EX-C,P.O, U.S. NAVY 
 
 Awarded the Croix 
 
 for distinguished service with the 
 
 French at Gallipoli. Wreath 
 
 by holders of the Croix 
 
 Crossed Cannon: received 
 with commission as gunner 
 in the Foreign Legioir 
 
 Three Bars : 2 
 Awarded by Captain of 
 ihe Trench battleship 
 C&ssarcf for ex- 
 tra marksmanships 
 
 Two Bars : 
 
 'show rank of 
 first-class 
 gunner 
 
 Casualty Stripes: 
 twice wounded--at 
 Diximide and trie 
 Dardanelles 
 
 -&
 
 
 /?/r 
 
 6
 
 Gunner Depew
 
 Gunner Depew 
 
 An American Sailor's 
 Story of the War 
 
 Fighting with the Foreign Legion 
 at Dixmude Gunner on the 
 French Battleship Cassard- 
 Fighting the Turks at the Dar- 
 danelles In the trenches at 
 Gallipoli Winning the Croix de 
 Guerre Wounded and sent to 
 France. 
 
 Later : 
 
 Captured by the German Raider 
 Moewe Transferred to the 
 Tarrowdale and landed in Ger- 
 many Three months of starva- 
 tion and torture in German Prison 
 Camps. 
 
 Finally : 
 
 An interview with Mr. Gerard 
 Anxious waiting Freedom ! 
 
 Gunner Depew tells an amazing story of what he 
 did what he saw what he endured in two 
 years packed solid with fighting on land and sea. 
 
 A thrilling picture is presented of the fighting at 
 Dixmude atGallipoli at the Dardanelles. The 
 description of the Yarrowdale, with its cargo of 
 human wretchedness, is the first complete account 
 written by an American who lived through the in- 
 describable horror of the eighteen days at sea. 
 And then, the story of those grim three months 
 spent in German Prison Camps a wonderfully 
 vivid picture of the inhuman cruelty with which the 
 Huns treat their prisoners-of-war. 
 
 A big thrilling story of a 
 wonderful fighting record 
 and absolutely true.
 
 Gunner Depew 
 
 By 
 
 Albert N. Depew 
 
 Ex-Gunner and Chief Petty Officer, U. S. Navy 
 
 Member of the Foreign Legion of France 
 
 Captain Gun Turret, French Battleship Cassard 
 
 Winner of the Croix de Guerre 
 
 With Maps and Illustrations 
 
 Chicago 
 
 The Reilly 8C Britton Co 
 1918
 
 Copyright, 1918 
 
 by 
 The Reilly & Britton Co. 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Made in U. S. A. 
 
 Published March 1, 1918 
 
 Second Printing, March 5, 1918
 
 Dedicated 
 by permission to 
 
 Mr. James W. Gerard 
 
 who was strong for the men 
 in the German prison camps, 
 and was a real friend to me.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Until I had been in Chicago for some time talk- 
 ing 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 there was nothing to it but to 
 just write down all about the places I had been, 
 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 just 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. 
 
 Chicago, February, 1918.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I IN THE AMERICAN NAVY 13 
 
 II THE WAR BREAKS 21 
 
 III IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 29 
 
 IV ON THE FIRING LINE 39 
 
 V WITH THE " 75 's " 53 
 
 VI FRITZ DOES A LITTLE " STRAFEING J: 65 
 
 VII STOPPING THE HUNS AT DIXMUDE 80 
 
 VIII ON RUNNER SERVICE 93 
 
 IX LAID UP FOR REPAIRS 103 
 
 X HELL AT GALLIPOLI 119 
 
 XI ACTION AT THE DARDANELLES. 130 
 
 XII A PAL CRUCIFIED - 148 
 
 XIII LIMEYS, ANZACS AND POILUS ... 161 
 
 XIV THE CROIX DE GUERRE 172 
 
 XV JE Suis BLESSE. 187 
 
 XVI CAPTURED BY THE MOEWE 198 
 
 XVII LANDED IN GERMANY 216 
 
 XVHI "PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES"... 232 
 
 XIX GERMAN PRISON CAMPS 247 
 
 XX KULTUR THE REAL STUFF 258 
 
 XXI A VISIT FROM MR. GERARD 271 
 
 XXII " THE HELL HOLE OF GERMANY "... 284 
 
 XXIII DESPAIR AND FREEDOM ....... 294 
 
 XXIV BACK IN THE STATES.. .307
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Gunner Depew Frontispiece 
 
 1 ' How we give 'em the butt " 65 
 
 Map : Gallipoli and the Dardanelles 121 
 
 Gunner Depew in French sailor uniform 129 
 
 Map : French Position on Gallipoli Peninsula 151 
 Map of Europe, showing Gunner Depew 's 
 
 route: January, 1915, to June, 1917 161 
 
 Deck Plan of the Raider Moewe 207 
 
 Postcard sent by Gunner Depew 257 
 
 Mr. Gerard and Gunner Depew. 281 
 
 Sketch of Brandenburg Prison Camp 289 
 
 Seaman's Identification Certificate.. . 309
 
 Gunner Depew 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 IN THE AMERICAN NAVY 
 
 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, Penn- 
 sylvania, I thought about them a whole lot and 
 wanted to be a sailor especially a sailor in the 
 U. S. Navy. 
 
 You might say I was brought up on 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 in swim- 
 ming. Then, in Yonkers, there was a pier at the 
 Yerks and Company docks that, with the lumber 
 piled on it, was seventy-five feet above the Hud- 
 son, and I used to dive off it many times each 
 day in the summer. This was when I was about 
 eleven years old. 
 
 When I was twelve years old 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 
 
 13
 
 14 Gunner Depew 
 
 were out four months on my first cruise, and 
 got knocked around a lot, especially in a storm 
 on the Newfoundland Banks, where we lost our 
 instruments, and had a hard time navigating 
 the ship. I got knocked around, 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 on, I often used to think of that 
 big bruiser when I was in the navy and my fists 
 were making a reputation for themselves. Whal- 
 ing crews work on shares, and during the two 
 years I was on the Therifus, my shares amounted 
 to fourteen hundred dollars. 
 
 Then I shipped as first-class wheelsman on 
 the British tramp Southerndown, a twin-screw 
 steamer out of Liverpool. Many people are 
 surprised that a fourteen year old boy should 
 be wheelsman on an ocean-going craft, but all 
 over the world you will see young lads doing 
 their trick 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, Arch- 
 angel, Hamburg, Rotterdam. There is nothing 
 like a tramp steamer if you want to see the 
 world. The Southerndown is the vessel that, in 
 the fall of 1917, sighted a German U-boat rigged 
 up like a sailing ship.
 
 In the American Navy 15 
 
 Although I liked visiting the foreign ports, 
 I got tired of the Southerndown after a while, 
 and at the end of a voyage which landed me in 
 New York, I decided to get into the United 
 States Navy. After laying around 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 ft. Ty 2 
 in. in height, and when I was sixteen, I was 
 just as tall as I am now and weighed 168 pounds. 
 I was a whole lot huskier then, too, for that was 
 before my introduction to kultur in German 
 prison camps, and life there is not exactly fat- 
 tening 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 shoul- 
 ders you will find that almost all of them 
 are small men. But they are a husky lot. 
 
 Now, in the navy, they always haze a new- 
 comer until he shows that he can take care of 
 himself, and I got mine 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 would give 
 me or the bucket a kick, and spill one or the 
 both of us. Each time I would move to some 
 other place, but I always seemed to be in some- 
 body'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
 
 16 Gunner Depew 
 
 a boot that sent it twenty feet away, at the 
 same time handing me a clout on the ear that 
 just about knocked me down. Now, I did not 
 exactly know what a marine was, and this fel- 
 low 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 (com- 
 missioned 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, looking on, 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 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 haze me much, except 
 for the regular gags, like tying a sleeping man's 
 feet to his hammock, such as you have got to 
 expect, and 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 on I had a reputation for 
 swimming, too. That first day they began call- 
 ing 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 under-
 
 In the American Navy 17 
 
 stand it, but garbles 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 off some foreign ship 
 they can not 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 garb 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 can not figure 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 changed a lot since the 
 days of the sailing ships, because their work 
 is so different, and sailors will change when 
 ships change; but ships change more than sail-
 
 18 Gunner Depew 
 
 ors. And I think it always will be that way. 
 
 A little while ago I spoke of a British sailor 
 as a " Limey." The old British ships used to 
 carry large quantities of lime juice aboard, 
 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 mate of a Lime-juicer 
 is the toughest guy in the world, but tjiey 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 U. S. S. Des Moines 
 as a gun-loader, I was transferred to the Iowa, 
 and finally worked up to a gun-pointer. After 
 a time I got my C. P. 0. 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 Statute of Liberty. I 
 had to join the Y. M. C. A. to get in the race. 
 I won my second cup in London in a two-mile 
 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
 
 In the American Navy 19 
 
 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 Con- 
 stantinople that I always battled with, and a 
 lighterman in Archangel. Genoa we liked be- 
 cause 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 drill up a 
 herd of goats, and work out a quart or what- 
 ever quantity you want. So, while one of us bar- 
 gained 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 got on to this in 
 Spezia, 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 gangplank. 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 lay 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
 
 20 Gunner Depew 
 
 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 \nt 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 super- 
 stitious. 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 H 
 THE WAR BREAKS 
 
 After serving four years and three months in 
 the U. S. Navy, I received an honorable dis- 
 charge on April 14, 1914. I held the rank of 
 chief petty officer, first-class gunner. It is not 
 uncommon for garbies to lie around a while 
 between enlistments they like a vacation as 
 much as any one 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 a hand to believe things until I saw 
 them, anyway. Aoiother 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, 
 France, and knew the country. So with France 
 at war, it was not strange that I should be even 
 more interested than many other garbies. 
 
 As I have said, I did not take much stock in 
 
 21
 
 22 Gunner Depew 
 
 the first reports of the Hun's exhibition of 
 kultur, because Fritz is known as a clean sailor, 
 and I figured that no real sailor would ever get 
 mixed up in such dirty work as they said there 
 was in Belgium. I figured 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 Han- 
 over, where she was when the war started, and 
 back to France. She always wore a little Amer- 
 ican flag, and this both saved and endangered 
 her. Without it, the Germans 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 bor- 
 der. 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 grand- 
 mother. He had gone to the front at the out- 
 break 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 it when a 
 man has been there and knows. 
 
 There was not much racket around New York, 
 so I made up my mind all of a sudden to go
 
 The War Breaks 23 
 
 over and get some for myself. Believe me, I 
 got enough racket before I was through. Most 
 of the really important things I have done have 
 happened like that: I did them on the jump, 
 you might say. Many other Americans wanted 
 a look, too; there were five thousand Amer- 
 icans in the Canadian Army at one time they 
 say. 
 
 I would not claim that I went over there to 
 save democracy, or anything like that. I never 
 did like Germans, and I never met a French- 
 man 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 excite- 
 ment around New York, and I figured the U. S. 
 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 ex-garby 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 
 U. S. 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.
 
 24 Gunner Depew 
 
 The five of us shipped on the steamship Vir- 
 ginian 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 and a line 
 running between the davits parted and let him 
 through into the sea. We were making about 
 twelve knots then, but there was a strong cur- 
 rent 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 un- 
 dressed 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 water- 
 tenders' the grub got pretty bad. One day 
 they brought us a big mess-kid 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 kick, 
 and so, when the other members of the mess
 
 The War Breaks 25 
 
 showed they were not anxious to go to the 
 front, it was up to me to make a beef about it 
 and see if we could not get better chow. So I 
 took the kid and went up to the chart house to 
 show it to the Old Man. I knocked on the door 
 several times, but he did not answer, so I put 
 the kid 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 laid down in the middle of it. His uni- 
 form 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 today. 
 That's your answer. 
 
 As we were tying to the dock at St. Nazaire, 
 I saw a German prisoner sitting on a pile of lum- 
 ber. 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 beefsteak sandwich, I am afraid. 
 But then I was not a heaven-born German. I
 
 26 Grunner Depew 
 
 was only a common American garby. He was 
 full of kidtur 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 two-story stone buildings, floored 
 with concrete, with auxiliary barracks of logs. 
 The German prisoners occupied the stone build- 
 ings, 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 was 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 pri- 
 vates which was a good thing for the privates 
 and were kept in houses surrounded by stock- 
 ades. Officers and privates received the same 
 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 of thick soup, and at three in the after- 
 noon more bread and a bottle of vino. The 
 soup was more like a stew very thick with
 
 The War Breaks 27 
 
 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 blan- 
 kets 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 res- 
 idences about the town. 
 
 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 bayonetted out 
 of their misery. 
 
 One day I met an officer prisoner, who, like 
 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
 
 28 Gunner Depew 
 
 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 
 IN THE FOEEIGN LEGION 
 
 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 him suspicious 
 of me, but it did not seem at all like the wel- 
 come 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 kick com- 
 ing, 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 legion- 
 aries are wanted by the police of their respective 
 countries, but a criminal record never had been 
 
 29
 
 30 Gunner Depew 
 
 a bar to service with the Legion, and I did not 
 see why it should be now if they suspected me 
 of having one. I had heard there were not a 
 few Germans in the Legion later on I became 
 acquainted with some and believe me, no 
 Alsatian ever fought harder against the Huns 
 than these 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 trouble was, but I 
 solved the problem by showing them my dis- 
 charge papers from the American Navy. Even 
 then, they were suspicious because they thought 
 I was too young to have been a C. P. 0. 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 get by on 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. Any- 
 way, I passed my examination without any 
 trouble, was accepted for service in the Foreign 
 Legion, and received my commission as gunner, 
 dated F"riday, January 1, 1915. 
 
