Evans, being a proficient radio operator, enlisted at once in the navy and was put through the intensive course for radio electricians, and then sent abroad on a destroyer.
When he left his home the parting was not easy. His mother was a widow, and he her only child; he was all she had. But in the spirit with which the Spartan mothers gave to their sons the shields they were to carry into battle, saying as they did so, “Return with it, or on it,” Jim Evans’s mother bade him Godspeed with a brave smile on her lips. He had a tradition to live up to, and she thanked God he was able to do it.
During the last months of the war the destroyer to which Evans was attached was among those basing on Queenstown and performing the arduous duty of meeting the great convoys from the States, far out at sea, and escorting them through the danger zone to safety.
The life on these slim fighting ships was a strange one indeed. As they slid silently out of the harbor past Haulbowline, three, four, or five in column, they never knew what might be in store for them. Then as they passed Daunt Rock and, forming their scouting line, plunged into the head seas that swept their narrow decks, there came the test of the sailor’s morale. To learn to live and carry on in their cramped quarters, rolling, pitching, and thrashing about till it seemed as if neither flesh and blood nor steel could stand it any longer, while the cold, gray rollers, washing over the ship from stem to stern, chilled the very soul, was a feat that seemed to call for even more than human powers of adaptation.
But it was not always rough and dreary. There were days of sparkling sunshine and calm seas, days when Evans’s spirit expanded and he rejoiced in the grandeur of the ocean. And as he became more and more accustomed to the life, his love of the sea, born at first in his childhood acquaintance with it on the New England coast, became deeper, till it was woven into every fiber of his being.
Soon after the Armistice, Evans went to London on leave. He now wore the uniform of a Chief Petty Officer, having risen through the successive grades of radio electrician to chief. In London he met Sam Mortimer, and they had a happy evening together. Mortimer told of the days and nights at the front in mud, rain, shell-fire, and gas.
“How was it on the destroyers?” he asked of Evans.
“Pretty hard to stick it at first,” was the answer. “In those early days when we first started bucking the head seas going out to seventeen degrees west to look for convoys, I’d just want to curl up in the lee of a stack where I could breathe fresh air and still not be drenched to the skin with the spray and green seas washing over the decks. I didn’t care a hang half the time if I made good or not. And I was just crazy for the sight of the green hills of Ireland and the spires of Queenstown, the snug berth at the mooring buoy and the liberty party ashore. Then I waked up to the fact that the messages I had to copy in those tedious watches in the radio room were very close to the heart of our naval strategy; handling them mechanically like an automaton, I was losing a golden opportunity to read the controlling mind. I began to notice things, and I saw a wonderful evolution going on. Sailing orders which at first required long messages were later transmitted in a few brief signals. Every month saw new growth of efficiency in handling communications and disposing the forces. We have the British chiefly to thank for that—especially Admiral Bayly.
“Toward the end I got to feel more like part of the ship; I got so I didn’t mind, no matter how rough it was, and then the real spirit of the sea got hold of me. As an old sailor said, life at sea clears the corruption of the beach right out of your system. I’ve got now so that when the old ship leaves Corkbeg Light astern and puts her nose into the Atlantic, I feel that I’m getting back into my native element.”
“I like the ocean on a nice calm day,” said Mortimer, “but I’d never feel like that.”