“Massachusetts,” replied Miss Lane coldly.
Boone Cruttenden offered a laboured expression of regret, and proceeded:
“Then they didn’t like saluting, or obeying orders on the jump. Neither
did I, for that matter. It seemed undemocratic.”
“So it is,” affirmed Miss Lane sturdily.
“Well, I don’t know. We certainly made much quicker progress with
our training once we had gotten the idea. Our instructors were very
particular about it, too—both French and British. There was an English
sergeant—well, the boys used to come running a hundred yards to see him
salute an officer. I tell you, it tickled them to death, at first. Next
thing, they were all trying to do it too.”
“What was it like?”
Boone rose from his seat upon the deck, stiffened his young muscles, and
offered a very creditable reproduction of the epileptic salute of the
British Guardsman.
“Like that,” he said.
“I’m not surprised they ran,” commented Miss Lane.
“Still,” continued Boone appreciatively, “that sergeant was a bird. At
the start, we regarded him as a pure vaudeville act. He talked just like
a stage Englishman, for one thing. For another, a German bullet had
gone right through his face—in at one cheek and out at the other—and
that didn’t help make a William Jennings Bryan of him. But William J.
had nothing on him; neither had Will Rogers, for that matter. He would
stand there in front of us and put over a line of stuff that made
everybody weak with laughing—everybody, that is, except the fellow he was
talking to. I shall never forget the first morning we held an Officers’
Instruction Class. There were about forty of us. Old man Duckett—that
was his name; Sergeant Instructor Duckett—marched us around, and put us
through our paces. We meant to show him something—we were a chesty bunch
in those days—so we gave him what we imagined was a first-class West
Point show. (Not that any of us had been at West Point.) When we had done
enough, he lined us up, and said: ‘Well, gentlemen, I have run over your
points, and before dismissin’ the parade I should like to say that I only
wish the President of the United States was here to see you. If he _did_
catch sight of you, I know that his first words would be—”Thank Gawd,
from the bottom of my heart, we’ve got a Navy!“’”
To Boone and Miss Lane now enter others. (This is a trial to which
Master Boone is growing accustomed, for Miss Lane is quite the prettiest
girl on the ship.) Among them we note one Jim Nichols, who, previous to
America’s entry into the War, has worked upon the New Orleans Cotton
Exchange “ever since he can remember.” There is also Major Powers,
wearing the ribbon of the Spanish War medal. There are two Naval
officers, crossing over to pursue submarines. Until they begin, Miss
Lane makes a very pleasant substitute. And there is a British officer
who walks with a limp—Captain Norton—returning from a spell of duty as
Military Instructor in a Texas training-camp.
Miss Lane, with the instinct of a true hostess, turns to the stranger.
“We were talking about our rookies, Captain,” she announces. “How did
they compare with your Kitchener’s Army?”
“Very much the same, Miss Lane, in the early days. Fish out of the
water, all of them. We had all sorts—miners, shipbuilders, farm-hands,
railway-men, newspaper-boys—and not one of them knew the smallest thing
about soldiering. They knew pretty well everything else, I admit. The
ranks were chock-full of experts—engineers, plumbers, electricians,
glass-blowers, printers, musicians. I remember one of my men put himself
down as an ‘egg-tester’—whatever that may be! An actor, perhaps. But
hardly one of them knew his right foot from his left when it came to
forming fours.”
“Same here,” said Major Powers. “My first consignment of drafted men
was a mixture of mountaineers from Tennessee—moonshiners, most of
them—and East-Side Jews from New York. (I wonder who the blue-eyed boy
at Washington was who mixed ’em!) The moonshiners looked the hardest lot
of cases you ever set eyes on: they hated discipline worse than poison;
and an officer was about as popular with them as a skunk at a picnic.
But they were as easy as pie: they were scared to death half the time,
by—what do you think?”
“The water-wagon?” suggested a voice.
“No—of getting lost! They could have found their way blindfold over their
own hills back home; but they had never lived on a street before, and
those huge camps had them paralyzed. They said the huts were all exactly
alike—which was true enough—and not one of them would stray fifty yards
from his own for fear he would not find it again. Curious, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Almost exactly what happened with our Scottish Highlanders,” said
Norton. “But they took quite kindly to city life in the end. Regular
clubmen, in fact. What about your East-Siders?”
