the wound, wrapped cotton around the probe, soaked it in iodine, jabbed
it in, twisted it around, swabbed it out, dressed it down, slapped the
patient on the chest, said "Next," and did it all over again.
"Next! You'd think it was a blessed barber's shop," Doc heard one of
them say. Only he was an officer--by the back of his head Doc knew
it--some of them would have told him what they thought of his rapid-fire
action. But it was no time for canoodling--it was war, and they were all
rated as grown men and so able to stand a few little painful touches.
One terribly wounded patient gave him worry. On him Doc worked with
great care. He was working on him, all the others being attended to,
when the 352's deck officer came to say that he was going back to the
destroyer to report. "The captain of this ship wants to abandon her,"
said the deck officer.
"Abandon ship and we will never be able to get this man I got here now
off her--not in this sea, sir," said Doc. "And if he's left alone for
two hours, he'll sure die."
"I'll signal what the skipper says." The officer went off with his crew
in the whale-boat, leaving a hospital steward and a signal quartermaster
to stay with the doctor.
Doc was working away on his hard case when his quartermaster came to say
that the 352 had signalled that they were to stay aboard and that the
steamer was to get under way and steer a course south half east
magnetic.
The doctor, without looking up, said: "All right."
"Shall I tell the steamer's captain, sir?"
This time Doc looked up. "Why, of course, tell him. Why not? Why do you
ask me that?"
"You are the ranking naval officer aboard here, sir. I take orders from
you now, sir."
For about four seconds Doc neglected his patient. That was so; so he
was.
"Yes, tell the captain."
The quartermaster ran up the bridge ladder. Doc gazed over the
chart-rail down to the deck, up and around on the ship. "Doggone!" he
breathed. "I am the ranking--I'm the only naval officer present." Then
he shook his head and bent to his patient. He might have the rank, but
the last thing he was going to do was to butt in on any regular ship's
officers.
The disabled ship went on to her new course, south half east magnetic,
with the destroyer steaming twenty-knot circles around her. And late in
the afternoon they made the convoy. By night she was tucked in the rear
of twenty other ships, the doctor and his emergency staff still aboard.
They were to remain aboard until the steamer made port.
That same night something happened. On the steamer they did not know
just what it was. They saw a column of white, a column of black--those
who happened to be looking--another column of white, from the big ship
of the fleet. And then dark came. There were radios flying about, but
they were code messages and the radio man could not decode them because
the first thing the steamer captain had done that morning when it looked
as though the U-boat was going to make them take to the boats was to
heave the code-books overboard. In the morning they would know.
Morning came, but with it not a ship in sight. Of twenty ships and a
group of destroyers the night before, not one now. It was his
signal-officer who thought it out first. "U-boats thick last night, sir,
and the convoy must 'a' got orders to disperse or else change course,"
he said to the doctor.
"That sounds like good dope to me too." He turned to the steamer's
captain. "Where were you bound, sir?"
"To Havre."
The doctor could see nothing else but to proceed to Havre, and on a
zigzag course. The old captain did not know about the zigzagging; he had
never done any zigzagging and did not know why he should now--besides,
it mixed his reckoning all up.
The doctor said he would fix the zigzagging part of it, and, telling his
hospital steward to have a special eye out for the very sick man, went
into the chart house and proceeded to explain the zigzagging stuff. He
paused to recall all he had ever learned while elbowing the 352's
navigator over the chart-table; also the answers he had got to his
questions while so doing.
You steer 45 degrees off the course you really want to make for so many
minutes and then you steer 90 degrees from that for the same number of
minutes back toward the course you really want to make--see, so--and
that gives so many minutes to the good--see. That was one way.
"How many minutes?" asked the captain.
Doc had to stop and think that over. "Twice the square of the total
minutes--no, no. Take twice the sum of the squares of the minutes on the
two legs--and get the square root and then you have the hypothenuse of
the two sides of the triangle; that is, you have the number of minutes'
steaming you make good on your real course."
The old skipper knew nothing of square roots or hypothenuses or anything
that looked like 'em, and he had always laid his course out by compass
points.
