It was a little girl at home, not old enough to read long words, but able to read a picture, as she put it; and there was a print of a company of marines leaving one of our navy-yards, and she said: "The marine soldiers going away—more trouble somewheres, isn't there, papa?"
Which caused her papa to recall that from where he was born and lived the first years of his life he had only to look out of his top window and across the harbor to see a big navy-yard; and while he was still too young to read a paper, he had seen marines boarding ships and marching off to trains; and just as sure as he did the older people would read from that night's or next morning's paper of trouble somewhere abroad.
And always they went without any fuss. Most of us would have more to say about going to the office of a snowy morning than do the marines on leaving for some far-away country, from where, as they know by pastrecords of the corps, quite a few of them are never coming back. They were the original efficiency boys. They slung their rifles, hooked on their packs and went; and that ended that part of it.
But after they were gone people living near naval quarters waited for the next word; and that next word so often came in the form of one laconic sentence, the same cabled back by the topside naval officer or some American consul, that we used to wonder if they had a rubber stamp for it—that laconic, reassuring sentence! When our country erects a memorial structure to the United States Marine Corps, she should chisel over the main front:
The Marines Have Landed and Have the Situation Well in Hand
The Marines Have Landed and Have the Situation Well in Hand
Landed in some tropic port with some hard-pronouncing name, they have, shoving off from the ship's side with their rifles and their packs, to get a toe-hold somewhere against two, five, ten times their number blazing away at them from behind sand-hills, or roof-tops, or a fine growth of jungle, it may be.
The others are not always as well equipped as our fellows and they may have no advance supply-base; but they know how to campaign. South of us are multitudes who will take a bag of corn, a water-bottle, and a pair of straw sandals and go shuffling over the hill trails for forty or fifty miles a day. And don't think they won't fight. They will. In countries where boys of twelve and thirteen pack a gun and go off with their fathers in the army, they probably do not worry overmuch about dying early.
From their retreats they like to sally forth at intervals and have a wallop at our fellows. There was a corporal in Haiti, on outpost, with half a dozen loyal natives acting as policemen with him. The native guards slept in barracks by themselves; our marine in a little low shack set up on posts a hundred yards away, with a native who acted as cook and general helper. The next outpost was six miles away.
A band of outlaws rushed the native police in their barracks at this post one night, and such as they did not shoot up they ran into the brush. Our corporal was awakened from sound slumber by the firing and shouting atthe barracks. A few volleys through the sides of his own shack waked him up good. He pulled on his trousers, taking time to fasten them only by one button at his waist. There was no time for socks; he pulled on his shoes, but had no time to lace them. A marine is trained to be neat in his attire, and so our corporal apologetically explained later that he had got no farther than that in his dressing when he heard them trying to burst in his front door.
The corporal sent his native cook to the rear door, while he fixed his bayonet to his rifle and stood guard over the front door. They had it all but stove in when he began cutting loose like three men with his rifle through the door. He killed a man there.
They then began to smash in the window nearest the door. He pried open the window with his bayonet, and got there before them. There was a big black fellow at the broken window. Our marine shot him dead, which gave him time to turn to the side window, which they had now broken in with the butts of their rifles. He got one there. There was another close up whom he hit but did not kill;and he dropped another one on the edge of the shadows outside. The cook, catching the spirit of the thing, killed one at the rear door on his own account.
The bandits had enough, and left. Next evening, when his officer came along with a squad, he found our corporal with his wounded under guard, his four dead ones in a neat row, and himself and his cook frying chicken in the twilight, cheerfully able to report that he had the situation well in hand.
They are a sharpshooting rifle outfit. Down in Vera Cruz during the late trouble a platoon of marines were at the foot of a street leading up from the water-front. They had cleaned up things all about them and thought they were in for a rest; and they wanted their rest—a hot tropic day with the heat rolling off the asphalt where they lay.
There came a ping! of a rifle bullet among them; and half a minute or so later another ping! They watched, and up the street they saw the head, arm, and shoulder of a man with a rifle come poking around the corner of a building, and ping! another one, and this time one of their men hit. A bad hombre, that one.
"Get him!" said their officer, and named two of them to get him.
