Part 11

Like this artist many women, unused to common labor, gladly left lives of ease and good times to help win the war even by drudgery. In the case of English women this was particularly true, and would have been true in America if the war had continued much longer. As it was, the women of America responded to the call of service with the same spirit which sent millions of men to the colors. Besides those positions which, left open by men going into war, were filled by women, countless services were performed by them to add to the comfort and happiness of soldiers, sailors, and marines. Knitted articles were made for the needy in the service, and for the destitute in the ravaged war countries. Not a canteen in the whole United States but has seen the untiring devotion of weary workers who whole-heartedly sacrificed their time and household comforts. In Europe the Salvation Army "lassies" worked in the trenches themselves. Hospitals everywhere have been made more grateful sanctuaries by the tender reassurance of the American nurse. As if by one voice the fighters of the nation unite in praise and appreciation of all the women who by their help made the second line of defense.

[Illustration: Somewhere in France these Salvation Army "lassies" are baking pies and "doughnuts for the doughboys." Their kitchen is set up in a part of the trenches under constant fire from the German guns. You can see their "box respirators," or gas-masks, worn at the "alert" position. Home cooking for the soldiers made home itself seem not so far away after all!]

U. S. DESTROYER _OSMOND C. INGRAM_

If you were standing on the deck of a patrol boat watching for submarines and, looking down at the water, suddenly perceived a torpedo coming directly toward you and knew it would strike the boat beneath your feet in a few seconds, what would you do?

A bullet or a cannon ball moves so swiftly that it is not seen. If it is coming straight for you, you only know your danger when it is over and you lie wounded; or your friends know it when it is too late. But a moving torpedo can be seen, and for some seconds one may stand and know a terrible explosion and probable death are approaching him.

On October 14, 1917, the United States destroyer _Cassin_ was on duty looking for German submarines. After many hours scouting, a U-boat was discovered five or six miles away, and the _Cassin_ made all speed in its direction; but the U-boat perceived its danger and submerged. The _Cassin_ cruised around for some time, for the U-boat could not be far away and might come to the surface at any moment; but no periscope was to be seen. The patrol boat kept steaming in zigzag lines so that the U-boat would find it more difficult to strike her with a torpedo.

Before an hour had passed, the commander of the _Cassin_ discovered the wake of a torpedo, a moving line of white on the surface of the ocean, and knew that in a few seconds the torpedo would strike his boat amidships. To avoid this he ordered full steam ahead, hoping perhaps to avoid being struck at all, and at least not amidships. But he had not seen the torpedo soon enough and it was quickly apparent that it would strike the _Cassin_ on the side and near the stern.

Ordinarily this would be less dangerous than if it struck amidships where it would very likely disable the engines and possibly explode the boilers, but in the case of the _Cassin_, avoiding one danger only brought another and a more serious one, for piled on the deck near the stern were boxes of high explosives which would be set off by the striking of the torpedo.

Some of the crew had been watching the approach of the torpedo. Most of them were forward and would escape the terrible danger at the stern of the boat.

But Gunner's Mate, O. C. Ingram, did not hurry forward; he rushed aft and began to throw overboard the boxes of explosives. He did not stop to see how near the torpedo had come and how much time he had; he simply set to work to save the boat and her crew. Just as he hurled the last box from his hand, the torpedo struck the _Cassin_ with a terrible explosion, throwing Ingram far overboard into the sea.

The torpedo had struck the destroyer near the stern, and blew off about thirty feet of the boat. It disabled one of the engines, and the steering gear, but the after bulkhead kept out the water and the destroyer was later towed to port and repaired.

Had the explosives not been thrown overboard, the _Cassin_ would doubtless have been sunk and few if any of her crew saved. As it was, Gunner's Mate Ingram was the only one to lose his life, for he drowned before help was able to reach him.

The _Cassin_ did not attempt, even after this experience, to get to safety, but remained watching for the reappearance of the submarine. When the U-boat finally came to the surface, she was greeted with several shots from the _Cassin_ and suddenly sank, or submerged. It is thought she was damaged and possibly destroyed.

The Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, sent the following letter to the commander, the other officers, and the crew of the _Cassin_:--

"The Department has received the report of the action between the U. S. S. _Cassin_ and a German submarine on October 15, 1917, and notes with gratification the highly commendable conduct of yourself, the other officers, and the crew of the _Cassin_. The manner in which the _Cassin_ was kept under way with her steering-gear disabled and practically at the mercy of the submarine, and opened fire on her when she appeared, is well worthy of the best traditions of the Navy."

