Over the Seas for Uncle Sam Part 9

It seemed queer to be on her again. There were just a handful of us, the rest of our mates were out of sight, bound for none of us knew where. It was like returning to a ghost ship, she lay so still on the waters, rocking softly, the waves washing over her deck.

There was plenty of work for all hands--it didn't give us time to think.

I was glad of that. d.i.c.k and Tod and I joked a bit about what the people back home would say now, if they could see us up to our ankles in water on a sinking ship. Afternoon changed to evening. Still we saw no sign of help coming toward us. However, just so long as Fritz stayed away we were satisfied. When it got good and dark, though, we weren't quite so pleased. It helps, I can tell you, to be able to see your hand before your face. You feel a lot happier then.

Late that night we made out something coming toward us. We weren't sure whether it was friend or foe. It gave us a bad few minutes, then we made out the towboats who had come to our a.s.sistance. We were so glad to see them that we almost cheered out loud, which is one thing you don't do in the Zone.

We pa.s.sed them lines, and they steered a course for land. All this time our ship was slowly working water; you could tell it by measuring, but the chief engineer continued to a.s.sure the captain that we would be successful in beaching her.

All night we moved slowly through the water, wondering each minute when she would take a sudden dive to the bottom. Walking along the edge of a canyon in the dark is much the same sensation, I guess. We were glad when we saw a pale streak in the sky, and watched the morning star fade.

Daybreak found us still afloat.

Some of the British crew had had experience on torpedoed ships. I suppose they knew that the wise thing to do was to leave her if they got the chance. That was the reason why they chose to go on the escort vessel when the captain put it up to them. By morning it certainly looked as if our ship would never be beached on this earth. We were in water up to our knees. There wasn't a dry spot on us, and the chill winds that swept down from the north played a game of hide-and-seek through our wet clothes.

The captain called us all together. He told us that the chances for bringing her in were small, that no man need stand by, that he did not blame anyone for choosing dry land and dry clothes in preference to almost certain sinking.

His speech did not shake the officers' determination to remain aboard her--all of them. They simply had no intention of getting off so long as there was a glimmer of a chance of landing her safe. Then the captain asked d.i.c.k if he desired to remain or if he wanted to get off.

d.i.c.k grinned.

"I'll stay, sir," he said.

The captain asked Tod.

"I'll stay, too, sir," he answered.

The captain came to me. I had my answer ready.

"I'll stay, sir," I told him.

After he had thanked us and gone on, d.i.c.k called a meeting of the Three Yanks. "You didn't stand by just because I volunteered to, did you?" he asked anxiously. We shook our heads. Our teeth were chattering so that it was hard to say what we thought, so we didn't try. What I thought was something to the effect that I wished I had my extra sweater on underneath, and that I was glad I had two such plucky pals.

We spent another night on board her. We had had not slept for forty-eight hours, but we didn't seem to need to--the excitement of wondering what the next minute would bring banished sleep.

The following morning at four o'clock we landed safely on the beach. The destroyers took us off the ship--all we knew was that at last we were on something where we could rest. I remember some of the crew asking us questions, but I don't remember our answering. We just dropped down on a roll of blankets and closed our eyes... .

I woke last. d.i.c.k and Tod were chatting softly in a corner. I opened my eyes and listened.

"Well, write it down, Tod, so you don't forget," d.i.c.k was saying. "You and Clink and I will hike it for Maine. Is that straight?"

"What's this?" I asked. d.i.c.k grinned over at me.

"We're making a little date for after the war," he said. "We figured what a lot we'd have to talk about on that camping trip, eh?"

I nodded. "You can count me in," I said.

But, as it's turned out, there won't be any camping trip for the three of us after all. d.i.c.k was lost at sea on his next trip across, while I was sick in hospital. Then I heard that Tod had gone down, and it nearly knocked me out. There never were two such pals as those chaps.

Perhaps some day when it's all over, and we've licked the Hun to a standstill, I'll wander up there myself with our stony-faced guide; and perhaps I'll sit on the bank of our little lake and fish in the clear water with the tackle we all used, or shoot the same-sized rifle--and I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that they've trod every inch of the ground--it will be almost like having them there--but not quite--pals like that don't happen more than once in a lifetime--I wish I could tell you just what great sort of fellows they were--oh, well, I couldn't if I tried a thousand years--so what's the use?

[Ill.u.s.tration: Here's to the marines--the foremost military body in America!]

