do, from getting up a dance to rounding up a bandit. I was in Santo
Domingo with my company. Most of the men were recruits, pretty soft from
life in the barracks. We were ordered to a nearby post on the trail of a
desperado. Before us lay a march of about four or five days. A hike is
all right over level country that is fairly dry, but ours lay through a
series of marshes winding upward over a mountain.
We started off at a brisk pace and we didn't let up. There were patches
of land which sent us through mud up to our knees--our feet were never
dry day or night--but there was no kick coming about that. We were going
to reach our base at the time planned--no later.
The last day was the worst. We were on a level stretch at last, but
there was no shade, and the sun beat down like a ball of fire. Our wet
shoes dried and cracked on our feet--and we were blistered from heel to
toe. But that didn't prevent our making thirty miles that day or doing
the last four miles in forty-five minutes.
We were tired to death when we reached our destination. It was ten
o'clock at night. The men dropped where they halted, just about all in.
We hadn't been there fifteen minutes when word came to us of the bandit
we were rounding up. It seems he was in hiding in the hills about twenty
miles north of us. A woman brought us the tip. He had thrown her down
and she was taking her revenge in the usual way.
There was no mistaking her earnestness. There was just one thing to
do--go out after that rebel. I sent over to the men and asked for seven
volunteers. When the boys heard what was wanted, sixty per cent of the
whole company offered to go. They forgot they were tired, stiff,
sore--you couldn't hold them back!
I had the horses saddled and every one who could commandeer an animal
mounted one. Some of them had never been on a horse's back before, but
that did not stop them. They were off like a shot, the whole crowd of
them--thundering up that dark road in search of the outlaw.
They caught him, too, after an all-night ride, and they brought him back
with them. I tell you a good rest was coming to them after that. They
certainly needed it!
The men have a great pride in our service. They show it outwardly by
keeping themselves trim as a whistle. On shipboard each man is allowed a
bucket of water a day for his ablutions--no more. Well, a marine makes
that bucket go a long way; with it he washes himself, brushes his teeth,
cleans his clothes, and scrubs the deck--anyone who claims he can do
more than that with a bucket of water will have to show me!
And a marine takes his job seriously, whatever it is--yes, indeed. In
the little French towns in which they have been landed they have become
the traffic cops of the place. All the duties of a gendarme have been
assumed by them with neatness and despatch.
The marines decided that no bluejacket was to hold conversation with a
French girl. Once that was definitely passed upon they began enforcing
the law. A particularly happy young bluejacket had received a flower
from the hands of a little French maiden. She had pinned it to his coat.
Along came the marine while Jack Tar was trying to thank her in his very
best and limited French.
"Cut it out!" growled the marine.
"You beat it!" said the bluejacket.
In reply the marine quietly but quickly plucked off the flower to
emphasize his command. There was nothing else to do but to fight, and
the marine managed to beat up Jack mildly. Jack went to the ship's
doctor to have a stitch or two taken in his ear. He was still raging,
and vowed he'd get that marine as soon as he was out. The doctor stopped
stitching long enough to look up over his glasses.
"I wouldn't, if I were you," he said, "that marine was very gentle with
you. Next time he might do some real damage."
Yes, the sailor respects the marine as a majesty of the law. One slim,
young marine is enough to make a gay and irresponsible party of
bluejackets along the docks sit up and take notice.
There was a young sergeant by the name of Watson. He was a particularly
efficient chap. Seats were hard to get on the train going up to Paris,
and, when a party of army, navy and marine officers arrived at the
little station, we found that Watson had reserved seats for all of us.
On our return trip we were surprised to meet him at a station some
distance from the little town that he was policing. We asked him if he,
too, had been up to Paris.
"Yes, sir," he said. We asked him how it happened he was so far away
from his post.
[Illustration: "Stand by!"--getting ready for Fritz.]
"I went up on my own, sir," he told us calmly enough. "I got to thinking
that, perhaps, the bluejackets were starting something in Paris, and I
thought I'd take a run up just to see they weren't putting anything over
on the marine corps."
Evidently he found everything O. K. or he would have remained to adjust
it.