[Illustration: The U. S. Destroyer _Fanning_ with depth bombs stored in run-ways on the after deck. These may be instantly released and dropped over the stern. (Refer to page 152.) The high explosives stored in crates on the after deck of the _Cassin_ were in the same general location as the above, but not primed for action.]

Sometime later Secretary Daniels told the following story of the naming of a new and very fast destroyer:--

"Awhile ago I was asked to give a name to a new destroyer. I took up first the names of the great admirals, and then the great captains, and all the American heroes of the sea, and all were worthy. And then I thought of Osmond C. Ingram, second-class gunner's mate on the destroyer _Cassin_. I thought of the night when he was on watch and saw a U-boat's torpedo headed for his ship. He was standing near the place where the high explosives were stored, and the torpedo was headed for that spot. In a flash he was engaged in hurling overboard those deadly explosives, which would have destroyed the ship if they remained on board, and he managed to get rid of enough of them to save the lives of all the officers and sailors on board, but he lost his own life. So I named the newest and finest addition to the American navy the _Osmond C. Ingram_."

JOYCE KILMER

The first poet and author in the American army to give up his life for the cause of freedom was Joyce Kilmer. Like Alan Seeger, another American poet who fell fighting in the Foreign Legion of France, Joyce Kilmer greatly loved life. He loved the flowers and birds and trees. Probably his finest poem is one which he wrote about trees. He loved the people around him, impatient only with those who did not love and make the most of the life that God had given them. He loved children, and simple everyday things, as he shows in one of his latest poems, "The Snowman in the Yard."

"But I have something no architect or gardener ever made, A thing that is shaped by the busy touch of little mittened hands; And the Judge would give up his lovely estate, where the level snow is laid, For the tiny house with the trampled yard, the yard where the snowman stands."

After his graduation from Columbia University in 1908, he became a teacher of Latin in the high school at Morristown, New Jersey, his home state. He seemed but a lad himself,--tall, with stern, dark eyes, a clear, musical voice, and a winning smile. Jovial, gracious, and gentlemanly in his manners, he made many friends both in his home state and in New York, where he soon took his wife and little son to live.

In college he had written some poetry. In New York he hoped to write more. He began his career there as editor of a journal for horsemen. But he did not remain at this work long. He became in turn a salesman in a large New York book store, an assistant editor, and then an editor. When the war broke out, he was a member of the staff of the _New York Times_. He had written several poems, and prose articles for popular magazines and periodicals. At the age of twenty-five he was widely known, enough of a celebrity, in fact, to have his name appear in "Who's Who in America."

He liked adventure, as does any American youth. He was always glad to visit a friend who had met with an accident or any other unusual circumstance. He found himself in what he considered an interesting and entertaining predicament when in New York he was struck by a train and had to be carried to a hospital. "Such things did not happen every day," he said, and he took the experience in good humor.

Soon after landing in France, he wrote a description of a long march made by his regiment. At the end of the march, the men were too weary even to spread out their blankets, but dropped down to rest on the floor of the loft in the French peasant home where they were billeted for the night. But even that experience was new and interesting. Later, when the men were somewhat rested, they missed one of their mates, and on going down stairs found him with his frozen feet in a tub of cold water furnished him by the peasant woman. The little girl of the home was on his knees, and the two boys were standing beside him--as Joyce Kilmer described them--"_envying_ him" his frozen feet.

He also found interesting work at the front, in connection with the trench newspaper, _The Stars and Stripes_.

At the dawn of a dark and misty Sunday morning in July, his regiment was ordered to charge across the river Ourcq and take the hill beyond, from where the enemy's machine guns were pouring down a withering rain of bullets. His own battalion, he learned, was not to be in the lead. So he promptly asked and obtained permission to join the leading battalion.

Across the river they charged and for five days fought for the heights. But Joyce Kilmer was not there to witness the victory.

In the fiercest battles, the bravest officers often go before and lead their men into the fight, thus encouraging them more than if following them or charging at their side. The fight beyond the Ourcq was a fierce one, and the chief officer dashed on ahead of his men. Touching elbows with him was Sergeant Kilmer. When the battalion adjutant was killed, he served, although without a commission, as a sort of aid to the battalion commander.