The two men lay down on the asphalt; and when their friend next poked his head and shoulders around the corner, they fired. They saw the adobe plaster spatter from a corner of the building just under the man's chin; but that wasn't getting him. They jacked their sights up 50 yards, making it 800 yards; and when next the native showed around the corner they both got him—one plumb between the eyes.
It was good shooting; but there was no special comment after it. The talk would have come if they hadn't got him.
But it is not always a matter of fighting or shooting efficiency. There was that bad hombre, Juan Calcano of Santo Domingo—Juan the Terrible, the natives called him. Juan and his gang had a headquarters in the mountains. From there they came riding down into the valleys—shooting, robbing, standing quiet natives on their heads generally. Juan had quite a little territory under tribute. He came down into La Ramona, where was a custom-house and guard. He shot up the guards, took allthe gold in the custom-house, and rode away, saying: "Come after me who dares!"
The marines did not worry about the daring part; but he was too strongly intrenched for a direct attack. Your professional soldier, above all men, prefers not to throw away good men's lives. They considered matters; and one day they set out, three marine officers and thirty men, for Juan's country. One of those tropical hurricanes came along the same day they started, blew down trees, filled rivers to over their banks, and made them wade waist-deep in the mud of the roads. It was tough going, but it had its good side—there were not many people abroad.
They arrived near the village where Juan was known to be. An American marine would not have stood much chance to get back if Juan had known one was around; but one of the officers rigged up as a mule trader and went looking for Juan. He found him, taking it easy until the roads after the storm should become passable, and allow himself and his men to sashay into the valley again.
All kinds of people—white, and black, and brown—came Juan's way to do business—to buymules and horses, for instance. In the course of his travels in the valley Juan had helped himself to some very fine mules and horses. Along comes this man this day—American, English, French, Spanish, who knows? Or cares? He talked money—cash—for a good pair of mules. No old spavined creatures, but young, strong, sound ones.
Yes, Juan had just such a pair of mules. Oh, a superb young pair! He would see. Truly yes. Would the stranger señor come into his house so that Juan might speak more confidentially of them? The stranger would. And did. But before Juan could unload all he had to say about his mules the mule buyer drew a large service automatic and slipped Juan out to where thirty-two marines, officers and men, were in hiding. And they put Juan in jail, and all it cost was one mule—not Juan's—drowned while crossing a stream during the hurricane.
The marines have a great fighting record; but the marines do more than fight. After all, men cannot be handling rifle and bayonet every waking minute—they would become abnormal creatures if they did, of use only in war time;and it would be a terrible world if war were our end and aim. The marines get aviation, search-light, wireless, telegraphic, heliograph, and other signal drill. They plant mines, put up telegraph and telephone lines in the field, tear down or build up bridges, sling from a ship and set up or land guns as big as 5-inch for their advance base work.
It is a belief with marines that the corps can do anything. Right in New York City is a marine printing plant with a battery of linotypes and a row of presses. They set their own type, write their own stuff (even to the poetry), draw their own sketches, do their own photography, their own color work—everything. Every man in that plant is a marine, enlisted or commissioned. Every one has seen service somewhere outside his country.
One was in a tropic country one time after an all-night march to a river where the ferry was a water-soaked bamboo raft. They had to wait until some native might happen along with a bull—or it might be a cow—to tow the raft across. After crossing the river twice in that day, the young marine commander halted on the bank and said: "That's sure notcrossing in a hurry if we had to. Might's well go to it and build a bridge right now."
They cut down trees, got a portable pile-driver from their transport, rigged it up and set to work. They hoisted the hammer—a good heavy one—and let it drop. Bam! she struck, and into the mud for about two feet went the pile. Fine! They hoisted the hammer again—four men hauling on pulley blocks did the hoisting—and let her go again. This time instead of a fine bam! the hammer went a fine splasho! into the river. The great heat and dampness of the place had warped the runways; almost every other time they let that hammer drop, it jumped the runways and into the river.
But that was all right. They could fish her out and hoist her up by man power again. It was when they left the solid bank and had to put out into the river that their troubles began. A pile-driver ought to have a pretty solid foundation. Ought to have! They took two dugout canoes, lashed them together, put a bamboo deck across, set their pile-driver on the deck and turned to again. It made a kind of a wabbly base; besides hauling the hammerout every time it jumped into the river, they had to see that it didn't come bouncing down atop of their own heads or through the canoe deck. However, they were getting action. They finished driving the piles and setting up the stringers.