It was Watson who had such trouble making the French peasants clean up
their huts. Now, as everyone knows, the French peasant is an individual
who wishes to be left alone to tend his little patch of ground. It is
his own business if he has the cow beneath the same roof that covers
him, and if the chickens have the freedom of the house it is, after all,
an affair between himself and his poultry, so to speak. But not in
Watson's eyes. He had orders to clean up that town, and there were no
exceptions. Protests were in vain. He saw that sanitary conditions for
the first time prevailed, and not until the houses fairly shone, and the
streets resembled Spotless Town, did he relax and express himself.
"I see their point of view, of course, sir," he told me, "but if it
happens to be the wrong point of view there's nothing to do but to right
it."
The marines aren't beaten often at any sport, but when they are they
take it as a tragedy. A ship's crew had been trained to shoot. They knew
they could shoot, and, on landing, they challenged the marines to a
contest. The marines, under a grizzled old sergeant, long in the
service, were immensely proud of their skill on the range. They accepted
the challenge. They were dead sure of the outcome. There wasn't a nickel
within hailing distance that wasn't wagered!
The marines got on the range before the bluejackets. No advantage was
taken. Well, the bluejackets beat them at slow fire. They beat them at
rapid fire. They beat them on skirmish, which the marines had boasted
most about. Altogether, it was an unhappy day for the marines.
Next day the commander of the ship, rising very early, saw a sight which
fascinated him beyond words. On the range were the crack shots of the
Marine Corps. Glowering above them stood the sergeant, his beard fairly
bristling with anger, his back ram-rod straight. He had the men all
out, and he was teaching them, with a thoroughness incomparable, the
rudiments of rifle practice.
With stony faces the men submitted to the insult of being returned to
the kindergarten of shooting. Again and again they went through the
manual. It was a just punishment for permitting bluejackets to defeat
them!
"Join the Marines--and see the world"--and to do that our boys pride
themselves on extra quick obedience to orders, for there is no telling
when an expedition will be pulled up in a hurry and sent to the other
end of the globe. But whether they go or whether they stay, they accept
it all calmly. The words of the little marine, who was plying his shovel
one hot day, seem to sum up their contentment. He had been shoveling
dirt since early morning. The sun was warm, and he paused in his task to
mop his face. He looked up with a grin.
"I enlisted to see the earth," he said; "and here I am, digging it up,
turning it over, and looking at it! . . ."
BUGLER COLBY SPEAKS:
THE WAY WITH THE FRENCHIES
I'M a home-loving man. I don't ask anything better of life than my
little house in the country, with the wife bustling about and the kids
waiting for a game of ball or a tramp in the woods.
Yes, I'm a peace-lover, but I'm the kind of peace-lover who wouldn't
quit this war a minute before the German empire is wiped off the map.
I'm going to stand by until that day comes to pass--as come it will!
I'd like to tear the heart out of every German for the work they have
done to the French and British and Scotch and Irish--oh, I know what I'm
talking about. Yes, you do, if you stay in Havre long enough. You can
get all your facts first hand.
Just wander down to the station every other evening when the big
seven-thirty express thunders in with her load of returned British
prisoners. Yes, you can see with your own two eyes what German methods
are, and I tell you it makes a man, who is a man, ready to give the last
drop of blood in him to stamp out a nation that treats men that way--and
what's worse--women and children. . . .
I'd been in the navy five years as a bugler. You are on the bridge all
the time, standing by for duty. We were assigned to one of the prettiest
yachts afloat. It was originally the famous pleasure boat of a great New
York multi-millionaire. She certainly was a nifty craft--about three
hundred feet long, almost as big as a destroyer, and graceful as a swan
in the water.
There must have been great parties aboard her in the old days, and I
wonder how she felt when they knocked out her mahogany staterooms and
hauled down her real lace curtains and tore up her fine saloons, for
transport duty.
Nothing classy about her then--just dirt and grease and the smell of
pork and beans. As for her color, she was gray, same as any little
ten-cent tug. But her lines didn't change. She was like a fine lady who
takes off her ball gown and puts on rags, and in spite of it you can
tell she's a fine lady through and through.
We carried the first American troops to land in France. The very first.
That was making history, wasn't it? It seemed right and fit that the
proud little yacht should have the glory of taking the first batch of
Yankees to foreign shores.