SEAMAN BURKE SPEAKS:

A TASTE OF h.e.l.l

I JOINED the Navy as an apprentice seaman. I thought it would be great to try a new way of licking the Huns. I had sampled the army. Yes, I was at the Somme with the Canucks. Greatest bunch of fighters the world has ever seen!

I can say it, because I'm an American, but as soon as war was declared, my three cousins and I beat it for Canada and enlisted. We were all in the same regiment, the third to go across.

You've no idea until you get into the thick of a fight with shrapnel whistling past you and sh.e.l.ls bursting a few feet away, how much depends on your leader. It's up to him to win or lose the ground you're holding for all you're worth. The men in charge of us were young and some of them pretty green at the war game--but say! there wasn't a b.l.o.o.d.y Hun alive that could scare them! Not by a long sight!

We sailed in August, about two thousand of us. We had a quiet trip across and, oh, Christmas! how we did long to get into the sc.r.a.p! They landed us at a French port and we had just three days' training before we were ordered up.

You can't make much headway in three days to prepare you to meet the Boches, but we did manage to get in a little drilling and skirmishing.

All the bayonet charging I learned was from a j.a.p in my company. He was a funny little cuss. Why he joined up I can't imagine. You'd think he would rather save his skin and stay at home, but he was all for fighting. He had been trained in j.a.pan and had joined the Canadians at the last minute.

My cousins and I learned all we knew from him. He seemed glad to show us. He was a friendly little chap and some fighter! I remember seeing him alongside of me for a few seconds in a trench full of Germans ...

and then not seeing him. What became of him I never knew. You don't, most of the time.

A long line of troop trains were awaiting us. Pullmans? I guess not!--freights. We piled in. We were all anxious to get to the front.

We knew they were in desperate need of men and that we might get a chance to go over the top, green as we were.

It was night before they opened the doors and let us out. We seemed to be in a sort of meadow. It was black as a cave, except for the lights of the station. There was plenty of noise as two thousand men alighted, but there was another sound--a dull, thick booming ... cannons! It seemed thousands of miles away, but you never forgot it for an instant. It meant that we fellows who had been so recently in offices plugging away for so much a week were out there at last on the great battlefield of France!

We had reached the trenches. They weren't at all like I supposed they'd be. I expected them to be narrow, with room enough for one man only.

Instead two and sometimes three could walk abreast. It seemed to me as though we marched a hundred miles that night. I was so tired I was ready to drop, and then all the mud I had ever read about seemed to be planted in that trench! Mud! We tramped through knee-deep slime--knee-deep, mind you--and we thought that was bad until we went in up to our waists.

It must have been raining pitchforks before we arrived, and as we scuffed along the best way we could it began again--a cold, driving rain straight down from the black sky, stinging our faces and running down our necks. After a while we halted for the night.

There were dugouts where you could set up your cook-stove if you were lucky enough to own one. All your food you carried on your back in cans, but you didn't have energy enough left to open them. You just dropped down under the shelter of a bunch of sandbags if you were lucky, or if you weren't, in a muddy patch of ground where you slept like a log.

Next day we were on our way--that long line of drenched men tramping toward the sound of the big guns. That's how you measured distance, by increasing volume. The rain had begun in earnest and it never let up for the three days we made our way to the trench just back of the Big Hill.

It seemed to be our destination, because we got orders to begin digging, and we went to work with pick and shovel. I forgot how tired I was in the excitement of being so near the Huns. You do out there. You don't worry about dying, that's one sure bet, nor about eating or sleeping; the one thing that gets you is when your best pals go west.

I had to stand watch that night. That meant two hours of pacing back and forth, fifteen feet, ready for the enemy's charge at any second. I couldn't believe that the fellows we were waiting for were so close up--there across that short patch of ground--but I realized it when a sh.e.l.l fell not five feet away from me and blew three of my pals to bits.

By G.o.d! I knew it then!

I shall never forget it. I'd been listening to them talk in a little knot as I paced by, swapping smokes and trying to find a dry place to stand. One of them laughed. That was the last sound I heard before the crash of exploding sh.e.l.l. There wasn't one of them left.

We were four days waiting for the signal to charge. We were mad for it.

It seemed as if the leaders could not hold us back another day. We wanted to get at those d.a.m.ned Huns who had killed our pals. We knew we could lick them, raw as we were. We had some full-blooded Indians from Ontario with us. They were the real thing in a fight. They did not know what fear meant. There just wasn't any such word in the language for them, and when they charged they forgot they were supposed to use rifles. They threw them away and drew their long knives--razor-sharp.

That's how they went after the Huns--and butchered the swine good and proper.