For their bridge floor they laid down wood shingles, and over that a mat made out of woven bamboo strips. For a top deck? Well, it was a coral island and the roads of that country were of pounded coral; they put a top dressing of pounded coral across the bridge.
And then the young marine commander looked her over and figured on the dimensions of his struts and stringers, and said: "Some class! She'll stand a two-ton load." And then along came a steam-roller from off the transport, and the roller weighed five tons and it was important that it be passed across. "Go ahead," said the marine commander—"only I hope you can swim!" And they all camped on the bank to watch. The steam-roller man was an optimist and a literary person: "You may have builded better than you know, captain!" The bridge settled down another foot, but the roller got across, and back and overmany more times; which set the younger marines to standing on the bank and saying: "That's us—bridge builders!"
The fight in the shack, the capture of Calcano, the sharpshooting at Vera Cruz, the building of that coral-floored bridge, are not set down here as wonderful stunts. They are set down because the writer happened to bump into them during a casual hour's inspection of their records. Scores of more heroic or ingenious samples could be served up by anybody who cared to dig deep into the records. These are detailed here, because they could be briefly told and at the same time show the marine's characteristic qualities: courage, ingenuity, technic, and industry.
Here we might mention that it is not in itself an act of war to land marines on foreign soil. It was sending ashore the bluejackets at Vera Cruz that made it an act of war. To protect American lives and property in Nicaragua a battalion of marines landed there a few years ago. They had some sharp fighting, but it was not an act of war. Do you begin to see him as a diplomatic asset? And perhaps why all this landing action comes his way? Mostof us have probably forgotten the details of that Nicaraguan landing; but—unless they have been jacked out lately—a company of those marines are still there, looking out for American interests. Only a company, but still hanging on.
Courage, ingenuity, industry—they need them all. Most of us will probably have to stop to remember that the marines who landed in Haiti and Santo Domingo are still there. And running things in their usual efficient fashion. There was the usual fighting to get a toe-hold, the usual fighting to retain place, the usual establishing of outposts, with the usual killed and wounded already probably forgotten by most of us. Perhaps they are too far away to make absorbing newspaper items; perhaps it is the Big War overshadowing all else.
In Haiti and Santo Domingo it was the old story of political factions, each faction having its own little gang of fighting men till our fellows came in and ran most of them into the hills. When the marines took charge they found that pretty much everything on the island had gone to wrack. As, for instance, under the old French régime there had beensome splendid roads in Haiti, but now they were hardly more than sewers in the towns and a drainage for the hill slopes of the country.
The marines repaired the roads; not always using the picks and shovels themselves, but seeing to it that somebody did, paying a living wage for such work to the natives. Sometimes bandits—who are quite often gentle creatures when out of training—captured bandits were allowed to quit jail to do useful work in this line. The marines installed sanitary methods, saw that courts of justice were resumed, marine officers themselves serving as justices until they found natives who could do that service. Likewise they collected and disbursed taxes.
Above all, they did away with the old reign of terror, when no man's life was safe if he happened to be on the wrong side. When the bandits were running around unchecked, it was not safe for a whole family to go to market together. Generally the women went to sell their little produce, while the men stayed behind to guard the little property at home. Now—the natives speak of the wonder of it—the roads on market-days are crowded with both men and women.
At first they had distrust of the marine; not altogether because he was a foreigner (the tropical people probably are less distrustful of us than we of them)—he was an armed soldier. But they learned to know him, and now the native salutes and smiles without effort at the marine in passing. When one particular marine officer left there to come home recently, crowds of native men, women, and children came down, some to weep, but all to wish him Godspeed in going.
The marine is sometimes termed soldier and sailor too, which is not correct. He is not a sailor and does not claim to be. When not in barracks ashore he lives aboard some war-ship afloat; and on shipboard he does certain guard work and handles the secondary batteries. But he does not have to sailorize; the bluejacket takes care of that part, and takes care of it well. The notion that a marine must qualify as a sailor aboard ship has probably cost the corps many a prospective recruit.