"All right," said Doc, and after a while laid out the zigzag courses in
compass points.
The old fellow did not quite like it, so all that day Doc alternated
between his bad patient and the bridge to keep the skipper reassured
about the zigzagging. Also he urged the crew to have a special watch out
for U-boats.
That night Doc and the seasoned signal quartermaster stood alternate
watches on the bridge. Doc would take a nap; the quartermaster would
take a nap; between them they were figuring to keep a sort of official
navy lookout. There were ship's crew men on the lookout too, but the
reaction from the shelling had set in. Doc used to find them asleep in
the bridge wings.
Just before dawn of the second morning Doc saw a shadow looming on their
starboard bow. He had another look. It was another steamer--a big one.
She was drawing nearer. "See that?" he called to the man at the wheel.
"See what?" sort of drowsed out the man at the wheel.
The trusty quartermaster from the 352 was getting a wink under the
bridge-rail. Doc yelled to him, at the same time grabbing up the
megaphone and roaring into the night air: "Where you-all going? Where
the devil you-all going? Can't you-all see where you're going? Keep
off--keep off."
"Can't _you_ see where you're going?--keep off yourself."
By that time the signal quartermaster was awake and bounding across the
bridge. He grabbed the wheel and began to spin it around. The ship's bow
turned. Doc saw the big hulk go by him in the dark.
"Good work," said Doc. "How'd you spot him so quick?"
"I didn't spot him, sir. I don't see him yet. I went by the sound of his
voice."
"Special little angel perched up aloft to look out for Jack when at
sea--" sang Doc. "I thought that was a nursery rhyme. Now I know it's
true. Between you and me, quartermaster, we'll get this ship to port
yet."
They finished that night and the next day without seeing anything or
having anything happen. Nothing except the argument about the forward
compartment.
Among the shells which had come aboard the steamer was one which had
punched a fine big hole in her bow. The ship's crew had put a plug there
which worked all right till the ship took to rolling, which it did this
day. The hole was just at the water-line. Before they knew anything
about it there was the plug gone and the water up to a man's knees in
the forward compartment. Doc said it should be stopped.
The old skipper wanted to know who was going to stop it. His crew? No,
sir. He wouldn't ask any of 'em to go down there--besides, they wouldn't
go. They were all used up since the battle with the U-boat. It made no
difference if the ship sank. He'd had so much trouble that trip anyway
that he wasn't too sure he wouldn't just as soon see her sink. He wasn't
too sure they wouldn't all be better off in the boats. The U-boat had
ordered them into the boats, and, only the destroyer had come along when
it did, they would 'a' taken to the boats, and then they'd 'a' been
picked up and no more watches or ships or holes in the for'ard
compartment to worry about.
There was nothing left but for Doc to call for volunteers from among the
gun crew. They were bluejackets, and their only complaint on the trip
had been that the U-boat's guns had outranged their guns. They
volunteered in a body--even the three wounded members. Doc took all the
sound ones and went down into the forward compartment with a mattress
and some scantling he found in the hold. The water was by then about up
to the men's waists. It was hard, cold work, but they got it done--the
mattress stuffed into the hole and the scantling shoring it up. It still
leaked, but not much--a little auxiliary steam in there at intervals did
not quite keep her dried out, but it kept her head above water, so that
was all right. All that day she was a lone steamer plugging her halting
way over a wide sea. Seven knots was her speed, and all hands tickled to
be making that because of weak places showing from time to time in her
steam department--damages by shell fire which they did not appreciate
properly at first.
They were nearing the coast of France. They would have to make a
landfall soon, and running without lights, as they were, made things
hard, so the old skipper began to talk to Doc. If the doctor didn't
mind, he would take full charge of the ship himself. She was a big ship
with a three-million-dollar cargo, and if anything happened her, the
owners would naturally look to him, the master, for it.
Doc thought it was a pretty cool way to wash out all record of what his
little force had done, but he also recognized the old fellow's position.
"It sounds reasonable," said Doc, "but I think you ought to give me an
idea of what you're going to do."
