Part 3

A petty officer met us at the steamer pier, taking us over in a little government boat to Coaster Island. We landed at the Government Pier and there we lined up. There was a queer old tub anchored nearby. I asked someone what it was, and he told me that I was gazing upon the old frigate _Constellation_, which fought in the war of 1812 and is now used as a signal school. She certainly looked out of date. I wondered if our snappy sub chasers would look as clumsy as that in another hundred years.

We marched to the receiving building and stood around on the outside. I didn't know a soul there, but three of us were Hospital Corps, and we sort of stuck together. The rest were a mixture. There were "sparks" that's what they call the radio wireless men; and electricians; and there were "chips"--that's carpenters--and there were some of the "black gang," which are what the firemen are called, unless it's "coalheavers." As for us, we were the "iodine crew." It's a good name, all right.

Each draft was called in in turn. A C.P.O. would come to the door and bawl, "All right, all New York draft in," and they'd waltz in while we waited and wondered how soon before we could sleep.

After a while they called Baltimore, and we went inside, turned over our papers, and were sent to an adjoining room to receive the Navy hair-cut.

Say, talk about speed! Liberty motors have got nothing on those four barbers. You no sooner sat down than--snip-snip-snip--and--"Next!" Then you signed your name, but what the barber wanted with all our autographs I never have been able to make out. Perhaps he figures some of us may become great heroes and he'll sell the signatures for a young fortune some day.

In the adjoining room we removed our clothes so that they could be disinfected and sent home. Then we took a shower. At times the water was very warm, then suddenly it would get cold as ice. They certainly believed in variety being the spice of life.

We were vaccinated next, a long line of us. And some were so scared they just curled up and fainted. But I got through and went in for my medical exam. If you don't pass it right there you are rejected, but if you only have depressed arches, or, say, stooping shoulders, they let you through. They know navy life will fix that O. K. Just do setting up exercises for a few months and you'll gain a ton!

Then we were measured for our uniforms and they were handed out to us: two suits of winter underwear, two pair of woollen socks, a navy sweater, a blue dress uniform and two white undress uniforms, shoes, hairbrush, clothes, "kiyi," which, in plain English, is a clothes brush, shoe cleaning gear, needle and thread and thimble, six pocket handkerchiefs, a neckerchief, a pocket knife, two white hats, a watch cap and a flat hat. Then you get your bedding: a mattress, two pair of blankets, your hammock and your duffle-bag. Believe me, the mattress looked good to me. I could see myself drifting off into slumber in a gently swaying hammock. . . .

They marched us to a Detention Barracks. You are not supposed to leave there until you get permission, in case someone breaks out with smallpox or yellow fever.

Everything was complete in the barracks. Meals were cooked in a regular galley; there were showers, mess room and sleeping rooms. Very nifty!

A little, fat C.P.O. with a bald head came in and instructed us how to clue our hammocks. It didn't seem hard. We were pretty proud of the job--all twenty of us.

By that time we could have eaten whale oil with a relish, and a squad of four went for chow, while the other fellows pitched in and laid out the mess gear. That navy stew certainly smelled good! The squad dished us out big portions of it and that, with hot coffee, made us feel like new men.

After we had finished four men washed up the mess gear and the rest of us turned to and swept down the room. The little C.P.O. bounced in again and fixed up our watch for us--two fellows on guard, each standing two hours. The Chief posted the first watchman, and taps began blowing as we started in stringing our hammocks.

It was great sport. Everyone had a theory about it, but we were told that, whatever we did, we must get the hammocks straight, because a sagging hammock is death on the back.

At nine, to the dot, lights were out. It was pitch black in our room. Somewhere outside one feeble standing light flickered, but inside, nothing doing.

Remember, these hammocks are about seven feet above ground--say, the fun started right there. How to get up in them was some problem. Each man thought of a way of doing it, and, in the first rush, one or two made it, but the rest of us only got a leg up and swung there before dropping back to earth.