To call him a seagoing soldier is more nearly correct. When it is not an act of war to land marines on foreign soil, it is good business tokeep them where landings can be quickly made with them. So his being kept aboard ship, perhaps. Bluejackets have taken part in landing-parties, too, but it is not to black the bluejacket's eye to say that it is not his regular job. The bluejacket's work is aboard ship—on the bridge, in magazines, in turrets, below decks. Advance shore work is the marine's specialty, and he goes to it pretty much as a man with a dinner-pail goes to work in the subway.
He is the first to land, the last to leave, and to name the places where he has seen service—well, one of them wrote a song once.
"From the hills of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli," it began. But he has seen more than Mexico or the Mediterranean since. He could now say:
"From the hills of Montezuma to the gates of old PekingHe has heard the shrapnel bursting, he has heard the Mauser's ping!He has known Alaskan waters and the coral roads of Guam,He has——"
"From the hills of Montezuma to the gates of old PekingHe has heard the shrapnel bursting, he has heard the Mauser's ping!He has known Alaskan waters and the coral roads of Guam,He has——"
But it's like calling a roll—Egypt, Algeria, Tripoli, Abyssinia, Mexico, China, Japan, Korea, Cuba, Porto Rico, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, Santo Domingo, Alaska, the Philippines, Formosa, Sumatra, Hawaii, Samoa, Guam—like calling the roll of tropic countries and a few less warm to say where he has been.
He has been most everywhere, done most everything. Did you ever see any mounted marines? There is a guard of mounted marines right now with the legation in Peking; and once a platoon of marines, on duty in Africa, not being able to get big enough horses, rode camels through the wilds of Abyssinia to the palace of old Menelik.
In speaking here of the marines, no man or officer has been named. That is done of a purpose. In talking of the corps, from the topsiders down—generals, colonels, majors, captains lieutenants, and enlisted men—one fact stuck out: They all played up the corps. All individuals—officers and men—were made subordinate to the corps. So here, taking the tip, no names are named. A soldier speaks of his regiment, a bluejacket of his ship. The Marine Corps is made up of companies, regiments,battalions, divisions; but it is the corps of which the marine always speaks.
If you ask the members of any other outfit to name the model military unit, they may name their own branch of the service first; but if they do, it is almost a sure bet that they will name the United States Marine Corps next. When they do not name themselves first, they name the marines first. And this does not apply to outfits in this country alone.
By the look of things now, there probably will be plenty of war before we are done. If any young fellow is wishful to be in the middle of it, we would say: Consider the marines. You may not see them mentioned every morning in the press reports, but be sure of this—they are there and on the job.
A young fellow reading all this stuff about the doings of our destroyers might be inclined to look on the navy as pure adventure, which would not be to get it quite right. The adventure is there, but there is something more.
The navy will take a young man, feed and clothe him, give him a good all-round training, and while he is yet in middle age retire him with at least $60 a month for the rest of his life. No matter how low his rating has been, that $60 a month is certain after his thirty years of service; while, if he has shown moderate intelligence and ambition, he can count on close to $100 a month, and this without his having ever been a commissioned officer. The years after his retirement he may spend as he pleases—go into business, get another job, and make another wage on top of his pension. He can go to jail if he prefers: whatever he does, always there is that sheet-anchor of a pension to windward.
Apart from the fighting end of it, most of us possibly do not know just what navy life means to-day. We all know that man-of-war's men no longer lie out on rolling yard arms to reef salt-crusted sails in gales of wind; but in what else lies the difference? Some of us, possibly, do not know that.
The navy still wants men with the seagoing instinct—men who can sailorize, who can hand, splice, and steer; but more than ever the navy is looking for men who can do other things. The navy wants ship-fitters, blacksmiths, plumbers, electricians, wireless operators, carpenters, boiler-makers, painters, printers, store-keepers, bakers, cooks, stewards, drug clerks; even as it wants gunners, boatmen, quartermasters, sailmakers, firemen, oilers, and it will take clarinet, trombone, and cornet players and the like for the ship's band.
If a man has no trade the navy will teach him one. There are navy schools for electricians, shipwrights, ship-fitters, carpenters, painters, coppersmiths, ship's cooks, bakers, stewards, and musicians. There are schools where yeomen (ship's clerks) are taught all about departmental papers; there is a HospitalCorps school; an aeronautic school; a school for deep-sea diving. (There are no schools for blacksmiths or boiler-makers; these must have mastered their trades before enlistment.)
