," said Doc, and turned in.
Doc could have slept longer—about twenty-four hours longer, he thought, when he foundhimself awake. It was a sort of grinding under the ship which had wakened him.
By his illuminated wrist-watch he saw that it was three o'clock—three in the afternoon, he hoped. But it wasn't. It was three in the morning. He had been asleep two hours.
He went on deck just as his signal-officer came to tell him the ship was ashore.
Doc found the old man and the mate looking over charts under a hand-light in the chart house. "I could 'a' bet we'd 'a' picked up that other light," the old man was saying.
"The bettin' part don't explain it," said the mate. "A fine place to be high and dry and a U-boat come along in the morning and plunk us another few shells between our livers and lights. I'm tired of keeping my mind on U-boats."
That was when Doc horned in on the old skipper. "I been pretty easy with you-all. You ought to been twenty miles farther east. You listened to me and you-all would have been. Look here"—he hauled down the chart-book and showed them. "And now I'll take charge."
It was low tide when she ran on to the beach.With the flood-tide and the engines kicking back they had her off at daylight. After that, with Doc on the bridge, everything seemed to go all right. The mate said he must have come over the side with a medicine-chest full of horseshoes. By eleven o'clock next morning they were taking on a pilot outside Havre.
Havre is a regular French port with jetties leading down from the heart of the residential places almost. The people, seeing her coming, she bearing the evident marks of her late battle, crowded down to greet her. About five minutes was enough for her story to circulate. The bluejacket gun crew, being in uniform, caught their eyes first. They cheered them, the brav' Américains. And then the wounded came. Oh, the pity! Three or four of the wounded, who had all that day been cavorting around deck, saw the dramatic values and assumed most languid poses. Oh, the great pity! Whereat two more almost fainted.
The worst wounded one—there was no pretense about him—had to be carried down the gang-plank. Doc went with him. Good nursing was what he needed; and he was going to see that he got it.
He got it in the port hospital; and then Doc and his two assistants turned in and slept sixteen hours by Doc's illuminated wrist-watch.
After cabling and getting his orders, Doc headed for his base. Their journey back by train and steamer—the two men in dungarees and life-vests, and Doc in sea-boots and one of those sheepskin coats they wear on destroyers—was noteworthy but not seagoing, so it is passed up here.
Doc made his port. We met him in the King's Hotel smoke-room, and he told us all about it. We had had it already from the quartermaster and the hospital steward, but Doc was to have a little touch of his own.
"There she was, a little down by the head, but safe in port," concluded Doc; "and while I was waiting for my orders I had a look around the place. There was a little square there with little cafés all around the square, and I sat in front of one of them and had my coffee."
"So this was France," I kept saying to myself. All my life I had been reading more or less about France, and it used to be a sort of dream to me to be thinking I might some day get there. And there I was—only a little cornerof France, but it was France, and a pretty sunny little place after our week to sea.
"And while I sat there people came up and looked me over. I thought it was my needing a shave, but it wasn't. I had my cap on, and by my cap they knew me for the officer of the heroes of the ship. After a while they came up and spoke to me. I didn't get quite what they were all saying, but I was one brave man—we were all brave men, there was no doubt about that part. When they all got through one little girl came up and gave me a bunch of flowers."
He pulled out some kind of a faded flower and sighed. "She was about eight years old."
"No use talking," I said, "it's a great life." And the quartermaster—he stood with his signal-flags sticking out under his armpit—said:
"Yes, sir, a great life if we don't weaken."
"What's there to weaken about? Something doing every doggone minute since we left our ship."