"There's been no sun for a sight these two days, but we were here"--he
made a new dot over an old one on the chart--"and logging so many knots
to-day noon we ought to be"--he made another dot--"about here now."
"How about the tides?"
"The tides? Oh, yes! Well, I don't know about the tides. You see, I
never made a port in France before."
"You didn't?"
There was a coast chart-book in the rack. Doc took it down and began to
read it. He made regular trips down to see how his wounded patient was
getting on, but always hurried back to his coast chart-book. Interesting
things in chart-books--he used to read them aboard the destroyer.
That night the first mate came up on the bridge. Doc asked him what kind
of a light he expected to pick up. The mate told him. Doc thought he was
wrong, and said so.
Well, that was the light the old man had said they would make. Where was
he now? Asleep, and Lord knows he needed it.
Doc did not wake him up. He had argued enough with him, but he didn't
think the old man had allowed for the tides, and if anything happened
there would be no more arguments--he would just assert his rank and take
charge of the ship.
Doc went below, gave his worst wounded patient a night potion and saw
him to sleep. He also went down to see the chief engineer, who had been
wounded three times--once in the head. The Doc talked to him awhile--he
was inclined to rave--gave him a half-grain jolt of morphine and saw him
to sleep. He told the signal quartermaster that he had better have a nap
before he dropped in his tracks.
"But the night-watches, sir?"
"We'll leave the night-watches to the ship's crew and Providence. The
watch may sleep on the job, but the Lord won't--at least I hope not.
Anyway, I know I'm doggone tired," said Doc, and turned in.
Doc could have slept longer--about twenty-four hours longer, he thought,
when he found himself awake. It was a sort of grinding under the ship
which had wakened him.
By his illuminated wrist-watch he saw that it was three o'clock--three
in the afternoon, he hoped. But it wasn't. It was three in the morning.
He had been asleep two hours.
He went on deck just as his signal-officer came to tell him the ship was
ashore.
Doc found the old man and the mate looking over charts under a
hand-light in the chart house. "I could 'a' bet we'd 'a' picked up that
other light," the old man was saying.
"The bettin' part don't explain it," said the mate. "A fine place to be
high and dry and a U-boat come along in the morning and plunk us another
few shells between our livers and lights. I'm tired of keeping my mind
on U-boats."
That was when Doc horned in on the old skipper. "I been pretty easy with
you-all. You ought to been twenty miles farther east. You listened to me
and you-all would have been. Look here"--he hauled down the chart-book
and showed them. "And now I'll take charge."
It was low tide when she ran on to the beach. With the flood-tide and
the engines kicking back they had her off at daylight. After that, with
Doc on the bridge, everything seemed to go all right. The mate said he
must have come over the side with a medicine-chest full of horseshoes.
By eleven o'clock next morning they were taking on a pilot outside
Havre.
Havre is a regular French port with jetties leading down from the heart
of the residential places almost. The people, seeing her coming, she
bearing the evident marks of her late battle, crowded down to greet her.
About five minutes was enough for her story to circulate. The bluejacket
gun crew, being in uniform, caught their eyes first. They cheered them,
the brav' Americains. And then the wounded came. Oh, the pity! Three or
four of the wounded, who had all that day been cavorting around deck,
saw the dramatic values and assumed most languid poses. Oh, the great
pity! Whereat two more almost fainted.
The worst wounded one--there was no pretense about him--had to be
carried down the gang-plank. Doc went with him. Good nursing was what he
needed; and he was going to see that he got it.
He got it in the port hospital; and then Doc and his two assistants
turned in and slept sixteen hours by Doc's illuminated wrist-watch.
After cabling and getting his orders, Doc headed for his base. Their
journey back by train and steamer--the two men in dungarees and
life-vests, and Doc in sea-boots and one of those sheepskin coats they
wear on destroyers--was noteworthy but not seagoing, so it is passed up
here.
Doc made his port. We met him in the King's Hotel smoke-room, and he
told us all about it. We had had it already from the quartermaster and
the hospital steward, but Doc was to have a little touch of his own.
