Over the Seas for Uncle Sam Part 7

There's nothing you can think of that you won't find some of them can do, from getting up a dance to rounding up a bandit. I was in Santo Domingo with my company. Most of the men were recruits, pretty soft from life in the barracks. We were ordered to a nearby post on the trail of a desperado. Before us lay a march of about four or five days. A hike is all right over level country that is fairly dry, but ours lay through a series of marshes winding upward over a mountain.

We started off at a brisk pace and we didn't let up. There were patches of land which sent us through mud up to our knees--our feet were never dry day or night--but there was no kick coming about that. We were going to reach our base at the time planned--no later.

The last day was the worst. We were on a level stretch at last, but there was no shade, and the sun beat down like a ball of fire. Our wet shoes dried and cracked on our feet--and we were blistered from heel to toe. But that didn't prevent our making thirty miles that day or doing the last four miles in forty-five minutes.

We were tired to death when we reached our destination. It was ten o'clock at night. The men dropped where they halted, just about all in.

We hadn't been there fifteen minutes when word came to us of the bandit we were rounding up. It seems he was in hiding in the hills about twenty miles north of us. A woman brought us the tip. He had thrown her down and she was taking her revenge in the usual way.

There was no mistaking her earnestness. There was just one thing to do--go out after that rebel. I sent over to the men and asked for seven volunteers. When the boys heard what was wanted, sixty per cent of the whole company offered to go. They forgot they were tired, stiff, sore--you couldn't hold them back!

I had the horses saddled and every one who could commandeer an animal mounted one. Some of them had never been on a horse's back before, but that did not stop them. They were off like a shot, the whole crowd of them--thundering up that dark road in search of the outlaw.

They caught him, too, after an all-night ride, and they brought him back with them. I tell you a good rest was coming to them after that. They certainly needed it!

The men have a great pride in our service. They show it outwardly by keeping themselves trim as a whistle. On s.h.i.+pboard each man is allowed a bucket of water a day for his ablutions--no more. Well, a marine makes that bucket go a long way; with it he washes himself, brushes his teeth, cleans his clothes, and scrubs the deck--anyone who claims he can do more than that with a bucket of water will have to show me!

And a marine takes his job seriously, whatever it is--yes, indeed. In the little French towns in which they have been landed they have become the traffic cops of the place. All the duties of a gendarme have been a.s.sumed by them with neatness and despatch.

The marines decided that no bluejacket was to hold conversation with a French girl. Once that was definitely pa.s.sed upon they began enforcing the law. A particularly happy young bluejacket had received a flower from the hands of a little French maiden. She had pinned it to his coat.

Along came the marine while Jack Tar was trying to thank her in his very best and limited French.

"Cut it out!" growled the marine.

"You beat it!" said the bluejacket.

In reply the marine quietly but quickly plucked off the flower to emphasize his command. There was nothing else to do but to fight, and the marine managed to beat up Jack mildly. Jack went to the s.h.i.+p's doctor to have a st.i.tch or two taken in his ear. He was still raging, and vowed he'd get that marine as soon as he was out. The doctor stopped st.i.tching long enough to look up over his gla.s.ses.

"I wouldn't, if I were you," he said, "that marine was very gentle with you. Next time he might do some real damage."

Yes, the sailor respects the marine as a majesty of the law. One slim, young marine is enough to make a gay and irresponsible party of bluejackets along the docks sit up and take notice.

There was a young sergeant by the name of Watson. He was a particularly efficient chap. Seats were hard to get on the train going up to Paris, and, when a party of army, navy and marine officers arrived at the little station, we found that Watson had reserved seats for all of us.

On our return trip we were surprised to meet him at a station some distance from the little town that he was policing. We asked him if he, too, had been up to Paris.

"Yes, sir," he said. We asked him how it happened he was so far away from his post.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Stand by!"--getting ready for Fritz.]

"I went up on my own, sir," he told us calmly enough. "I got to thinking that, perhaps, the bluejackets were starting something in Paris, and I thought I'd take a run up just to see they weren't putting anything over on the marine corps."

Evidently he found everything O. K. or he would have remained to adjust it.

It was Watson who had such trouble making the French peasants clean up their huts. Now, as everyone knows, the French peasant is an individual who wishes to be left alone to tend his little patch of ground. It is his own business if he has the cow beneath the same roof that covers him, and if the chickens have the freedom of the house it is, after all, an affair between himself and his poultry, so to speak. But not in Watson's eyes. He had orders to clean up that town, and there were no exceptions. Protests were in vain. He saw that sanitary conditions for the first time prevailed, and not until the houses fairly shone, and the streets resembled Spotless Town, did he relax and express himself.

"I see their point of view, of course, sir," he told me, "but if it happens to be the wrong point of view there's nothing to do but to right it."