 There is no use in my describing the Foreign 
 Legion. It is one of the most famous fighting 
 organizations in the world, and has made a won- 
 derful record during the war. When I joined 
 La Legion, it numbered about 60,000 men. Today
 
 In the Foreign Legion 31 
 
 it has less than 8,000. They say that since 
 August, 1914, the Legion has been wiped out 
 three times, and that there are only a few men 
 still in service who belonged to the original 
 Legion. I believe it to be true. In January of 
 this year the French government decided to let 
 the Legion die. I was sorry to hear it. The 
 legionnaires were a fine body of men, and won- 
 derful fighters. But the whole civilized 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. 
 
 But one thing about the Legion, that I find 
 many people do not know, is that the legionaries 
 are 'used for either land or sea service. They 
 are sent wherever they can be used. I do not 
 know whether this was the case before the pres- 
 ent war I think not but in my time, many 
 of the men were put on ships. Most people, 
 however, have the idea that they are only used 
 in the infantry. 
 
 With my commission as gunner, I received
 
 32 Gunner Depew 
 
 orders to go to Brest and join the dread- 
 naught Cassard. This assignment tickled me, 
 for my pal Murray was aboard, and I had 
 expected trouble in transferring to his ship in 
 case I was assigned elsewhere. We had framed 
 it up to stick together as long as we could. We 
 did, too. 
 
 Murray was as glad as I was when I came 
 aboard, and he told me he had heard Brown, 
 our other pal, had been made a sergeant in an- 
 other regiment of the Legion. 
 
 We were both surprised at some of the dif- 
 ferences between the French navy and ours, but 
 after we got used to it, we thought many of 
 their customs improvements over ours. But we 
 could not get used to it, at first. For instance, 
 on an American ship, when you are pounding 
 your ear in a nice warm hammock and it is 
 time to relieve the watch on deck, like as not 
 you will be awakened gently by a burly garby 
 armed with a fairy wand about the size of a 
 bed slat, whereas in French ships, when they 
 call the watch, you would think you were in a 
 swell hotel and had left word at the desk. It 
 was hard to turn out at first, without the aid 
 of a club, and harder still to break ourselves 
 of the habit of calling our relief in the gay and 
 festive American manner, but as I say, we got 
 to like it after a while. 
 
 Then, too, they do not do any hazing in the 
 French navy, and this surprised us. We had 
 expected to go through the mill just as we did 
 when we joined the American service, but nobody
 
 In the Foreign Legion 33 
 
 slung a hand at us. On the contrary, every 
 garby aboard was kind and decent and extremely 
 curious, and the fact that we were from the 
 States counted a lot with them. They used to 
 brag about it to the crews of other ships that 
 were not so honored. 
 
 But this kindness we might have expected. 
 It is just like Frenchmen in any walk of life. 
 With hardly an exception, I have never met one 
 of this nationality who was not anxious to help 
 you in every way he could; extremely generous, 
 though not reckless with small change, and almost 
 always cheery and there with a smile in any 
 weather. A fellow asked me once why it was 
 that almost the whole world loves the French, 
 and I told him it was because the French love 
 almost the whole world, and show it. And I 
 think that is the reason, too. 
 
 About the only way you can describe the poibus, 
 on land or sea, is that they are gentle. That is, 
 you always think that word when you see one 
 and talk to him unless you happen to see him 
 within bayonet distance of Fritz. 
 
 The French sailors sleep between decks in 
 bunks, instead of hammocks, and as I had not 
 slept in a bunk since my Southerndown days, 
 it was pretty hard on me. So I got hold of 
 some heaving line, which is one-quarter inch 
 rope, and rigged up a hammock. In my spare 
 time I taught the others how to make them, and 
 pretty soon everybody was doing it. By the 
 way, the American rag- time about " Everybody's 
 Doing It " had just reached the French navy,
 
 34 Gunner Depew 
 
 and everybody was overdoing it, each with a 
 different version. 
 
 When I taught the sailors to make hammocks, 
 I figured, of course, that they would use them 
 as we did that is, sleep in them. They were 
 greatly pleased at first, but after they had tried 
 the stunt of getting in and staying in, it was 
 another story. A hammock is like some other 
 things it works while you sleep and if you 
 are not on to it, you spend most of your sleep- 
 ing time hitting the floor. Our gun captain 
 thought I had put over a trick hammock on him, 
 but I did not need to; every hammock is a trick 
 hammock. 
 
 They would not believe me, however, and they 
 couldn't say enough things about me, and called 
 me all the names in the French language, even 
 " camel/' which is supposed to be a very rough 
 word and a terrible insult. I passed them a 
 little language, too, in American, only I did not 
 call them camels. No American garby would 
 call a mate that! 
 
 Also, I taught them the way we make mats 
 out of rope, to use while sleeping on the steel 
 gratings near the entrance to stoke holes. In 
 cold weather this park of the ship is more com- 
 fortable than the ordinary sleeping quarters, 
 but without a mat it gets too hot. 
 
 American soldiers and sailors get the best food 
 in the world, but while the French navy chow 
 was not fancy, it was clean and hearty, as they 
 say down East. For breakfast we had bread 
 and coffee and sardines ; at noon a boiled dinner,
 
 In the Foreign Legion 35 
 
 mostly beans, which were old friends of mine, 
 and of the well-named navy variety; at four in 
 the afternoon, a pint of vino, and at six, a sup- 
 per of soup, coffee, bread and beans. 
 
 Although the French " Seventy-five " is the 
 best gun in the world, their naval guns are not 
 as good as ours, and their gunners are mostly 
 older men. But they will give a youngster a 
 gun rating if he shows the stuff. 
 
 Shortly after I went aboard the Cassard, we 
 received instructions to proceed to Spezia, Italy, 
 the large Italian naval base. The voyage was 
 without incident, but when we dropped anchor 
 in Spezia, the Italian port officials quarantined 
 us for fourteen days on account of smallpox. 
 During this period our food was pretty bad; 
 in fact, the meat became rotten. This oould 
 hardly have happened on an American ship, 
 because they are provisioned with canned stuff 
 and preserved meats, but the French ships, like 
 the Italian, depend on live stock, fresh vege- 
 tables, etc., which they carry on board, and we 
 had expected to get a large supply of sueh stuff 
 at Spezia. Long before the fourteen days were 
 up we were out of these things, and had to live 
 on anything we could get hold of mostly hard- 
 tack, coffee and cocoa. 
 
 I knew Spezia well, but I did not go about 
 the town after the quarantine was lifted, .because 
 of the adventure I had had with the gendarme 
 on another voyage. I saw a gendarme, that I 
 took to be my friend, at a distance, but I did 
 not haul any closer to make sure. I was glad
 
 36 Gunner Depew 
 
 if he was still living, but I figured he would not 
 want to get chummy with me, so I thought I 
 would not bother him. 
 
 We loaded a cargo of aeroplanes for the 
 Italian aviators at the French flying schools, 
 and started back to Brest. On the way back 
 we had target practice. In fact, at most times 
 on the open sea, it was a regular part of the 
 routine. 
 
 It was during one of these practices that the 
 French officers wanted to find out what the 
 Yankee gunner knew about gunnery. At a range 
 of eight miles, while the ship was making eight 
 knots an hour, with a fourteen-inch gun I scored 
 three d's that is, three direct hits out of five 
 trials. After that there was no question about 
 it. As a result, I was awarded three bars. These 
 bars, which are strips of red braid, are worn on 
 the left sleeve, and signify extra marksmanship. 
 I also received two hundred and fifty francs, or 
 about fifty dollars in American money, and four- 
 teen days shore leave. 
 
 All this made me very angry, oh, very much 
 wrought up indeed not! I saw a merry life 
 for myself on the French rolling wave if they 
 felt that way about gunnery. 
 
 I spent most of my leave with my grand- 
 mother in St. Nazaire, except for a short trip 
 I made to a star-shell factory. This faetory 
 was just about like one I saw later somewhere 
 in America, only in the French works, all the 
 hands were women. Only the guards were men, 
 and they were blesses (wounded).
 
 In the Foreign Legion 37 
 
 When my leave was up and I said good-bye 
 to my grandmother, she managed a smile for 
 me, though I could see that it was pretty stiff 
 work. And without getting soft, or anything like 
 that, I can tell you that smile stayed with me 
 and it did me more good than you would believe, 
 because it gave me something good to think about 
 when I was up against the real thing. 
 
 I hope a lot of you people who read this 
 book are women, because I have had it in mind 
 for some time to tell all the women I could a 
 little thing they can do that will help a lot. 
 I am not trying to be fancy about it, and I 
 hope you will take it from me the way I mean it. 
 
 When you say good-bye to your son or your 
 husband or your sweetheart, work up a smile 
 for him. What you want to do is to give him 
 something he can think about over there, and 
 something he will like to think about. There 
 is so much dirt, and blood, and hunger, and cold, 
 and all that around you, that you have just got 
 to quit thinking about it, or you will go crazy. 
 And so, when you can think about something 
 nice, you can pretty nearly forget all the rest 
 for a while. The nicest things you can think 
 about are the things you liked back home. 
 
 Now, you can take it from me that what your 
 boy will like to remember the best of all is your 
 face with a smile on it. He has got enough hell 
 on his hands without a lot of weeps to remember, 
 if you will excuse the word. But don't forget 
 that the chances are on his side that he gets back
 
 38 Gunner Depew 
 
 to you; the figures prove it. That will help you 
 some. At that, it will be hard work; you will 
 feel more like crying, and so will he, maybe. 
 But smile for him. That smile is your bit. 
 
 I will back a smile against the weeps in a 
 race to Berlin any time. So I am telling you, 
 and I can not make it strong enough send him 
 away with a smile.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 ON THE FIEING LINE 
 
 Whem I reported on the Cassard after my 
 fourteen days' leave, I was detailed with a 
 detachment of the Legion to go to the Flanders 
 front. I changed into the regular uniform of 
 the Legion, which is about like that of the 
 infantry, with the regimental badge a seven- 
 flamed grenade. 
 
 We traveled from Brest by rail, in third-class 
 cars, passing through La Havre and St. Pol, 
 and finally arriving at Bergues. From Bergues 
 we made the trip to Dixmude by truck a dis- 
 tance of about twenty miles. We carried no 
 rations with us, but at certain places along the 
 line the train stopped, and we got out to eat 
 our meals. At every railroad station they have 
 booths or counters, and French girls work day 
 and night feeding the poilus. It was a wonderful 
 sight to see these girls, and it made you feel 
 good to think you were going to fight for them. 
 
 It was not only what they did, but the way 
 they did it, and it is at things like this that the 
 French beat the world. They could tell just 
 what kind of treatment each poilu needed, and 
 they saw to it that he got it. They took special 
 pains with the men of the Legion, because, as 
 
 39
 
 40 Gunner Depew 
 
 they say, we are " strangers," and that means, 
 " the best we have is yours " to the French. 
 These French women, young and old, could be 
 a mother and a sweetheart and a sister all at 
 the same time to any hairy old ex-convict in the 
 Legion, and do it in a way that made him feel 
 like a little boy at the time and a rich church 
 member afterwards. The only thing we did not 
 like about this trip was that there were not 
 enough stations along that line. There is a tip 
 that the French engineers will not take, I am 
 afraid. 
 
 And the legionaries were French enough in 
 their feelings so that they took it in the right 
 way, too. I never saw one of our men get gay 
 with a French girl, and if they did not, I know 
 the regular French troops did not either. As 
 soldiers are apt to be pretty raw sometimes, that 
 is saying a lot for the French women. 
 
 There is another thing about the French women 
 that I have noticed, and that is this. There 
 are pretty girls in every country under the sun, 
 but the plain girls in France are prettier than 
 the plain ones in other countries. They might 
 not show it in photographs, but in action there 
 is something about them that you can not explain. 
 I have never seen an ugly French girl who 
 was not easy to look at. 
 
 Most of the French people are just a little bit 
 afraid of the men of the Legion. They think 
 that a man must be a very desperate thug before 
 he would be willing to serve where the Legion 
 does in time of peace and for the small pay
 
 On the Firing Line 41 
 
 they get. Also, after the Germans took Alsace- 
 Lorraine in 1870, there were so many Alsatians 
 who joined the Legion because otherwise they 
 would have to serve with the Germans that 
 the French got* into the habit of calling the 
 legionaries Germans or Prussians, or something 
 like that, and many of the simple-minded French 
 people got to think they really were all Germans 
 in the Legion. 
 
 So, when a section of the Legion came through 
 a certain little town a short time before we did, 
 the inhabitants were much frightened. They 
 had never seen legionaries before, but they had 
 heard of them. 
 
 " It is the Germans, the desperate men of the 
 Legion," they said. " What will become of the 
 town? " 
 
 The men got out of the trains and wandered 
 about the little town, and some of them wanted 
 to buy tobacco or vino or whatnot. But every 
 shop was closed and barricaded. Every person 
 they came to ran away as fast as he or she 
 could, and nobody would have a thing to do with 
 them. 
 
 This made the men pretty mad, naturally. A 
 great many soldiers or sailors would have broken 
 up the whole place, but the men of the Legion 
 knew discipline, for they really are proud of the 
 regiment and do not want to disgrace it. So 
 while these men were angry and insulted, they 
 behaved themselves. 
 
