Gunner Depew

Front matter

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V

V

Preface

Until I had been in Chicago for some time talking about my war experiences, I never had any idea of writing a book. It was about the last thing in the world I ever thought of doing. But people who heard me talk always wondered why I didn't. Then a chap, who had been "over there" and written about it, said : " Oh ! You can do it ! " So I began to take observations, as you might say.

One man said I had nothing to do but to write about all the places I had been to, everything I'd seen or heard, and everything that had happened to me. " Some" job, as I found out.

Well, anyhow, I've done it, and I found I remembered more things than I thought I could — some things I'd as lief forget. I'm not a writer, but I have done the best I could, and I hope you will like my book.

I want to thank all the people who have been so

good to me since my return to America. Somehow,

I never seem to know just how to do it when I see

them.

A. N. D.

Contents

6. Fritz does a little V Strafeing

7. Stopping the Huns' at" Dixmude

10. Hell at Gallipoli

Chapter I

My father was a seaman, so, naturally, all my life I heard a great deal about ships and the sea. Even when I was a little boy, in Walston, Pennsylvania, I thought about them a whole lot and wanted to be a sailor — especially a sailor in the United States Navy.

You might say I was brought up in the water. As far back as I can remember, I was a good swimmer. When my mother and I were living in Walston and she wanted me for anything, she always sent down to the creek for me, because she knew if I was not at home, I would be swimming. Then, in Yonkers, there was a pier at the Yerks and Company docks which, with the lumber piled on it, was seventy-five feet above the Hudson, and I used to dive off it many times every day in the summer. This was when I was about eleven years old.

When I was twelve I went to sea as cabin boy on the whaler Therifus, out of Boston. She was an old square-rigged sailing ship, built more for work than for speed. We were out four months on my first cruise, and were badly battered, especially in a storm on the Newfoundland Banks, where we lost our instruments, and had a hard time navigating the ship. I got knocked about, too, for there was a big whaler aboard, who used to beat me up almost every day. He thought I did not put on enough style in bringing the grub to the forecastle. I was not a very fancy waiter, I guess. Later, I often used to think of that big bruiser when I was in the navy and my fists were making a reputation for themselves. Whaling crews work on shares, and during the two years I was on the Therijus my shares amounted to fourteen hundred dollars (£280).

Then I shipped as first-class helmsman on the British tramp Southerndown, a twin-screw steamer, out of Liverpool. Many people are surprised that a fourteen-year old boy should be helmsman on an ocean-going craft, but all over the world you will see young lads doing their turn at the wheel. On a sailing ship like the Therifus, they have four men to the wheel ; on a steamer, one ; it is the steam steering-gear that makes the difference. I was on the South erndown two years, and in that time visited most of the important ports of Europe — Spezia, Bilbao, Cadiz, Brest, Liverpool, Odessa, Archangel, Hamburg, Rotterdam. There is nothing like a tramp steamer if you want to see the world. The SouthenidGwn is the vessel which, in the fall of

1917, sighted a German U-boat rigged up like a

sailing ship.

Although I liked visiting the foreign ports, I got tired of the Southemdown after a while, and at the end of a voyage which landed me in New York, I decided to go into the United States Navy. After lying by for a week or two, I enlisted and was assigned to duty as a second-class fireman.

People have said they thought I was pretty small to be a fireman; they have the idea that firemen must be big men. Well, I am 5 feet 7i inches in height, and w^hen I was sixteen I v;as as tall as I am now and weighed 168 pounds. I was a w^hole lot heftier then, too, for that was before my introduction to "kultur" in German prison camps, and life there is not exactly fattening— not exactly. I do not know why it is, but if you will notice the navy firemen— the lads with the red stripes around their left shoulders— you will find that almost all of them are small men. But they are a hefty lot.

