offensive started last March, President Wilson, acting on General
Pershing's suggestion, agreed to the brigading of the American troops
in France with the British and French armies until such time as they
were in sufficient strength to form an army of their own. It was a wise
action from the military point of view alone, but doubly so in giving
our allies so unmistakable example of the spirit in which America was
entering the common fight.
It is characteristic of the essential difference between land and sea
operations that the announcement of a similar sacrifice of national
pride in the furtherance of Allied unity--this time on the part of the
American Navy, and antedating the other by several months--should have
to be withheld from the public until the significance of it was largely
overshadowed by the more dramatic conditions under which the decision
to brigade the American troops with the Allied armies was taken. Yet it
is a fact that, until the arrival of the American battleships, white
with brine of the Atlantic across which they had ploughed their way,
last winter, never before in history had the warships of one nation
endeavoured to co-operate with those of another save as a separate
fleet. Never, indeed, up to that time, had such a consummation been
deemed practicable.
But the American Navy Department and--especially--the distinguished
Admiral appointed to the command of the first squadron to be sent to
European waters, realising that nothing but national pride, and certain
service practices which they felt sure Yankee adaptability would be
equal to modifying, were the only obstacles to an arrangement which
could not but add incalculably to the weight they were throwing into
the balance, decided--quite on their own initiative and without any
pressure whatever from the British--that all American battleships should
be incorporated into the Grand Fleet instead of operating as a distinct
American force. From that time on, to all intents and purposes, it was
as though so many new British units--fresh from the yards of the Tyne or
the Clyde--had been added to the Grand Fleet. The American ships still
flew the Stars and Stripes, and there were no changes in pay, uniform,
discipline, nor in such technical practices as effected the efficiency
of the ship as a fighting unit. But in every particular involving
relations with the Grand Fleet as a whole, British practice was and is
the rule. Everything that any British ship or squadron does devolves
likewise upon every American ship and squadron, this extending from such
things as providing work-parties for road-making or other jobs on the
beach, to sallying forth on one of the great concerted sweeps through
the North Sea in which the bulk of the floating might of the whole world
is on the move.
One American battleship which, crossing the Atlantic alone and arriving
at Base only a few hours before the Grand Fleet was ordered to sea on
what at the moment looked like the hottest kind of a Hun scent, made a
great hit with the sport-loving British by replenishing her bunkers in
a wildly-rushed coaling, and raising steam in time to get under weigh,
and swing into line with her sisters who had been grooming themselves
for just such an event for many weeks. The next morning I was standing
on the bridge of a British super-dreadnought with an historic name, when
the Admiral read out a signal from the Fleet Flagship, which made it
appear likely that an action with the German High Sea Fleet was but a
matter of a few hours. Walking out to the end of the bridge, he turned
his glasses back to where, steaming hard in line ahead, the American
ships were coming up in perfect station on our starboard quarter.
Running his glasses back along the line, he rested his glance for a
moment on the last ship.
"There's the good old _Texas_," he said, with an affectionate smile,
"not an inch out of station, and steaming with the best of 'em. You'd
never think to see her that she was bucking the swells of the Atlantic
at this time yesterday morning. My word, what a stroke of luck for her
if she _does_ happen to stumble, in her first twenty-four hours with the
Grand Fleet, into what the rest of us have been waiting four years for!"
It turned out to be the same old disappointment after all, this time
as so many others, but the plucky bid the _Texas_ made for a chance of
participating in "Der Tag" pleased the British mightily, and won her at
the outset a high place in their esteem.
That the newcomers would have much to learn from the three- and
four-year veterans of the Grand Fleet was only to be expected, and
right eagerly they set themselves out to master the things that can only
be taught by experience. But the exchange of ideas was not entirely
one-sided. One day I heard the Gunnery Lieutenant of my ship speaking
with great enthusiasm of the American telephone system, and of the
astonishing speed with which the "Yanks" loaded their turret guns. The
Commander came back from U.S.S. _New York_ loud in the praise of the
quality of the American paints, which he claimed gave a surface much
more easily kept clean than the similar grades provided in the British
ships. The swift, smart American launches always evoked favourable
comment, and even the strange-looking "bird-cage" masts won occasional
converts. Perhaps the most interesting thing of all is the large
and increasing number of British officers that one hears speaking
sympathetically, and even approvingly, of the total abstinence in force
in the American ships. The fact that the officers of the latter are
practically unanimous in declaring that they would never favour going
back to the old regime has made a good deal of an impression on the
British, and more and more frequently I hear the older Royal Naval
officers saying that they wished they had the same anti-liquor rules in
force in their own ships.
In these and a score of other similar things one has evidence every
day that, while the British Fleet is a constant inspiration to the
Americans, the coming of the latter has not been without its "tonic"
effects on the former.
