Once you're in the Navy you stay for a while. I liked it from the start. I got to know a thing or two about the guns, went to gunnery school; that's how I came to be made chief gunner's mate, I guess, and told to report for armed guard duty on May 29, 1917.
I drew an old tub. I suppose it had been used to carry a cargo of salt fish from Maine to Newfoundland, and here it was, painted fresh, and ready to cross the old Atlantic, which was fairly bristling with mines and lurking sea-devils.
We put to sea June 19th, and we reached the War Zone on July 3rd. I know what I'm doing, writing War Zone with capitals. You don't have to be told when you get there. You feel it in the air--it's like a wire vibrating; everyone's on edge, keyed up to G pitch.
It was my job to see that all lights were doused and all ports closed as soon as it got dark. I wasn't particular about the way I enforced orders just so I got them obeyed--and I saw to it that every man who carried a match was parted from it and that all pocket lights were put in a neat little pile--officers excepted, of course. They kept theirs.
Every hour I made a round of the ship, watching out sharp for a light. Important! Say, just suppose Fritz's sea-baby were lying off a few miles or so without the faintest idea that a merchantman, chuck-full of munitions, was a stone's throw away. Think how that German crew would feel if across the darkness they saw the flare of a match. Well, it would be apt to be lights out for us all that time--that's what.
The watch was doubled--four on and four off--a watch of good sixteen hours at a clip, with a life preserver on every minute of the time--that is, you were supposed to. On the transports the rule is carried out to the letter. Catch a man without a life belt and he can be pretty sure he'll be up for court-martial when he gets back to port.
But with us it was different. We kept them close by; some of the men slept in them. I had mine over my feet ready to snatch up in case of trouble.
It was July 3rd, remember, and we were feeling pretty good. My bunky was McCaffrey--Mac for short--a little red-headed, freckled Irishman from Wisconsin, the best that comes west of the Mississippi. We had it all fixed up to fire a gun off on the Fourth.