When a young fellow enlists he is sent to one of several naval training-stations. Here they are quartered in barracks—well-aired, well-lighted, well-heated buildings. At one place, where the climate is mild, the boys sleep in barracks in bungalows with upper sides of canvas, which are rolled down to let in sun and air in fine weather and laced up against bad weather.
At all training-stations there are mess-halls, reading-rooms, libraries; also gymnasiums, athletic fields, and ball parks. At all stations there are setting-up drills, gymnastic, swimming and signal exercises, ship and boat training. The men go on hikes, fight sham battles, dig trenches. Line-officers give them advice which will be of use to them on shipboard later; service doctors and chaplains hand them hygienic and moral truths that will be of use to them anywhere at any time.
A recruit goes from the training-school to a cruising ship, where he may find himself—according to his work—doing watch duty four hours on to eight hours off; or working at hours like a man ashore—turning to at eight or nine o'clock and knocking off at four or five or six o'clock in the afternoon.
War-ships formerly meant close living quarters; and ships formerly went off on cruises on which the men sometimes did not set foot on shore for six months or a year, and quite often they had to go for months without taste of fresh meat or vegetables. Those days are gone. Ships still make long cruises from home, but they do not keep the sea as they used to. Service regulations require that men now be given a run ashore once in three months; and "beef boats" travel with all fleets.
The everlasting holystoning of wooden decks and the dim lanterns hung at intervals from low-hanging beams—they are gone. The only dim lanterns now are the "battle-lanterns" in use at night war practice; and they are swung to steel bulkheads by electric wires. Quarter-decks, forecastle heads, and bridges are still planked on the big ships, and such do still have to be holystoned on special days; but the great stretches between decks are now laid inlinoleum on the hard steel itself; electric lights are all over the ship, and, as for the low beams, the new big ships are so high-girdered that hammock-hooks on the berth-deck have to be made extra long so the men won't have to get stepladders to turn in. A battleship nowadays is about 600 feet long, 100 feet wide, has seven or eight decks, with turrets, bridges, military masts, and smoke-pipes topside. Between decks are magazines, storerooms, engine-rooms, boiler-rooms, dynamo-rooms, mess-rooms, ice-rooms, repair-shops, staterooms, office-rooms, sick-bays, galleys, laundries, pantries—but only ship-constructors can tell you offhand how many hundreds of compartments are below decks of a present-day big war-ship.
She is a great workshop, an office-structure, a big power-plant, a floating hotel—and a few other things. But above all she is meant to be a home for ten or twelve hundred officers and men.
A man may not be given duty on a battleship or battle cruiser; he may be sent to a scout cruiser or a beef boat or a gunboat, which, being smaller, will bounce and roll around more in heavy weather and not offer so much roomto move around in; but he will get used to the bouncing around, and always he will find some variety and some comfort in his daily life.
That item of comfort might as well be counted in as important. It is something to know that, no matter what else happens, there are hot meals waiting a man three times a day, and a dry change of clothing, and a dry hammock to turn into nights. Even on deck duty in bad weather a man can get into slicker, rubber boots, and rain-hat, and at the worst be almost comfortable.
Navy life is not meant to be a perpetual entertainment—not though they do hold regular smokers on the quarter-decks of the big ships. To lie for months off a tropic port waiting for something to happen—that is not exhilarating; and coaling ship, even with the band playing—that is no joy. But the watching of tropic ports passes; and the ship has to steam many a mile before she must be coaled again. So, taking it in the long perspective, it is a moderately varied life, an outdoor life, and under hygienic conditions of the best. Right now, war with us, there is going to be some danger; but we are assuming that any man whothinks of joining the navy is prepared for a little danger.
A man may enlist in the navy up to thirty-five years of age, provided he is at least 5 feet 4 inches tall, weighs 128 pounds, has a 33-inch chest, possesses normal vision, a moderate number of sound teeth, is free from disease or deformity, and is an American citizen. Sometimes men shy on some measurement are passed if above average otherwise. A boy seventeen (the youngest enlistment age) must be 5 feet 2 inches and weigh 110 pounds. When a boy or a man enlists he goes at once on the payroll. With his pay goes a clothing allowance sufficient to cover all service demands; with his pay also goes nourishing and abundant food.
