Over the Seas for Uncle Sam Part 12

He was well once more and back again in the field.

Malaria was rampant in Africa. Our s.h.i.+p exceeded capacity by over a hundred cases--men with raging fevers. Working at top speed, we could not bathe them all, and cold baths alone could save them.

The convalescent officers helped us. We worked like machines. Some of the nurses caught the tropical fever, too, but they stuck by their post.

They did not dare give in. There were too many sick and dying men calling for them. I have known those girls to stand on their feet when their own temperatures ranged between 103 and 104 degrees. They laughed at the idea of giving in. They couldn't. That was all.

You have heard of the brutality of the Turk. Let me tell you he is gentle compared to the ferocity of the Germans. We lay at anchor near Salonika. The Turks were on one side of the Gulf, the British on the other. More than once I have seen the Turks hoist a white flag to us, and, when we have at length replied to it with our flag of truce, they have sent an envoy aboard. Always, he desired to parley with the Matron instead of with the Commander, and I would be summoned to receive his message.

"Mem Sahib," he would say, "we are about to open fire on the British.

You will move your s.h.i.+p about fifty yards. You will then be out of danger." He would bow and return to his regiment, giving us ample time to move before the great guns roared once more.

But the Germans! To bomb a field hospital or sh.e.l.l an ambulance, or sink a Red Cross s.h.i.+p is a triumph for them!

It was three o'clock one morning. We lay in the Mediterranean. An accident case needed instant care. I ran to prepare the "theater," as we call the operating room. The patient was treated and had been lifted to a stretcher when the Huns' torpedo struck us.

Then came the crash, the sudden trembling of the s.h.i.+p and the sudden dreadful listing. We carried the man to the deck, scrambling up as best we could. The engine had not been struck, but the stern was shattered.

Every man who was able to, reached the deck with life-belt on, and the nurses and doctors flew to the rescue of those below.

We carried them all on deck, and the Commander faced us quietly.

"The boats on the port side are smashed, and those on starboard cannot be lowered."

There was not a sound for a full moment after he spoke, as the awful truth dawned upon us. Then his voice rang out:

"There is only one chance--to jump for your lives."

Jump for your lives! I looked at the men who were too ill to be moved, who lay unconscious, with flushed cheeks and closed eyes. Jump for our lives! What chance had they? Truly the Boches could take toll that night if they counted sick and wounded men and Red Cross nurses as fair prey... .

The Commander shouted to us: "Jump feet first. Watch out--jump _feet first_."

We had practised doing it in the tank on the way over. With life-belts on, it is the only way of preserving your balance.

The men were dragging out tables and tearing up planks for rafts. They hurled them into the water, and little groups of them climbed the rail, stood poised an instant above the black depths below them--then leaped down... .

The voices of hundreds of struggling men rang in on our ears and we were helpless to aid them.

The Commander called the nurses to him.

"You go next," he told them. "The Matron and I will jump last."

They were the bravest, coolest lot of girls I have ever seen. They climbed the rail, hand in hand. They hesitated a second--with a shudder at what lay before them, then they leaped forward... . I could not look. Only the Commander and I remained. He drew me to the rail.

"I can't do it," I cried, drawing back. But he was very firm.

"Come," he said quietly, "it will soon be too late."

He helped me up. My heart was thumping like a trip-hammer in my breast.

I could not--I could not--_could not_ jump. He drew me down suddenly. I lost my footing and plunged after him. The water closed over me. It seemed hours before I came to the top. For a long time I could not move.

At length I began to swim. I knew enough to get as far away as I could from the suction that would draw me as the s.h.i.+p sank.

Three hours later patrols picked us up.

And yet, I love the water. If I am ash.o.r.e and cannot sleep, I pretend my room is a cabin and that I am on a quietly rocking sea. That is why I entered the Navy nurse corps of my country when she declared war on Germany.

So I have served under three flags since war was declared, and at last--at last I am under my own!

GUNNER'S MATE M'QUIRE SPEAKS:

"ABANDON s.h.i.+P!"

