Читать книгу In The Trenches 1914-1918 - Glenn Ph.D. Iriam - Страница 11

We were off down the Bristol Channel, destination unknown aboard a freight tramp Ahoy! The freighter that carried us was of an all-steel construction shell with decks from top to bottom of all-steel plates. Ribs and deck girders were of all-steel I beams or T beams. Each man had his spot on the lower deck to spread his bed and equipment on the steel riveted deck floor, and there was little room to spare. All the ships were loaded to capacity. Bristol Channel, St. George’s Channel, then away south and still south until the breeze began to smell balmy and warm. I began to sniff and have visions of the Straits of Gibraltar, and hopes of seeing the Mediterranean, or perhaps Egypt, the Dardanelles or at least Marseilles. We got in the neighborhood of the Bay of Biscay and fully expected to meet a storm as that quarter has an unenviable reputation for dirty weather.

It stayed fine and sunny, and in mid afternoon our old R. S. M. brought a crock out on deck to issue our first ration of rum on active service. I sat on top of a hatch cover and watched the proceeding, which were quite interesting. Some of the boys were teetotalers, some were the opposite, some were merely curious about the old Jamaica, trying it as an experiment and gagged on it with wry faces. I took mine finding it strong enough to make me blink and swallow a few times before getting a free breath. I figure it must be 35 or 40 O. P.

We passed several queer-looking craft and met one Nova Scotia Man loping along and nearly becalmed. The “herring chokers” hurried to the rail waving greetings. It was a brig and what they were doing in these waters I don’t know. Maybe hunting subs with their old seal guns.

When I turned in at a late hour we were still pounding away to the south and it was getting to be quite warm. Awaking in the morning I had a suspicion that things had changed. I was shivering in a damp cold foggy draft and the steel plate mattress felt like an ice floe. There was a fresh breeze with a choppy sea on, a drift of scud, fog, and we were drumming away full speed to the north getting colder every minute.

In the course of the day we saw a couple of queer bunchy awkward- looking naval craft through the fog on the port bow. These turned out to be French cruisers lying outside the entrance to the Port of St.Nazaire. We soon picked up a pilot and worked our way into the roadstead and in due time swung at anchor in the inner harbor. Here was a long straggling water front of mixed shipping and a mixed looking town stretching back from it into fog and smoke.

I heard a French bugle some place on shore playing reveille. This call has the same notes as used by the U. S. Army, was no doubt introduced here by Lafayette. We sized up the grimy looking shoreline.

Here it was at last

It was the land of France

The chosen home of Chivalry

The garden of Romance

It turned out that we had slipped across the Bay of Biscay, pretty luckily, just ahead of a nasty storm that caught some of the transports close behind us nearly swamping a couple of them that were loaded with horses and forage. I believe there was a loss of some of the horses.