The marines aren't beaten often at any sport, but when they are they take it as a tragedy. A s.h.i.+p's crew had been trained to shoot. They knew they could shoot, and, on landing, they challenged the marines to a contest. The marines, under a grizzled old sergeant, long in the service, were immensely proud of their skill on the range. They accepted the challenge. They were dead sure of the outcome. There wasn't a nickel within hailing distance that wasn't wagered!

The marines got on the range before the bluejackets. No advantage was taken. Well, the bluejackets beat them at slow fire. They beat them at rapid fire. They beat them on skirmish, which the marines had boasted most about. Altogether, it was an unhappy day for the marines.

Next day the commander of the s.h.i.+p, rising very early, saw a sight which fascinated him beyond words. On the range were the crack shots of the Marine Corps. Glowering above them stood the sergeant, his beard fairly bristling with anger, his back ram-rod straight. He had the men all out, and he was teaching them, with a thoroughness incomparable, the rudiments of rifle practice.

With stony faces the men submitted to the insult of being returned to the kindergarten of shooting. Again and again they went through the manual. It was a just punishment for permitting bluejackets to defeat them!

"Join the Marines--and see the world"--and to do that our boys pride themselves on extra quick obedience to orders, for there is no telling when an expedition will be pulled up in a hurry and sent to the other end of the globe. But whether they go or whether they stay, they accept it all calmly. The words of the little marine, who was plying his shovel one hot day, seem to sum up their contentment. He had been shoveling dirt since early morning. The sun was warm, and he paused in his task to mop his face. He looked up with a grin.

"I enlisted to see the earth," he said; "and here I am, digging it up, turning it over, and looking at it! ..."

BUGLER COLBY SPEAKS:

THE WAY WITH THE FRENCHIES

I'M a home-loving man. I don't ask anything better of life than my little house in the country, with the wife bustling about and the kids waiting for a game of ball or a tramp in the woods.

Yes, I'm a peace-lover, but I'm the kind of peace-lover who wouldn't quit this war a minute before the German empire is wiped off the map.

I'm going to stand by until that day comes to pa.s.s--as come it will!

I'd like to tear the heart out of every German for the work they have done to the French and British and Scotch and Irish--oh, I know what I'm talking about. Yes, you do, if you stay in Havre long enough. You can get all your facts first hand.

Just wander down to the station every other evening when the big seven-thirty express thunders in with her load of returned British prisoners. Yes, you can see with your own two eyes what German methods are, and I tell you it makes a man, who is a man, ready to give the last drop of blood in him to stamp out a nation that treats men that way--and what's worse--women and children... .

I'd been in the navy five years as a bugler. You are on the bridge all the time, standing by for duty. We were a.s.signed to one of the prettiest yachts afloat. It was originally the famous pleasure boat of a great New York multi-millionaire. She certainly was a nifty craft--about three hundred feet long, almost as big as a destroyer, and graceful as a swan in the water.

There must have been great parties aboard her in the old days, and I wonder how she felt when they knocked out her mahogany staterooms and hauled down her real lace curtains and tore up her fine saloons, for transport duty.

Nothing cla.s.sy about her then--just dirt and grease and the smell of pork and beans. As for her color, she was gray, same as any little ten-cent tug. But her lines didn't change. She was like a fine lady who takes off her ball gown and puts on rags, and in spite of it you can tell she's a fine lady through and through.

We carried the first American troops to land in France. The very first.

That was making history, wasn't it? It seemed right and fit that the proud little yacht should have the glory of taking the first batch of Yankees to foreign sh.o.r.es.

It was a rough trip, though, and we felt sorry for the boys whose sea travels had been limited to the ferryboat between Hoboken and New York.

Rough weather on s.h.i.+pboard is no joke. You can talk about the hards.h.i.+ps of the trenches, but how about being aboard a pitching vessel, when you can't even get a light in your galley ranges, which means no food can be cooked and a steady diet of hard tack and bully beef?

Oh, we hadn't any kick coming. It was all part of the game, but we did wish the sea would calm down a bit and the fog lift. I never saw such a fog in all my days. From the minute we left, it wrapped itself around us like a damp blanket. You could hardly see your hand before your face.

We didn't need a smoke curtain that trip--nature provided one for us, all made to order.

Our first taste of excitement was on the thirteenth day out. We were just wis.h.i.+ng for something, when we saw, through the mist that had let up a little, a strange s.h.i.+p ahead of us. We signalled her to make her colors, but instead she started off as though she were trying to run away. That promised hot excitement, so we went after her. We chased her for five hours--now losing her in the fog, now sighting her again, gaining on her inch by inch. We were sure she was a blamed German merchant vessel trying to sneak back to her base, and we had the guns primed to send her straight to the place all Germans come from.

When we got within a few hundred yards of her we hauled up the battle ensign on the foremast. We meant business. The gunners stood by. Just as they expected to hear the command, "Fire when ready," up came the British Jack to her mast!

Say, but we felt foolish, chasing one of our own allies all over the broad Atlantic. We asked her why the deuce she hadn't made her colors before, and she signalled back that she was under the impression we were an enemy raider.