It was a race of thoroughbreds, and when the winner tied up at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, there was the same absence of self exploitation that had signaled the services of the Cinderellas from the first day they began writing glowing pages of new achievement against new enemies.
CHAPTER XVI
"DO NOT SURRENDER"—"NEVER!"
SHIP SHELLED, MEN WOUNDED, NAVY GUNNERS ON "J. L. LUCKENBACH" FOUGHT SUBMARINE FOUR HOURS—ARMED GUARDS SAILING WAR ZONE BEFORE WAR WAS DECLARED—HAD 227 ENCOUNTERS WITH SUBMARINES—FIRST IN SERVICE, THEY WERE FIRST IN SACRIFICE—"HAND IT TO 'EM, JOE!"
Navy gunners, manning Navy guns on American merchant ships, were sailing the war zone before the United States declared war. First to get into action, these armed guards had more than two hundred encounters with submarines, many of them long-fought gunfire battles. First in service, they were first in sacrifice.
The night President Wilson delivered his war message to Congress, when I returned from the Capitol to my office in the Navy Department, I was greeted by this dispatch from the American Ambassador to France:
Paris, April 2.
Secretary of State,
Washington.