ME father was always talkin' about the old country. Sure and he said there was nothin' in the whole of America to compare with a corner of County Cork! We kids used to poke fun at him, but I'm confessin' it made us kinder hanker to see that land ourselves.

He was after claimin' that the gra.s.s was greener there than anywhere else on earth and the sky bluer. As a kid I planned to run away and s.h.i.+p over there just to see if the old man was givin' it to us straight. But it was to Canada I drifted, and, because I have more inches than most men, the Northwest Mounted sent me an engraved invitation askin' me to join them, which I did for six years.

Sure, it's a great way to spend your days, ridin' through snow and ice or mud and mosquitoes--accordin' to the season--after the gang of outlaws runnin' loose up there. But it was always worryin', the wife was, for fear I couldn't shoot quick enough and they'd get the drop on me. She'd tell me that it was the kid she was considerin'--she wasn't wantin' to bring him up without a father. She'd say he was too big a handful for her to manage, then get around me by claimin' he was a chip off the old block all right--all right.

So I give up me post in the Northwest and settled down in Winnipeg. Then the war came and I could see reasons all over the place for me joinin'

up at once. First of all, though me country was America, me home was in Canada and I knew that nine-tenths of the Canucks would be friends of mine. Then secondly, wasn't I Irish, which meant gettin' into any sc.r.a.p that was goin', so help me?

Well, the wife held me back at the start. She kept coaxin' me to bide a bit. She argued the States wasn't in trouble yet, so I listened with one ear, but with the other I was hearin' from all sides about the greatest free-for-all fight in the world's history, and I knew that me, Patrick M'Quire, had no business to be standin' by.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Gas Masked," the men in the trenches throw hand grenades.]

The wife wasn't well and she was always frettin' at the thought of me enlistin', so I told her I'd wait, but I warned her that it was entirely responsible she'd be if Germany tied the Allies in a show-down. I told her I was a sharpshooter with a record in the Northwest to be proud of.

I asked her why she was keepin' me back. Sure, I demanded what business she had to be hamperin' the Allies' chances like that!

Well, me humor fell on deaf ears and I stayed until me own country, the United States of America, declared war, and that same afternoon, by the grace of G.o.d, I walked meself up, bought tickets for the States, packed me family aboard and two days later joined the navy.

It's compromisin' I was when I joined. I told the wife that the fear of trenches or gas attacks need never enter her heart, but I knew as well as me own name the danger on the seas of Fritz gettin' playful and stickin' a torpedo in your ribs--but why worry her?

Better than me prayers I knew firearms. I could take a rifle apart and put it together again with me eyes closed. I had had as many machine guns jam on me as the next fellow. I was entirely qualified to be a gunner's mate, which, I a.s.sure you, I wasted no time becomin'.

They s.h.i.+pped me over on a British auxiliary--a cargo s.h.i.+p. For the two months they held me at the trainin' station. The wife had been knittin'

and knittin'! If I'd been bound straight for the North Pole I couldn't be after havin' more helmets or sweaters or socks or wristlets than she sent me. Whist! how these women do slave for us. It was askin' her not to, that I did at first, until I saw it was givin' her the only mite of pleasure she could squeeze out of me goin' away. Women is like that.

They wants to be babyin' their men folks until the end of the story.

What I valued most of all was a picture she had taken with the kid. That nearly finished me. I was after winkin' and blinkin' over it like an old fool parted from his senses. But she looked so sweet smilin' at me there and the kid looked so clean it almost broke me up.

I set sail on a warm June day. There was no chance to go home and say good-bye. In a way I was glad of that. She was, too. It's rough weather we had all the way and plenty of work, but I liked the life. I was hard as nails. I was strong from bein' outdoors twenty-nine years of me thirty. Weather didn't worry me--rain or s.h.i.+ne was all the same.

We came to the Zone. "Aha!" says I to meself, "so this is the patch Fritz has picked to try his luck with us as a target!" I kept wis.h.i.+n'