Stories of the Ships

by Lewis R. Freeman

"The baseball games have given us a welcome chance to show our friendship for the American bluejackets. It is the custom to provide each member of a British shore-leave party with tickets good for two pints of beer at the Recreation Club. The Yank ships, being teetotallers, did not do this, and so the poor chaps would have had to get on without any beer if we had not come to their rescue. Soon it became quite the regular thing for a British sailor to provide his Yankee chum with half his beer-tickets, and, as many of the days were sweltering hot, you may believe they were appreciated. As the present beer we get does not contain enough alcohol to intoxicate a fly, American mothers need have no fear that there is anything in this action calculated to lead their sailor boys astray.

"I need hardly say that the Yanks have reciprocated every time they had a chance. I was having tea at the Naval Club a few days, and, having neglected to bring any sugar ashore from the ship, I was about to do the best I could without it, when an American sailor reached over from the next table and handed me his ration, saying that he had come provided with an extra one for just that purpose. And it was fine white sugar, too. I have seen the same thing happen a number of times. The Yanks seem to be allowed an extra lot of sugar and sweets to make up for not having grog. They tell me that they don't miss the latter very badly, and I can't say that they seem any the worse for not having it. Perhaps that is the one thing that we have worried most about since the Yankees came—as to whether or not their example would cause the British ships to 'go dry' too. Who can say? Stranger things have happened, but the change will hardly come during the war anyhow.

"The few weeks' sport at this Base gave the men a chance to meet in such a way that they could form real friendships, and I know of a number of instances where British sailors have asked Yankees to visit them in their homes if ever there is a chance that the leaves work out favourable to that arrangement. We found that we had a great many things in common with them; so much so that, writing some weeks after these meetings, it seems awkward to speak of them as Yanks at all, they have become so much part and parcel of ourselves.

"I cannot close this without mentioning an amusing incident which occurred to a messmate of mine. This chap was told off for patrol duty at the railway station, and, as was usual, had a Yankee sailor as a partner, the latter being provided with a small truncheon, according to their custom. The British lad, who was a good deal of a youngster, got interested in the stick and asked many questions, to all of which the American replied with the greatest good humour. Among other things, he said that the truncheon was 'loaded,' and that it was used for quieting obstreperous sailors. After this my friend kept his distance, and on returning to his mess explained to an attentive crowd all the happenings of the afternoon, ending up by saying that he took no chances with that 'loaded gun' stick, as he was afraid it might go off by mistake. It appears that he actually thought that a 'loaded' stick meant one that 'went off' when a man was hit with it. You may be sure that we lost no time in passing the joke on to the Yanks, who appear to be enjoying it quite as much as we have. Indeed, perhaps the surest sign of the good solid base our friendship is built on is the fact that it has long ago reached the 'joking' stage—the one at which we both feel quite free to throw aside 'company manners' and 'rag' each other without fear of being misunderstood or hurting any one's feelings. And that, let me tell you, means that we've at last got out a sheet-anchor that ought to keep the barque of our common friendship head-to-wind through any storm that is ever likely to threaten to swamp it."

I do not think there is much that I need add to this naïve but comprehensive statement of the way in which the Yankee bluejacket has impressed his fellows of the British Navy. The life of the Grand Fleet is a strenuous one, and at times many weeks may go by in which there is no opportunity for the men to foregather ashore. How well these rare opportunities have been used by the British and American sailors to become acquainted is evidenced by the frequency with which the officers doing the ship's censoring come across letters from one to the other, and the cordiality of the feeling which is springing up may be judged by the fact that the commonest form of address is "Dear Chum." The friendships which are growing between the thousands of Americans and Britons who are holding the seas to-day will be of incalculable influence in strengthening the bonds of international amity between the two nations upon whom most of the responsibility will rest in determining the future of civilization.

[III. What the American Bluejacket thinks of Britain and the British]

The scroll of human experience has been unrolling at rather a dizzy rate for both the American soldier and sailor during the last year; but it has seemed to me to be the latter—probably because he has somewhat more time to "sit and think" than the former—that has gone the farthest in the orderly pigeon-holing of his impressions. All the spirit of the soldier's being has been concentrated on his preparation for "licking the Boche." In mind and body he is fitting himself for his grim task, and his outlook on life and things generally is not uncoloured by the red mist that is deepening before his eyes as the time of his big moment approaches. With the sailor it is different. Although, first and last, the part that he is playing and will play in winning through is every bit as important as that of the soldier, his hate of the Hun is rather more impersonal, and he is less inclined to have his moments of "seeing red" than is the Yankee soldier. It is this fact that has made the American sailor a rather more detached and unbiased observer of the things the war drama has unrolled before him than is the soldier.

"How do things look to you after a year of real war?" I asked a tall youth in blue jeans and a grey armless sweater whom I found tinkering with the sights of the forecastle gun of the destroyer in which I chanced to be out with for a few days at the time. The question was merely an ingratiating attempt to get acquainted on my part, and was ventured with no expectation of drawing a serious answer. I was not as familiar then as I have become since with the material they are making the young Yankee sailor of, however. He turned on me a keen eye, with wrinkles at the corners which I was quite right in surmising had come there through gazing at heat-waves dancing along broad horizons long before he had squinted down the sight of a naval gun. My diagnosis of "Texas cowboy" only missed the truth by the difference between that and an "Oklahoma oil driller, with a 'Varsity education and a ranch of his own."

He leaned back easily with an arm over the gun-breech (where a British bluejacket under similar circumstances would have stiffened at once to attention), and yet there was nothing familiar or disrespectful in his attitude. "It looks to me like two or three things," he said after a moment of wrinkling his tanned brow as he collected his thoughts. "It looks to me as though these waters hereabouts were not going to be exactly a happy hunting-ground for the U-boat now that we're beginning to savy the game good and proper. That's one thing. Another is, that it's beginning to look as if they're waking up to the fact in the States that to call a man 'politician' is one degree worse than to call him a ---- ——. It took them a year or two of war to learn that in England, and we didn't profit much by their example. Another thing—it looks like Americans—or at least those of us as have come across to this side—are going to have a fair chance to discover that the natives of these little islands are more or less the same kind of animals the Yanks are after all. We've never had that chance in the last hundred and forty years. Instead, we've been taught from our cradles to nurse a grudge that was really wiped out when we licked them—or such forces as they could send across then—and set up business on our own account in '76. And one more thing. It looks as if Americans were at last getting off their blinkers in the matter of the Irish; that they are beginning to understand that these—but, excuse me, sir" (he turned and started adjusting the sighting mechanism again), "I just saw the Captain come up on the bridge, and I don't like to swear too freely in his hearing. And a man can't talk about this end of Ireland—or leastways about the way it's acted in the war—without swearing."

These offhand observations come pretty near to epitomising the several salient ideas that have been crystallising in the mind of the American sailor in the course of his year or more of active service in the war. If he is in a destroyer or submarine operating against the U-boat he knows full well what has been done in turning the little neck of the Atlantic where he works into what may well be termed a "marine hell" for the pirates. If he is in one or the other of these branches of the service, too, the fact that he has based in a South of Ireland port has given him a liberal education in the affairs of that "disthreshful country" and stirred in him the deepest abomination of Sinn Fein, all it stands for, and all who stand for it. A growing impatience and distrust of all professional politicians is common to the officers and men of all the American ships on this side, and bodes as hopefully for the future as does a similar feeling that is becoming increasingly evident in both the British Army and Navy.