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 movie theatres
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.
ONE THEY DIDN'T GET
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 the _Luckenbach_.
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 to twenty-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 the _Luckenbach_ that 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 the _Luckenbach_, 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 soon as 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 bust each 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 was twenty-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 more left 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 antennae."
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's mate 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 grease off. 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.
[Illustration: Our thirty-knot clip was eating up the road. We were
getting near the spot.]
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 the
_Luckenbach_. 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 antennae," 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 and announce 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 wounded nine 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 the
_Luckenbach_ and 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 the _Luckenbach_ at 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 the
_Luckenbach_. 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 the _Luckenbach_ having 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 was all 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 saw him, 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 the _Luckenbach_ found 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 to S 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."
THE DOCTOR TAKES CHARGE
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 least once 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 of time 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 got the 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 cases up, 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.