Stories of the Ships

by Lewis R. Freeman

[III. AMERICA ARRIVES]

[THE UNITED STATES NAVY]

In writing some months ago on the coming of the American Army to France, I quoted the naïve words used by a French Staff Officer to describe the impression the new arrivals had made upon him. After speaking of the keenness of the American officers to learn from those who had had the experience, he concluded: "We like them very much. In fact, they have been quite a surprise. They have not displayed the least tendency to show us how to run the war. Indeed, they are not the least American!"

I do not know that I have heard a British naval officer use precisely the same words in voicing his relief that his American "opposite number," whom he is now beginning to meet with increasing frequency and intimacy, has not fulfilled expectations in insisting on showing the British Navy how to win the war; but that precise sentiment I heard implied many times, though, I am happy to record, less and less frequently as the favourable impression formed by those who have had opportunity of meeting the first officers from across the Atlantic, has had time to "percolate." Save on the score of technical training and uniform, there is very little to differentiate the American naval officer from his brother in the Army who has furnished so agreeable a surprise to his Allies in France, and there need be no fear (whatever may have been expected from those who have not had the opportunity of meeting him before) that the former will not "keep station" at sea in the same quiet unostentatious way that the latter has "fallen into step" on land.

So far, since American naval activities in the war zone have been largely limited to the operations of their fleet of destroyers off the Irish coast, the two navies have had far less opportunity to get acquainted than have the British and American armies. The liaison established at Queenstown, however, may be taken as a microcosm of the co-operation that will be established on a larger scale should the exigencies of the situation demand it. As thoroughly characteristic of the spirit in which the Americans are taking up their work in these waters, I may quote the words of an officer of one of their destroyers with whom I talked recently.

"Green as we came to the job," he said, "in comparison to their three years of hard experience of the British, our taking over here was almost like a lot of boy scouts replacing a regiment of seasoned veterans in the trenches. We were all for the job, however, and somehow we began to get results right from the get-away. Let me tell you, though, that if we had had to find out all the wrinkles of the game ourselves—if they had not given us the benefit of all they had been paying in ships and men for three years to learn—it would have been a far slower business for us, and a far more costly one as well. I take off my hat to the British destroyers and trawlers, and to the men who man them. I have not had a chance yet to see anything of the rest of their Navy, but if the officers and men are of the same stamp as those we have worked with here, when our capital ships come over it will be just like joining up with another American fleet."

These sentiments seem to me thoroughly typical of the spirit with which the American Navy is taking up its task in European waters, and such also was the opinion of a distinguished British Naval officer to whom I quoted them not long ago.

"I have known American Naval Officers a good many years," he said, "principally on the China and West India stations, so that, personally, I had none of the doubts about our ability to co-operate with them that may have been harboured by some of my friends who had been less fortunate than myself on that score. The fact that the average untravelled Briton has had to judge the American wholly by such specimens as seemed to him the most characteristic among those coming to this side of the water—that is, by the Cook's tourist and the money-slinging millionaire, neither of whom is in the least representative—has been responsible for our getting, as a nation, a distorted picture of you, as a nation. It was that which gave the more conservative element in both our Army and Navy some doubts as to how we might settle down to pull in double harness.