It was a rough trip, though, and we felt sorry for the boys whose sea
travels had been limited to the ferryboat between Hoboken and New York.
Rough weather on shipboard is no joke. You can talk about the hardships
of the trenches, but how about being aboard a pitching vessel, when you
can't even get a light in your galley ranges, which means no food can be
cooked and a steady diet of hard tack and bully beef?
Oh, we hadn't any kick coming. It was all part of the game, but we did
wish the sea would calm down a bit and the fog lift. I never saw such a
fog in all my days. From the minute we left, it wrapped itself around us
like a damp blanket. You could hardly see your hand before your face.
We didn't need a smoke curtain that trip--nature provided one for us,
all made to order.
Our first taste of excitement was on the thirteenth day out. We were
just wishing for something, when we saw, through the mist that had let
up a little, a strange ship ahead of us. We signalled her to make her
colors, but instead she started off as though she were trying to run
away. That promised hot excitement, so we went after her. We chased her
for five hours--now losing her in the fog, now sighting her again,
gaining on her inch by inch. We were sure she was a blamed German
merchant vessel trying to sneak back to her base, and we had the guns
primed to send her straight to the place all Germans come from.
When we got within a few hundred yards of her we hauled up the battle
ensign on the foremast. We meant business. The gunners stood by. Just as
they expected to hear the command, "Fire when ready," up came the
British Jack to her mast!
Say, but we felt foolish, chasing one of our own allies all over the
broad Atlantic. We asked her why the deuce she hadn't made her colors
before, and she signalled back that she was under the impression we were
an enemy raider.
We calmed down after that and made port without pursuing the rest of the
British navy to cover.
The base we established was the first naval base in France. We kind of
like to think that some day, when our grandchildren cross the Atlantic
on a pleasure trip--it having been made safe by us from those German
vipers--they'll hunt out the little harbor, tucked away in a corner,
where their grandfathers landed that June day, and went ashore with the
first handful of American soldiers to set foot in France. They were
there for just one purpose--to show what red, white and blue blood could
do toward making the world a safe place to live in.
No fogs in France--just yellow sunshine and soft air and eager crowds
waiting for us with open arms. Flags everywhere. It certainly made you
catch your breath to see your own star-spangled banner flying from the
windows of the little French town.
We went ashore pretty flush. Some of us had as much as a couple of
hundred dollars, I suppose. We made our way to the railroad station. We
wanted to get up to the "gay Paree" we'd been hearing about all our
lives. We couldn't believe we were within hailing distance of it. It had
always been a bright red spot on the map that we hoped to visit some
day--and here we were just a few hours away from the liveliest city of
Europe.
We made for the railroad station double quick. It was there I had my
first real taste of French big-heartedness. In the crowd I noticed a
beautifully dressed woman. She had all the French zip about her, but
when she saw us she began to cry, and she just let the tears roll down
her cheeks as though she didn't know she was doing it.
She stepped forward as we were passing, and the crowd let her through.
They seemed to know who she was, for they whispered together and
pointed her out. She hurried toward us and began to talk in broken
English.
"You must be careful," she begged us. "All this money you have--it may
tempt some of these poor people. Put it away, I implore you. Use only as
much as you need. . . ."
Then she caught my hands. "Oh, how glad I am that you have come at last!
How I bless you and your country!"
She bought our tickets to Paris for us and saw us safely on the train,
putting us wise to the ropes. Nothing was too much trouble for her to do
for us. I tell you we never forgot it. Even after the train pulled out
of the station we could see her standing a little apart from the rest,
waving her lace handkerchief to us until we rounded a curve and lost her
from sight.
Now that we were started on our journey we felt great and I began to
tune up. I can sing a little, my mates say, so I let out a few songs
that made us think of home. While I was giving them "'Way Down upon the
Suwanee River" the door of the compartment opened and a big chap in a
British uniform stood there grinning.
"Don't stop, boys," he said. "It sounds bully!"
