Читать книгу Huts in Hell - Daniel A. Poling - Страница 5

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The great liner had reached the danger zone. She drove ahead through the night with ports closed and not a signal showing. Under the stars, both fore and aft, marines watched in silence by the guns. Each man wore or had by him a life-preserver, and there was silence on the deck.

Quietly I stood by the rail, and watched the waves break into spray against the mighty vessel's bow. The phosphorescent glow bathed the sea in wondrous light all about; only the stars and the weird illumination of the waves battled with the darkness; there was no moon.

It was hard to realize that out there somewhere silent watchers waited to do us hurt, hard to grasp the stern significance of those men in uniform who crowded the staterooms, officers of the new army of democracy bound for the bleeding fields of France. It was hard to comprehend these facts of blood and iron.

"Well, old top, I'm more nervous to-night than I ever was in the air; it's a jolly true fact, I am," said the British flier, who was standing by my side.

"Up there you can see them coming, but out here you just stand with your eyes closed, and wait." He was a captain and an "ace." After convalescing from a wound sufficiently to be about, he had been sent to America to serve as an instructor in one of the new aviation camps. He was returning now to re-enter the service at the front.

And it was a nerve-racking experience to wait out the night with its hidden but sure dangers. I turned in at eleven, fully dressed, and in spite of the menace that charged the very air was soon asleep. It seemed like ten minutes, or a flash—it really was six hours—when "Boom!" and I was awake. I sat up in bed, and tried to get my bearings. In a flash I remembered that I was at sea. Then I recalled the falling of a great stack of chairs on the deck just above our stateroom a few nights before, and was reassured. But "Boom! Boom! Boom!" three times in quick succession our six-inch guns spoke, shaking the ship from bow to stem. Before the third discharge had sounded I was in the middle of the floor.

There I met my cabin partner, the premier aviator of the American navy. We exchanged no lengthy felicitations, but jumped into our life-preservers and hurried on deck. Eight times the guns were in action in that first attack. What the results were we never learned; ships' officers are reticent, and gun-crews are not allowed to speak.

On four different occasions, the last time within thirty miles of the Mersey River, we were attacked by submarines. Later, in London, I learned that ours had been one of the most eventful trips of the war—that did not end disastrously. I know now exactly what a "finger periscope" looks like at a distance of three hundred yards; one glimpse is quite enough! And at least one submarine that interviewed us went down after its interview deeper than it had ever gone before.

After the first attack, unless we happened to be on deck when an action began, we were kept below until the disturbance was over. There was little chance to observe the manœuvres of the enemy, anyhow; he was elusive and kept discreetly under cover. It was not until several hours after the first attack that our convoy appeared; until within the danger zone we had sped on our way alone, trusting to our own engines and the skill of our captain.

Then the destroyers finally picked us up, three of them; we saw the Stars and Stripes flying from their signal-masts. It was a feast to our anxious eyes. Like frisky young horses these chargers of the sea cavorted about us. The sight of them brought a comforting sense of security.

The last attack came at dusk, and was beaten off with gun-fire and depth-charges, the latter dropped in the wake of the conning-tower that had scarcely got out of sight when the destroyers dashed over the spot, one from the rear and another that swept across our bows, clearing us by inches. Our own gun-crew did not relax its vigilance until the bar was crossed and all danger was passed. The officer in charge of the bluejackets was an Annapolis man and a friend of my cabin companion. He had been compelled to resign his commission because of ill health; the doctors assured him that he was incurably afflicted with tuberculosis. But the war brought him quickly back. The need was so great that he was not turned away. When I left him at Liverpool, he had been without sleep for two days and two nights; but he was happy.

"I have my big chance," he said, "and I'm getting well!" Thus does the spirit conquer the body when a crisis challenges the soul.

A few days after landing in Great Britain I saw the ruins of a fishing-ship that had been attacked by a submarine. Without warning the U-boat had appeared and begun to shell the little vessel. Though outranged, the one gun of the smack replied right sturdily. But it was an unequal and hopeless fight. Soon the fishermen were forced to take to the open boats. This they did, dragging along their wounded. They were shelled as they pulled away; and the mate, already hit, received a mortal hurt, but did not flinch.

The submarine disappeared as suddenly as it came, perhaps warned by wireless of the approach of British cruisers. Back to their little ship came the dauntless seamen. Let one of those who heard the story tell it.

"The fire was burning fiercely forward; steam was pouring from her wrecked engine-room; and the ammunition was exploding broadcast about her decks.

"'A doot she's sinkin',' said Ewing stoutly. Noble said nothing; he was not given overmuch to speech; but he made the painter fast, and proceeded to climb aboard again. Ewing followed, and between them they fought and overcame the fire.

"'Dinna leave me, Jamie!' cried the mate piteously. 'Dinna leave me in the little boat!'

"'Na, na,' was the reply; 'we'll na leave ye'; and presently they brought their wounded back on board, and took them below again. The mate was laid on his bunk, and Ewing fetched his shirts from his bag, and tore them up into bandages. 'An them's his dress shirts!' murmured Noble. It was his first and last contribution to the conversation.

"They took turn and turn about to tend the wounded, plug the shot-holes, and quench the smouldering embers of the fire, reverently dragging the wreckage from off their dead, and comforting the dying mate in the soft, almost tender accents of the Celt.

"''Tis nae guid,' said the mate at last. 'Dinna fash aboot me, lads. A'll gang nae mair on patrol'; and so he died." But they saved their little ship, and I saw her there in a corner of the basin, a mass of twisted metal and charred woodwork, but a flawless monument to the courage of the British fisherman in war.