To the very heights he rushed, and threw himself down at a little ridge where he might peer over and seek out the hidden enemy machine gun battery. It was there, lying as if still scouting, that his comrades found him, so like his living self that they did not at first think him dead.

They buried him at the edge of a little wood, called the Wood of the Burned Bridge, close to the rippling waters of the Ourcq, and at the foot of the unforgetable hill.

Deep and keen was the loss felt by his comrades and his officers. From their pockets many of the men drew forth verses written by the poet about some incident in the trenches or some comrade who had been lost.

One of the poems to a lost soldier was read over the poet's grave. A refrain, supposed to be sounded by the bugle, is repeated through the verses, and as these lines were read the sad notes of "taps" sounded faintly from the grove. On his little wooden cross were written the simple words: "Sergeant Joyce Kilmer," then his company and regiment, and "Killed in Action, July 30, 1918."

But Joyce Kilmer and his verses will long live in the minds and hearts, not only of his comrades in battle, but of all Americans.

Such a buoyant, happy life does not seem to have passed away. Some beautiful tributes to him, written by other American poets, express this thought.

One friend at the news of Kilmer's death was reminded of his poem, "Main Street."

"God be thanked for the Milky Way that runs across the sky; That is the path my feet would tread whenever I have to die. Some folks call it a Silver Sword, and some a Pearly Crown, But the only thing I think it is, is Main Street, Heaventown."

Then the friend touchingly added, "Perhaps Seeger and Kilmer are strolling down Main Street together tonight."

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TREES

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

JOYCE KILMER.

BLOCKING THE CHANNEL

Bruges is an important city of Belgium made familiar to American boys and girls by Longfellow's beautiful poem, "The Belfry of Bruges." He describes what "the belfry old and brown" has seen.

"Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dike of sand, 'I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land.'"

What a terrible story the historian or poet will have to tell who narrates what the belfry of Bruges has seen during the fifty-two months of the World War, a year, we may call it, in which each week had become a month.

The port of Bruges, called Zeebrugge or Bruges on the Sea, lies not far from the city, at the mouth of a maritime canal. The entrance to this canal was protected by a great crescent-shaped mole thirty feet high inclosing the harbor.

The Germans in the shipbuilding yards at Antwerp built small warships and submarines and sent them over the canals across Belgium to Ostend and Zeebrugge, from where they went out to destroy Allied shipping.

The English determined to put an end to this and on the night of April 22, 1918, an expedition was sent to block the channel and to destroy as far as possible the mole which protected it. It has been said that it was "one of the most thrilling and picturesque of the naval operations of the war. To Americans it recalled Hobson's exploit with the Merrimack, at Santiago, while to Englishmen it brought back memories of Sir Francis Drake and his fire ships in the harbor of Cadiz." The fight lasted only an hour but the British lost 588 men, for the channel and the mole were so fully guarded with searchlights, machine guns, and artillery that such an attempt was looked upon by the Germans as foolhardy and doomed to absolute failure.

A British cruiser, the _Vindictive_, in charge of Commander Alfred F. B. Carpenter, with two ferryboats, the _Daffodil_ and the _Iris_, were to escort six obsolete British cruisers filled with concrete and sand to the harbor mouths at Ostend and Zeebrugge and to sink them there in the channels. The ferryboats carried sailors and marines who were to attack and destroy the mole. It was thought that this attack would divert the attention of the defenders and make it easier to sink the concrete laden cruisers in the channel. Two old and useless submarines, filled with explosives, were to be blown up against the viaduct joining the mole and the shore.

A heavy protective curtain of smoke was essential to the success of the plan. Commander Brock, who was killed during the action, planned the smoke screen and carried it out so successfully that the _Vindictive_ was able to get almost to the mole before being discovered. At Ostend the wind blew from such a direction that the smoke screen did not hide the boats and the attack there on that night was for that reason a failure. It succeeded better later, on May 9, when the battered _Vindictive_ was sunk in the channel.

The following is the story of the action at Zeebrugge taken from the official report of the British Admiralty:--

"The night was overcast and there was a drifting haze. Down the coast a great searchlight swung its beam to and fro in the small wind and short sea. From the _Vindictive's_ bridge, as she headed in toward the mole, with the faithful ferryboats at her heels, there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen shoreward. Ahead, as she drove through the water, rolled the smoke screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about her by small craft. This was the device of Wing Commander Brock, without which, acknowledges the Admiral in command, the operation could not have been conducted.