 They really did need tobacco and a few other 
 things, so they took the shutters out of a shop
 
 42 Gunner Depew 
 
 window and climbed in and helped themselves. 
 But they left the money for it, and because 
 they did not have the exact change, they left 
 more than the right price. Then they got aboard 
 their train and pulled away. 
 
 But the people of the town kept talking about 
 the affair until, according to them, the Legion 
 had sacked the town and looted every house in 
 it. I guess they got to believing it themselves, 
 because by the time we got there, to say that 
 they were off of us for life was putting it mildly. 
 
 They did not have the shops closed this time, 
 and they were not hiding, but they would not 
 have anything to do with us. They would sell 
 us what we wanted to buy, but that was all, and 
 not a single cheer-oh when some of us wanted 
 to buy vino for the bunch. 
 
 We were used to this kind of thing at least 
 the old legionaries were because trippers, like 
 the boys of the Legion, never do get very chummy 
 with the home guards. But we wanted to get 
 the Legion in right in this town, and we were 
 disappointed when the merry villagers froze up 
 the way they did. 
 
 The worst of it was we had to stop over in 
 this town for three hours. We walked up and 
 down the square feeling right at home and just 
 the correct thing like wearing a yachting suit 
 in the mountains. 
 
 We finally got to Dixmude, after having spent 
 about eighteen hours on the way. On our arrival, 
 ene company was sent to the reserve trenches, 
 and my company went to the front line trench.
 
 On the Firing Line 43 
 
 We were not placed in training camps, because 
 most of us had been under fire before. I never 
 had, but that was not supposed to make any 
 difference. They say if you can stand the 
 Legion, you can stand anything. But I have 
 seen worse than that. 
 
 Before we entered the communication trench, 
 we were drawn up alongside of a crossroad for 
 a rest, and to receive certain accoutrements. 
 Pretty soon we saw a bunch of boches coming 
 along the road, without their guns, a few of 
 them being slightly wounded. Some of them 
 looked scared and others happy, but they all 
 seemed tired. Then we heard some singing, 
 and pretty soon we could see an Irish corporal 
 stepping along behind the Huns, with his rifle 
 slung over his back, and every once in a while 
 he would shuffle a bit and then sing some more. 
 He had a grin on him that pushed his ears back. 
 
 The British non-com, who was detailed as our 
 guide, sang out : ' ' What kind of time are you 
 having, Pat? " 
 
 The Irishman saluted with one hand, dug the 
 other into his pocket and pulled out enough 
 watches to make you think you were in a pawn 
 shop. " Oh, a foin toim I'm bavin'," he says. 
 " I got wan from each of thim fellas." We 
 counted fourteen prisoners in the bunch. Pat 
 sure thought he was rolling in wealth. 
 
 After we were rested up, we were issued rifles, 
 shrapnel helmets and belts, and then started 
 down the communication trench. These trenches 
 are entrances to the fighting trenches, and run
 
 44 Gunner Depew 
 
 at varying angles and varying distances apart. 
 They are seldom wide enough to hold more than 
 one man, so you have to march single file in 
 them. They wind in and out, according to the 
 lay of the land, some parts of them being more 
 dangerous than others. When you come to a 
 dangerous spot, you have to crawl sometimes. 
 
 There are so many cross trenches and blind 
 alleys that you have to have a guide for a long 
 time, because without one, you are apt to walk 
 through an embrasure in a fire trench and right 
 out into the open, between the German front 
 line and your own. Which is hardly worth 
 while! 
 
 If any part of the line is under fire, the guide 
 at the head of the line is on the lookout for 
 shells, and when he hears one coming, he gives 
 the signal and you drop to the ground and wait 
 until it bursts. You never get all the time you 
 want, but at that, you have plenty of time to 
 think about things while you are lying there 
 with your face m the mud, waiting to hear the 
 sound of the explosion. When you hear it, you 
 know you have got at least one more to dodge. 
 If you do not hear it well, most likely you are 
 worrying more about tuning your thousand string 
 harp than anything else. 
 
 In the communication trench you have to keep 
 your distance from the man ahead of you. This 
 is done so that you will have plenty of room to 
 fall down in, and because if a shell should find 
 the trench, there would be fewer casualties in 
 an open formation than in a closed. The Ger-
 
 On the Firing Line 45 
 
 man artillery is keen on communication trenches, 
 and whenever they spot one, they stay with it 
 a long time. Most of them are camouflaged 
 along the top and sides, so that enemy aviators 
 can not see anything but the earth or bushes, 
 when they throw an eye down on our lines. 
 
 We took over our section of the front line 
 trenches from a French line regiment that had 
 been on the job for twenty-four days. That was 
 the longest time I have heard of any troops 
 remaining on the firing line. 
 
 Conditions at the front and ways of fighting 
 are changing all the time, as each side invents 
 new methods of butchering, so when I try to 
 describe the Dixmude trenches, you must realize 
 that it is probably just history by now. If they 
 are still using trenches there, they probably look 
 entirely different. 
 
 But when I was at Dixmude they were some- 
 thing like this: 
 
 Behind the series of front line trenches are 
 the reserve trenches; in this case, five to seven 
 miles away, and still farther back are the billets. 
 These may be houses or barns or ruined churches 
 any place that can possibly be used for quar- 
 tering troops when off duty. 
 
 Troops were usually in the front line trenches 
 six to eight days, and fourteen to sixteen days 
 in the reserve trenches. Then, back to the billets 
 for six or eight days. 
 
 We were not allowed to change our clothing 
 in the front line trenches not even to remove 
 socks, unless for inspection. Nor would they let
 
 46 Gunner Depew 
 
 you as much as unbutton your shirt, unless there 
 was an inspection of identification discs. We 
 wore a disc at the wrist and another around the 
 neck. You know the gag about the discs, of 
 course: If your arm is blown off, they can tell 
 who you are by the neck disc; if your head is 
 blown off, they do not care who you are. 
 
 In the reserve trenches, you can make your- 
 self more comfortable, but you can not go to 
 such extreme lengths of luxury as changing your 
 clothes entirely. That is for billets, where you 
 spend most of your time bathing, changing 
 clothes, sleeping and eating. Believe me, billets 
 is great stuff: it is like a sort of temporary 
 heaven. 
 
 Of course you know what the word " cooties " 
 means. Let us hope you will never know what 
 the cooties themselves mean. When you get in 
 or near the trenches, you take a course in the 
 natural history of bugs, lice, rats and every kind 
 of pest that has ever been invented. 
 
 It is funny to see some of the newcomers when 
 they first discover a cootie on them. Some of 
 them cry. If they really knew what it was 
 going to be like, they would do worse than that, 
 maybe. Then they start hunting all over each 
 other, just like monkeys. They team up for this 
 purpose, and many times it is in this way that 
 a couple of men get to be trench partners, and 
 come to be pals for life which may mot be a 
 long time at that. 
 
 In the front line trenches it is more com- 
 fortable to fall asleep on the parapet ire-step
 
 On the Firing Line 47 
 
 than in the dugouts, because the cooties are 
 thicker down below, and they simply will not 
 give you a minute's rest. They certainly are 
 active little pests. We used to make back- 
 scratchers out of certain weapons that had flex- 
 ible handles, but never had time to use them 
 when we needed them most. 
 
 We were given bottles of strong liquid which 
 smelled like lysol, and were supposed to soak our 
 clothes in it. It was thought that the cooties 
 would object to the smell and quit work. Well, 
 a cootie that could stand our clothes without the 
 dope on them would not be bothered by a little 
 thing like this stuff. Also, our clothes got so 
 sour and horrible smelling that they hurt our 
 noses worse than the cooties. They certainly 
 were game little devils, and came right back 
 at us. 
 
 So most of the poilus threw the dope at Fritz, 
 and fought the cooties hand to hand. 
 
 There was plenty of food in the trenches most 
 of the time, though once in a while, during a 
 heavy bombardment, the fatigue usually a cor- 
 poral 's guard would get killed in the commu- 
 nication trenches, and we would not have time 
 to get out to the fatigue and rescue the grub 
 they were bringing. Sometimes you could not 
 find either the fatigue or the grub when you got 
 to the point where they had been hit. 
 
 But as I say, we were well fed most of the 
 time, and got second and third helpings until we 
 had to open our belts. But as the Limeys say: 
 " Gaw blimey, the chuck was rough. " They
 
 4:8 Gunner Depew 
 
 served a thick soup of meat and vegetables in 
 bowls the size of wash basins, black coffee, with 
 or without sugar mostly without ! and plenty 
 of bread. 
 
 Also, we had preserves in tins, just like the 
 Limeys. If you send any parcels over, do not 
 put any apple and plum jam in them, or the 
 man who gets it will let Fritz shoot him. Ask 
 any Limey soldier, and he will tell you the same. 
 I never thought there was so much jam in the 
 world. No Man's Land looked like a city dump. 
 Most of us took it, after a while, just to get the 
 bread. Early in the war they used the tins to 
 make bombs of, but that was before Mills came 
 along with his hand grenade. Later on they 
 flattened out the tins and lined the dugouts with 
 them. 
 
 Each man carried an emergency ration in his 
 bag. This consisted of bully beef, biscuits, etc. 
 This ration was never used except in a real 
 emergency, because no one could tell when it 
 might mean the difference between life and death 
 to him. When daylight catches a man in a shell 
 hole, or at a listening post out in No Man's 
 Land, he does not dare to crawl back to his 
 trench before nightfall, and then is the time that 
 his emergency ration comes in handy. Also, the 
 stores failed to reach us sometimes, as I have 
 said, and we had to use the emergency rations. 
 
 Sometimes we received raw meat, and fried 
 it in our dugouts. We built regular clay ovens 
 in the dugouts, with iron tops for broiling. This, 
 of course, was in the front line trenches only.
 
 On the Firing Line 49 
 
 We worked two hours on the fire-step and 
 knocked off for four hours, in which time we 
 cooked and ate and slept. This routine was 
 kept up night and day, seven days a week. 
 Sometimes the program was changed; for 
 instance, when there was to be an attack, or 
 when Fritz tried to come over and visit, but 
 otherwise nothing disturbed our routine unless 
 it was a gas attack. 
 
 The ambition of most privates is to become a 
 sniper, as the official sharpshooters are called. 
 After a private has been in the trenches for six 
 months or a year and has shown his marksman- 
 ship, he becomes the great man he has dreamed 
 about. We had two snipers to each company, 
 and because they took more chances with their 
 lives than the ordinary privates, they were 
 allowed more privileges. WTien it was at all pos- 
 sible, our snipers were allowed dry quarters, the 
 best of food, and they did not have to follow 
 the usual routine, but came and went as they 
 pleased. 
 
 Our snipers, as a rule, went over the parapet 
 about dusk, just before Fritz got his star shells 
 going. They would crawl out to shell craters, 
 or tree stumps, or holes that they had spotted 
 during the day in other words, places where 
 they could see the enemy parapets, but could 
 not be seen themselves. Once in position, they 
 would make themselves comfortable, smear their 
 tin hats with dirt, get a good rest for their 
 rifles and snipe every German they saw. They 
 wore extra bandoleers of cartridges, since there
 
 50 Gunner Depew 
 
 was no telling how many rounds they might fire 
 during the night. Sometimes they had direct and 
 visible targets, and other times they potted Huns 
 by guess work. Usually they crawled back just 
 before daylight, but sometimes they were out 
 twenty-four hours at a stretch. They took great 
 pride in the number of Germans they knocked 
 over, and if our men did not get eight or ten, 
 they thought they had not done a good night's 
 work. Of course, it was not wholesale killing, 
 like machine gunning, but it was very useful, 
 because our snipers were always laying for the 
 German snipers, and when they got Sniper Fritz, 
 they saved just so many of our lives. 
 
 The Limeys have a great little expression that 
 means a lot: " Carry on." They say it is a 
 cockney expression. When a captain falls in 
 action, his words are not a message to the girl 
 he left behind him, or any dope about his gray- 
 haired- mother, but " Carry on, Lieutenant 
 Whosis." If the lieutenant gets his, it is " Carry 
 on, Sergeant Jacks," and so on as far as it 
 goes. So the words used to mean, " Take over 
 the command, and do the job right." But now 
 they mean not only that, but " Keep up your 
 courage, and go to it." One man will say it 
 to another, sometimes, when he thinks the first 
 man is getting down-hearted, but jpore often, if 
 he is a Limey, he will start kidding him. 
 
 Our men, of course, did not say " Carry on," 
 and in fact, they did not have any expression 
 in French that meant exactly the same thing. 
 But they used to cheer each other along, all
 
 On the Firing Line 51 
 
 right, and they passed along the command when 
 it was necessary, too. I wonder what expression 
 the American troops will use. (You notice I do 
 not call them Sammies!) 
 
 I took my turn at listening post with the rest 
 of them, of course. A listening post is any good 
 position out in No Man's Land, and is always 
 held by two men. Their job is to keep a live 
 ear on Fritz, and in case they hear anything 
 that sounds very much like an attack, one man 
 runs back to his lines, and the other stays to 
 hold back the boches as long as he can. You 
 can figure for yourself which is the most healthy 
 job. 
 