Social entertainment between ship and ship is one of the features of
British naval life that has been most conspicuous by its absence since
the war began, and perhaps the highest compliment that could be paid
the Americans was that the Grand Fleet did not consider it necessary to
make any exception to the general practice in their case. Senior and
Junior officers of ships that chanced to be moored conveniently near
each other lunched and dined back and forth, but no more or no less than
if the newcomers had been English rather than American. There was no
drinking of high-sounding toasts, and the nearest thing to formality in
this respect I recall was the proposing the health of "The President,"
following that of "The King," with the port. For the rest, when one
of our Latin allies could not possibly resist clinking glasses to
"America," "The Entente," "Victory," and no end of similar toasts, the
Briton contented himself with an unobtrusive "Cheerio" or "Chin-chin."
But what these little unpremeditated "inter-wardroom" affairs lacked
in formality they made up in geniality. One of the most memorable
"evenings" I ever spent was that following a dinner in a certain famous
light cruiser of the Australian Navy, at which four officers of U.S.S.
_Wyoming_ (which chanced to be moored in the next line) were present.
There was a concert by the ship's company that evening, and after a
delectable hour and a half of Anglo-Australian chaff and harmony had
been brought to a close by the playing of "God Save the King" and the
"Star Spangled Banner," the officers returned to the wardroom for a
quiet hour with their pipes. The thing started, I believe, when somebody
wound up the gramophone with a "Chu-Chin-Chow" record on it, and
everybody joined in on the chorus. Then it transpired that the American
guests showed unmistakable evidence of "team-work" in their harmony, and
presently the others fell out and left the quartette singing alone. Two
or three strange new "jazzy rags," which had not yet won their way to
popular favour on this side of the Atlantic, gave way to "Mississippi"
and "Tennessee" and the classic melody of "I've Been Working on the
Railroad." Finishing up with a flourish in a snappily executed bit of
"buck-and-wing-ing," the guests then insisted that they had occupied the
centre of the stage long enough, and demanded that the next round of the
show should be British.
The hosts, affirming that they could not think of producing an
anti-climax by following on after so finished a musical performance
as that just concluded, said they would nevertheless endeavour to
provide their share of entertainment by playing a game of "chair polo."
This spirited competition quickly resolved itself into a general
rough-and-tumble, out of which the fatherly Major of Marines, who was
the senior officer of the guests, only managed to keep one of the young
American Lieutenants by reminding him that it was not becoming that an
officer and gentleman should break furniture outside of his own ship.
When all the British officers had fought themselves into a state of
collapse, a hulking young midshipman who was roosting precariously on
two legs of the lounging chair under which the Commander was imprisoned,
gave vent to his exultation by taking in a lungful of air and expending
it in the blood-curdling Maori war-cry, which he had learned in his New
Zealand home before he joined the Navy. That gave the visitors a chance
to get in the running again, and, putting their heads close together and
beating out the rhythm with their fists, they fairly started the rivets
on the wardroom ceiling with the thunderous bark of the Navy yell.
The Maori war-whoop was like the chirping of a cricket in comparison.
Wide-eyed with wonder and admiration, the British officers relaxed the
death grips in which they had been holding each other, and gathered
near to see at close range how the big noise was made. The Gunnery
Lieutenant slipped away for a moment, presently to reappear wearing
his "ear-defenders." "Always use 'em when the big stuff is firing," he
explained; "when do we start the next run?"
Nothing would do but that the officers of H.M.S. "----" should be taught
the Yankee Navy yell. A class was formed then and there, and lessons
were in full swing an hour later when the Officer of the Watch poked
his head timidly inside the door to announce that the boat for the
American officers had been standing-by for twenty minutes, but that he
had been waiting for a pause in the singing to report it. He was a
serious-looking little Sub, that Officer of the Watch, and I never could
make quite sure whether he thought it was really singing (perhaps a new
kind of Yankee ragtime) he was interrupting or not.
Ducking under hammocks in which restive would-be sleepers were stirring,
we filed up the ladder and came out into the frosty air of the
quarterdeck to speed the parting guests. Good-nights were spoken softly
in deference to the Captain, whose sleeping cabin was just beneath our
feet, and the four cloaked officers tip-toed gently down the gangway
and aboard their waiting launch. Then the Commander passed a quietly
spoken order down the line along the rail. "Ready now; altogether.
One--two--three!"
With the sudden roar of a full gun salvo, the Navy yell boomed out
on the still air and went rolling forth across the still waters to
set strange echoes chattering in the distant hills. A sudden surge of
quickly suppressed laughter floated back to us from the receding launch,
but the visiting officers were on their good behaviour once they were
"out in the open" again, and the challenge was not taken up.