Now, in the navy, they always worry a newcomer until he shovrs that he can take care of himself, and I got my whack very soon after I went into Uncle Sam's service. I was washing my clothes in a bucket on the forecastle deck, and every garby (sailor) who came along used to give me or the bucket a kick, and spill one or both of us. Each time I moved to some other place, but I always seemed to be in somebody's way. Finally, I saw a marine coming. I was nowhere near him. but he hauled out of his course to come up to me and gave the bucket a boot that sent it twenty feet away, at the same time handing me a clout on the ear that about knocked me down. Now, I did not exactly know what a marine was, and this fellow had so many stripes on his sleeves that I thought he must be some sort of officer, so I just stood by. There was a gold-stripe (that is, a commissioned officer) on the bridge and I knew that if anything was wrong, he would cut in, so I kept looking up at him, but he stayed where he was, seeing everything, and never saying a word. And all the time the marine kept slamming me about and telling me to " get the hell out of there."

Finally I said to myself, "I'll get this guy if it's the brig [cells] for a month." So I planted him one in the kidneys and another in the mouth, and he went clean up against the rail. But he came back at me strong, and we were at it for some time.

But when it was over the gold-stripe came down from the bridge and shook hands with me !

After this they did not tease me much, excepting the regular tricks, like tying a sleeping man's feet to his hammock, such as you have got to expect, which you pull off on the next man when his turn comes. This was the beginning of a certain reputation that I had in the navy for fist- work. Later I had a reputation for swimming, too. That first day they began calling me " Chink," though I don't know why, and it has been my nickname in the navy ever since.

It is a curious thing, and I never could understand it, but garbies and marines never mix. The marines are good men and great fighters, aboard and ashore, but we garbies never have a word for them, . nor they for us. On shore leave abroad, we pal up with foreign garbies even, but hardly ever with a marine. Of course, they are with us strong in case we have a scrap with a liberty party from some foreign ship — ^they cannot keep out of a fight any more than we can — but after it is over, they are on their way at once and we on ours. The only other navy that has a marine corps is the British, although the French have a Marine Infantry that garrisons ports, but does not serve aboard ships. The British call their men the Royal Marine Light Infantry, and a Limey garby told me it was the same way with them. They keep to themselves and the Limey garbies do the same. But he did not know why, either. He said it always had been that way in their navy, and I have heard it always has been with us.

There are lots of things like that in the navy that you cannot find out the reason for, and I think it is because sailors change their ways so little. They do a great many things in the navy because the navy always has done them. I never saw an old garby who wasn't always telling the young ones what things were like in his day and advising them to do as he did. Of course, sailors have much changed since the days of the saihng ships, because their work is so different, and sailors change when ships change ; but ships alter more than sailors. And I think it always will be that wa}'.

A few sentences back I spoke of a British sailor as a "Limey." The old British ships used to carry large quantities of lime-juice, because they thought it was a cure for the scurvy. So, all over the world, British ships are called " Lime-juicers " and their sailors " Limeys." There is a saying in the merchant marine that the bucko (or tyrannical) mate of a Limejuicer is the toughest guy in the world, but they do not think so in the navy.

I kept strictly on the job as a fireman, but I wanted to get into the gun turrets. It was slow work for a long time. I had to serve as second-class fireman for four months, first-class for eight months, and in the engine-room as water-tender for a year.

Then, after serving on the Des Moines as a gunloader, I was transferred to the Iowa, and finally worked up to a gun-pointer. After a time I got my C. F. O. rating — chief petty officer, first-class gunner.

During my four years in the American navy I won three cups in swimming races. The first was in a Y.M.C.A. race from Battery Park, New York City, to the Statue of Liberty. I had to join the Y.M.C.A. to qualify for the race. I won my second cup in London in a two-miles' race in the Thames, starting from Tilbury Docks. There were about seventy men in this race, which was held by the Lamport & Holt and the Atlantic Transport Lines. Then, at Brest, the French and American fleets held a race, and I won my third cup. I understand there were four hundred men in this race.

Somehow, there is always somebody for a sailor to fight in every port in the world, and I met my share of them. Just as some people know a place by its restaurants, or theatres, or art galleries, so sailors know a port by the fights they have had there, or perhaps some particular kind of food. There was a big porter in Constantinople that I always battled with, and a lighterman in Archangel. Genoa we liked because of the macaroni ; we used to eat yards of it.