 As many times as I went on listening post 
 duty, I never did get to feeling homelike there, 
 exactly. You have to lie very still, of course, as 
 Fritz is listening, too, and a move may mean a 
 bullet in the ribs. So, lying on the ground with 
 hardly a change of position, the whole lower 
 part of my body would go to sleep before I had 
 been at the post very long. I used to brag a 
 lot about how fast I could run, so I had my turn 
 as the runner, which suited me all right. But 
 every time I got to a listening post and started 
 to think about what I would do if Fritz should 
 come .over, and wondered how good a runner he 
 was, I took a long breath and saidj " Feet, do 
 your dut/." And I was strong on duty. 
 
 After I had done my stunt in the front line 
 and reserve trenches I went back with my com- 
 pany to billets, but had only been there for a 
 day or two before I was detached and detailed
 
 52 Gunner Depew 
 
 to the artillery position to the right of us, where 
 both the British and French had mounted naval 
 guns. There were guns of all calibres there, 
 both naval and field pieces, and I got a good 
 look at the famous " Seventy-fives," which are 
 the best guns in the world, in my estimation, 
 and the one thing that saved Verdun. 
 
 The ' ' 75 's " fired thirty shots a minute, where 
 the best the German guns could do was six. 
 The American 3-inch field piece lets go six times 
 a minute, too. The French government owns 
 the secret of the mechanism that made this rapid 
 fire possible. When the first " 75 's " began to 
 roar, the Germans knew the French had found 
 a new weapon, so they were very anxious to 
 get one of the guns and learn the secret. 
 
 Shortly afterward they captured eight guns 
 by a mass attack in which, the Allies claim, 
 there were 4,000 German troops killed. The 
 bodies studied the guns, and tried to turn out 
 pieces like them at the Krupp factory. But 
 somehow they could not get it. Their imitation 
 " 75 's " would only fire five shots very rapidly, 
 and then ' l cough, ' ' puff, puff, puff, with noth- 
 ing coming out. The destructive power of the 
 " 75 's " is enormous. These guns have saved 
 the lives of thousands of poilus and Tommies, 
 and it is largely due to them that the French 
 are now able to beat Fritz at his own game and 
 give back shell for shell and then some.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 WITH THE " 75 's " 
 
 My pal Brown, of whom I spoke before, 
 had been put in the infantry when he enlisted 
 in the Legion, because he had served in the 
 United States infantry. He soon became a ser- 
 geant, which had been his rating in the Amer- 
 ican service. I never saw him in the trenches, 
 because our outfits were nowhere near each other, 
 but whenever we were in billets at the same time, 
 we were together as much as possible. 
 
 Brown was a funny card, and I never saw 
 anyone else much like him. A big, tall, red 
 headed, dopey-looking fellow, never saying much 
 and slow in everything he did or said you 
 would never think he amounted to much or was 
 worth his salt. The boys used to call him 
 " Ginger " Brown, both on account of his red 
 hair and his slow movements. But he would 
 pull a surprise on you every once in a while, 
 like this one that he fooled me with. 
 
 One morning about dawn we started out for a 
 walk through what used to be Dixmude piles 
 of stone and brick and mortar. There were no 
 civvies to be seen; only mules and horses bring- 
 ing up casks of water, bags of beans, chloride 
 of lime, barbed wire, ammunition, etc. It was 
 
 53
 
 a good thing we were not superstitious. At that, 
 the shadows along the walls made me feel shaky 
 sometimes. 
 
 Finally Brown said: " Come on down; let's 
 see the ' 75 'a.' " At this time I had not seen a 
 " 75," except on a train going to the front, so 
 I took him up right away, but was surprised 
 that he should know where they were. 
 
 After going half way around Dixmude, Brown 
 said, " Here we are," and started right into 
 what was left of a big house. I kept wondering 
 how he would know so much about it, but fol- 
 lowed him. Inside the house was a passageway 
 under the ruins. It was about seven feet wide 
 and fifty feet long, I should judge. 
 
 At the other end was the great old " 75," 
 poking its nose out of a hole in the wall. The 
 gun captain and the crew were sitting around 
 waiting the word for action, and they seemed to 
 know Brown well. I was surprised at that, but 
 still more so when he told me I could examine 
 the gun if I wanted to, just as if he owned it. 
 
 So I sat in the seat and trained the cross 
 wires on an object, opened and closed the breech, 
 and examined the recoil. 
 
 Then Brown said: " Well, Chink, you will see 
 some real gunnery now," and they passed the 
 word and took stations. My eyes bulged out 
 when I saw Brown take his station with them! 
 
 " Silence! " is about the first command a gun 
 crew gets when it is going into action, but I 
 forgot all about it, and shouted out and asked 
 Brown how the hell he got to be a gunner. But
 
 With the " 75's r 55 
 
 he only grinned and looked dopey, as usual. 
 Then I came to, and expected to get a call down 
 from the officer, but he only grinned and so 
 did the crew. It seems they had it all framed 
 to spring on me, and they expected I would be 
 surprised. 
 
 So we put cotton in our ears, and the captain 
 called the observation tower a short distance 
 away, and they gave him the range. Then the 
 captain called " 4128 metres " to Brown. They 
 placed the nose of a shell in a fuse adjuster, and 
 turned the handle until it reached scale 4128. 
 This set the fuse to explode at the range given. 
 Then they slammed the shell into the breach, 
 locked it shut, and Brown sent his best to Fritz. 
 
 The barrel slipped back, threw out the shell 
 case at our feet, and returned over a cushion of 
 grease. Then we received the results by tel- 
 ephone from the observation tower. After he 
 had fired twelve shots, the captain said to Brown : 
 " You should never waste yourself in infantry, 
 son." And old dopey Brown just stood there 
 and grinned. 
 
 That was Brown every time. He knew about 
 more things than you could think of. He had 
 read about gunnery and fooled around at Dix- 
 mude until they let him play with the " 75's," 
 and finally, here he was, giving his kindest to 
 Fritz with the rest of them. 
 
 I never saw a battery better concealed than 
 this one. Up on the ground, you couldn't see 
 the muzzle twenty yards away and that was 
 all there was to see at any distance. There
 
 56 Gunner Depew 
 
 was a ruined garden just outside the gun quar- 
 ters, and while the gunners were there picking 
 apples, there would be a hiss and an explosion, 
 and over would go some of the trees or maybe 
 a man or two, but never a shell struck nearer 
 the guns than that. The poilus used to thank 
 Fritz for helping them pick the apples, because 
 the explosions would bring them down in great 
 style. Shells from our heavy artillery passed 
 just over the garden, too, making an awful 
 racket. But they were not in it with the " 75 's. ' * 
 
 They gave me a little practice with a " 75 " 
 under the direction of expert French gunners 
 before I went to my 14-inch naval gun, and 
 believe me, it was a fine little piece. Just pic- 
 ture to yourself a little beauty that can send a 
 38-pound shell every two seconds for five miles 
 and more, if you want it to, and land on Fritz's 
 vest button every time. There is nothing I like 
 better than a gun, anyway, and I have never 
 since been entirely satisfied with anything less 
 than a " 75." 
 
 As you probably know, the opposing artillery 
 in this war is so widely separated that the gun- 
 ners never see their targets, unless these happen 
 to be buildings and even then it is rare. So, 
 since an artillery officer never sees the enemy 
 artillery or infantry, he must depend on others 
 to give him the range and direction. 
 
 For this purpose there are balloons and aero- 
 planes attached to each artillery unit. The aero- 
 planes are equipped with wireless, but also signal 
 by smoke and direction of flight, while the bal-
 
 With the " 75's '' 57 
 
 loons use telephones. The observers have maps, 
 and powerful glasses, and cameras. Their maps 
 are marked off in zones to correspond with the 
 maps used by the artillery officers. 
 
 The observations are signaled to a receiving 
 station on the ground, and are then telephoned 
 to the batteries. All our troops were equipped 
 with telephone signal corps detachments, and this 
 was a very important arm of the service. The 
 enemy position is shelled before an attack, either 
 en barrage or otherwise, and communication 
 between the waves of attack and the artillery is 
 absolutely necessary. Bombardments are directed 
 toward certain parts of the enemy position 
 almost as accurately as you would use a search- 
 light. The field telephones are very light, and 
 are portable to the last degree. They can be 
 rigged up or knocked down in a very short time. 
 The wire is wound on drums or reels, and you 
 would be surprised to see how quickly our corps 
 established communication from a newly won 
 trench to headquarters, for instance. They were 
 asking for our casualties before we had finished 
 having them, almost. 
 
 Artillery fire was directed by men whose duty 
 it was to dope out the range from the informa- 
 tion sent them by the observers in the air. Two 
 men were stationed at the switchboard; one man 
 to receive the message and the other to operate 
 the board. As soon as the range was plotted 
 out, it was telephoned to the gunners and they 
 did the rest. 
 
 The naval guns at Dixmude were mounted on
 
 58 Gunner Depew 
 
 flat cars, and these were drawn back and forth 
 on the track by little Belgian engines. 
 
 After I had been at my gun for several days 
 I was ordered back to my regiment, which was 
 again in the front line trenches. My course 
 was past both the British and French lines, but 
 quite a distance behind the front lines. 
 
 Everywhere there were ambulances and wagons 
 going backwards and forwards. I met one 
 French ambulance that was typical of all the 
 rest. It was a long wagon full of poilus from 
 a field hospital near the firing line, and was 
 driven by a man whose left arm was bandaged 
 to the shoulder. Two poilus, who sat in the 
 rear, on guard, had each been wounded in the 
 leg, and one had had a big strip of his scalp 
 torn off. There was not a sound man in the 
 bunch. You can imagine what their cargo was 
 like, if the convoy was as used up as these chaps. 
 But all who could were singing and talking and 
 full of pep. That is the French for you; they 
 used no more men than they could possibly 
 spare to take care of the wounded, but they were 
 all cheerful about it always. 
 
 Just after I passed this ambulance, the Ger- 
 mans began shelling a section of the road too 
 near me to be comfortable, so I beat it to a 
 shell crater about twenty yards off the road, to 
 the rear. A shrapnel shell exploded pretty near 
 me just as I jumped into this hole I did not 
 look around to see how close it was and I 
 remember now how an old minstrel joke I had 
 heard on board ship came to my mind at the
 
 With the " 75's >: 59 
 
 time something about a fellow feeling so small 
 he climbed into a hole and pulled it after him 
 and I wished I might do the same. I flattened 
 myself as close against the wall of the crater 
 as I could, and then I noticed that somebody 
 had made a dugout in the other wall of the 
 crater, and I started for it. 
 
 The shells were exploding so fast by that time 
 that you could not listen for each explosion sep- 
 arately, and just as I jumped into the dugout 
 a regular hail of shrapnel fell on the spot I 
 had just passed. It was pretty dark in the dug- 
 out, and the first move I made I bumped into 
 somebody else, and he let out a yell that you 
 could have heard for a mile. It was a Tommy 
 who had been wounded in the hand, and between 
 curses, he told me I had sat right on his wound 
 when I moved. I asked him why he did not 
 yell sooner, but he only swore some more. He 
 surely was a great cusser. After a while I asked 
 him if his hand still hurt him, and he said: 
 " Hand, hell! It's my bloody pipe IVe been 
 swearing about, you blighter. I lost it when the 
 damned bullet hit me." I gave him my pipe, 
 and he seemed perfectly satisfied and did not 
 let out another word. 
 
 The bombardment slackened up a bit about 
 this time, and I thought I would have a look 
 around. I did not get out of the crater entirely, 
 but moved around out of the dugout until I 
 could see the road I had been on. The first 
 thing I saw was a broken-down wagon that had 
 just been hit in fact, it was toppling over
 
 60 Gunner Depew 
 
 when my eye caught it. The driver jumped from 
 his seat, and while he was in the air, his head was 
 torn completely from his shoulders by another 
 shell, I do not know what kind. This was enough 
 for me, so back to the dugout. 
 
 How the Germans did it I do not know, but 
 they had found out about that road, and opened 
 fire at exactly the moment when the road was 
 covered with wagons and men. Yet there had 
 not been a balloon or aeroplane in the sky for 
 some time. 
 
 After a while the bombardment moved away 
 to the east, from which direction I had come, 
 and I knew our batteries were getting it. The 
 Tommy and I came out of the dugout As I 
 started climbing up the muddy sides I saw there 
 was a man standing at the edge of it, and I 
 could tell by his puttees that he was a Limey. 
 I was having a hard job of it, so without look- 
 ing up I hailed him. 
 
 11 That was sure some shelling, wasn't it? " 
 I said. " There's a lad down here with a 
 wounded fin; better give him a hand. 77 
 
 11 What shelling do you mean," says the legs, 
 without moving, " there's been none in this 
 sector for some time, I think." 
 
 The Tommy was right at my heel by this time, 
 and he let out a string of language. I was 
 surprised, too, and still scrambling around in 
 the mud. 
 
 " My God," I says, " what have you been 
 drinking? " 
 
 Then the Tommy let out a " Gawd 'elp us! "
 
 With the " 75's ' 61 
 
 and I looked up and saw that the legs belonged 
 to a Limey officer, a major, I think. And here 
 we had been ens sing the eyes off of him! 
 
 But he sized it up rightly and gave us a 
 hand, and only laughed when we tried to explain. 
 I got rattled and told him that all I saw was 
 his legs, and that they did not look like an 
 officer's legs, which might have made it worse, 
 only he was good natured about it. Then he 
 said that he had been asleep in a battalion 
 headquarters dugout, about a hundred yards 
 away, and only waked up when part of the roof 
 caved in on him. Yet he did not know he had 
 been shelled! 
 
 I went on down the road a stretch, but soon 
 found it was easier walking beside it, because 
 the Huns had shelled it neatly right up and 
 down the middle. Also, there were so many 
 wrecked horses and wagons to climb over on 
 the road besides dead men. 
 