Enlistments are of four years for men. A boy's enlistment runs to his majority. A man may work up to be a C. P. O. (chief petty officer) in his first enlistment. The navy is full of men who have done that. During this war many a recruit should make his C. P. O. quickly, for there is nothing in the Regulations to prevent a recruit from making his C. P. O. overnight. The habit of most officers is to rateup good men in their divisions as fast as vacancies will permit.
A C. P. O.'s base pay may run up to $77 a month. With re-enlistment that base pay is increased. A man re-enlisting without delay gets a bounty of four months' pay. (Figure that extra re-enlistment money—four months' pay every four years, the same with interest at the navy savings-account rate of 4 per cent—and see what it amounts to after thirty years' service.) That extra re-enlistment money is not figured into the pension probabilities, as stated in the beginning of this article. Consider that and then consider how many men have to work until they are too old to work any further and who, after all their years of labor, go on the scrap-heap without a dollar against the poverty of their old age.
Besides the base pay of a man's rating there is extra money for men doing special work. (Neither has this been reckoned in the pension possibilities.) Certain gun-pointers, gun-captains, coxswains, stewards, and cooks get extra money up to $10 a month. Men in submarines get $1 extra for every day their boat submerges up to $15 a month. Men acting as mail-clerksdraw up to $30 a month extra; ship's tailors up to $20 a month extra. Men in the Flying Corps get 50 per cent more than the base pay their rating calls for. Every man in the service draws a small extra sum for good conduct.
A chief petty officer is not the highest rating of the enlisted service. There is a most efficient body of men called warrant-officers, who wear a sword, are called "Mr.," and draw up to $2,400 a year. There are warrant boatswains, gunners, machinists, carpenters, pharmacists, and pay-clerks. But they must remain in service, even as most commissioned officers, till they are sixty-four, before they draw their pension of three-quarters pay. Also, like commissioned officers, they get no clothing allowance and have to pay for their food.
The matter of becoming a commissioned officer may interest the recruit. One hundred appointments may be made to Annapolis every year from among the younger enlisted men of the navy. Young fellows who wish to try for this are given special opportunities for study. The proviso that an applicant must be under twenty years of age and have been at least one year in service to make Annapolis is going tobar the way to some. For such there is another way—warrant. A warrant boatswain, gunner, or machinist of four years' standing and still under thirty-five years of age may take an examination for ensign. Twelve warrant-officers may be made ensigns annually. If they pass, they thereafter go on up exactly as any Annapolis graduate. A warrant pay-clerk may go up to be junior paymaster, where he will rank with an ensign.
The foregoing is for the business or ambitious side. Somebody may ask: Will the young fellow who looks on the navy as a business proposition make a good fighting man?
Well, in the judgment of men who study the game, almost any young fellow you meet along the street has it in him to make a good fighting man. The fighting habit is more a habit of mind than of body. Habituating the mind to the fighting game is what makes our sailors, soldiers, and marines do the right thing almost automatically in crises; and this almost automatically correct action makes for the greater safety of shipmates or comrades in time of peril.
In this book only the work of our destroyersin this war has been spoken of. That is because only our destroyers have come in contact with enemy ships; but all along the line the personnel is of equal caliber.
Our navy is crowded with men who will face any danger. Some years ago one of our battleships was on the battle-range, with bags of powder stowed in her turrets to save time in loading and firing the guns. A spark got to the bags of powder. There was an explosion and a fire. Directly underneath was the handling-room. Burning pieces of cloth fell from the turret down into the handling-room. The crew of that handling-room could have jumped into the passageway, made their way up a ladder, and so on to the free and safe air of the open deck. What they did was to stand by to stamp out what fire they could.
Leading from the handling-room were the magazines. The doors of the magazines were open. Men jumped into the magazines and buttoned the keys of the bulkhead doors so that there would be no crevice for sparks. In doing that they locked themselves in; and once in they had to stay in. Above them, they knew, was a turret full of men and officers deadand dying; they knew that fire was raging around them, too, and that the next thing would be for the people outside to flood the magazines. The magazines were flooded; when things were under control and the doors opened, the water in the magazines was up to the men's necks.