We got to be fond of goats' milk, too. In Italy, when you want any milk, they round up a herd of goats, and work out a quart or whatever quantity you want. So, while one of us bargained with the milkman and had him draw off a quart or so, the rest of us would chase the goats around the corner and get all the milk we wanted for nothing. They caught on to this in Spezia, though, and our ship had a bad name there. So, one time when we were in this port, we were refused shore leave, and they put a gendarme at the gangway. I tried to get past him, but he drove me back with his rifle. This made me pretty sore, so when we were leaving, I shoved him in the neck with a long board from off the after deck. They tried to arrest me then, but the skipper told me to go forward and get my gear going and they wouldn't know who had done it. I hid in this way until we were clear of the port, but they cabled ahead of us and the authorities tried to take me off at Gibraltar. Our skipper saved me somehow, though I do not know exactly how. This is just a sample of the scrapes sailors get into.

The various navies differ in many ways, but most of the differences would not be noticed by anyone but a sailor. Every sailor has a great deal of respect for the Swedes and Norwegians and Danes ; they are born sailors and are very daring, but, of course, their navies are small. The Germans were always known as clean sailors ; that is, as in our navy and the British, their vessels were ship-shape all the time, and were run as sweet as a clock. Some of the navies of Southern Europe are not so notable in this respect. The British and German sailors are strong on tradition, and are considered superstitious. A man gets his ratings with them more for age and experience, while in our navy and in that of France skill counts for more than time in service.

There is no use comparing the various navies as to which is best ; some are better at one thing and some at another. The British navy, of course, is the largest, and nobody will deny that at most things they are topnotch — least of all themselves ; they admit it. But there is one place where the navy of the United States has it all over every other navy on the seven seas, and that is gunnery. The American navy has the best gunners in the world. And do not let anybody tell you different.

Chapter II

After serving four years and three months in the United States Navy, I received an honourable discharge on April 14, 1914. I held the rank of chief petty officer, first-class gunner. It is not uncommon for garbies to go easy for a while between enlistments — ^they like a vacation as much as anyone — and it was my intention to loaf for a few months before joining the navy again.

After the war started, of course, I had heard more or less about the German atrocities in Belgium, and while I was greatly interested, I was doubtful at first as to the truth of the reports, for I knew how news gets changed in passing from mouth to mouth, and I never was much of one to believe things until I saw them, anyway. Another thing that caused me to be interested in the war was the fact that my mother was born in Alsace. Her maiden name, Diervieux, is well known in Alsace. I had often visited my grandmother in St. Nazaire and knew the country. So with France at war, it was not strange that I should be even more interested than many other garbies.

The War Breaks ii

As I have said, I did not take much stock in the first reports of the Hun's exhibition of kultur, because Fritz is known as a clean sailor, and I felt certain that no real sailor would ever get mixed up in such dirty work as they said there was in Belgium. I supposed, too, that the soldiers were like the sailors. But I found out I was wrong about both.

One thing that opened my eyes a bit was the trouble my mother had in getting out of Hanover, where she was when the war started, and returning to France. She always wore a little American flag, and this both saved and endangered her. Without it, the Gemians would have interned her as a Frenchwoman and, with it, she was sneered at and insulted time and again before she finally managed to get over the border. She died about two months after she reached St. Nazaire.

Moreover, I heard the fate of my older brother, who had made his home in France with my grandmother. He had gone to the front at the outbreak of the war with the infantry from St. Nazaire and had been killed two or three weeks afterwards. This made it a sort of personal matter.

But what put the finishing touches to me were the stories a wounded Canadian lieutenant told me some months later in New York. He had been there and he knew. You could not help believing him ; you can always tell when a man has been there and knows.

There was not much doing around New York, so I made up my mind all of a sudden to go over and get some excitement for myself. Believe me, I got enough business before I was through. Most of the really important things I have done have happened Hke that : I did them on the jump, you might say. Many other Americans wanted a look, too ; there were five thousand Americans in the Canadian Army at one time they say.

I would not claim that I went to Europe to save democracy, or anything like that. I never did like Germans, and I never met a Frenchman who was not kind to me, and what I heard about the way the Huns treated the Belgians made me sick. I used to get out of bed to go to an all-night picture show, I thought about it so much. But there was not much excitement around New York, and I inferred that the United States would not get into it for a while, anyway, so I just wanted to go over and see what it was like. That is why lots of us went, I think.