"There she was, a little down by the head, but safe in port," concluded
Doc; "and while I was waiting for my orders I had a look around the
place. There was a little square there with little cafes all around the
square, and I sat in front of one of them and had my coffee."
"So this was France," I kept saying to myself. All my life I had been
reading more or less about France, and it used to be a sort of dream to
me to be thinking I might some day get there. And there I was--only a
little corner of France, but it was France, and a pretty sunny little
place after our week to sea.
"And while I sat there people came up and looked me over. I thought it
was my needing a shave, but it wasn't. I had my cap on, and by my cap
they knew me for the officer of the heroes of the ship. After a while
they came up and spoke to me. I didn't get quite what they were all
saying, but I was one brave man--we were all brave men, there was no
doubt about that part. When they all got through one little girl came up
and gave me a bunch of flowers."
He pulled out some kind of a faded flower and sighed. "She was about
eight years old."
"No use talking," I said, "it's a great life." And the quartermaster--he
stood with his signal-flags sticking out under his armpit--said:
"Yes, sir, a great life if we don't weaken."
"What's there to weaken about? Something doing every doggone minute
since we left our ship."
THE 343 STAYS UP
Most shore-going people, after a look at a fleet of our destroyers,
would not mark them high up for safe ships. They are too long and slim
and floppety-like.
But no one can tell their officers and crews anything like that. They
have tried them out and know. You take a destroyer in a ninety-mile
breeze of wind, put her stern to it, give her five or six knots'
headway, and there she'll lay till the North Atlantic blows dry.
And that is not their only quality. Speed, of course; but not that
either. They have a way of staying up after being cut up. There was that
one which was of the first to cross over for the U-boat hunting game.
One dark night she was struck amidships by a 2,000-ton British
sloop-of-war. In crowded quarters and steaming without lights those
little collisions are bound to occur.
This one was hit amidships--bam!--and amidships is a bad place for a
destroyer to be hit--her big engine and boiler-room compartment lie
amidships.
This one of ours was hit so hard that nobody aboard ever thought she
would stay up. She did go down till her deck was flush with the water's
edge, but there she stayed; and her crew, climbing back aboard, took a
hawser from the sloop-of-war, which towed her back to port. She was a
fine heartening sight coming in. If she could come back, why worry about
minor mishaps?
One of them--the 343 say--had performed her duty, which was to see a
small convoy to a point well on toward a large port, and was returning
to the naval base.
She was in no great rush, and, it happening to be smooth water, which is
a rare thing up this way at this time of the year, she stopped for a
little needed gun practice.
There was no more thought than usual of U-boats. Nobody would have been
surprised if one popped up--it was a coast where they had been regularly
operating--but no one was particularly expecting one.
Destroyers are bad medicine if you do not get to them quickly, and
lately the U-boats seemed to care more to get merchant ships; but this
day the lookouts were not loafing on their job on that account.
The 343 got through with her target practice, and, except for a few
gunners' mates still coddling their pet guns, the crew were taking it
easy around deck; and also, because of the smooth sea, the ship was
making easy weather of it toward port.
Seeing a periscope is oftentimes a matter of luck. When they stay up it
is easy enough, but when they are porpoising, shooting it up for just a
look around, you have to be looking right at one. What they first saw on
the 343 was the wake of this torpedo, coming on at a forty-knot clip for
the waist of the ship.
The commander of the 343 was on the bridge at the time and saw the wake
almost with the cry of the lookout. The wake was then pretty handy to
the ship, and the torpedo itself would be fifty feet or so ahead of the
wake.
There was no getting away from it then. The only hope was to take it
somewhere else than amidships. Engine and boiler compartments were
amidships. If it struck her there they might as well call it taps for
all hands. So the commander put the wheel hard over--to take it on his
quarter, where there was also a chance that it would pass under her.
Torpedoes generally strike twelve to fifteen feet under water, but just
before this one could make the 343 it broached--came to the surface of
the water--but without slacking her forty-knot speed. It was unusual and
spectacular. The sun shone on the polished sides of her as she leaped
from the sea.