 After I had passed the area of the bombard- 
 ment and got back on the road, I sat down to 
 rest and smoke. A couple of shells had burst 
 so near the crater that they had thrown the 
 dirt right into the dugout, and I was a little 
 dizzy from the shock. While I was sitting 
 there a squad of Tommies came up with about 
 twice their number of German prisoners. The 
 Tommies had been making Fritz do the goose 
 step, and they started them at it again when 
 they saw me sitting there. It sure is ^ood for 
 a laugh any time, this goose step. I guess they 
 call it that after the fellow who invented it
 
 62 Gunner Depew 
 
 One thing I had noticed about a Fritz was 
 the way his coat flared out at the bottom^ so 
 I took this chance to find out about it, while 
 they halted for a rest just a little farther down 
 the road. I found that they carried their emer- 
 gency kits in their coats. These kits contained 
 canned meat, tobacco, needles, thread and plas- 
 ter all this in addition to their regular pack. 
 
 Then I drilled down the road some more, but 
 had to stop pretty soon to let a column of 
 French infantry swing on to the road from a 
 field. They were on their way to the trenches 
 as reinforcements. After every two companies 
 there would be a wagon. Pretty soon I saw the 
 uniform of the Legion. Then a company of 
 my regiment came up and I wheeled in with 
 them. We were in the rear of the column. 
 Our boys were not part of the column tkat had 
 just passed, but were going up for their regular 
 stunt in the front lines, while the others had 
 just arrived at that part of the front. 
 
 Then for the first time my feet began hurting 
 me. Our boots were made of rough cowhide and 
 fitted very well, but it was a day's labor to 
 carry them on your feet. I began lagging behind. 
 I would lag twenty or thirty yards behind and 
 then try to catch up. But the thousands of men 
 ahead of me kept up the steady pace and very 
 few limped, though they had been on the march 
 since 3 a. m. It was then about 11 a. m. Those 
 who did limp were carried in the wagons. But 
 I had seen very few men besides the drivers 
 riding in the wagons, and I wanted to be as
 
 With the " 75's ' 63 
 
 tough as the next guy, so I kept on. But, 
 believe me, I was sure glad when we halted for 
 a rest along the road. 
 
 That is, the reinforcements did! Our com- 
 pany of the Legion had not come from so far, 
 and when the front of the column had drawn out 
 of the way along the road, we kept on filing, as 
 the saying it. I did not care about being tough 
 then, and I was ready for the wagon. 
 
 Only now there were no wagons! They 
 belonged with the other troops. So I had to ease 
 along as best I could for what seemed like hours 
 to my feet until we turned off onto another 
 road and halted for a rest. I found out later 
 that our officers had gone astray and were lost 
 at this time, though, of course, they did not tell 
 us so. But I suspected it then, for, when some 
 traveling stoves or soup kitchens came up the 
 road, our officers stopped them, and made them 
 serve us with the soup they had been cooking 
 while they traveled along. They would not have 
 done this if we had not been lost, because 
 they would either have known they were close 
 to our destination, or would have brought a 
 commissary with them. 
 
 But I did not stop to argue about it. I 
 understood very clearly that I was hungry, and 
 I think I would have enjoyed a bale of hay just 
 as well as the soup kitchen horses did. These 
 soup kitchens, by the way, always reminded me 
 of a small town fire engine, and I could never 
 see one without expecting it to come tearing 
 along with the horses galloping and a fellow
 
 64 Gunner Depew 
 
 hanging on to the stern ringing a gong. I 
 dreamed of this once, in a firing line dugout, 
 and just as plain as day I saw the soup kitchen 
 dash past, with the fellow ladling out soup as 
 fast as he could go. 
 
 We arrived at our section of the trench about 
 3 o'clock that afternoon, and I rejoined my com- 
 pany. I was all tired out after this trek, and 
 found myself longing for the Cassard and the 
 ruling wave, where no Marathons and five-mile 
 hikes were necessary. But this was not in store 
 for me yet
 
 How we give 'em the butt "
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 FRITZ DOES A LITTLE " STRAFEING " 
 
 My outfit was one of those that saw the Ger- 
 mans place women and children in front of them 
 as shields against our fire. More than a third 
 of our men, I should say, had been pretty tough 
 criminals in their own countries. They always 
 traded their pay against a handful of cards, or 
 a roll of the bones, whenever they got a chance. 
 They had been in most of the dirty parts of the 
 world. This war was not such a much to them; 
 just one more job in the list. They could call 
 God, and the saints, and the human body, more 
 things than any boss stevedore that ever lived. 
 
 Yet they were religious, in a way. Some of 
 them were always reading religious books or 
 saying prayers in different ways, and between 
 them they believed in every religion and super- 
 stition under the sun, I guess. Yet they were 
 the toughest bunch I ever saw. 
 
 After they saw the Germans using the Bel- 
 gian women the way they did, almost every man 
 in my company took some kind of a vow or 
 other, and most of them kept their vows, too, 
 I believe. And those that were religious got 
 more so, after that. 
 
 65
 
 66 Gunner Depew 
 
 Our chaplain had always been very friendly 
 with the men, and while I think they liked him, 
 they were so tough they would never admit it, 
 and some of them claimed he was a Jonah, or 
 jinx, or bad luck of some kind. But they all 
 told him their vows, as soon as they made them, 
 and he was supposed to be a sort of referee 
 as to whether they kept them or not. 
 
 The men of the Legion were always singing. 
 Whenever they would be on the march, they 
 would pipe up, and no bunch of two or three 
 could get together without trying out a barber 
 shop chord or two. As you probably know, 
 American rag-time is the rage in France, and 
 they knew a lot of popular songs that we have 
 heard over here. Sometimes they sang them 
 in French and sometimes in English. 
 
 The songs they seemed to like best were 
 usually parodies, such as "It's a Long Way to 
 St. Helena." They also were fond of one of 
 the many alleged Hawaiian songs they all sound 
 alike to me about Waikiki or Mauna Loa or 
 neighboring ports. Then they had songs that 
 they made up themselves, one for almost every 
 important battle the Legion ever fought in. But 
 the song I liked best was an old song of the 
 Legion, one of their many historical songs, which 
 was called " Rataplan." Believe me, it was 
 great stuff to swing along a road with the whole 
 bunch roaring, " Rrrrrrat-a-pfaw/ ' Another 
 tune that I liked was the regimental march, 
 " Allons, Giron." The men used to sing or hum 
 these songs even in the trenches, or while we
 
 Fritz Does a Little " Strafeing ' 67 
 
 were consolidating an enemy position that we 
 had taken. 
 
 During my second stunt in the front lines 
 things got pretty bad. The Germans were five 
 to our one, and they kept pushing back parts 
 of the line and cleaning out others. And the 
 weather was as bad as it could be, and the food 
 did not always come regularly. Now, before they 
 took their vows, every last man in the bunch 
 would have been kicking and growling all the 
 time, but as it was, the only time they growled 
 was when the Germans pushed us back. 
 
 Things kept getting worse, and you could 
 see that the men talked to the chaplain more, 
 and quite a few of them got real chummy with 
 him. 
 
 One morning Fritz started in bright and early 
 to begin his strafe. The lieutenant was walking 
 up and down the trench to see that the sentries 
 were properly posted and were on the job. A 
 shell whizzed over his head and landed just 
 behind the parados, and the dirt spouted up like 
 I imagine a Yellowstone geyser looks. 
 
 Another officer came up to the lieutenant a 
 new one who had only joined the company about 
 a week before. They had walked about ten yards 
 when another shell whizzed over them. They 
 laid to, and a third one came. There were three 
 in less than five minutes, directly over their 
 heads. 
 
 Then a shell landed in the left side of the 
 trench, and a pottu yelled that four men had 
 got it. They were all wounded, and three died
 
 68 
 
 later. The lieutenant went over to them, and 
 just after he passed me, a lad got it square 
 not far from me and was knocked over to where 
 I was lying. 
 
 The lieutenant came back and helped me with 
 the first-aid roll, and then the Germans began 
 using shrapnel. The lieutenant was swearing 
 hard about the shrapnel, and the Germans, and 
 everything else. 
 
 Farther to the right a shell had just struck 
 near the parados and made a big crater, and 
 across from it, against the parapet, was a young 
 chap with a deep gash in his head, sitting on 
 the fire step, and next to him a fellow nursing 
 the place where his arm had been blown off. 
 Our bread ration lay all about the trench, and 
 some of the potttis were fishing it out of the mud 
 and water, and wiping the biscuits off on their 
 sleeves or eating as fast as they could. Only, 
 some of the biscuits had fallen in bloody water, 
 and they did not eat these. 
 
 A young fellow, hardly more than a boy, 
 stumbled over the parados, and fell into the 
 trench right near the lieutenant, and the lieu- 
 tenant dressed his wounds himself. I think he 
 was some relation of the boy. 
 
 The lieutenant asked him how he felt, but the 
 boy only asked for water and smiled. But you 
 could see he was in great pain. Then the boy 
 said: " Oh, the pain is awful. I am going to 
 die." 
 
 " You are all right, old man," the lieutenant 
 said. " You will be home soon. The stretcher-
 
 Fritz Does a Little " Strafeing " 69 
 
 bearers are coming." So we passed the word 
 for the stretcher-bearers. 
 
 Then he took the water bottle from the boy's 
 side, and sat him up and gave him some water. 
 He left the water bottle with the chap, and 
 went to hurry the stretcher-bearers along. When 
 he got around the corner of the trench, the boy 
 was slipping back, and the water bottle had 
 fallen down. So I went over to him and propped 
 him up again, and gave him some more water. 
 
 The lieutenant came back with the stretcher- 
 bearers, and he asked one of them, so the boy 
 could not hear him, if the boy would live. 
 
 The stretcher-bearer said: " I don't think so. 
 One through his chest, and right leg broken," 
 
 The boy had kept quiet for a while, but all of 
 a sudden he yelled, " In the name of Christ, 
 give me a cigarette ! ' I handed him a cigarette 
 butt that I had found in the dugout. We were 
 all out of cigarettes. 
 
 So they lit it for him, and he kept quiet. As 
 soon as they could, they got around the corner 
 of the fire bay with him and through a commu- 
 nication trench to a field hospital. The lieu- 
 tenant and I walked a little way with him, and 
 he began to thank us, and he told the lieutenant: 
 " Old man, you have been a father and a mother 
 to me." 
 
 And the lieutenant said to him: " You have 
 done damn well, old boy. You have done more 
 than your share." 
 
 When they started into the communication 
 trench, the boy began to scream again. And the
 
 70 Gunner Depew 
 
 lieutenant acted like a wild man. He took out 
 his cigarette case, but there were no cigarettes 
 in it, and then he swore and put it back again. 
 But in a few minutes he had the case out again, 
 and was swearing worse than ever, and talking 
 to himself. 
 
 " The boy isn't dying like a gentleman," he 
 said. " Why, in God's name, couldn't he keep 
 quiet. " I do not think he meant it. He was 
 all nervous and excited, and kept taking out his 
 cigarette case and putting it back again. 
 
 The other officer had gone on to inspect the 
 sentries when the boy rolled into the trench, 
 and a poilu came up to tell us that the officer 
 had been hit. We walked back to where I had 
 been, and there was the officer. If I had been 
 there I would have got it, too, I guess. He was 
 an awful mess. The veins were sticking out 
 of his neck, and one side of him was blown 
 off, so you could see his entrails. Also, his foot 
 was wounded. That is what shrapnel does to 
 you. As I crawled past him I happened to touch 
 his foot, and he damned me all over the place. 
 But when I tried to say I was sorry, I could 
 not, for then he apologized and died a moment 
 later. 
 
 There was a silver cigarette case sticking out 
 of the rags where his side had been blown away, 
 and the lieutenant crossed himself, and reached 
 in and took out the case. But when he pried 
 open the case he found that it had been bent 
 and cracked, and all the cigarettes were soaked 
 with blood. He swore worse than ever, then,
 
 Fritz Does a Little " Strafeing " 71 
 
 and threw his own case away, putting the other 
 officer's case in his pocket. 
 
 At this point, our own artillery began shelling, 
 and we received the order to stand to with fixed 
 bayonets. When we got the order to advance, 
 some of the men were already over the parapet, 
 and the whole bunch after them, and, believe me, 
 I was as pale as a sheet, just scared to death. 
 I think every man is when he goes over for the 
 first time every time for that matter. But I 
 was glad we were going to get some action, 
 because it is hard to sit around in a trench 
 under fire and have nothing to do. I had all 
 I could do to hold my rifle. 
 
 We ran across No Man's Land. I can not 
 remember much about it. But when we got to 
 the German trench I fell on top of a young 
 fellow, and my bayonet went right through him. 
 It was a crime to get him, at that. He was as 
 delicate as a pencil. 
 
 When I got back to our trenches after my 
 first charge, I could not sleep for a long time 
 afterwards, for remembering what that fellow 
 looked like, and how my bayonet slipped into him 
 and how he screamed when he fell. He had his 
 legs and his neck twisted under him after he 
 got it. I thought about it a lot, and it got to 
 be almost a habit that whenever I was going to 
 sleep I would think about him, and then all hope 
 of sleeping was gone. 
 
 Our company took a German trench that time, 
 and along with another company, four hundred 
 prisoners. We had to retire, because the men
 
 72 Gunner Depew 
 
 on our sides did not get through, and we were 
 being flanked. But we lost a lot of men doing it. 
 
