Over the Seas for Uncle Sam Part 5

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A sniff of "chow."]

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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.signed to cla.s.srooms. It seemed queer to be going to cla.s.s 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 a.s.signed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.s 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tles 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 G.o.d! 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 G.o.d, as I stood there, that I had never had to see it proved to me that way.