The Commander was chuckling as he bade me good night in the
half-darkness of the wardroom flat. "There can't have been such another
yell as that heard by these quiet waters since they were first ploughed
by the galleys of the old Norse Vikings," he said with a laugh. "I'd
really like to know just how many of the fifty or sixty thousand men of
the Grand Fleet awakened by it knew to what Navy that 'Nav-eee!' they
heard referred to. Not that it makes much matter, though, now that we're
all one."
II. WHAT THE BRITISH BLUEJACKET THINKS OF THE AMERICAN
The British naval officer, sapient of many ports and peoples, had a
pretty clear idea that in the American Naval Officer he was going to
find an ally who, in spite of a number of superficial differences from
himself, would still be a deal easier to act in intimate co-operation
with than any of those with whom he had been fighting up to the time of
the entry of the United States into the war. With the British sailor it
was different. Only a few of him had ever met any American bluejackets,
and these meetings--for the most part confined to the bars and bunds of
Shanghai, Hongkong, Singapore, and the other ports of the Far East--had
not always been of a nature calculated to be promotive of international
amity. The American Jackie was chiefly remembered by the British for
the softness of a speech that belied the hardness of a fist, and an
astonishing and unaccountable penchant for scattering Mexican dollars
from rickshaws for coolies to scramble for.
It was a good deal as a brine-pickled old British man-o'-wars-man of
many years' service said to me a few days ago. "We never had no chance
to know the Yanks afore the present, sir. We was allus eyin' each other
distrustful like when we was in the same ports, and we was never gettin'
much closer than the length o' a bar apart. Result was that we only seed
the few things in them that was diff'rent from what we was, and they
likewise wi' us. And o' course we never spotted the things in which we
was just alike. All that I rec'lect o' the Yanks we used to run into on
the China Station was that they was dressed diff'rent from us, talked
diff'rent, and even swore diff'rent. The way they cussed struck me most
of all. It was so earnest like. That was the thing I remembered 'em best
for--as the blokes wot cussed like they was sayin' their prayers."
And so it was that the British and American bluejackets remembered
each other for their differences rather than for the traits they had
in common. Naturally, the picture was a distorted one on both sides.
But when, with the coming of the American ships to European waters, the
first chance to get together and become really acquainted was offered,
each soon began to see the other in the proper perspective, and from the
very first they have become better and better friends with every day
that went by.
A good many British sailors have told me during the last few months of
the increasing ties of friendship and kinship that were knitting between
them and the "Yanks," but perhaps some extracts from an article which
has just appeared in the little monthly magazine published by the
Lower Deck of one of the battleships of the Grand Fleet will give the
best idea of the way things have gone in this respect. It was signed
"Bluejacket," and I have learned that the writer is a Seaman Gunner who,
like the great majority of his mates, never met any of his cousins from
across the Atlantic until the American Battleship Squadron joined the
Grand Fleet last winter.
"We had all heard a good deal of the Yankee Fleet," it begins, "and a
few of us had seen Yankee ships before in our voyages abroad; but to
the most of us their manners and customs were a sealed book; and so
many curious glances were cast toward their battleships, after their
arrival to take their place beside us, just to catch a glimpse of an
American sailor. We all had our various ideas of what they were really
like, and I am giving away no secret when I say that we did not expect
them to come up to our standard, or to be very much our own kind. This
was inevitable owing to the feeling fostered by some sections of the
British press during the preceding years of the war in which America
had been neutral. Consequently we were more than a little surprised
on meeting them ashore for the first time to find them such very good
fellows. Perhaps the thing that surprised us most about them was to find
that there was less difference between the English that they talked
than there was between that of the Cockney and the Scotchman, or the
Cornishman and the Yorkshireman, or the Welshman and the Lancashireman.
That is to say, it was easier for the run of us to understand them than
it was for us to understand each other. But the thing that we liked best
about them was the quiet way they had of speaking. This, I must admit
again, was also a great surprise to us, for the Yankee of our funny
papers and music-halls was invariably very loud-mouthed and boastful.
They had some rather fearful and wonderful slang, it is true, but the
most of it was so expressive that we had not the least difficulty,
first, in following it, and then beginning to adopt it for our own use.
For instance, it was as easy to see that 'Some class, those shooting
irons on the _Lizzie_,' referred to the 15-inch guns of the _Queen
Elizabeth_, as it was to see that 'pretty nifty with his hot footing,
hey bo?' referred to the way Charley Chaplin was kicking out with his
feet in the movie (there, I have dropped into a 'Yankeeism' myself!
Nothing could be more catching) at the Y.M.C.A. hut. We have probably
been borrowing more of their language than they have of ours so far, for
many of the Yankeeisms seem to go right to the spot so much better than
ordinary English.