 When we returned to our trenches OUT* outfit 
 was simply all in, and we were lying around in 
 the front line, like a bunch of old rags in a 
 narrow alley. None of us showed any signs of 
 life, except a working party that was digging 
 with picks and shovels at some bodies that had 
 been frozen into the mud of the trench. 
 
 I used to think all the Germans were big and 
 fat and strong, and, of course, some of the 
 Grenadier regiments are, but lots of the boches 
 I saw were little and weak like this fellow I 
 " got " in my first charge. 
 
 It was a good piece of work to take the 
 prisoners, and a novelty for me to look them 
 in the face the fellows I had been fighting. 
 Because, when you look a Hun in the face, you 
 can see the yellow streak. Even if you are their 
 prisoner, you can tell that the Huns are yellow. 
 
 Maybe you have heard pigs being butchered. 
 It sounded like that when we got to them. When 
 they attacked us, they yelled to beat the band. 
 I guess they thought they could scare us. But 
 you can not scare machine guns, nor the For- 
 eign Legion, either. So when they could not 
 scare us, they were up against it and had to 
 fight. I will admit, though, that the first time 
 Fritz came over and began yelling I thought 
 the whole German army was after me, at that, 
 and Kaiser Bill playing the drum. And how 
 they hate a bayonet! They would much rather 
 sit in a ditch and pot you.
 
 Fritz Does a Little " Strafeing ' : 73 
 
 I admit I am not crazy about bayonet fighting 
 myself, as a general proposition, but I will say 
 that there have been times when I was serving a 
 gun behind the front lines when I wished for a 
 rifle and a bayonet in my hands and a chance 
 at Fritz man to man. 
 
 It was in this charge that our chaplain was 
 put out of commission. As we were lined up, 
 waiting to climb on to the fire step, and then 
 over the parapet, this chaplain came down the 
 line speaking to each man as he went. He would 
 not say much, but just a few words and then 
 make the sign of the cross. He was in a black 
 cassock. 
 
 He was just one man from me as we got the 
 word, and stood up on the fire step. He was 
 not armed with as much as a pin, but he jumped 
 up on the step and stuck his head over the par- 
 apet, and got it square, landing right beside 
 me. I thought he was killed, but when we got 
 back we found he was only wounded. The men 
 who saw it were over the parapet before the 
 order was given, and then the whole bunch after 
 them, because they, too, thought he was killed, 
 and figured he never would know how they came 
 out about their vows. All the men in the com- 
 pany were glad when they found he was only 
 wounded. 
 
 While half of us were on the firing step 
 throughout the day, or night, the other half 
 would be in the dugouts, or sitting around in 
 the bottom of the trench, playing little games,
 
 74 Gunner Depew 
 
 or mending clothes, or sleeping, or cooking, or 
 doing a thousand and one things. The men were 
 always in good humor at such times, and it 
 seemed to me even more so when the enemy fire 
 was heavy. 
 
 If a man was slightly wounded, down would 
 come the rifles to order arms, and some pottu 
 was sure to shout, * ' Right this way. One franc. ' ' 
 It was a sort of standing joke, and they always 
 did it. The poilu who did it most of the time 
 was a Swiss, and he was always playing a joke 
 on somebody, or imitating some one of us, or 
 making faces. 
 
 Then he would shout, as though he was selling 
 tickets to a show: " Don't rush! There's plenty 
 of room. Watch your purses! ' and so on. 
 One time, while we were under a very heavy 
 bombardment, and it was too dangerous to go 
 through the communication trenches, two fellows 
 both got wounded in the left hand. They were 
 around the corner of the trench from each other, 
 but this Swiss got wind of them and brought 
 one of them up to the other and pretended 
 to introduce them. He said they would now be 
 comrades in hands instead of arms, only that 
 each had got it in the same hand. Pretty soon 
 he had them playing marbles with some shrap- 
 net bullets that had fallen near them. I do not 
 know what countries these two fellows were 
 from, but they both spoke English. I had never 
 heard them speak anything but French before 
 they were wounded, though. I tried to talk to
 
 Fritz Does a Little " Strafeing " 75 
 
 them, then, but they did not want to talk to 
 me. They played marbles there for some time, 
 until they could go out to the dressing-station. 
 
 This same Swiss got hold of a revolver some- 
 where, and he used to spend his spare time 
 potting trench rats. He would save some of 
 his bread ration and put it on the parados, and 
 then lay for the rats. He killed lots of them. 
 He used to give some of the dead rats to the 
 rifle grenadiers, and he claimed that they shot 
 them over with the rifle grenades to Fritz. I 
 do not know whether they really did or not, 
 but I know he used to throw dead rats at the 
 German trenches when we were only forty-five 
 yards from them. And some of the men said 
 he went on a raiding party one time with a 
 haversack full of dead rats. 
 
 So we were all sorry when this Swiss " went 
 West," as the Limeys say, and we tried to keep 
 up his jokes and say the same things and so 
 forth. But they did not go very well after he 
 was dead. He got his in the same charge in 
 which the chaplain was wounded. He was one 
 of the bunch that charged before the order was 
 given, when the chaplain got it, and was run- 
 ning pretty near me until we got to the boche 
 wire. I had to stop to get through, though most 
 of it was cut up by artillery fire, but he must 
 have jumped it, for when I looked up he was 
 twenty or thirty paces ahead of me. We got 
 to the Germans about that time, and I was pretty 
 busy for a while. But soon I saw him again. 
 He was pulling his bayonet out of a boche,
 
 76 Gunner Depew 
 
 when another one made a jab at him and stuck 
 him in the arm. Then the boche made a swing 
 at him with his rifle, but the Swiss dropped 
 on one knee and dodged it He kept defending 
 himself with his rifle, but there was another 
 German on him by this time, and he could not 
 get up. The corporal of our squad came up 
 just about that time, but he was too late, 
 because one of the boches got to the Swiss with 
 his bayonet. He did not have time to withdraw 
 it before our corporal stuck him. The other 
 German made a pass at the corporal, but he 
 was too late. The corporal beat him to it, and 
 felled him with a terrific blow from his rifle butt. 
 The Huns were pretty thick around there just 
 as another fellow and myself came up. A boche 
 swung his rifle at the corporal, and when he 
 dodged it, the boche almost got me. The swing 
 took him off his feet, and then the corporal did 
 as pretty a bit of work as I ever saw. He 
 jumped for the boche who had fallen, landed on 
 his face with both feet, and gave it to the next 
 one with his bayonet all at the same time. He 
 was the quickest man I ever saw. 
 
 There were a couple of well-known savate men 
 in the next company, and I saw one of them 
 get under Fritz's guard with his foot, and, 
 believe me, there was some force in that kick. 
 He must have driven the German's chin clear 
 through the back of his neck. 
 
 We thought it was pretty tough luck to lose 
 both the chaplain and the village wit in the 
 same charge, along with half of our officers,
 
 Fritz Does a Little " Strafeing ' : 77 
 
 and then have to give up the trench. Every 
 man in the bunch was sore as a boil when we 
 got back. 
 
 As you probably know, it is the usual thing 
 over there to give the men in the trenches a 
 small issue of rum before they go over the top 
 to tackle the boches. They say there are lots of 
 people in this country who think it is very wrong 
 to give the soldiers rum. 
 
 Well, now: 
 
 Suppose you have not changed your shoes or 
 socks for five days. And suppose that all this 
 time you have been in water up to your knees, 
 and have had to snatch your sleep, four hours 
 at a time, in stinking mud that reminds you of 
 the time they flushed the sewer in front of your 
 house. Suppose your clothes are soaked through 
 and through with rain, and mud, and sweat, and 
 worse, and that they, too, have been on you 
 for five days. And besides, they are so stiff 
 with dirt, or maybe blood, that they will only 
 bend where they are freshly wet 
 
 Suppose you are simply swarming with body 
 lice. You can hardly sleep for the itching all 
 over your body, and when you roll over, some- 
 times, you can almost hear the crackling as the 
 lice are mashed against you. Imagine yourself 
 waking up some fine morning to find a rat almost 
 as big as a cat gnawing your boot. Think of 
 waking up suddenly in the dark and feeling the 
 wet fur of a rat brush under your chin 
 
 And suppose, too, that a few yards in front
 
 78 Gunner Depew 
 
 of yon there are rotting human bodies sunk in 
 the mud. And some of them were once men 
 who had loaned you cigarettes and showed you 
 photographs 
 
 Suppose your special pal's brains had been 
 blown all over you two hours before. Think of 
 the horror of reaching into a mud bank in the 
 gray, cold morning and pulling out a magotty 
 human hand 
 
 You have lived between a thunder-clap and a 
 flash of lightning for five days, and have stared 
 at two walls of mud for the same length of time. 
 And your nerves jump and shiver every time 
 there is a moment's silence 
 
 Imagine the discomfort of lining up at 4:30 
 on a snowy morning, loaded down under dead 
 pounds of pack, and overcoat and rifle. And 
 suppose, that in a few minutes, you were going 
 to climb over your mud wall, and run through 
 the dark, and trip over barbed wires and bodies, 
 and fall in shell holes full of slime; that thou- 
 sands of jagged pieces of iron were going to 
 whizz past you, that machine guns would be 
 sweeping over the whole field, that shells the size 
 of umbrella-stands would be exploding all around 
 you, that thousands of rifle bullets were search- 
 ing for you 
 
 Suppose, too, that if you got past all these 
 things, you were going to stick a sharp piece 
 of steel into a soft, grunting body, and put your 
 foot in its ugly face and pull your steel out, 
 and rush on and do it over again, and swing 
 your rifle-butt against a chattering head. And
 
 Fritz Does a Little " Strafeing ' 79 
 
 that if you did not do these things, they would 
 be done to you, and probably would anyway 
 
 And that, if you did do them, and your com- 
 rades did, there would be two or three hours 
 digging in the captured trench to hold it in the 
 face of the enemy 
 
 Suppose you were as miserable as five days' 
 hell in a sewer could make you, and knew you 
 had to do all these things, and that you would 
 have to start doing them in fifteen minutes. 
 Meanwhile you were so cold you could not move 
 without aching, and you were consumed with the 
 fear that the crucial moment might find you 
 afraid 
 
 And suppose the man next to you was just 
 drinking a mouthful of stuff that would warm 
 him, and brace him, and help him over into his 
 day's work 
 
 And suppose the non-com was offering you a 
 drink of the same stuff 
 
 Wouldn't you take it? 
 
 You men in slippers, with fluffy balls on them, 
 and fur around the edges, sitting in a Morris 
 chair, with the throttle pulled way open, and a 
 box of Peerless Dainties on the arm 
 
 What do you think about it? Do you not think 
 that the boys over there ought to have a little 
 of this stuff now and then? 
 
 In the seven months that have passed since I 
 returned to this country from the German prison 
 camps, I have had one cocktail and two coffee 
 cognacs. That is how it made a drunkard out 
 of me,
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 STOPPING THE HUNS AT DIXMUDE 
 
 I was standing in a communication trench 
 that connected one of our front line trenches 
 with a crater caused by the explosion of a mine. 
 All around me men of the third line were com- 
 ing up, climbing around, digging, hammering, 
 shifting planks, moving sand bags up and down, 
 bringing up new timbers, reels of barbed wire, 
 ladders, cases of ammunition, machine guns, 
 trench mortars all the things that make an 
 army look like a general store on legs. 
 
 The noise of the guns was just deafening. 
 Our own shells passed not far above our heads, 
 so close were the enemy trenches, and the 
 explosions were so near and so violent that when 
 you rested your rifle butt on something solid, 
 like a rock, you could feel it shake and hum 
 every time a shell landed. 
 
 Our first line was just on the outskirts of the 
 town, in trenches that had been won and lost 
 by both sides many times. Our second line was 
 in the streets, and the third line was almost at 
 the south end of the town. 
 
 The Huns were hard at it, shelling the battered 
 remains of Dixmude, and to the right stretcher- 
 bearers were working in lines so close that they 
 
 80
 
 Stopping the Huns at Dixmu.de 81 
 
 looked like two parades passing each other. But 
 the bearers from the company near me had not 
 returned from the emergency dressing station, 
 and the wounded were piling up, waiting for 
 them. 
 
 A company of the 2 me Legion Etrangere had 
 just come up to take their stations in the crater, 
 under the parapet of sandbags. A shell landed 
 among them just before they entered the crater, 
 and sent almost a whole squad West, besides 
 wounded several others. 
 
 Almost before they occupied the crater, the 
 wires were laid and reached back to us, and 
 the order came for us to remain where we were 
 until further orders. So I began to walk slowly 
 along behind a line of legionaries, who leaned 
 up against the parapet with their rifles ready. 
 
 I had not got very far when some one said, 
 in a plain Bowery accent, " Ah there, Doc! ' 
 and a little chap, in the uniform of the Legion, 
 with a " tin basin " on his head, left his rifle 
 leaning up against the parapet and walked over 
 to where I was. 
 
 " Don't you know me, Doc? " he said. " Nig 
 Lamb, from the Fiftieth Ward? " 
 
 " Well, I'll be damned," I said, "if it isn't 
 my old side-kick, Nig! Eight down here in the 
 baldhead row. What do you think of that? ' 
 But I had never even heard of him before. 
 