“They were a more difficult proposition,” said Powers. “In the first
place, they didn’t want to fight at all, whereas the moonshiners did.
In fact, the moonshiners didn’t care whom they fought, so long as
they fought somebody. They were like the Irishman who asked: ‘Is this
a private fight, or can anybody join in?’ But the East-Siders were
different. Their discipline was right enough: in fact, the average
East-Side rookie usually acted towards an officer as if he wanted to sell
_him_ something. But they were city birds, born and bred. They were
accustomed to behave well when a cop was in sight; but once around the
corner you could not have trusted them with their own salary. They didn’t
like country life, and they didn’t like the dark. They were never really
happy away from a street with illuminated signs on it—and there aren’t
many of those in Texas. If you put one of the bunch on sentry duty by
himself in a lonely place, like as not he’d get so scared he’d go skating
around the outskirts of the camp looking for cover. I once rounded up
four of my sentries from different posts, all together in one pool-room.
But discipline has them nicely fixed now. By the way, you heard the story
of the Jew doughboy whose friends recommended him to take a Commission?”
“No. Tell me!” commanded Miss Lane.
“He refused, on the ground that it would be too difficult to collect. He
said he might not be able to keep tally of all the Germans he killed:
besides, his General might not believe him. Anyway, he preferred a
straight salary! Tell us some more of your experiences, Captain.”
“They were much the same as yours,” said Norton. “The trouble with
Kitchener’s Army was that practically every member of the rank-and-file
enlisted under the firm belief that Kitchener would simply hand him a
rifle and ammunition and pack him off right away to the Front—whatever
that might be—to shoot the Kaiser. Their experiences during the first six
months—chiefly a course of instruction in obedience and sobriety—was a
bit of a jolt to them. But discipline told in the end. To-day I believe
most of them would rather have a strict officer than an officer they
could do what they liked with. Leniency usually means inefficiency; and
inefficiency at the top of things usually means irregular meals and
regular casualties for the men underneath!”
“What do you include under discipline, Captain?” enquired that upholder
of personal liberty, Miss Lane, suspiciously.
“Little things, chiefly—things that don’t seem to matter much. Shaving,
and tidiness—”
“What, in a trench?” asked several young officers. But Major Powers
nodded his head approvingly.
“That is just what most of us ask who don’t know,” he said. “But I have
seen enough service to have learned one thing, and that is that a dirty
soldier is a bad soldier, all the world over. If a man is encouraged
to neglect his personal appearance, he starts to neglect his work—gets
careless with the cleaning of his rifle, and so forth. If a man takes no
pride in his appearance, he takes no pride in his duty. The other way
round, the best soldier is the soldier who keeps himself smart.”
“That is just what I think,” interpolated Miss Lane, virtuously. (She
had succeeded during the Major’s homily in surreptitiously powdering her
nose, and felt ready to take Florence Nightingale’s place at a moment’s
notice.)
“We certainly found it so,” said Norton. “In fact, after a short
experience of trench warfare we revived all the old peace-time stunts.
The order was given that every man in the trenches was to be shaved by
a certain hour each day. (Of course, if the Boche attacked in mass,
the ceremony was liable to postponement.) In billets behind the line
every one was expected to make himself as smart as possible—brush his
uniform, shine his shoes, and so on. The band played for an hour every
evening. Saluting and other little ceremonies like that were insisted
on. These things all together had a tremendous effect. I don’t know
why, but it was so. For one thing, it made life behind the lines more
tolerable—more refreshing. In the line itself, it made officers more
concise in giving their orders, and men more alert and intelligent in
carrying them out. In fact, the greater the fuss a regiment made about
its appearance—‘eye-wash,’ we called it—the better its work in the field.”
“Things worked out that way with us too, even in home training,”
corroborated Powers.
“So I noticed. I was in four or five big camps, in different States, and
I found that the rate of progress in training varied almost directly with
the discipline.”
“Which camp did you like best?”
The British officer turned to Miss Lane, and shook his head. “No, you
don’t, Miss Lane!” he replied. “I belong to the most tactless race in the
world, but I know enough to keep out of trouble of that kind! I had a
gorgeous time in _all_ of them.”
At this point a timely bugle blew for boat drill, and the harassed
veteran stumped off.
Boat drill occurs at frequent intervals, and is still sufficient of a
novelty to be regarded as an amusement.