"Our first meetings on shore got on so well that we decided to get up
some kind of a game with them. It was out of the question for us to try
to play their baseball or football, just as it was for them to tackle
our cricket. But we had heard that one of their ships had been having a
try at our Association football, and on the strength of this we sent
them a challenge for a game of 'Soccer.' The fact that they jumped at
the chance to take us on at a game at which they had practically no
experience at is the best evidence of the kind of sporting spirit we
have found the Yanks showing about everything.
"When the time for the game came there is no denying that we began
to get rather nervous; not because we were not sure we were going to
give them a licking (for ours is the champion Soccer team of the Grand
Fleet), but because we weren't quite sure what we were going up against.
(There goes another Yankeeism, just because it puts the thing better
than any words in our own language.) We had read of what a shambles
the field at an American football game was, and of how the men fought
in armour, like the knights of the crusades, and of how each team was
attended by its own stretcher-bearers and casualty clearing station.
Frankly, we were afraid that they might take the occasion to 'Yankefy'
Soccer along these lines. As a precautionary measure, we made a point of
getting shore leave for just as many men as possible, so as to be sure
of being in sufficient force to back up our boys if it came to a fight
for life. Indeed, we were much relieved to find on landing that the
British bluejackets outnumbered the American by three to one, and that
there were no evidences of hospital arrangements.
"Of course we beat them, for our team had years' experience of the game
where theirs had days, but the game was keenly contested all the way,
and the score of six to one in our favour was by no means as one-sided
as we could have piled up against many of the British ships of the Grand
Fleet. There was no sentiment about it, either. We licked them as bad
as we could. Their training in the Yankee game had made them quick to
master the main points of the British, and the result was that they
had made a progress in the latter which must have been just about a
record considering only one or two of them had ever seen Soccer before.
We heard them cursing each other a bit now and then in an effort to
stiffen up their defence, but so far as we were concerned they displayed
nothing but the cleanest kind of sportsmanship. By their showing on this
occasion we were prepared to hear, as we did shortly, that this same
Yankee team had won games of Soccer from two or three of the British
battleships and battle cruisers. Nothing but their greater interest in
baseball, which they were able to take up in the spring, has prevented
the Yanks from turning out a football team that would have been a real
contender for the Grand Fleet championship, and even as it is they
have given us an example of their adaptability, quick-wittedness, and
sportsmanship that has won the admiration and respect of everybody.
"But it was not till the long days of summer came and shore leave was
granted more liberally that we had a chance to really form friendships
with our new allies. Perhaps it was baseball that helped us more than
anything else in getting acquainted. The Commander-in-Chief having
provided suitable grounds, a baseball league was formed of the teams
of the several American battleships, and from the very start these
games provided a very strong counter-attraction to our own football
matches. There might be a half-dozen football games in progress, but the
moment the wild yelling from down in front of the pavilion told that a
baseball game was under weigh all the spectators melted away at once,
and sometimes even the players themselves chucked their hands in and
went over to see the antics of the Yanks. It was these antics--rooting,
I think they call it, though I don't quite know why--that attracted us
at first, but we were not long in finding out what they were driving
at, and really following the progress of the game. Certainly none of
us had ever seen the ball handled with such dexterity, both in the way
it was caught and the way it was thrown, and the best cricket seemed
dull and tame in comparison. We especially admired the quickness of the
players on their feet, both in fielding and running round the bases.
Few British bluejackets could show such speed, and we have decided the
Yankees are faster because they are all shorter service men than we are,
and so have had less time to get slow and beefy through ship life. We
hope to make our beef and bulk tell against them in boxing and rowing.
They tell us that it takes ten years to make a good baseball player, and
we can well believe it. As none of us are yet ready to acknowledge the
possibility of the war lasting that long, it is hardly likely that we
shall try to turn out any teams with the idea of nosing the Yanks out of
the baseball championship of the Grand Fleet, but all the same we are
fully determined to tackle the game for the game's sake, and to play it
among ourselves as we get a chance. The British matelot never did have
the patience to play cricket, but baseball has so much that cricket
lacks that it is by no means impossible that he may take to it in time,
just as our Canadian cousins have. In the mean time our old song which
goes 'We'll ramp and we'll roar like true British sailors' will have
to be sung, 'We'll ramp and we'll roar like Yankee baseballers,' for
there is no question that they can out-ramp and out-roar us with several
cables'-lengths to spare.
"The baseball games have given us a welcome chance to show our
friendship for the American bluejackets. It is the custom to provide
each member of a British shore-leave party with tickets good for
two pints of beer at the Recreation Club. The Yank ships, being
teetotallers, did not do this, and so the poor chaps would have had
to get on without any beer if we had not come to their rescue. Soon
it became quite the regular thing for a British sailor to provide his
Yankee chum with half his beer-tickets, and, as many of the days were
sweltering hot, you may believe they were appreciated. As the present
beer we get does not contain enough alcohol to intoxicate a fly,
American mothers need have no fear that there is anything in this action
calculated to lead their sailor boys astray.