Everyone was hollering suggestions and trying to get a grip on the blamed things. It wouldn't have been so hard if the hammocks hadn't moved--but they almost acted as though they had sense--hanged if they didn't. They'd bob this way and that, and the moment you got up--well----

After three or four attempts I made it. I got in all right, but, before I could settle down, over it turned with me--spilling out everything I owned, me included. I scrambled around picking up what I could in the dark, and what I said wouldn't be passed by the Board of Censors.

I piled the things in again and crawled back--pretty cautious this time. I rolled up my clothes for a pillow and lay on my back, gripping both sides of my little old bed. That's the way I slept--or rather didn't sleep. All through the night there were thump-thumps, as someone fell out and hit the deck.

When I heard reveille next morning I was so stiff I could scarcely move a muscle. I wasn't the only one though. We looked at each other and wondered if ever under the blue sky we would get the hang of sleeping in something that turned over every time you hitched a bit.

We cleaned up the quarters and spread our blankets and mattresses to air. It was bitter cold. We huddled close to the steam pipes and certainly tackled the chow for all it was worth when it appeared about six A. M.

After breakfast we lashed our hammocks, and I told mine a thing or two as I tied it up. Then we listened to the C.P.O. giving us our first talk on regulations. We wondered if we'd ever remember half the things he was telling us.

As soon as he was out of sight, in trotted the ship's tailor with a portable sewing machine. Funny little man, so intent on his tiny task of sewing little strips of white cloth inside our clothes for marking. I suppose he felt as important in his way as the Navigator.

Somebody passed out stencils with our names on them, and the C.P.O., rather out of breath from scooting all over the station, dropped in long enough to tell us how to mark our clothes--then he was off on the wing. Busiest man I ever saw. I bet he lost ten pounds a morning. Well, he could afford to.

We were dying for lunch. You are always ready to eat in the navy, and the food is great. Lots of it, too. A new bunch of men had arrived--we felt like veterans as we gave them a hand at cluing their hammocks--and say, advice! We told them all there was to know about climbing into your swinging bed.

That night, when I crawled in, I found I could manage much better. I was dead to the world, and I slept the sleep of the just. Nothing short of reveille or an earthquake could have made me open an eye.

Next morning we parted from our room-mates. In peace times you are supposed to spend twenty-one days in detention. This was war, so we had spent three. We were to be shipped straight off to our respective division stations.

We Hospital Corps men reported to the head doctor and were assigned to classrooms. It seemed queer to be going to class again, after you'd been out making your living for a few years in business, but we got used to it. The lecture was on regulations, then they marched us over to Barracks B, our new home. We three from Baltimore stuck together. We were all assigned to quarters on the second deck--it's really the second floor, but you don't call them that in the navy.

It was a big place, but with a hundred and fifty men in it there was scarcely room to turn around--packed like sardines. We found a tiny space up by a window and put up our hammocks. Supper was in the mess hall, then back we'd go to school for a lecture; after that you could study or write letters until nine o'clock and taps.

We were up at five every morning, chow at six-thirty, mustered at seven-fifteen, and marched down to school in time to clean the lecture rooms inside and outside. Spick and span is the watchword of the navy. You get so you wonder how you ever lived inside of a house that didn't shine from top to bottom.

We didn't have to know much to pass exams--oh, no! Only Anatomy and Physiology, and First Aid, and Minor Surgery, and Operating Room Technique, and Nursing, and Hospital Management, and Pharmacy, and Materia Medica, and Toxicologies, and Chemistry, and Litter Drill, besides a little "lab" work in the compounding of medicines. Oh, no--anyone could learn that with one eye shut!

I stayed in Barracks B for three weeks, then the government sent down some big circus tents holding about one hundred and fifty, and we pitched them. We slept on cots for a change. Queer how we had to get used to them. Hanged if we didn't long for our hammocks.