By all, that is, except the _habitués_—the crew, the stewards, and
that anæmic race of troglodytes which only emerges from the lower
depths of the ship under the stress of great emergency—the army of
dish-washers and potato-peelers. These fall in at their posts with the
half-ashamed self-consciousness of big boys who have been compelled by an
undiscriminating hostess to participate in children’s games. They grin
sheepishly, shiver ostentatiously in the fresh breeze, and offer profane
but amusing comments in an undertone to one another.
But few of the present passengers have ever been on board a ship before.
Indeed, many of us never saw the ocean until last week. War and its
appurtenances are for the present a game, full of interesting surprises
and wonderful thrills. It is surprising, for instance, however good your
appetite may have been in camp, to find how much more you can eat on
board ship; and it is thrilling, if you happen to be a rustic beauty from
a very small town in Central Iowa, to find yourself dancing the one-step,
in a life-jacket, with a total stranger in uniform, upon an undulating
deck to the music of a full military band.
So most of us have entered upon the business with all the misguided
enthusiasm of the gentleman who once blacked himself all over to play
“Othello.” Some of us sleep in our clothes; others carry all their
valuables about their person; not a few donned patent life-saving
contraptions before we cleared Sandy Hook. But no one appears the least
nervous: there is a pleasurable excitement about everything. And we
listen with intense respect to the blood-curdling reminiscences of
the crew, particularly the stewards. All our cabin stewards have been
torpedoed at least three times, and every single one of them was on board
the _Lusitania_ when she was sunk. The survivors of the _Lusitania_ must
be almost as numerous by this time as the original ship’s company of the
_Mayflower_.
CHAPTER THREE
THE LOWER DECK
If you clamber down the accommodation ladder on to the well-deck
amidships, you will find yourself in a world which will enable you to
contemplate War from yet another angle.
For a guide and director I can confidently recommend Mr. Al Thompson,
late of Springfield, Illinois—“No, _sir_, not Massachusetts!” he will be
careful to inform you—now a seasoned ornament of a Trench Mortar Battery.
“We sure are one dandy outfit,” he observes modestly. “Two hundred
roughnecks! I’ll make you known to a few. There’s Eddie Gillette: you
seen him box last night, out on the forward deck there? Yep? Well, you
certainly seen something!”
We certainly had. Boxing is an ideal pastime for a large, virile, and
closely packed community, for several reasons. In the first place,
it requires very little space. A twelve-foot ring will do: indeed,
towards the end of an exciting bout the combatants can—or must—make
shift with mere elbow-room. In the second, the novice extracts quite
as much exercise and excitement from the sport as the expert—possibly
more. Thirdly and most important, boxing fulfils the cardinal principle
of providing for the greatest good of the greatest number, because it
affords far more undiluted happiness to the spectators than to the
performers. Last night, for instance, when Mr. Hank Magraw (weight two
hundred pounds), a gladiator mainly conspicuous for unruffled urbanity
and entire ignorance of the rules of boxing, growing a trifle restive
under the cumulative effect of three consecutive taps upon the point
of the chin from an opponent half his size, suddenly gathered that
gentleman into his arms and endeavoured to stuff him down one of those
trumpet-mouthed ventilators which lead to the stokehold, the spectators
voiced their appreciation by a vociferous encore.
A wonderful sight these spectators are. They are banked up all around the
well-deck, forming a deep pit, in the bottom of which two boxers gyrate,
clash, and recoil like nutshells in a whirlpool. Tier upon tier they
rise—with their long, lean, American bodies, and tense, brown, American
faces—seated in concentric circles on the deck itself, perched on hatches
and deck-houses and sky-lights, clinging to davits and ventilators, or
hanging in clusters from the rigging—all yelling themselves hoarse.
The “announcer”—one Buck Stamper—stands for the moment at the bottom of
the vortex. With each of his muscular arms he encircles the shrinking
figure of a competitor, and introduces the pair to the audience.
“Boys,” he bellows, in a voice which must be easily audible in the
surrounding transports, “one of the English officers up there has
come across with—with—a ten-shilling certificate”—he releases one of
his _protégés_ in order to display a pink-and-white British treasury
note—“to be awarded to the winner of this bout.”
There is a little polite applause. Then a stentorian voice enquires:
“How much is that—in money?”
