The Corsair in the war zone

by Ralph Delahaye Paine

This war work agrees with me better than anything I have engaged in. I am growing stouter and more vigorous and enjoying every minute of it.... If we bean a submarine and crow about it, everybody ashore gives us the horse laugh because we did not have the propellers or conning tower to show for it; and if some misguided sub takes a shot at us and the torpedo happens to miss and biffs one of the empty buckets we are escorting over the horizon, the Admiral roars until we dare not show our faces ashore. I recently heard the anti-submarine campaign assailed on the ground that the submarines are still at large and going strong. They are. But the submarine campaign of Germany is away past its zenith. It was passed several months ago and the lid is now being nailed down on its coffin.

We are over here in this mess up to our ears and we know what has taken place when the whole ocean seems to tremble and that sickening, muffled roar, whose direction defies discovery, comes to our ears. We know that another torpedo has found its mark. Does it make us gloomy? It does not. It cheers us up. Why? Because we can instantly diagnose just how it was done and we recognize that our enemy is becoming more timid, impotent, and desperate. Very soon every successfully exploded torpedo will cost the life of the sub that sent it. Instead of being the terror of the seas that they were last June and July, the U-boats now advertise the fact that the terror of the seas is the American destroyer.

The war goes booming along on an ever greater scale, and to those who are given this opportunity of viewing the panorama, it unfolds itself with a magnitude that defies all description. Could I but tell you of the vast works that America alone has put upon the landscapes here in France, you would believe my enthusiasm exaggerated. Details I cannot give, but as a comparison imagine a contract for the construction of a series of communities, each one about as large as Newark was ten years ago, and imagine them equipped with every modern improvement such as wharfage on a river-bank formerly barren, manufacturing plants for the fabrication of everything from wooden legs to steel ships, and then accept this as a fact already accomplished and doing business, and you can gather some idea of the tremendous efforts that have been put forth.

ROLLING OUT TO FIND A CONVOY

A LITTLE WATER ON DECK

For all this we are indebted, not nearly so much to the men here at the front as to those whose untiring efforts at home, in face of all kinds of criticism of the most venomous kind, have driven this enormous task to a successful culmination. I have a wonderful respect for our men at home who have had to stay home and accomplish things which they could never disclose to a naturally impatient and clamoring public. Had the Germans done such things as I have seen here accomplished by Americans, I would have taken off my hat to them and acknowledged the fact that German efficiency coupled with the advantages of a despotism was at least worthy of a close look. I dwell upon this phase of the situation because it has recently come to my attention, from most reliable sources, that there is a tendency toward gloom in certain quarters at home. The constant attacks made by conscientious critics, aside from the braying of the eternally discontented and the insidious whispers of the disloyal, are liable to make even the stoutest hearts falter at times.

I cannot too emphatically contradict every reason advanced to sustain a gloomy attitude of mind. There is every reason for the greatest enthusiasm and confidence. In fact, we over here on the firing line have a spontaneous kind of enthusiasm that comes only to the victorious. This war is a long and ferocious process in which each battle must be considered as a single shot fired only as a part of the ensemble. On land and sea things look better than they have in a long time. Every American effort is pure velvet for the Allied side. I trust our nation will now begin to see that America is a big and powerful fellow among the nations of the world and that, with just a little bit of careful attention, this European situation can be hammered into shape. The women of the country are, after all, pretty much the whole thing, for they can inculcate the spirit of fight and of happy confidence that nothing else can put into their boys. If the mother will adopt the old Spartan admonition of “Come home either with your shield or on it,” the boys will keep surging into this war with an ardor that no enemy can stop.

... My experiences thus far have brought me more laughs than it has been my pleasure to have in any other period of time. I must confess, however, that many of the laughs come when I view some of the situations in retrospect. At times, especially in the middle of a ruction, when literally tons of high explosives are being launched, we are too busily engaged to laugh. On such occasions we have to think rapidly and work fast.