I remember one night when we had a bear of a storm--a regular gale--and sure enough the old tent began to leak. I happened to be on watch so I spent about two hours going around keeping a sharp lookout for leaks--there were plenty of them. As wet a crowd of boys as I ever saw came forth, and I sent them to the lecture rooms to sleep. Funniest looking gang, sleepy and cross, their blankets around their shoulders dripping water. They made a run for the deck.

About twelve I woke my relief and started to turn in. There was no leak over my bed and I was half undressed when something rolled down my back. I beat it for the school. Not ten minutes later the whole tent collapsed, with thirty men in it. Rescue parties were formed, and the men inside needed it--a small Niagara had swept in on top of them.

But no one seemed any the worse for it. We were a hardened lot by that time. I thought of the day I had left Baltimore and the way I had shivered with the cold--here I was, only a few weeks later, only half dressed, drenched to the skin and not minding it a bit. The training had done wonders for me.

Next day a pile of lumber arrived--we carried it from the wharf to the Barracks and we were informed that after school we would find nails--plenty of them--one saw and one hammer for two hundred men to lay the floor, upright and erect tents before taps. Say, that was a staggerer! But orders were orders and we fell to. What did we do? Why, we got rocks or pipes or anything you could use for a hammer and with two hundred huskies working at top speed just to show the C.O. that they can do a thing once they make up their mind to it, we got those tents up that night right as a top!

Luckily for me, my site was 'way up on Strawberry Hill, back of the hospital, and with the crackingest view of Narragansett Bay--and a distant glimpse of the Atlantic. It was a wonderful life up there. We'd become so used to outdoors that we used to talk about how strange it would feel to live in four walls again. We took everything as it came and enjoyed it. The government certainly did all in its power to make things comfortable. We used to wonder how the Sam Hill all the busy people up in Washington could keep every one of us in mind and see that we were all supplied. It is a queer feeling--that sensation that you don't have to worry about to-morrow or what it will bring, that you are clothed and fed and housed--and that your only problems are the ones that may come with the rising sun. Great life!

Other camps were all around us. The Yeoman's camp, the Seamen's camp--nothing but bluejackets from morning until night. We wondered if the whole U. S. Navy were there--it didn't seem as if there could be any more sailors in the world.

The Hospital Corps didn't have much drilling to do, just squad movements and litter drills and counter-marching. We used to parade through Newport to boom recruiting, and on Saturday the whole school turned out for Captain's inspection on the green in front of the War College.

There was so much to learn that we spent most of our liberties in the study hall, but once in a while we would drop in at the Army-Navy Y. M., or go down to beaches for a swim, or take in a show.

At the end of three months we were through a course that takes, as a rule, eight months. Then I went to the Naval Hospital and there I made my rate. Gee, but I'm glad I'm going over at last. There's a girl down in Baltimore--I've promised her some souvenirs. Some of the fellows have been back and forth eight times without a glimpse of a submarine--but I hope we see one. I'd like to tell it what I think of it.

Yes, we're leaving pretty soon now. I'll tell you all about it when I get back.

CHIEF PETTY OFFICER BERTRAM SPEAKS:

ZEPS AND TORPEDOES

I JOINED the navy because I felt patriotic and all the rest of it. You couldn't help it down home. Everybody was doing it. My brother-in-law made the yeomanry, my chum went in for hospital corps work. Wherever you turned you found fellows discussing their branch of service and swearing it was the best in the pack. It didn't take me long to make up my mind. I sure was crazy to get "over there."

It's the English in me, I guess. Yes, I've got quite a slice. Before the war I was thirty-third in direct line for the title of Earl of Northumberland. Now I am about seventeenth.

It's queer how much I wanted to go to London. I just itched to. My family had come from Nova Scotia to Louisiana and settled there. That's where I was born--Johnny Rebs, you know. But that's ancient history--just plain all-round American now.

I never had a chance to forget the English part of me, though. I couldn't very well. You see the solicitors send me a notice every now and then telling me how good my chances are of inheriting a thirty-three-million dollar estate and a couple of dozen titles on the side.