There were five of us who went to Boston to ship for the other side : Sam Murray, Ed Brown, Tim Flynn, Mitchell and myself. Murray was an exgarby — two hitches (enlistments), gun-pointer rating, about thirty-five years old. Brown was a Pennsylvania man about twenty-six years old, who had served two enlistments in the United States Army and had quit with the rank of sergeant. Flynn and Mitchell were both ex-navy men. Mitchell was a noted boxer. Of the five of us, I am the only one who went in, got through and came out. Flynn and Mitchell did not go in ; Murray and Brown never came back.

The five of us shipped on the steamship Virginian of the American-Hawaiian Line, under American flag and registry, but chartered by the French Government. I signed on as water-tender — an engine-room job — but the others were on deck — that is, seamen.

We left Boston for St. Nazaire with a cargo of ammunition, bully beef, etc., and made the first trip without anything of interest happening, except that, while we were in the war zone, our boatswain was rigging the life-boats, when a line running between the davits parted and let him through into the sea. We were making about twelve knots at the time, but there was a strong current against us and a good sea running, and the boatswain shot past us like an arrow. We put about at once, but it took us three-quarters of an hour to get back to him, and more than that before we had a boat over the side and him into it. When we dragged him in, he did not have a stitch of clothing on him. He had undressed himself completely while he was in the water and kept himself up at the same time. Which I thought was doing pretty well, as there was a fairly high sea running.

Then, too, in my mess— the oilers' and watertenders' — the grub got pretty bad. One day they brought us a big mess-kid or tub full of what was supposed to be stew. It was the rottenest kind of garbage, really, and we made up our minds not to put up with it. In the navy we always complain If we have any real reason for a grievance, and so, when the other members of the mess showed they were not anxious to go to the front, it was up to me to make^ a bother about it and see if we could not get better food. So I took the tub and went up to the chart house to show it to the Old Man. I knocked at the door several times, but he did not answer, so I put the tub down on the deck right in front of the door and went away. A few minutes later he came out — right into the stew. His foot slipped and he lay down in the middle of it. His uniform and his dignity sustained severe injuries, as they say. Also, some more of him ! Did he find out who did it ? Well, I am here to-day. That's your answer.

As we were mooring to the dock at St. Nazaire, I saw a German prisoner sitting on a pile of lumber. I thought probably he would be hungry, so I went down into the oilers' mess and got two slices of bread with a thick piece of beef-steak between them and handed it to Fritz. He would not take it. At first I thought he was afraid to, but by using several languages and signs, he managed to make me understand that he was not hungry — had too much to eat, in fact.

I used to think of this fellow occasionally when I was in a German prison camp, and a piece of mouldy bread the size of a safety-match box was the generous portion of food they forced on me, with true German hospitality, once every forty-eight hours. I would not exactly have refused a beef-steak sandwich, I am afraid. But then I was not a heaven-born German. I was only a common American garby. He was full of kultur and grub. I was not full of anything.

There was a large prison camp at St. Nazaire, and at one time or another I saw all of it. Before the war it had been used as a barracks by the French army and consisted of well-made, comfortable twostorey stone buildings, floored with concrete, with auxiliary barracks of logs. The German prisoners occupied the stone buildings, while the French guards were quartered in the log houses. Inside, the houses were divided into long rooms with whitewashed walls. There were two-decked wooden platforms in the rooms and iron cots, exactly the same as the French soldiers used. There were a gymnasium for the prisoners, a canteen where they might buy most of the things you could buy anywhere else in the country, and a studio for the painters among the prisoners. Officers were separated from privates— which was a good thing for the privates— and were kept in houses surrounded by stockades. Officers and privates received identical treatment, however, and all were given exactly the same rations and equipment as the regular French army before it went to the front. Their food consisted of bread, soup, and " vino," as wine is called almost everywhere in the world. In the morning they received half a loaf of Vienna bread and coffee. At noon they each had a large dixie or can of thick soup, and at three in the afternoon more bread and a bottle of vino. The soup was more like a stew — very thick with meat and vegetables. At one of the officers' barracks there was a cook who had been chef in the largest hotel in Paris before the war.

