Part 14 (1/2)
One day last summer a group of our destroyers were sent across the Atlantic. It was a night-and-day strain for all hands--watching out for raiders, watching out for U-boats, watching out for everything, and grabbing s.n.a.t.c.hes of sleep when they could.
Arriving at their naval base, every skipper of the little fleet felt pretty well used up. But every worth-while skipper thinks first of his men. One we have in mind pa.s.sed the word to his crew that whoever cared to take a run ash.o.r.e to stretch his legs and forget sea things for a while, why--to go to it. And stay till morning quarters if they wished.
As fast as they could clean up and s.h.i.+ft into sh.o.r.e clothes they were going over the side. Our young captain felt then that perhaps there was a little something coming to himself; so he turned in, and he was logging great things in the sleeping line when the anchor watch, who was also a signal quartermaster, woke him up with:
”Signal from the admiralty, sir.”
”Read it.”
The S. Q. M. read it--an order to proceed at once to an oil dock and take oil.
It was nine o'clock at night when our skipper had come to moorings. It was now one in the morning, and he knew he could have slept for another week; however, orders were to oil up.
He turned out and mustered what remained aboard of his crew. There were about a dozen. He sent three to the fire-room, three to the engine-room, one here, another there, himself took the wheel, and with his signal quartermaster acting as a sort of officer of the deck, set out to find the oil dock.
He had never seen that harbor before that night, but he sheered close in to every s.h.i.+p's anchor light he saw and hailed for the course to the oil dock. Most of them did not know, but one now and then pa.s.sed him a word or two, and so he b.u.mped along and by and by made the oil dock.
Officers who have business with it will tell you that the naval organization of the British is pretty complete. Our young skipper found everything ready for him now. Men ash.o.r.e made fast his lines, connected up his pipes, filled his tanks--all in good order. Sister destroyers were oiling up with him, and with tanks filled they all b.u.mped their way back to moorings, again without sinking anything along the way.
It was then daylight, and right after breakfast they all had to report to the admiralty, so no use trying to sleep any more. Arrived at the admiralty, the officer in command complimented them on their safe run across, and then went on to say that of course they had had a trying pa.s.sage, and naturally their s.h.i.+ps, especially engines and boilers, would have to be overhauled--all very natural and proper--and of course the needful time for overhauling, and for officers and crew--two, three, four days, whatever it was--would be granted; but (they knew the need) the question was: How long before they would be ready to go to sea?
The young destroyer commanders had discussed that and other possibilities in the reception-room outside, so when the senior of the group looked from one to the other of his colleagues they had only to nod, for him to turn to the admiral and say:
”We are ready now, sir.”
Which remark should become one of the historic remarks of this war.
At this time--at the gates to the North Sea, the English Channel, the Irish coast--the U-boats were collecting frightful toll. In the Mediterranean they were running wild. Five s.h.i.+ps from one convoy in one day--three of them big P. & O. liners--was one of their records in the Eastern Mediterranean.
To the natural question, Why haven't you checked them? almost any young British naval officer felt like saying: ”Check 'em? Try it yourself and check 'em! You go out there and keep your s.h.i.+p zigzagging full speed night and day for three years and see how you like it! Go out there in rough weather and fog with not a minute's let-up, and see if you get to where the fall of a bucket of a dark night will make you jump three feet in the air or not! Our s.h.i.+ps were not built, and our chaps were not trained, to beat their rotten game.”
So things were when our fellows took hold, and hearing no word from them for a long time and then but a meagre one, it may be that many a citizen on this side was saying to himself:
”Well, they're gone, that little flotilla, swallowed up in the mists of the Atlantic, and that is all we know about them. And now I wonder what they're doing over there? Are they doing great work or are they tied up to a dock at the naval base, and their officers and crews roistering ash.o.r.e?”
I can say from several weeks' observation later that they were not doing too much roistering ash.o.r.e. Before leaving this side I found no evidence that anybody in Was.h.i.+ngton wished to suppress the record of what that little fleet was doing. Secretary Daniels and Chairman Creel of the Committee on Public Information believed with me that our little fellows over there were doing things worth recording. This fact is set down here because many people last summer believed there was too much suppression of the news of our fighting forces; and suspicion of suppression breeds distrust. Our fellows perhaps were not doing well. If they were doing well, wouldn't we be told more?
But they have ideas of their own on these matters over on the other side, and it is the other side which has most to say of what shall or shall not be given out for publication. In a previous chapter I have reported the answer of the British admiral in charge to my request to be allowed to cruise on an American destroyer. The reply was a flat and immediate: ”No.” They did not allow British writers on British s.h.i.+ps; why should they allow an American writer on an American s.h.i.+p?
It had to be explained that despite what they allowed or did not allow, English papers did publish praiseful items about the deeds of the British navy; and even if they did not publish such items, conditions governing publicity in the United States and the British Isles were not equal. The British navy was a tremendous one and it was operating just off their own sh.o.r.es; officers and men were regularly going ash.o.r.e by the thousands and to their friends and families, if to n.o.body else, they talked of what was going on; and it does not take long for thousands of bluejackets to spread the gossip in a country where no spot in it is more than forty miles from tide-water, whereas our nearest Atlantic ports were three thousand miles from our base of operations in Europe, and it was another three thousand miles to our west coast.
It also had to be pumped into the admiralty over there that possibly the American and British publics did not hold to quite the same ideas about their respective navies. It was possible that the 110,000,000 people of the United States looked on our navy as not altogether the property of the officers and men in it; possibly our 110,000,000 people over here looked on the navy as their navy, that they had a right to know something of what it was doing; and so (this item had to be pointed out to one of our own topside officers, too) as that same public were paying the bills of the navy, no harm perhaps to let them in on a few things or, this being the twentieth century, they might take it into their heads some day to have no navy at all.
It took the foregoing talk and something more before I could get the permission of the British Admiralty to cruise on one of our own destroyers over there. This isn't so much a criticism of the British Admiralty as to show that their point of view differs from ours; and to show that it was not Was.h.i.+ngton which was holding up news of our navy over there.
As to what they have been doing! They have been doing great work. I cruised over there on one of our destroyers. She was five years old, yet one day during an 85-mile run to answer an S O S call she exceeded her builder's trial by half a knot. Incidentally, she saved a merchantman which had been sh.e.l.led for four hours by a U-boat and her $3,000,000 cargo; also she ran the U-boat under--one of the new big U-boats with two 5.9 deck guns. On the same day two other destroyers of our group took from a sinking liner 503 pa.s.sengers without the loss of a life. One of these destroyers lashed herself to the sinking s.h.i.+p the more quickly to get them off; and as the liner went down our little s.h.i.+p had to use her emergency steam to get away in time. A fourth destroyer of ours got the U-boat which sank the liner. That was the record of one little group of destroyers in one day; and it is detailed here because the writer happened to be present when these things happened.
When our fellows first went over they had to learn a few things from the British. We had first to get rid of some childish ideas about depth charges. We brought over a toy size of 50 to 60 pounds. They showed us a man's size one--300 pounds of T N T, a contraption looking so much like a galvanized iron ash-barrel with flattened sides that they call them ”ash-cans.”