There is a great roar of laughter. The announcer retires, to seek an
expert financier. A British marine enlightens him, and he announces:
“’Bout two dollars-and-a-half. On my right I have Ikey Zingbaum, of the
Field Ambulance—”
The immediate conjunction of Ikey Zingbaum and two-and-a-half dollars
appeals to the crowd’s sense of humour. When they have recovered, Buck
Stamper proceeds:
“On my left”—he thrusts forward a smooth-chinned, pink-cheeked, lusty,
country lad—“Miss Sissy Smithers, what has got in among the boys by
mistake!”
Amid yells of delight the blushing Sissy shakes hands with his
tallow-faced opponent, and falls promptly upon his neck. The pair, locked
in a complicated embrace, circle slowly round the ring, feebly patting
one another on the back. At the urgent suggestion of the spectators the
referee separates them, caustically observing that this is a fight and
not a fox-trot. For a short time they stand uneasily apart; then Ikey
Zingbaum, stimulated possibly by his supporters’ constant references
to the ten-shilling certificate, leans suddenly forward and boxes his
opponent’s ears. Miss Sissy, stung into indignant activity, lunges
out with all his strength and counters fairly and squarely in the pit
of Ikey’s stomach. Mr. Zingbaum shuts up like a footrule, and shoots
stern-foremost into the thick of the audience. He is extracted amid
shouts of laughter, groaning horribly, and receives first aid from a
dozen willing but inexperienced hands. Presently he recovers sufficiently
far to be informed that he has been awarded the match—on a foul. Miss
Sissy, not ill-pleased with himself, modestly disappears.
“Yes,” continued Al Thompson, “you seen something. Was you there when
Eddie Gillette fit that duck what we call Coca-Kola? No? I’m sorry.
Coca-Kola’s a Turk. Comes from Turkey, I mean. Las’ winter, when he was
fighting around the Bowery, he would eat raw meat whenever he could get
it. Said it kept him kinder fit. Anyway, he was put up las’ night against
Eddie Gillette. We picked on Ed because he was the best man in the Trench
Mortar Section, and Coca-Kola had been winning out all the time for the
Machine Gunners, where he belonged, and they was blowing some. Ed was
giving away more than seventeen pounds of weight, besides which the Turk
was the sort of guy that if he was short of money he would go up to a
person an’ say: ‘You give me two bits and I’ll let you hit me on the jaw
any place you like!’ That was the kind of lobster Coca-Kola was, and
gives you some sort of an idea what Ed was up against!
“The match was to be ten rounds of two minutes each. There was five
dollars donated by an officer for the winner, and some powerful
side-bets. But it was all over in one round. Eddie started by rushing in
and giving the Turk a silly little tap on the nose. That seemed to get
the Turk’s goat, for he went for Eddie like a cyclone, and rushed him
all around the ring for maybe a minute. At the end of that he gave him a
blow on the body that laid him flat on the deck. We all thought Eddie was
gone for sure. The time-keeper had counted up to five before he come to
life at all. Then he began to recover, very slow. At ‘seven’ he rolled
over on his face. The Turk, reckoning that Eddie was too dopy to go on
any more, just straddled around in the middle of the ring, looking up to
the deck above for the officer that was donating the five bucks. But at
‘nine’ Eddie was on his feet again, like a streak. No one hardly saw him
get up. All they did see was Eddie _soak_ the Turk under the point of the
jaw—which was well up in the air at the time. Coca-Kola fairly knocked a
groan out of the deck when he struck it. It took them two hours to bring
him round. Gee, but it was some soak! Some of the Machine Gun boys cut
open Eddie’s glove after, because they suspicioned he might have a chunk
of lead there. But there weren’t nothing there. No, _sir_! Nothing but
Eddie’s little old punch!”
We are presented both to the victorious Eddie and the dethroned
masticator of raw meat. The latter is inclined to be taciturn; but the
former, true to national use and custom, is quite ready to be interviewed.
Yes, this is his first trip across, but he is not seasick, and does not
expect to be. Reason; he has spent twelve years on the Great Lakes, and
a man that can stand the up-and-down convulsions of, say, Lake Michigan
during a winter storm, need not fear the spacious roll of the Atlantic.
