On Board the “President Lincoln”
The mounting flames of a bonfire cast a flickering red light down the battery street. Burning the whole night through, to consume boxes, refuse and abandoned material of various kinds, these ruddy illuminations in the quarters of the 149th Field Artillery, at Camp Mills, Long Island, were omens of unusual, and unpublished, happenings. The men of the regiment felt the nearness of these events, though they had been given no warning of them, and slept, fully clothed, with their packs still rolled as they had been at inspection the afternoon before. Covered only by their overcoats, the boys tossed uneasily on their canvas cots in the chilliness of the night. When one, awakened by the cold, ventured to approach the bonfire to warm himself, the voice of a sentry warned him away: “No one is allowed around the fire. Orders are for no unusual appearance or noise.” And the chilly one would return to his tent, if not to slumber, muttering, “Tonight’s the night, all right!”
At 3:30 a. m., a whispered summons roused each man. A few, who had scoffed at the omens the previous evening, rolled their packs by feeble candles. All the cots were folded and piled in the shed at the end of the street that had housed the battery kitchen. The cooks performed their last rites there, by serving coffee and sandwiches. The last scraps of paper and other litter in the battery street were “policed up,” and added to the now dying bonfire. Then the batteries were formed, and the regiment, at 5 o’clock, October 18, 1917, marched silently out of Camp Mills.
The hike to the railroad station was a short one. There the regiment quickly boarded a waiting train, which pulled out at 6, to make the brief journey to the ferry docks in Brooklyn. Quickly and quietly, the men boarded the ferry. They had been instructed to make no noise, attract no attention, and so shield the troop movement as much as possible from public (and enemy) notice. But a ferry-boat load of khaki-clad youths, when such ferry-boat loads were not so numerous as they later became, could not fail to draw the eyes of the throngs on their way to business. The journey around the Battery and up the Hudson River was punctuated by cheers and shouts of good-bye from witnesses of our departure. At the docks of the Hamburg-American Line, where the “Vaterland” and other ocean liners had lain since the autumn of 1914, the boys filed onto the wharf and immediately over the side of the “President Lincoln.”
As he was assigned his place in the hold, each man was given two things: a printed sheet of instructions, which was to guide his actions on board, and a life-preserver, which, hanging like two sofa pillows, one on his breast, the other on his back, was to impede all his movements on board. For these must be worn night and day, whether one was eating or drinking, working or playing; and must be within reach when one slept. That last was easy, for they usually served as pillows.
That was one of the precautions against danger from a submarine’s torpedo. Another was the fire-drill, which occurred at unexpected times, either at night, in the midst of sleep, or during the day. Since there were between 5,500 and 6,000 troops on board, exclusive of the crew of 400, it was important that they should know the quickest and easiest way to escape from the ship in case of accident. The “President Lincoln,” before the war the largest freight vessel afloat, was built for the carrying trade and not at all for passengers. In each hatch were four, and in some five, decks below, and it was a feat to empty all these by the narrow iron stairways in the short space of two minutes. At the entrance to each hatch were stacked rafts, ready to be unlashed and heaved over the side, and every man had a place.
Below, each man had a bunk, a canvas stretcher hung on a frame, three tiers high, that ran the length of the hatch, narrow aisles separating each double row. Electric lights made these good places to lounge and read. But when night fell, every light in the ship was extinguished, save only the dim blue lights at the stairways. Not even a lighted cigarette was allowed on deck or at a porthole, lest it betray the fleet to some hostile submarine, lurking near under cover of darkness. And all day long and the night through, lookouts—an officer and one enlisted man—watched the waves from the mast heads and from sentry boxes along the side, fore and aft, for the ripple of a periscope.
Excessive precaution was not without good cause. This fleet was such as to spur enemy submarines to extraordinary activity for several reasons: The vessels were former Hamburg-American Line ships, making their first voyage under American colors; it was a double blow that these German boats should not only be employed in the service of the United States, but even be used to carry troops and supplies to defeat Germany herself. Again, these seven vessels transported an entire division at once, the first to be sent across the Atlantic as a unit, a division which had received much attention because of its composition, an amalgamation of National Guard organizations from twenty-six states.
Battery E mounted guard on the “President Lincoln” on the evening of the day the regiment embarked, October 18, and so a good many of the boys were on deck to see the lights of the Statue of Liberty fade behind as the fleet stood out to sea during the dark. About midnight the gongs sounded an alarm, and everyone was awakened for the first fire-drill. But the blue lights at the stairways that were the sole illumination, refused to work, and since no one could tell in the pitch blackness where to turn or whom to follow, the men were sent back to their bunks.
The next day Battery E went on “K. P.” Since more than 2.500 men were served in the forward mess hall in approximately two hours, the force of “kitchen police” required was large. The cooking was done by the regular ship’s cooks in their kitchen with huge caldrons and immense kettles. Only the serving was done by the troops. It was a particularly hard job that day, for the roughness of the open sea had begun to unsteady the boys, and the sight of food, let alone serving it for two hours, was enough to incapacitate them as kitchen hands.