While that was going on below decks, in the turret were other men and officers, including the chaplain, not knowing what was going on below, and expecting every moment to be blown up into the sky; but there they were, easing the last moments of the men who were not already dead. Thirty all told were killed in the turret. All concerned behaved well, but no better than they were expected to behave.
A few years ago there was a destroyer off Hatteras. It was before daybreak of a winter's morning in heavy weather. A boiler explosion blew out her side from well below the water-line clear up through to her main deck. Men were killed by the explosion; others were badly scalded. A steam burn is an agonizing thing, yet some of these scalded men went back into that hell of a boiler-room and hauled out shipmates who, to their notion, were morebadly burned than themselves. One such rescuer died of his burns. The hole in the deck and top side of that destroyer was twelve feet across, yet her commander and crew got her to Norfolk under her own steam. Commander and crew behaved well, but no better than they were expected to behave.
There is a chief boatswain in the navy who had the duty of taking a ship's steamer with a crew to look after the ship's target at battle practice. A target is a frame of canvas set up on a raft of logs. The duty of the steamer was to stand off to one side and make a record of the hits.
This boatswain likes to joke, to try out new men. On the run from the ship he called the roll and said: "Now, boys, in this work one of you will have to stay on the raft to count the hits. Of course it is dangerous work. I won't say that it isn't. The man going may not come back. The chances are"—he eyed them one after another—"that whoever goes will never come off the raft alive. Now, I can name the one who will have to do that work. But I don't want to have to name him. I'll let you draw lots."
He took a sheet of paper and cut it into strips. His crew—all apprentice boys, all fresh from the training-school—drew the slips. The lad who drew the short slip was no better or braver to look at than most of the others. He looked at his slip of paper and then in a sort of wonder at the sea and sky.
He came back to his short slip. His lips trembled. He prayed to himself. Then he went down into his blouse pocket and fished out a stub of a pencil. He was whiter than ever, and shaking. "Can I have a sheet of paper, sir?"
"What do you want a sheet of paper for?"
"I'd like, sir, to write a note to my mother before I go."
To pick out a few isolated instances from service records and shout: "There is the proof of general efficiency, of courage, of—" whatnot—that would be idle. These were not taken from the service records. Officers and men in the turret explosion, in the destroyer accident, in the raft incident, are mentioned here because the writer, at different times, has cruised with them.
They all behaved well; but no better than they were expected to.
When I asked the boatswain in the raft case if he expected the boy to quit, he said: "Quit! They never quit."
This talk of heroism and pensions in the same breath may not seem to jibe; somebody is going to wonder if the man who thinks of the money side of the navy in the beginning isn't going to think too much of it in the end. But there is a point of view which should be reckoned with, and a type of man, of a good fighting man, who should be listened to in this matter. Why should not a man who risks his life in his daily calling have the normal comforts and his family the ordinary necessities of life?
I know a fireman, an efficient, brave man—a man with a record. One night—we were in a drug store in a crowded city—he was answering the argument of a man working in a big factory.
Said the fireman: "You're making your five or six—yes, and eight—dollars a day, in lively times like now. All right. But the lively times will pass, and there'll come weeks when you won't make any four or five or six dollars a day, and there'll come weeks when you'll be on half-time. Average it up and you won't get anymore than I will in the long run. And when I'm through, when I'm fifty-five, I get a pension, and with a few good years left to me. And where are you then? Out on the street or some home for the aged—if they will take you.
"Save money as I go along? I don't figure on it—not with a family and trying to give them the kind of food they need and the little things that live boys and girls—especially girls—care as much for as the grub they eat and the clothes they wear. But if I do spend all my pay, my family are getting the good of it, I don't go into the discard at the end. And when I'm up on a shaky roof in a bad fire, maybe I'll be more ready to take a chance, knowing that if I go through and cripple myself, there's something coming to the wife and family after it."
The fireman's argument holds for the navy, except that in the navy they get through younger and with a bigger pension.