She struck the 343 above her water-line and pretty well aft. Those on
her deck who saw her make that last leap out of water hoped for the
best, though waiting for the worst. But the resulting explosion was
nothing tremendous--so officers and men say, and so adding a little more
data to U-boat history. The bark of one of their own little 4-inch guns
was more impressive. There was a flame and an up-shooting cloud of black
smoke, followed instantly by another explosion, that of their own depth
charges, of which there were two of 300 pounds each in the stern. Those
who had any thoughts about it at the time were sure that if the torpedo
did not get them the depth charges would.
When they went to look they found that thirty-odd feet of the after end
of their ship had been blown clean off. The torpedo had hit them on the
port side, and the wreckage was hanging from the starboard quarter. Of
the after gun only the base was left; they never did see any of the rest
of it. The gunner's mate, one of those men who love to keep a gun in
shape, was swabbing it out at the time, and they never saw anything of
him again.
The chief petty officers' quarters were farthest aft on the 343. The
after bulkhead to their compartment was blown in, leaving the inside of
the ship open to sea and sun. Fourteen men were in there at the time,
lounging around or in their bunks. Many of them were bruised and all
were shook up, but they all made the deck. They do not know how they
made it, but they did. The after hatchway to the deck was closed with
tumbling wreckage, so they must have gone up the midship hatch.
One man taking a nap in the cot bunk farthest aft had a part of the
bulkhead blown past him. It cut off a corner of his cot and broke one of
his legs, and blew him into the passageway in passing. Landing in the
passageway he sprained his other ankle. He is not quite sure how he made
the deck without help, but he did make it, and he says he beat some of
them to it at that.
The man who was working on the after gun with the gunner's mate who was
blown up, saw the shining torpedo leaping in the sun and heading
straight for his part of the ship. If he did not do something he knew he
was in for it, so he began to take long high leaps forward. The
explosion came while he was in the air on his third long high jump. All
he remembers happening to him after that was of an ocean of water
flowing over him, and he not minding it at all. When he came to, the
doctor was looking him over for broken bones, but did not find any.
After the doctor left him he sat up and said: "I bet I've been as near
to a torpedo exploding and getting away with it as anybody in the world,
hah?" And "Yes," said one of his shipmates, "and I bet you made a
world's record for three long high jumps, without a run, too. You sure
did travel, boy."
When it was all over the two propeller shafts were still sticking out
astern, one naked and shining in the sun; the other also shining and
naked, but with a propeller still in place on it. Spotting that, the
skipper ordered the engines turned. To their delight the shaft revolved,
the ship began to move. No record-breaking pace, but--God love the
builder of a good little ship--she was making revolutions. The wreckage
hanging from her starboard quarter acted as a rudder, and so, instead of
going straight ahead, she began to go round in circles.
She continued to make circles, and her officers and men stood to
stations and waited for what next would happen. Destroyer people have it
that there are grades of U-boat commanders--some of nerve, some only
ordinary. The U-boat man with nerve enough to attack a destroyer is a
good one. He will bear watching; so what they expected was to see this
U-boat come up and finish the job. If she did come up and at the right
place to get another torpedo in, then the 343 was in for a bad time. So
they waited, some thinking one thing, and some another, but all agreeing
that the odds were against them.
The U-boat did show again. They saw her conning-tower slipping through
the water at about 1,500 yards. The skipper of the 343 was ready in so
far as he could be ready with his poor little cripple. Crews were at gun
stations, and that conning-tower had hardly got above the surface when
two of the 343's guns cut loose at it. They got in four shots, the
fourth one pretty handy. But no more. She submerged to the
discouragement of one earnest gun-pointer. He leaned against the breech
of his little 4-inch to say: "One more and I'd 'ave got her. Bet you me
next month's pay that I get her if she shows for two shots again."
She did not show again, but her not showing did not end the 343's
troubles. They could steam in circles, but it was not getting them
anywhere. A few miles away was one of the roughest shores in the world,
the kind where green seas piled up against rocky cliffs--and a tide that
was already setting them toward it. A bad enough place in any kind of
weather, but with wind and sea making, and this time of year!