There wasn't any keeping me out of the navy. We have four honorable discharges hung up in our house. I used to show them to my kid. He's five, but awful smart. He knows all about them.
"That's from the War of 1776," he'll say, pointing to the first one.
"And that's from the Civil War, my great Grandpa fought in that."
The third one is for the Spanish-American.
"My grandpa fought in that one," he tells you.
And pretty soon, when this scrap is over there'll be a fourth one hanging alongside of the others and Bill can look at it and say, "My pop got that one in the biggest war of all."
I only wish the youngster was old enough to enlist himself. We're a fighting family. I joined the navy in 1915. I was on a battleship then, but when war broke they transferred me to a destroyer. We didn't go out until the cold weather had set in. All of us were given Arctic outfits and it's lucky we were—we needed them, believe me! You are mighty grateful for the heavy woollen pants and the jumper with a hood that covers your ears.
Destroyer duty is the most exciting of all, for, while merchant crafts go out of their way to avoid submarines, our game is to go out of our way to hunt them. It was like a game of hide and seek, with a destroyer "It," trying to tag Fritz if he'd only give us half a chance.
One of Fritz's pet stunts was to send us an S.O.S., giving us the exact location at sea of a vessel in trouble—oh, he was awful careful to see that you got it right, all you needed to do was to steam up to that spot and be blown clear out of creation.