All the prisoners were well clothed. Once a week, socks, underwear, soap, towels and blankets were issued to them, and every week the barracks and equipment were fumigated. They were given the best of medical attention.

Besides all this, they were allowed to work at their trades, if they had any. All the carpenters, cobblers, tailors and painters were kept busy, and some of them picked up more change there than they ever did in Germany, they told me. The musicians formed bands, and played almost every night at restaurants and theatres in the town. Those who had no trade were allowed to work on the roads, parks, docks, and at private residences.

Talk about Dear Old Jail ! You could not have driven the average prisoner away from there with a 14-inch gun. I used to think about them in Brandenburg, when our boys were rushing the sentries in the hope of being bayoneted out of their misery.

One day I met an officer prisoner, who, Hke many of his kind, had not been grateful for the kindly treatment the French gave him, and had therefore been confined in a stockade. The cure for his stubbornness had evidently worked, for he pointed over to a hill, where there was the biggest pile of logs I ever saw, and said : " I would saw up all those logs if I could go over to that hill ; it must be great to look down from the top of it. I've been staring at a fence for what seems years."

While our cargo was being unloaded I spent most of my time with my grandmother. I had heard still more about the cruelty of the Huns, and made up my mind to get into the service. Murray and Brown had already enlisted in the Foreign Legion, Brown being assigned to the infantry and Murray to the French man-of-war Cassard. But when I spoke of my intention, my grandmother cried so much that I promised her I would not enlist— that time, anyway — and made the return voyage on the Virginian. We were no sooner loaded in Boston than back to St. Nazaire we went.

Chapter III

This time I was determined to enlist. So, when we landed at St. Nazaire, I drew my pay from the Virginian, and after spending a week with my grandmother, I went out and asked the first gendarme I met where the enlistment station was. I had to argue with him some time before he would even direct me to it. Of course, I had no passport, and this made Kim suspicious of me, but it did not seem at all like the welcome the Canadian lieutenant had assured me I would receive. However, I finally got the gendarme to take me to the enlistment station by showing him that if there was any objection coming, the recruiting officers were the ones to make it. I could have found the way by myself, I suppose, but once I had started arguing with the gendarme I hated to give in.

The officer in charge of the station was no warmer in his welcome than the gendarme, and this surprised me, because Murray and Brown had no trouble at all in joining. The French, of course, often speak of the Foreign Legion as " the convicts," because so many of the legionaries are wanted by the police of their respective countries, not necessarily for criminal acts, though a criminal record never had been a bar to service with the Legion, and I did not see w^hy it should be now — if they suspected me of having one. I had heard there were not a few Germans in the Legion — later I became acquainted with some — and, believe me, no Alsatian ever fought harder against the Huns than those former Deutschlanders did. It occurred to me then that if they thought I was a German, because I had no passport, I might have to prove I had been in trouble with the Kaiser's crew before they would accept me. I do not know what the real difficulty was, but I solved the problem by showing them my discharge papers from the American Navy. Even then, they were suspicious because they thought I was too young to have been a C.P.O. When they challenged me on this point, I said I would prove it to them by taking an examination.

They examined me very carefully, in English, although I know enough French to pass in a subject like gunnery. But foreign officers are very proud of their knowledge of English — and most of them can speak it — and I think this one wanted to show off, as you might say. Anyway, I passed my examination without any trouble, was accepted for service in the Foreign Legion, and received my commission as gunner, dated Friday, January 1, 1915.

There is no use in my describing the Foreign

Legion. It is one of the most famous fighting organisations in the world, and has made a wonderful record during the war. When I joined the Legion, it numbered about 60,000 men. The legionaries were a fine body of men, and wonderful fighters. But the whole civilised world is now fighting the Huns, and Americans do not have to enlist with the French or the Limeys any longer.

While I was in the Legion I heard of one chap who wrote long and exciting yarns of his life in the trenches — raids, bombardments, etc. — and all the while he was in a training camp far back from the lines out of sound of the guns. Some of his letters got past the censor somehow, but others were held up, and, believe me, this lad had it laid on to him thick and fast. He is dead now, or missing, I never heard exactly which, and anyway, he was just a kid, so nobody holds it against him.