 II Guess you never thought you'd see me here 
 in this tin derby, picking Fritzes and Heinies, 
 did you? Ain't it hell the way they got this 
 whole bunch sewed up in the gulley? "
 
 82 Gunner Depew 
 
 Then lie went back to the parapet and took 
 up his rifle again, and I hunched down behind 
 the parapet. " Nig," I said, " how did you come 
 to enlist in the Foreign Legion? " 
 
 " Ahr-rr-r-r-r, " he said, and a whole lot of 
 cuss words. " Too many vee-vees, that's what 
 put little Fido in the sausage mill." 
 
 I did not know what he was talking about, 
 but I let him go on. 
 
 * ' Me and two other boys was handling some 
 ponies down to the Boolong track, when this 
 here war busted open and put everything on the 
 blink. * Aw hell,' I says, * let's go back to Paris 
 and look 'em over before we ease back to the 
 States.' 
 
 II Say, these here dames had went crazy over 
 this war stuff. ' Vive! Vive la France! ' they 
 says, and by God, we vee-veed too. We put on 
 a little party at one of them cafes, and hit the 
 old vino till she hollered for help. Pretty soon 
 we began waving little American flags and hol- 
 lering, ' To hell with the Huns,' and vee-veeing 
 everything else. 
 
 " Then, all I can remember is marching down 
 the boolyvard with a guy in red pants, and I 
 has a committee meeting with a lot of other 
 guys, and pretty soon I was hollering: ' Wow, 
 lemme at 'em! Vee-vee la France! ' and all 
 like that. 
 
 " When they asks me would I sign up, I guess 
 I must have said * vee-vee,' and they took it 
 for ' oui, oui ' 'cause here I am, and a pretty 
 damn long way from home. Ain't it so, Doc? "
 
 Stopping the Huns at Dixmude 83 
 
 " So you didn't know you enlisted! " 
 
 " Ahr-rr-r-r hell, does it make any difference 
 to these here guys what you know and what you 
 don't? ' Then he began firing, though none of 
 the rest were doing so, and pretty soon a non- 
 com came along and made him quit. 
 
 11 There you are, Doc," he said. " When you 
 want action, you can't have it, and when you 
 want peace and quiet bam! ' Go out and get 
 me a few Heinies fer breakfast,' they says. 
 
 " Believe me, a guy can vee-vee himself into 
 a lot of trouble if he yells loud enough," he said. 
 ' ' I 'm getting mine right now. ' ' 
 
 " Well," I said, " do you know anything bet- 
 ter to vee-vee than France? ' 
 
 " Yes," he said, " N'Yawk! Vee-vee N'Yawk! 
 Vee-vee N 'Yawk ' ' and he must have yelled it 
 fifty times. Then he began shooting again, Lord 
 knows what at, and the non-com ran up and 
 swore at him in French, and Nig let out another 
 " vee-vee " or two and put down his rifle again. 
 
 The non-com looked at me and shook his head 
 behind Nig's back and said " cafard." That is 
 what they call it when a man goes crazy tem- 
 porarily. But I knew it was just Nig's way of 
 letting off steam. 
 
 Nig was just starting to ask me some ques- 
 tions when the officers passed down the line. 
 " Baionnettes, mes enfants," and I went back to 
 my own section. 
 
 Then we got the complete orders. We were 
 to make no noise, but were all to be ready in 
 ten minutes. We put on goggles and respirators.
 
 84 Gunner Depew 
 
 In ten minutes the bombers were to leave the 
 trenches. Three mines were to explode, and 
 then we were to take and hold a certain por- 
 tion of the enemy trenches not far off. We were 
 all ready to start up the ladders, when they 
 moved Nig's section over to ours, and he sneaked 
 up to me and whispered behind his hand, " Be 
 a sport, Doc; make it fifty-fifty and gimme a 
 chance. ' ' 
 
 I did not have any idea what he meant, and 
 he had to get back to his squad. Then the 
 bombers came up to the ladders, masked, and 
 with loaded sacks on their left arms. " One 
 minute now," said the officers, getting on their 
 own ladders and drawing their revolvers 
 though most of the officers of the Legion charged 
 with rifle and bayonet, like their men. 
 
 Then Boom! Slam! Bang! and the mines 
 went off. 
 
 " Allezl ' and then the parapet was filled 
 with bayonets, and men, scrambling and crawling 
 and falling and getting up again. The smoke 
 drifted back on us, and then our own machine 
 guns began ahead of us. 
 
 Up toward the front, the bombers were fish- 
 ing in their bags and throwing, just like boys 
 after a rat along the docks. The black smoke 
 from the " Jack Johnsons " rolled over us, and 
 probably there was gas, too, but you could not 
 tell. 
 
 The front lines had taken their trenches and 
 gone on, and you could see them, when you stood 
 on a parapet, running about like hounds through
 
 Stopping the Huns at Dixmude 85 
 
 the enemy communication trenches, bombing out 
 dugouts, disarming prisoners very scarey-look- 
 ing in their masks and goggles. The wounded 
 were coming back slowly. Then we got busy 
 with our work in the dugouts and communica- 
 tion trenches and fire bays, with bayonets and 
 bombs, digging the boches out and sending them 
 " West." And every once in a while a Fritz on 
 one side would step out and yell " Kamarad," 
 while, like as not, on the other side, his pal would 
 pot you with a revolver when you started to 
 pick him up, thinking he was wounded. 
 
 Then we stood aside at the entrance to a dug- 
 out and some boches came out in single file, 
 shouting " Kamarade " for all they were worth. 
 One of them had his mask and face blown off; 
 yet he was trying to talk, with the tears rolling 
 down over the raw flesh. He died five minutes 
 later. 
 
 Farther down the trench we found poor Nig. 
 While we were taking off his " tin derby " and 
 tunic, he asked who it was, and when I said, 
 11 It's Doc," he must have thought I was a 
 medico, sure enough. 
 
 " Through the belly, Doc. Gimme a drink." 
 That would have finished him, of course, so I 
 said there was no water. 
 
 " All right, Doc, all right. I'll wait. It's in 
 the belly, ain't it, Doc? It ain't nothing, is it? 
 Pull me through, Doc." 
 
 " Sure I will, Nig, You'll be all rignt in a 
 minute. ' ' 
 
 " Say, Doc, don't hand me no cones of hokey-
 
 86 Gunner Depew 
 
 pokey. Gimme a deck of the stuff. Dope out 
 the coke, Doc, dope out the old coke. Tell me, 
 do I croak, Doc? Well, I'm going to fool youse 
 the same as I fooled the guys at Luke's Hos- 
 pital the time I got shot up in the subway. I've 
 went through worse than this. I ain't hurt bad, 
 am I Doc? " 
 
 I tried to say something to him, but he would 
 not stop talking. 
 
 II Would I let myself croak so as youse can 
 give me the ha-ha? I can see myself doing that 
 not. Say, Doc, will you talk business? ' 
 
 " Listen, Nig, the stretcher-bearers will be 
 here in a second ' ' 
 
 " To hell with them guys. I'm asking you 
 if you'll make it fifty-fifty. Fifty-fifty, fifty- 
 fifty, Doc fifty-fifty " 
 
 He kept on, almost singing " fifty-fifty," and 
 then he was quiet for a while. All of a sudden 
 he sang out: " For Christ's sake, Doc, talk 
 business ! ' ' and then not a word out of him. 
 
 The stretcher-bearers finally came up and took 
 him away, but he did not let out a sound. They 
 reported back later that he had got it in the 
 thigh and not the stomach, and a lad told me 
 he kept yelling for Doc and singing fifty-fifty. 
 It got to be a sort of pass word in his section, 
 and I am telling the truth when I say that I 
 have seen men from his company slipping the 
 steel to Fritz and yelling, " Feefty-feefty, 
 Doack," as they did it. 
 
 I never did hear what happened to Nig, 
 though. It was not his graft, this war, as he
 
 Stopping the Huns at Dixmude 87 
 
 said, and I hope he got back to N'Yawk before 
 he went over the top for the last time. 
 
 One night, while I was lying back in the 
 trench trying not to think of anything and go to 
 sleep, the bombs began to get pretty thick around 
 there, and when I could not stand it any longer, 
 I rushed out into the bay of the fire trench and 
 right up against the parapet, where it was safer. 
 
 Hundreds of star shells were being sent up 
 by both sides, and the field and the trenches were 
 as bright as day. All up and down the trenches 
 our men were dodging about, keeping out of the 
 way of the bombs that were being thrown in our 
 faces. It did not seem as if there was any place 
 where it was possible to get cover. Most of the 
 time I was picking dirt out of my eyes that 
 explosions had driven into them. 
 
 If you went into a dugout, the men already 
 in there would shout, " Don't stick in a bunch 
 spread out ! ' While you were in a dugout, 
 you kept expecting to be buried alive, and when 
 you went outside, you thought the boches were 
 aiming at you direct and there was no place 
 at all where you felt safe. 
 
 But the fire bay looked better than the other 
 places to me. I had not been there more than 
 a few minutes when a big one dropped i'i, and 
 then that bay was just one mess. Out of the 
 twenty-four men in the bay only eight escaped. 
 We were just nothing but blood, with pieces of 
 flesh, and brains, and entrails all over us. It 
 made me so sick I just had to lie down, and
 
 88 Gunner Depew 
 
 vomit, and shake, and sweat. I could not move. 
 But I knew that if that shell did not get me, 
 the one that did would be the grand-daddy of 
 all shells. 
 
 When the stretcher-bearers got there they did 
 not have much to do in the way of rescue it 
 was more pall-bearer's work. 
 
 A stretcher-bearer was picking up one of the 
 boys, when a grenade landed alongside of him, 
 and you could not find a fragment of either of 
 them. That made two that landed within twelve 
 feet of me; yet I was not even scratched. 
 
 When I got so that I could move, I went over 
 to where the captain was standing, looking 
 through a periscope over the parapet. I was 
 very nervous and excited, and was afraid to 
 speak to him, but somehow I thor^ht I ought to 
 ask for orders. But I could no. say a word. 
 Finally a shell whizzed over our heads just 
 missed us, it seemed like, and I broke out: 
 " What do you see? What's all of the news? " 
 and so on. I guess I chattered like a monkey. 
 
 Then he yelled: " You're the gunner officer. 
 You're just in time I've located their mortar 
 batteries. ' ' 
 
 I surely wished I was the gunner officer: I 
 would have enjoyed it more if I could have got 
 back at Fritz somehow. But I was not the 
 gunner officer, and I told him so. I had to shout 
 at him quite a while before he would believe me. 
 Then he wanted me to find the gunner officer, 
 but I did not know where to find him. If I
 
 Stopping the Huns at Dixmude 89 
 
 could have got to our guns I guess I would have 
 had another medal for working overtime, hut I 
 missed the chance there. 
 
 About this time another bomb came over and 
 clouted out the best friend I had in my company. 
 Before the war he had been one of the finest 
 singers in the Paris opera houses. When he 
 was with us he used to say that the only dif- 
 ference between him and Caruso was $2,500 a 
 night. 
 
 A pottu and I dragged him into a dugout, but 
 it was too late. One side of his face was blown 
 off; the whole right side of him was stripped 
 off, and four fingers of the right hand were 
 gone. 
 
 I stuck my head out of the dugout, and there 
 was the captain discussing the matter with him- 
 self, cursing the Germans from here to Helgo- 
 land, and putting in a word for the bombs every 
 once in a while. All up and down the trenches 
 you could hear our men cursing the Germans in 
 all kinds of languages. Believe me, I did my 
 bit, and I could hear somebody else using good 
 old United States cuss words, too. It certainly 
 did not make me feel any better, but it gave 
 me something to do. I think that was why all 
 of us cursed so much then, though we were 
 pretty handy with language at any time. But 
 when you are under heavy fire like that, and 
 can not give it back as good as you get, you 
 go crazy unless you have something to do. 
 Cussing is the best thing we could think of.
 
 90 Gunner Depew 
 
 Up the trench, the third bay was simply 
 smashed in, and the Germans were placing bomb 
 after bomb right in it, and in ours. The cap- 
 tain yelled out that he was going up to the 
 next bay to examine it, but no more had he 
 got there than he had his head taken clean off 
 his shoulders. 
 
 At daybreak our trenches were all pounded in, 
 and most of our dugouts were filled up. Then 
 Fritz opened up with his artillery fire right on 
 us. We thought they were going to charge, and 
 we figured their barrage would lift and we could 
 see them come over. 
 
 We received orders to stand to with fixed bay- 
 onets. Then the man at the periscope shouted: 
 11 They come! " 
 
 A battery directly behind us went into action 
 first, and then they all joined in, and inside of 
 five minutes about eight hundred guns were rais- 
 ing hell with Fritz. The bodies were caught 
 square in No Man's Land, and our rifles and 
 machine guns simply mowed them down. Many 
 of them came half way across, then dropped 
 their guns, and ran for our trenches to give 
 themselves up. They could not have got back 
 to their own trenches. 
 
 It was a shame to waste a shell on these poor 
 fish. If they had been civvies, the law would 
 prevent you from hitting them you know the 
 kind. They could hardly drag themselves along. 
 
 That is the way they look when you have got 
 them. But when they have got you kicks,
 
 Stopping the Huns at Dixmude 91 
 
 cuffs, bayoaet jabs there is nothing they will 
 not do to add to your misery. They seem to 
 think that it boosts their own courage. 
 
 An artillery fire like ours was great fun for 
 the gunners, but it was not much fun for Fritz, 
 or for us in the trenches. We got under cover 
 almost as much as Fritz, and held thumbs for 
 the gunners to get through in a hurry. 
 