"A northeast wind moved the volume of it shoreward ahead of the ships. Beyond it, was the distant town, its defenders unsuspicious. It was not until the _Vindictive_, with blue-jackets and marines standing ready for landing, was close upon the mole that the wind lulled and came away again from the southeast, sweeping back the smoke screen and laying her bare to eyes that looked seaward.

"There was a moment immediately afterward when it seemed to those on the ships as if the dim, coast-hidden harbor exploded into light. A star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells. The wavering beams of the searchlights swung around and settled into a glare. A wild fire of gun flashes leaped against the sky, strings of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank. The darkness of the night was supplemented by a nightmare daylight of battle-fired guns and machine guns along the mole. The batteries ashore awoke to life.

"It was in a gale of shelling that the _Vindictive_ laid her nose against the thirty-foot high concrete side of the mole, let go her anchor and signaled to the _Daffodil_ to shove her stern in.

"The _Iris_ went ahead and endeavored to get alongside likewise. The fire was intense, while the ships plunged and rolled beside the mole in the seas, the _Vindictive_ with her greater draught jarring against the foundations of the mole with every lunge. They were swept diagonally by machine-gun fire from both ends of the mole and by the heavy batteries on shore.

"Commander (now Captain) Carpenter commanded the _Vindictive_ from the open bridge until her stern was laid in, when he took up his position in the flame thrower hut on the port side. It is marvelous that any occupant should have survived a minute in this hut, so riddled and shattered is it.

"The officers of the _Iris_, which was in trouble ahead of the _Vindictive_, describe Captain Carpenter as handling her like a picket boat. The _Vindictive_ was fitted along her port side with a high false deck, from which ran eighteen brows or gangways by which the storming and demolition parties were to land.

"The men gathered in readiness on the main lower decks, while Colonel Elliott, who was to lead the marines waited on the false deck just abaft of the bridge. Captain Halahan, who commanded the blue-jackets, was amidships. The gangways were lowered, and they scraped and rebounded upon the high parapet of the mole as the _Vindictive_ rolled in the seaway.

"The word for the assault had not yet been given when both leaders were killed, Colonel Elliott by a shell and Captain Halahan by machine-gun fire which swept the decks. The same shell that killed Colonel Elliott also did fearful execution in the forward Stokes mortar battery. The men were magnificent; every officer bears the same testimony.

"The mere landing on the mole was a perilous business. It involved a passage across the crashing and splintering gangways, a drop over the parapet into the field of fire of the German machine guns which swept its length, and a further drop of some sixteen feet to the surface of the mole itself. Many were killed and more wounded as they crowded up the gangways, but nothing hindered the orderly and speedy landing by every gangway.

"Lieutenant H. T. C. Walker had his arm shot away by shell on the upper deck, and lay in darkness while the storming parties trod him under. He was recognized and dragged aside by the commander. He raised his remaining arm in greetings. 'Good luck to you,' he called as the rest of the stormers hastened by. 'Good luck.'

"The lower deck was a shambles as the commander made the rounds of the ship, yet those wounded and dying raised themselves to cheer as he made his tour. . . .

"The _Iris_ had troubles of her own. Her first attempts to make fast to the mole ahead of the _Vindictive_ failed, as her grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet. Two officers, Lieutenant Commander Bradford and Lieutenant Hawkins, climbed ashore and sat astride the parapet trying to make the grapnels fast till each was killed and fell down between the ship and the wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both legs shot away and died next morning. Lieutenant Spencer though wounded, took command and refused to be relieved.

"The _Iris_ was obliged at last to change her position and fall in astern of the _Vindictive_, and suffered very heavily from fire. A single big shell plunged through the upper deck and burst below at a point where fifty-six marines were waiting for the order to go to the gangways. Forty-nine were killed. The remaining seven were wounded. Another shell in the wardroom, which was serving as a sick bay, killed four officers and twenty-six men. Her total casualties were eight officers and sixty-nine men killed, and three officers and 103 men wounded.

"Storming and demolition parties upon the mole met with no resistance from the Germans other than intense and unremitting fire. One after another buildings burst into flame or split and crumbled as dynamite went off. A bombing party working up toward the mole extension in search of the enemy destroyed several machine-gun emplacements, but not a single prisoner rewarded them. It appears that upon the approach of the ships and with the opening of fire the enemy simply retired and contented themselves with bringing machine guns to the short end of the mole."