It was Paul Rainey, the great hunter. Say, we certainly were glad to
meet him, not only because he spoke our language, but because we knew
from hearsay that he wasn't afraid of man or beast, and that's the kind
of a fellow you like to know. He stayed with us the rest of the journey,
and as he was to be in Paris a day on his way to Belgium, he took us
with him to the American Ambulance Quarters, where he was stationed.
We arrived there in the evening. Next day he had to go on, so we found
ourselves wandering around the Place de la Concorde and the Place
Vendôme and the Champs Elysées without compass or rudder.
It was a pretty city, but all of a sudden I felt awfully blue.
Everywhere you turned somebody hollered something at you in a language
you couldn't make head or tail of--even the hack drivers and little kids
in the street talked French.
I took a room at the Continental, and say, they almost robbed the shirt
off me. Next morning I was wishing so hard for home you could almost
hear me coming down the street. I found the American Express office and
lingered there listening to people speaking English. I wondered where
the gay part of "Paree" came in. It looked busy and prosperous and
warlike to me--but gay? Nothing doing.
Just then someone spoke in my mother tongue and I whirled to see a
French army officer at my elbow.
"If you have not already seen the sights of Paris, it will give me great
pleasure to show them to you," he said.
I hadn't, so he proceeded to do the honors, and, like everything the
French do--be it big or small--he made a thorough job of it. He was my
host for two days and a half, and I'll guarantee I saw every little
thing in Paris from the Apaches up. I wouldn't have missed that
sight-seeing trip for all the gold in Europe. That's the French for you.
Their hearts and their homes were opened wide to us. I bet there isn't
a Yank living who wouldn't fight to the last breath for them.
Next I fell in with two French privates on furlough. They took me home
with them and to show my gratitude I sang our songs for them and taught
them some real live United States slang. They were good pupils, too, and
were proud as peacocks of startling a crowd by calling out, "Wash you
step!"
It was from them that I bought my best little souvenir--a German
officer's helmet one of the Frenchies had picked up after shooting his
man. It was a peach of a helmet, slashed across the patent leather
crown, and still stained with blood. Inside was stamped the officer's
name and regiment. He was of the Death Head Huzzars--the Kaiser's own.
I asked Frenchie if he didn't want to keep it, but he shrugged. He could
get plenty more, I made out he meant. He was going back to the front
soon; they'd be picking helmets off the trees once the French got really
started. So I bought it from him for forty francs.
[Illustration: "Before taking"--a dose of military discipline makes them
"Topnotch Americans."]
Our boat lay in the harbor. They were coaling it, and, once ready, we
started our work of patrolling the coast. It was on one early afternoon
that we got sudden orders to put to sea, and we started out at a fast
clip. Somebody passed the word that we were on a rescue party and to
keep a sharp watch out for rafts or lifeboats.
Rescue party! Ever see men who have faced death in a leaky boat all
through a black night? I'll never forget their faces--something was
stamped there that will never come out--a grim, strained, white look you
don't like to see. The few boats we spotted bobbed about like corks on
the waves. The men were too numb to pull on their oars. They had been
rowing all night. Some of them were half dressed.
Once we pulled them in and helped fit them out with clothes we heard
their story. They had been struck amidships by a blasted torpedo along
about midnight. Their boat was a yacht something like our own; the
impact of the shell blew her to a thousand bits. The men asleep were
killed like rats in a trap. The few on deck managed to launch some
boats and rafts before they were sucked down with the vessel.
That midnight attack made our score against the Hun a little higher, not
that I needed any incentive to hate him another notch. I had a vision
stamped on my mind I could never forget. I could still see that black
snake of a train crawling into the crowded station at Havre--hear the
long-drawn grinding of the brakes and hissing of steam--see the guards
keeping back the mob surging forward for a chance to welcome home its
sons. There was endless noise and confusion--but occasionally you would
find a silent watcher--a woman and sometimes a man, who stood
motionless, staring at the cars--muscles taut, waiting for God knows
what horror.
Yes, you don't forget the first sight of the returned prisoners, in
their worn uniforms. White-faced boys looking about eagerly for the face
of friends--friends at last, after three long years! No, you never
forget those battle-scarred men, with here an arm gone, or a leg--or
worse, the eyes blinded forever.
Oh, my God! you dream of it nights afterward; you see that endless line
of maimed and broken men. . . .
