So I give up me post in the Northwest and settled down in Winnipeg. Then the war came and I could see reasons all over the place for me joinin' up at once. First of all, though me country was America, me home was in Canada and I knew that nine-tenths of the Canucks would be friends of mine. Then secondly, wasn't I Irish, which meant gettin' into any scrap that was goin', so help me?
Well, the wife held me back at the start. She kept coaxin' me to bide a bit. She argued the States wasn't in trouble yet, so I listened with one ear, but with the other I was hearin' from all sides about the greatest free-for-all fight in the world's history, and I knew that me, Patrick M'Quire, had no business to be standin' by.
"Gas Masked," the men in the trenches throw hand grenades.
The wife wasn't well and she was always frettin' at the thought of me enlistin', so I told her I'd wait, but I warned her that it was entirely responsible she'd be if Germany tied the Allies in a show-down. I told her I was a sharpshooter with a record in the Northwest to be proud of. I asked her why she was keepin' me back. Sure, I demanded what business she had to be hamperin' the Allies' chances like that!
Well, me humor fell on deaf ears and I stayed until me own country, the United States of America, declared war, and that same afternoon, by the grace of God, I walked meself up, bought tickets for the States, packed me family aboard and two days later joined the navy.
It's compromisin' I was when I joined. I told the wife that the fear of trenches or gas attacks need never enter her heart, but I knew as well as me own name the danger on the seas of Fritz gettin' playful and stickin' a torpedo in your ribs—but why worry her?
Better than me prayers I knew firearms. I could take a rifle apart and put it together again with me eyes closed. I had had as many machine guns jam on me as the next fellow. I was entirely qualified to be a gunner's mate, which, I assure you, I wasted no time becomin'.
They shipped me over on a British auxiliary—a cargo ship. For the two months they held me at the trainin' station. The wife had been knittin' and knittin'! If I'd been bound straight for the North Pole I couldn't be after havin' more helmets or sweaters or socks or wristlets than she sent me. Whist! how these women do slave for us. It was askin' her not to, that I did at first, until I saw it was givin' her the only mite of pleasure she could squeeze out of me goin' away. Women is like that. They wants to be babyin' their men folks until the end of the story.