“There’s a ten-thousand-ton ship has went down there before now,” says
Eddie, referring apparently to Lake Michigan, “just because them twisty
seas has sheered the heads clean off her bolts and opened her up. Kinder
ripped her, I guess. Every October owners raises the pay of all hands on
them ships fifteen per cent—raises it voluntary.”
“Why?”
“Because the whole bunch would quit if they didn’t!”
This does not sound like a very convincing example of the voluntary
system; but the great are permitted to be inconsistent. Mr. Gillette,
proceeding, considers that life on board this ship is tolerable, but
the food monotonous. Another gentleman, chewing tobacco, now joins the
symposium. He is introduced as Joe McCarthy, of Oklahoma.
“You said it!” he announces, referring apparently to the food question.
“Especially the coffee. The stuff they serve on board this packet ain’t
got no kick to it.”
He is reminded that he has passed out of the coffee belt, and that he is
approaching a land of tea-drinkers.
“Tea or coffee,” he rejoins, with the dogged persistence of the
professional grumbler, “it don’t make no difference to me. And another
thing. This yer travelling by sea is a lonesome business. Give me a
railroad! There you can look out of the window of the car and see folks
waving their hands to you; and presents of candy at the deepo, and
everything. While this”—he flings a disparaging glance over the heaving
Atlantic—“this is all the same, all the time!”
“Well, Joe,” explains the fair-minded Al Thompson, “I guess we
_got_ to travel to Europe this way, seeing there ain’t no railroad
across—leastways not at present.”
But Mr. McCarthy refuses to be comforted.
“Europe!” he exclaims. “There y’ are! Europe—four thousand miles from
America! Some folks must be darned anxious for war, if they got to send
us four thousand miles to find it!”
This last sentiment produces a distinct sensation. It is adjudged by
those who hear it to border on pro-Germanism. Heads turn sharply in Joe’s
direction. A certain licence is permitted to professional grouchers; but
“knocking” the Cause is the one thing that the New Crusaders will not
permit.
That simple-hearted American, Al Thompson, conveys the necessary reproof,
in a manner which more highly-placed diplomatists might envy.
“Listen, Joe,” he remarks: “that stuff don’t go here. I know you been
mighty seasick, and you’re sore on the food, and the monotony, and the
other little glooms that come around on a slow trip like this. But
whenever _I_ git sore on things just now, like we all do, I just remember
them dirty bums over there marching through Belgium with little babies
on their bayonets; and then—well, all I care about is _getting_ over
there and killing any guy that calls himself a Dutchman. Let me kill a
few of them first—and, even if they kill me after, I should worry!”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE DANGER ZONE
There are many other types on board. Here is one at your elbow. He is
a sentry, on Number Nine post. His duties appear to be confined to
scrutinizing the ocean for periscopes. This is not a very arduous task,
for we are not in the danger zone at present. Indeed, a good deal of this
sentry’s time appears to be spent in gazing over the taffrail towards the
setting sun—towards America. Possibly he ought to be straining his eyes
towards France. But we are all human, especially the American soldier
boy, and this boy is unaffectedly and avowedly homesick. Jim Cleaver’s
thoughts at the present moment are nowhere near Number Nine post; they
are centred upon a little township called Potsdam, far away. This sounds
good and blood-thirsty: unfortunately this particular Potsdam is not
in Prussia, but “way up” somewhere in the State of New York; and Jim’s
imagination is concerned less with the House of Hohenzollern than with
the House of Cleaver—particularly the feminine portion thereof. Moreover,
it happens to be Sunday evening; and we all know what that means.
At the other corner of the deck stands Antonio. That is not his real
name, but no matter. He will inform you that he has already crossed
the ocean—once. A brief exercise in mental arithmetic will presently
cause you to realize that Antonio cannot have been born in America. This
is so. He crossed over ten years ago, in the steerage of an Austrian
Lloyd liner, outward bound from Trieste, on his way from the sunny but
unremunerative plains of Lombardy, in search of a mysterious Eldorado
called Harlem, New York. And now here he is, aged twenty-six, picked out
by the groping hand of the Selective Draft, on his way back again, to
help rend those same plains (among others) from the Hun and restore them
to their rightful owners. He is quite cheerful at the prospect, though he
would sooner be with the Italian Army than with the American. Not that he
is lacking in patriotism towards the land of his adoption, but—
“I gotta two brother over there,” he explains. “Besides, here I gotta
talka da Ingleese. Alla same, I feela fine!”