Well, I don't care what I shipped on so long as it had a prow and a stern and kept afloat. They held me three months in the naval station waiting for a ship, and at last I got one--and what a one! An old oil tank! Ever see an oil collier? It resembles one of the countries of Europe. Which one? _Greece._

Grease everywhere. You eat grease and you drink grease and you sleep grease and you breathe grease. You never get it off your hands or your clothes or your disposition until you land.

I was commissary. That meant I had charge of the cook and bought supplies and dished out food and made up the bill of fare. But I might as well have saved myself the trouble of that, because every little thing tasted alike. Why wouldn't it, with eighty-three barrels of oil on board?

None of us wore our uniforms. What was the use? We were saving them for London or Paris, and it's lucky we did! Instead, we slapped on our overalls--"dungarees," we call them in the navy. We looked like a crowd of rough-necks, instead of a crew of snappy bluejackets.

We left some time in September, and steamed up to Nova Scotia, then across. We had a speedy ship, all right. Eight knots was the best she was known to make. Say, did it give you the jumps! It sure did! I could walk a heap faster than that old tug could steam at full speed. It seemed as though every raider and submarine in the Zone would line up in a row and take a shot or two at us--it was too easy to miss.

We had rough weather all the way. That and grease are about all that happened until we hit the Zone. There we met our convoy--a British flagship, a number of merchantmen, and a flock of torpedo-boats.

My pal was a fellow from Newark, New Jersey, Bill Willsie. He was out for excitement.

"I certainly hope something will break before we land," he'd say, "so that I can have a real yarn to spin for the folks back home."

He got his wish. It was the fourth day in the Zone, at five twenty-seven in the afternoon. I was on deck sniffing air that wasn't full of grease. Suddenly I saw the red flag go up to the mast. . . . Danger! . . . Gee, I sure did wish Bill hadn't wished for trouble out loud. I wondered which one of us would get it--the British flagship ahead of us, or the merchantmen behind.

It all happened in the fraction of a minute. I saw scudding across the water the black nose of a torpedo. You've heard of men having a premonition of death, but how about seeing it coming straight toward you at the rate of thirty miles an hour!

My God! I'll never forget it! I thought my heart had stopped beating. I gripped the railing and waited. She struck the flagship and sank her in seven and a half minutes. To this day I can see her going down--the explosion--the roar--the sudden list--the boats lowered, and, on the bridge, two figures pacing--pacing--the captain and the admiral.

Do you think they left their ship? Not they! Up and down--up and down--those two paced. Oh, I tell you the British are a great people, but I wished to God, as I stood there, that I had never had to see it proved to me that way.

Up and down they walked, talking together as though nothing out of the way were happening. I saw the ship settle for her last heave. No, they didn't leave her bridge. Why not? They were true British naval officers, that's the answer. They sank with her.

By that time every alarm on our ship was sounded--five long whistles, electric bells, a regular bedlam let loose. I never heard such a noise. The life-boats swung out ready to drop. All hands were on deck except the engineers. They stand by in the engine room until a ship is struck. As soon as she is hit their job is to put out the fires and turn off the water--that is, if they aren't blown into the middle of next week first.

About eighty yards away the submarine came up and fired point blank at us. She missed us again and she submerged. That was the last we saw of her. The destroyers were working like little flashes of lightning, picking up the men in the water, darting here and there. You've seen those dragon flies in the pools--that's what the little gray fellows were, dragon flies--here, there, everywhere. I never saw such quick work.

Along about eight we pulled into Dover. All dark, except for a few smothered lights. We anchored and went up on deck. We were pretty glad to have land so near. You felt a lot safer. The comfort didn't last long, for we heard the queerest buzz in the sky above us--a long hum.

"Zeps! By Cracky!" yelled Bill in my ear. "We're in for an air raid!"

Out of the blackness of the city before us leaped a million lights, cutting the darkness like a knife, hunting--hunting for those Zeps. Searchlights turning their yellow blaze on the sky, whisking from one point to another, relentless in their scour of the heavens.