We had one Sunday on the Atlantic. The evening before I sat with Tennyson and read of King Arthur and his men, the Knights of the Table Round. But even as I read, all about me was a braver picture than the words of the great singer conjured up for me, five hundred men of the new chivalry, in the uniform of my country, with faces set toward the places where Democracy battles to rescue the Holy Grail of Freedom and Justice and Peace.

On Sunday morning for an hour the ship became a house of worship. The songs of our Christian faith and the words of our Christ came to us with richer meaning. About the long tables in the main dining-room during the services sat colonels and majors and captains, lieutenants and privates, soldiers of the land and also soldiers of the sea. Never have I seen anywhere a finer company—strong faces, clear eyes and skins, sturdy bodies.

It was a group representative of every section of the United States and of virtually every profession. Here was a major from Texas who had left behind him a daily newspaper; another from Chicago, who is a famous surgeon; another from Boston, dean of a great law school. I was seated by a captain who was to solve the telephone problem for our fighting front. He is one of America's leading telephone executives; and, when I had last seen him, he was president of the Christian Endeavor union in Grand Rapids, Mich.

At the piano was a lieutenant whose name was on every lip at a great Eastern football game a year ago; and directly in front of him was a choir singer from the largest Episcopal church in Washington, D.C. There I found the professor of French in a State university. He was going back to his old home, going back with two silver bars upon each shoulder, going back beneath the Stars and Stripes.

There were West Pointers in the company, stalwart young officers only a few months from the Orient, and graduates of Annapolis, one, now the ranking aviator of the navy, a soft-voiced Southerner, who was the champion light-weight boxer of the Naval Academy.

Down well in front—and while I was speaking his eye never left mine—sat the English "flier." His cane was by his side, and on his sleeve were the gold bars that tell of wounds.

There was no false sentiment in that company, but there was a profound emotion. Practical men they were, and they were dreamers too. In their dreams that day were the faces of fair women and of little children, for "the bravest are the tenderest"; and in their dreams were the soft caresses that thrust them forth to the battles' hardness, for love has the keener goad where honor marks the path of duty.

We were on the backward track of Columbus, and those men sailing out of the New World which the far-visioning mariner first saw four hundred years ago were discoverers too. They have found themselves; they and their brothers have found their country's soul, and they go now on a spiritual adventure holier than that which brought Richard the Lion-Hearted to the walls of Jerusalem.

The shipboard meeting was arranged by the secretaries of the Y. M. C. A., and the English clergyman who conducted the formal portion of the service selected as the Scripture lesson the story of the journey of Mary with the Christ-child into Egypt and their return to Nazareth when the danger of King Herod's wrath was passed. At first the lesson seemed a trifle unusual, a little out of place for the occasion; but now I am of the opinion that it was peculiarly fitting. Out of the tale of the babe whose weakness was stronger than hate, and whose helplessness was not despised, came to thoughtful men the memories of the sacred associations of their "yesterdays," a satisfying calm, a sober exaltation that was to their souls what food is to the body.

THE GERMAN CREW AND SUBMARINE WHICH SURRENDERED TO THE U. S. S. "FANNING"

This is the first capture at sea of Germans by American forces, an event which will go down into history.

Copyright by Committee on Public Information.

These modern knights, bound on their Crusade farther than flew the imperial eagles of Rome, gathered there beneath the starry banner of their fathers and under the flag of the church with as true a consecration and as fine a faith as ever thrilled the breasts of mail-clad men when ancient knighthood was in flower. No cause since men fought to free the sepulchre of Christ, no tourney of kings, no search for a grail, has been so worthy as the cause in which these soldiers of Democracy go forth by land and sea to dare their best and all.

And there were other soldiers on board, soldiers of the Red Triangle, soldiers as brave and soldiers as vital to the cause of their country as those who wear the insignia of the combatant. After the service that morning one of these slipped his arm into mine as I steadied myself against a particularly heavy sea, and said, "I've just had a great time, old man."

I knew by the eager look in his eyes that he wanted to talk about it, and so I led him over to a sheltered spot on the deck where we could be alone. The secretary was a college professor with a wife and two babies in the "States," and he had been a very nervous man all the way across the ocean; but now he was quite himself and very happy.

"I've just had a good hour with a lieutenant from S——," he continued. "He came to me in trouble. The story is the old one, one God knows we'll hear many times in the next few months. The chap is paying the price of his sin, rather the price of his ignorance, for he is just an overgrown country boy. He never saw the ocean until this ship carried him out upon it, and New York was too big and bad and attractive for him. Well, things might be worse. I helped him, and started him in the right direction; and then I said: 'Say, lad, you've got a stiff battle before you in France, stiffer than any the Germans can give you, stiffer than New York; and I know what you need. Do you want it?' and the chap looked me in the eye, and said, 'I do.' Well," the secretary continued, "we were on our knees presently, and God helped me first, and then helped him, to pray. Now Jesus Christ has another follower on this transport."

There was silence between us for a moment, and then the secretary concluded: "Last night I slept with my clothes on; I suppose we all did. I listened to the steady pound of the engines, and waited, tense and anxious, for the crash of the torpedo I knew might come; and then I got a grip on myself. I said: 'What are you here for? Who sent you? Whose are you?' and I promised God to stop being a coward. I asked Him to give me a chance to make amends for the time I had lost on this voyage looking for a submarine that is not likely to come. I asked God to give me a man out of these hundreds in uniform, to give me a man for Christ.

"And how quickly God has answered my prayer! Now I know why I'm here, and I have the first-fruit of my ministry."

A great thing it is to know why you are here! The man who has a reason for his journey, and the evidence of his decision in his own heart, has the peace that passeth understanding, and that not even U-boats can take away.