After they had gained their sea-legs, however, mess time was the important hour of the day, and the chief occupation of everybody was waiting for the next meal. The occasional fire-drills were brief. Calisthenics were necessarily light and not long in duration, on account of the lack of space on deck. Reading matter was greatly in demand, and much time was spent on deck merely in contemplation of the sad sea waves, the flying fish, and now and then a school of porpoise. On the fifth day out, target practice by the ship’s gun crews furnished great excitement, and gave us greater sense of security when we had seen how accurate marksmen the gun-pointers were.
As a rule, the meals on ship-board were worth anticipating. Sunday dinners included chicken, for the last times that delicacy appeared on our menu, unless one includes the Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys of the first winter in France. Eggs, boiled for breakfast, also appeared on the menu for the last time, as did fresh fruit, such as apples, oranges and bananas. Sweet potatoes were more plentiful than the Irish variety, until one began to long for plain “spuds.” Stew and beans became more frequent as the voyage neared its close. But the men who ate in that forward mess hall will never forget the meal with which Battery E, again on “K. P.,” celebrated our arrival in port at St. Nazaire on the afternoon of October 31, 1917.
On the morning of the previous day we found that, instead of the cruiser and destroyer which had escorted us across the Atlantic, there were on all sides of us little, parti-colored craft that tore through the water and careered all about us, French coast patrol boats. They were camouflaged in that peculiar style, after the fashion of a cubist painting, which was to become so common to our eyes later on. Far on the horizon that morning we saw, too, a large fleet of merchant vessels returning to the United States, and the terrific rolls that struck the ship convinced us we were in the Bay of Biscay, nearing port.
“Land! Land!” was the cry next morning. Sure enough, there it was! We thought some ex-New Yorker had memories of the island prison in the East River when he said: “There’s Belle Isle!” But so it was: Belle-Ile-en-mer, a short distance from the harbor of St. Nazaire. We reached the port at about 3 o’clock that afternoon, and were fast to the dock an hour or two later.
Evening mess, which was usually begun at 3:30 or 4 o’clock, so that it might be over by dark, was delayed till 5 that day, while everybody hung over the rails to get their first sight of France. When they did descend, however, Battery E was waiting to serve a meal worthy of the day. Roast beef, Irish potatoes, gravy, bread and butter, tea, tapioca pudding and fruit cake. Nor was the quantity stinted. “We’re celebrating tonight!” said Battery E, behind the serving tables, “Eat your fill, boys!” And an extra helping went into the mess kits. When the long line had all passed by, the kitchen had sent its last shred of meat, its last drop of pudding to the mess hall. The allowance of cake for the meal had been far exceeded, but the good-natured chief petty officer in charge of the mess stores sent again and again for more.
Five more days were spent on board the boat. The first two passed slowly enough. Much time was spent in efforts to buy chocolate and apples, hoisted aboard by campaign hats lowered on long strings from portholes, from the boats sculled alongside by fantastically clad fishermen, girls, small boys and old women. Or one might watch the German prisoners, marked by a huge “P. G.” stamped on the back of their uniforms, pushing about the puny French freight cars on the docks. Or one might catch a detail to unload freight, or stand guard on the dock.
Saturday afternoon, November 3, the regiment marched up through the city and along the Boulevard de l’Ocean, St. Nazaire’s Riverside Drive. Then we remarked what we later became used to seeing, that the women seemed almost all to wear black, and practically every man was in a uniform.
The following afternoon, leave was given to visit the town. Hotels, restaurants and pastry shops did a rushing business, as did also the old women who kept the stands in the market square, selling postcards, souvenirs and all manner of trinkets. But the time spent ashore was not long, for we were called back to unload the ship that night, and marched out next day, our packs upon our backs, to a camp a short distance from the city.
At that camp we felt first that economical parsimony which the Old World must practice, in contrast to the extravagant abundance of our own land. The scanty wood allowance made the cooks suddenly mindful of the last stray splinters. Wash water was available only at certain specified times, and a squad of men must be gathered for a bath, in order that the water from the showers should not be wasted. No wonder, thought we, that the Frenchman drinks his eternal “vin rouge,” if water is so scarce.
But our stay at St. Nazaire was not long. There were a few days of diverse details, such as shifting boxes and equipment on the docks, leveling the drill grounds, and excavating for the big reservoir that was later to furnish the water supply for the camp. Saturday night the Second Battalion marched out of camp shortly after midnight, and boarded a train for the short ride northward to the town of Guer, in the department of Morbihan. That we were not full-fledged soldiers was evidenced by the fact that we made the trip in third-class passenger coaches and not in the box-cars which were ever afterwards to be our mode of transportation in France. But the stops were as frequent as they were in our later train rides, and it was not until the middle of the afternoon, Sunday, November 11, that we arrived at Guer.
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| Machine Gun Mounted for Air Craft | Three Sergeants in Romenoville’s Ruins | |
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| Three Corporals Ready to Hike | The Battery Clerk and the Courier |