Hate Germans! I tell you I'm a peace-loving man and all I want is my
little home, with the wife and the kids, but do you think I'd stop
fighting in this war while there is yet a drop of blood left in me? Not
much! I love my own too well to let them suffer as those French and
Belgian women have--that's the answer!
ENSIGN STAFFORD SPEAKS:
A YANKEE STANDS BY
I HAVEN'T anything to tell about. Being torpedoed is an old story now.
Any number of men have met Fritz on the way over, and, if they haven't
been quick enough, he's managed to take a shot at them, but it isn't
often we fail to get a chance to return fire. Just let a periscope stick
its head out of water, and I'll show you action on deck that would make
a Kansas cyclone look tame--not that I've seen one. My home is in the
East. The best we can boast about is a blizzard or two, and a sixty-mile
gale.
I enlisted as a signalman, and was assigned to duty on a merchant ship.
There were two other U. S. N. signalmen aboard her, and we managed to
make the time fly talking about home and the people we knew.
One of our prize ways of speeding up a long evening on shipboard was to
swap notes on the summers we had spent. We all three, at different
times, had "vacated" in the Maine woods, almost at the identical spot,
and, do you know, we hailed the fact with something very close to
triumph!
I guess we three hashed over every little incident of our trips. We
found we had had the same close-mouthed Indian guide, that we had all
fished on the same bank of a little lost lake, that we had all camped on
the same site in a clearing by the water. But when we discovered that we
had used the same sort of tackle, and the same-sized rifles, we were
almost "moved to tears," as the lady novelists put it.
Those things, small as they seem, are the most important things in the
world when you are far away from home. They certainly make men
inseparable, and, aside from the fact that Dick Chamberlain and Tod
Carlin and I were the only Americans aboard, we became, from the first,
the best pals in the world.
We were proceeding as flagship of a convoy, and, as such, we kept an
extra sharp lookout for trouble, once we were in the zone.
It was three o'clock on the afternoon of a clear September day. The sea
was smooth and we were all on deck. The sky was so blue and the sun so
bright that it seemed as though the lurking submarine we were always
expecting was a myth like the sea serpent you read about but never see.
Night time is the time you are looking for an attack, but broad daylight
always seems to dispel thoughts of danger. However, the danger was
there.
We were struck close by the engine rooms. All I remember clearly was the
terrific roar and splintering of wood, and the sudden listing of the
ship. The order rang out to clear the ship and the crew immediately took
to the life-boats in the event of rapid settling.
We three found ourselves assigned to the same life-boat. There was a
slight delay in lowering it. That delay was fatal. The explosion that we
had been expecting blew our boat to pieces and we found ourselves
struggling in the water.
The officers' boat had been lowered and it drew up alongside of us. They
helped us in. The captain was all for going back to his ship. He was
sure there was no immediate danger of her sinking. The water-tight
compartments fore and aft were holding and he called for volunteers to
go aboard and help in an attempt to beach the ship.
By this time the other life-boats were beyond hailing distance and we
found out afterward that the men in them, including some British
gunners, were picked up later by patrol boats.
Of course, all the occupants of the remaining boats volunteered. I
didn't particularly like the looks of the ship, as her well docks were
on the sea level, but she had stopped settling and we followed the rest
aboard.
It seemed queer to be on her again. There were just a handful of us, the
rest of our mates were out of sight, bound for none of us knew where. It
was like returning to a ghost ship, she lay so still on the waters,
rocking softly, the waves washing over her deck.
There was plenty of work for all hands--it didn't give us time to think.
I was glad of that. Dick and Tod and I joked a bit about what the people
back home would say now, if they could see us up to our ankles in water
on a sinking ship. Afternoon changed to evening. Still we saw no sign of
help coming toward us. However, just so long as Fritz stayed away we
were satisfied. When it got good and dark, though, we weren't quite so
pleased. It helps, I can tell you, to be able to see your hand before
your face. You feel a lot happier then.
Late that night we made out something coming toward us. We weren't sure
whether it was friend or foe. It gave us a bad few minutes, then we made
out the towboats who had come to our assistance. We were so glad to see
them that we almost cheered out loud, which is one thing you don't do in
the Zone.