There he was taught to march and to sing "The Yanks are Coming" and other choice vocal selections; was lectured on patriotism and cautioned against intemperance, lewd and lascivious conduct and the great temptations held out to innocent and inexperienced Y secretaries in the great foreign cities. He was given lessons in Italian and at the end of three months could speak that language more fluently than his professor.
On the 26th of August his passport arrived and he was notified to be prepared to sail on September 1st. From that time until he left New York he stood in line before different clerks and officials, receiving instructions, signing papers and procuring his outfit. He was furnished everything except his underclothing, including a fund for incidental expenses over actual transportation.
Standing in line with more than a hundred others, he was surprised to see, only a short way behind him, his brother-in-law, John Cornwall.
Cornwall, in January, 1918, had made application to enter the Officers Training Camp at Port Benjamin Harrison, but had been rejected because he was past forty-five. He had then tried to enlist as a private, but had been rejected for the same reason. He had tendered his services to the Judge Advocate General's department, but had heard nothing from his application. As a last opportunity he offered his services to the International Y and had been accepted.
He arrived in New York on the night of August 27th and learned that his passport had been received, and he and three hundred and sixteen other Y men were to sail on September 1st.
In the early morning of that date they boarded a train for Montreal, where they arrived past midnight and were marched aboard the Burmah, a British transport of seven thousand tons burden. At two a. m. they were given a meal of tea, bread, condensed milk, boiled potatoes and a most horrible sausage and told to turn in. As their bunks were hold hamocks, quite a few turned out.
About daylight the thousand-mile journey down the St. Lawrence began. When they reached the ocean they joined a convoy of a dozen ships, screened in a cold mist and rocked by a choppy sea. Then began the ocean voyage of twelve days, through fog and rain and over a rough, gray sea. At night it was early to bed, because lights were not allowed.
The fare shows the ship's registry, and for breakfast, dinner and supper was the same—tea, oatmeal, mutton, marmalade, condensed milk, cheese, oleomargarin, bread and boiled potatoes. The ship was redolent with mutton. Those whose stomachs were upset by a first voyage, more than sixty per cent, declared they could never again look a sheep in the face and live through it. Several gave their sheep skin coats away, believing they added to the prevailing odor.
Every day of the voyage they marched in the morning and held a song service in the afternoon, followed by an address by some diplomatic preacher or professor, who, being on a British transport, considered it an opportune time to tell the captain and crew what the Yanks intended doing and why the soldiers of all the other allied nations had failed in the war.