Now and then they would spot one of the great black bugs that buzzed on high with that tormenting hum keep it for a second in the radius of light, losing it as suddenly, and all the while the machine guns in the city pop-popped without taking a breath.

Now and then from the sky would be hurled a black something that flamed and thundered as it struck earth. . . . Bombs! . . . Their red glare lighting up a roof--a cornice--a water front--showing groups of frenzied little black figures scurrying to shelter--then blackness once more and the pop-popping of the machine guns, spiteful, biting sound that never paused.

It lasted about half an hour. The Zeps circled Dover and went back. The guns stopped firing one by one, as though they had run down. The lights died out, save for a few on guard. Did we sleep well? We did not, in spite of the fact that we hadn't had our clothes off a single night while in the Zone.

"I bet we're going to have a swell time in London," Bill told me. "We sure have started off right!" We certainly had!

We had three days shore leave and we started out next day--sixteen of us--in our best bibs and tuckers, to see the sights. Were we glad to get ashore? Chorus--we were! We took a little train--funniest train I ever saw. Reminded me of the Jim Crow cars back home. They were divided into first, second and third class, but over there uniforms can ride wherever they choose, and we are expected to pay only half of a third-class fare.

Remember, we were one of the first shipload of American sailors to put foot in London, and as such we were one of the sights of the city. Crowds! Say! New Year's Eve around Times Square or Mardi Gras back home had nothing on the mob we drew there in Charing Cross.

They fought to see us. They elbowed and pushed and wormed their way in. The girls threw their arms around us and kissed us, and the men cheered, but that wasn't all. They wanted to wish on the eagles on our sleeve--all of them did. And they wanted souvenirs--anything for souvenirs--buttons or American loose change.

"Give us American dimes," they'd cry. "Give us American dimes," and they fought for them. I had some Confederate money with me. They snapped it up.

Two bobbies--they are the English policemen, you know--came to our rescue, and packed us into taxies, but not before the crowd surged around us exclaiming about our caps--our little white canvas hats. They had never seen any like them. They wanted those, too. I don't know what would have become of us if the police hadn't taken a hand.

Say, by that time, we were hungry and thirsty, but we didn't dare get out for fear of starting another young mob. I felt like the President on inauguration day, or the King, or someone.

"Stop at a beanery," yelled Bill to our driver, a little old man with round shoulders and a shiny coat. He cocked an eye at us.

"Beg pardon, sir?" he said.

Bill replied, "As me Allies, the French, put it, 'Jay fame.'"

Our driver wasn't a French scholar. He looked at me.

"Where is it you want to go, sir?"

"Food," I said. "In plain Anglo-Saxon, I hunger--I crave nourishment."

"Oh," he said, "I see, sir," and he dumped us out before a restaurant. We went in.

"Ham and eggs," we all shouted. Every good American sailor always orders that, but our waiter didn't care.

"You can have either ham, sir, or eggs. Not both."

And we learned something else, too. You couldn't order more than thirty cents' worth of food at one sitting. It's against the law, and, what's more, you can't treat a pal; you can't even treat a girl, which ought to please some people I know back home.

We didn't stay in that joint. We tried four others with the same result. I never wanted to spend money so badly before in my life.

What got me was the work the women are doing in London. Women bus drivers--women street cleaners--women baggage smashers--and all of them the healthiest lot of girls I've ever seen--red cheeks and clear eyes and a smile for us always.

"Will you let us wish on you?" they'd cry. Of course we let them. I only hope their wishes came true.

But, say, night in London is one great party. It gets dusk, and, if you're on to what you are in for, you make a bee-line for where you are going, before the light fades entirely--or you don't get there. We didn't know that, so we planned to go to the Hippodrome; but we waited until dark. Say, talk about pitch black! It's pale beside London at night!

Imagine Broadway with not a single light--not even a pale glimmer. Imagine it filled with thousands and thousands of people, bumping into each other--talking, laughing, whispering.