Is there any romance in the navy nowadays? Who can answer for all? Probably as much now as ever there was. Why should substituting smoke-pipes for spars, and propellers forsails, kill the thing that thrills us? I've seen men washing down decks of a tropic morning, and, ninety miles inland, old Orizaba showing his white head above the clouds; and some of those men thought it was slow work and others thought it was great.
On a scout cruiser to African ports, or a thousand miles up a Chinese river on a gunboat, among the South Sea Islands on a light cruiser, some men return with dumb lips and others can keep you awake till morning with the tales of what they've seen.
A nineteen-year-old big-gun pointer sits atop of his bicycle saddle, and the enemy fleet is swinging into range. Will it be like shooting clay pipes in a gallery or will a warmer wave go rolling through his veins as he presses the button?
Romance! Is it something always dead and gone, or something a man carries around with him?
Whatever it is, the navy is there to try it out, and no danger of starving while we try it.
Submarines have been cutting a large figure in this war. There is probably a general curiosity to know how they are operated. I know I was curious to know, and,Collier'shaving secured me permission from the Electric Boat Company, I went over to Cape Cod to take in a trial trip or two of some boats they were building for the British Government.
There was one all ready for sea.
Long and narrow, and modelled like a stretched-out egg she was, with one end of the egg running to a point by way of a stern, and the other flattened to an up-and-down wedge-like bow. A heavy black line marked her run.
Below her run she was tinted to the pale green of inshore waters, and to a grayish blue above. Everything above her deck, which was only a raised fore-and-aft platform for the crew to walk on, with countless little round scupper-holes in its sides—above the deck herconning-tower, and above that again her periscope casing—all were blue-gray.
The feeling of the morning was of heavy wind and rain or snow to come; and a hard, cold breath of the sea and a taste of the rain were already on us as we crossed the plank from the mother ship to the deck of the "sub" and, one after the other, fitted ourselves into the main hatchway and wiggled down into her.
Our submarine, from the inside, was an amazing collection of engines, tanks, gauges, tubes, pipes, valves, wheels, torpedoes, tube heads, electric registers, electric lights, and whatnot. A flat steel floor ran from the forward end to the engine-room aft. Between the floor and the arched deck overhead were three heavy steel bulkheads with heavy steel doors. A narrow iron skeleton ladder led up to her conning-tower; small steel rungs bolted to the casing showed the way to a square after-deck hatch.
When all the others of us were below, the captain came squeezing down from the conning-tower hatch and took his position at the periscope.
To the captain's left stood a man whose jobit was to hold the sub to the depth of water desired. This was the diving-rudder man, a most expert one, we were told, who had been known to hold a submerged sub at full speed to within six inches of one depth for two miles at a stretch. A thin brass scale and a curved tube of colored water with an air bubble in it helped out the diving-rudder man's calculations. The least deviation of the sub's course from the horizontal and these two instruments, lit up by electric lamps, showed it at once. There was a big dial, with a long green hand, which also marked the depth of the sub; but that was an insensitive and rather slow-acting gauge—all right for the crew to look at from half the length of the sub, but not fine or quick enough for the diving-rudder man.
He was the busy man while we were under water. The others could now and again grab a moment of relaxation from their tenseness, but while the sub was moving the diving-rudder man never took his eyes off the little brass scale with the electric light playing on it. Stop and consider that our sub had only to get a downward inclination of ever so little while running hooked-up under water, and in notime she would be below her lowest safety depth of 200 feet, where the pressure is 7 tons to every square foot of her hull. And should she collapse there would be no preliminary small leak by way of warning. She would go as an egg-shell goes when you crush it in your palm. Plack!—like that—and it would be all over. Above this same middle compartment, the smallest and most crowded of all, up through the grilled spaces of a steel grating, we could see the wide feet and boot-legs of the man who held the ship to her compass course; and for a wheel, we knew, he was holding a little metal lever about as long and thick as his middle finger, with a little black ball about as big as the ball of his thumb on the end of it.
To the right of the foot of the conning-tower ladder stood the ballast-tank man; and when the captain from the foot of his periscope gave the word—after first looking forward, aft, and to each side of him to see that all hands were at their proper stations—it was the ballast-tank man who went violently at once into action. He grabbed a big valve and gave it a twist; grabbed another and gave it a twist; and another, and one more; and, standing near by,we could hear—or thought we could—the in-rush of great waters.