 Then the fire died down, and it was so quiet 
 it made you jump. I heard the same man, who 
 had helped me cuss in American, shout out: 
 " Old Fritz has got a bellyful of the hell he 
 started now." We were so used to shouting we 
 could not talk naturally for quite a while. I 
 never did find out who this American was, 
 although I looked for him and asked about him. 
 
 We thought our parapet was busted up a good 
 deal, but when we looked through the periscope, 
 we saw what had happened to Fritz's trenches, 
 and, believe me, as the negro said, they were 
 practically ruined. 
 
 Out in No Man's Land, it looked like Wool- 
 worth's 5-and-10; everywhere were gray uni- 
 forms, with tin cups and accoutrements that 
 belonged to the Germans before our artillery 
 and machine guns got to them. 
 
 Our stretcher-bearers were busy, carrying the 
 wounded back to first aid dressing station, for, 
 of course, we had suffered, too. From there, 
 the blesses were shipped to the clearing station. 
 
 The dead lay in the trenches all day, and at 
 night they were carried out by working parties 
 to " Stiff Park," as I called it.
 
 92 Gunner Depew 
 
 A man with anything on his mind ought not 
 to go to the front line trenches. He will be 
 crazy inside of a month. The best way is not 
 to give a tinker 's dam whether it rains or snows : 
 there are plenty of important things to worry 
 about.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 ON EUNNEE SEEVICE 
 
 One night a man named Bartel and I were 
 detailed for Eunner service, and were instructed 
 to go to Dixnmde and deliver certain despatches 
 to a man, whom I will call the Burgomaster, and 
 report to the Branch Staff Headquarters that 
 had been secretly located in another part of 
 town. We were to travel in an automobile 
 and keep a sharp watch as we went, for Dix- 
 mude was being contested hotly at that time, 
 and German patrols were in the neighborhood. 
 No one knew exactly where they would break 
 out next. 
 
 So, we started out from the third line 
 trenches, but very shortly one of our outposts 
 stopped us. Bartel carried the despatches and 
 drove the car too, so it was up to me to explain 
 things to the sentries. They were convinced 
 after a bit of arguing. Just as we were leaving, 
 a message came over the phone from our com- 
 mander, telling them to hold us when we came. 
 It was lucky they stopped us, for otherwise 
 we would have been out of reach by the time 
 his message came. The commander told me, 
 over the telephone, that if a French flag flew 
 over the town, the coast would be clear; if a 
 
 93
 
 94 Gunner Depew 
 
 Belgian, that our forces were either in control, 
 or were about to take over the place, bnt that 
 German patrols were near. After this we 
 started again. 
 
 When we had passed the last post, we kept 
 a sharp lookout for the flag on the pole of the 
 old Fish Market, for by this we would get our 
 bearings and perhaps, if it should be a Ger- 
 man flag, a timely warning. But after we were 
 down the road a bit and had got clear, we saw 
 a Belgian flag, whipping around in a good strong 
 breeze. But while that showed that our troops, 
 or the British, were about to take over the place, 
 it also indicated that the Germans were some- 
 where nearby. Which was not so cheerful. 
 
 As we went through the suburbs along the 
 canal, which runs on the edge of town, we found 
 that all the houses were battered up. We tried 
 to hail several heads that stuck themselves out 
 of the spaces between buildings and stuck them- 
 selves back just as quickly, but we could not get 
 an answer. Finally, we got hold of a man who 
 came out from a little cafe. 
 
 He told us that the Germans had been through 
 the town, and had shot it up considerably, killing 
 and wounding a few inhabitants, but that shortly 
 afterward, a small force of Belgian cavalry had 
 arrived and driven the boches out. The Ger- 
 mans were expected either to return or begin 
 a bombardment at any moment, and all the 
 inhabitants who sported cellars were hiding in 
 them. The rest were trying to get out of town 
 with their belongings as best they could.
 
 On Runner Service 95 
 
 On reaching our objective, we made straight 
 for the Hotel de Ville, where we were admitted, 
 and after a short wait, taken to the Burgo- 
 master. We questioned him as to news, for 
 we had been instructed to pick up any informa- 
 tion he might have as to conditions. But we 
 did not get much, for he could not get about 
 because of the Germans, who had made it a 
 policy to terrorize the people of the town. 
 
 We had just got into the car, and were about 
 to start, when the Burgomaster himself came 
 running out. He ordered us to leave the car 
 there, and said he would direct us where to go. 
 He insisted that we go on foot, but I could not 
 understand when he tried to explain why. 
 
 About fifty yards away, the other side of the 
 road was piled high with rifles, lances, bayo- 
 nets, and all kinds of weapons. But the Burgo- 
 master would not explain this. He certainly 
 was a pig-headed boy, if there ever was one. He 
 began puffing about this time, and I thought he 
 was wishing he had let us drive him in the car. 
 Finally, he said he would go back, and he 
 showed us which way our course lay. 
 
 We saw two soldiers ahead of us on the road, 
 and we waved at them and tried to make them 
 stop, but they did not pay the slightest atten- 
 tion. We sprinted a bit and caught up with 
 them, and after a while, they cut loose and 
 began to talk. One of them, a lad of about 
 eighteen, had on a pair of cavalry boots, which 
 he had pulled off of a German he had killed. 
 He told us about it several times, and we
 
 96 Gunner Depew 
 
 laughed and kidded him along, until he must 
 have thought us the best fellows he had ever 
 seen. Actors are not the only people who like 
 applause. Then we left the road. 
 
 We soon saw the probable reason for the 
 Burgomaster's refusal to ride in the car. All 
 around, for about a mile, the roads were heavily 
 mined, and small red flags on iron staves were 
 stuck between the cobblestones, as warnings not 
 to put in much time around those places. Also, 
 there were notices stuck up all around warning 
 people of the mines, and forbidding heavy carts 
 to pass. When we got off of the road, I breathed 
 again ! 
 
 After a great deal of Questioning, we finally 
 reached our destination, and made our report 
 to the local commandant. We told him all we 
 could, and in turn, received various informa- 
 tion from him. We were then taken over to 
 the hotel. Here, we read a few Paris news- 
 papers, that were several weeks old, until about 
 eight, when we had dinner, and a fine dinner it 
 was, too. 
 
 After we had eaten all we could, and wished 
 for more room in the hold, we went out into 
 the garden and yarned a while with some gen- 
 darmes, and then went to bed. We had a big 
 room on the third floor front. We had just 
 turned in, and were all set for a good night's 
 rest, when there was an explosion of a different 
 kind from any I had heard before, and we and 
 the bed were rocked about, like a canoe in the 
 wake of a stern-wheeler.
 
 On Runner Service 97 
 
 There were seven more explosions, and then 
 they stopped, though we could hear the rattle 
 of a machine gun at some distance away. Bartel 
 said it must be the Forts, and after some argu- 
 ment, I agreed with him. He said that the 
 Germans must have tried an advance under cover 
 of a bombardment, and that as soon as the Forts 
 got into action, the Germans breezed. We were 
 not worried much, so we did not get out of bed. 
 
 A few minutes later, we heard footsteps on 
 the roof, and then a woman in a window across 
 the street, asking a gendarme whether it was 
 safe to go back to bed. Then I got up and 
 took a look into the street. There were a lot 
 of people standing around talking, but it was 
 not interesting enough to keep a tired man up, 
 so into the hay. Bartel was already pounding 
 his ear, but he did not get much of a start on 
 me at that, for I think I must have slept twice 
 as hard as he did to catch up. 
 
 It seemed about the middle of the night when 
 Bartel called me, but he said it was time to get 
 out and get to work. We found he had made 
 a poor guess, for when we were half dressed, 
 he looked at his watch and it was only a quarter 
 past seven, but we decided to stay up, since we 
 were that far along, and then go down and 
 cruise for a breakfast. 
 
 When we got downstairs and found some of 
 the hotel people, it took them a long time to get 
 it through our heads that there had been some 
 real excitement during the night. The explo-
 
 98 Gunner Depew 
 
 sions were those of bombs dropped by a Zeppelin, 
 which had sailed over the city. 
 
 The first bomb had fallen less than two hun- 
 dred yards from where we slept. No wonder 
 the bed rocked! It had struck a narrow three 
 story house around the corner from the hotel, 
 and had blown it to bits. Ten people had been 
 killed outright, and a number died later. The 
 bomb tore a fine hole, and hurled pieces of itself 
 several hundred yards. The street itself was 
 filled with rocks, and a number of houses were 
 down, and others wrecked. When we got out 
 into the street and talked with some army men, 
 we found that even they were surprised by the 
 force of the explosion. 
 
 We learned that the Zepp had sailed not more 
 than five hundred feet above the town. Its 
 motor had been stopped just before the first 
 bomb was let go, and it had slid along perfectly 
 silent and with all lights out. The purr that 
 we had thought was machine guns, after the 
 eighth explosion, was the starting of the motor, 
 as the Zepp got out of range of the guns that 
 were being set for the attack. 
 
 The last bomb had struck in a large square. 
 It tore a hole in the cobblestone pavement about 
 thirty feet square and five feet deep. Every 
 window on the square was smashed. The fronts 
 of the houses were riddled with various sized 
 holes. All the crockery, and china, and mirrors 
 in the houses were in fragments. 
 
 Not much more than an hour before the Zepp
 
 On Runner Service 99 
 
 came, we had been sitting in a room at the 
 house of the local military commandant, right 
 under a big glass-dome skylight. This house was 
 now a very pretty ruin, and it was just as well 
 that we left when we did. You could not even 
 find a splinter of the big round table. The 
 next time I sit under a glass skylight in Dix- 
 mude, I want a lad with a live eye for Zeppelins 
 on guard outside. 
 
 Something about the Branch Headquar- 
 ters ruins made us think of breakfast, which 
 we had forgotten, so back to the hotel. Then 
 we started back to our lines. We were ordered 
 to keep to the main road all the way back, or 
 we would be shot on sight, and to report to 
 headquarters immediately on our return. I 
 thought if the sight of me was so distasteful to 
 anybody, I would not take the chance of offend- 
 ing, being anxious to be polite in such cases. 
 So, we stuck to the main road. 
 
 Fritz did not give us any trouble, and we were 
 back by five, with all hands out to greet us when 
 we hove in sight, and a regular prodigal son 
 welcome on tap, for we were later than they 
 had expected us, and they had made up their 
 minds that some accident had happened. 
 
 While I was around Dixmude, I saw many 
 living men and women and children who had 
 been mutilated by the Germans, but most of 
 them were women and children. Almost every 
 one of the mutilated men was too old for mili-
 
 100 Gunner Depew 
 
 tary service. The others had been killed, I 
 guess. 
 
 But the Belgians were not the only ones who 
 had suffered from German kidtur. Many French 
 wounded were tortured by the Huns, and we 
 were constantly finding the mutilated bodies of 
 our troops. It was thought that the Germans 
 often mutilated a dead body as an example to 
 the living. 
 
 The Germans had absolutely no respect what- 
 ever for the Eed Cross. For instance, they cap- 
 tured a wagon loaded with forty French 
 wounded, and shot every one of them. I saw 
 the dead bodies. 
 
 When the Germans came to Dixmude, they 
 got all the men and women and children, and 
 made them march before them with their hands 
 in the air. Those who did not were knocked 
 down. After a while, some of them saw what 
 they were going to get, and being as game 
 sports as I ever heard of, tried to fight. They 
 were finished off at once, of course. 
 
 The former burgomaster had been shot and 
 finished off with an axe, though he had not 
 resisted, because he wanted to save the lives 
 of his citizens. They told me of one case, in 
 Dixmude, where a man came out of his house, 
 trying to carry his father, a man of eighty, to 
 the square, where they were ordered to report. 
 The old man could not raise his hands, so they 
 dragged his son away from him, knocked the old 
 man in the head with an axe, and left him there
 
 On Runner Service 101 
 
 x 
 
 to die. Those who were spared were made to 
 dig the graves for the others. 
 
 There was a doctor there in Dixmude, who 
 certainly deserves a military cross if any man 
 ever did. He was called from his house by 
 the Germans at 5:30 one morning. He left his 
 wife, who had had a baby two days before, in 
 the house. He was taken to the square, lined 
 up against a wall with three other big men of 
 the town. 
 
 Then he saw his wife and baby being car- 
 ried to the square on a mattress by four Ger- 
 mans. He begged to be allowed to kiss his 
 wife good-bye, and they granted him permission. 
 As he stepped away, there was a rattle and 
 the other men went West. They shot him, too, 
 but though he was riddled with bullets he lived, 
 somehow, and begged the German officer to let 
 him accompany his wife to the prison where 
 they were taking her. This was granted too, 
 but on the way, they heard the sound of firing. 
 The soldiers yelled, " Die Franzosen! ' and 
 dropped the mattress and ran. But it was only 
 some of their own butchers at work. 
 
 Dr. Laurent carried his wife and baby to 
 an old aqueduct that was being rebuilt by the 
 creek. There they lived for three days and 
 three nights, on the few herbs and the water 
 that Dr. Laurent sneaked out and got at night. 
 Dr. Laurent says that when the Germans killed 
 and crucified the civilians at Dixmude, they 
 first robbed them of their watches, pocket books, 
 rings and other things. There was a Madame
 
 102 Gunner Depew 
 
 Tilmans there, who had had three thousand 
 francs stolen from her and was misused besides. 
 *" These were just a very few of the things that 
 happened at just one place where the Germans 
 got to work with their kultur. So you can 
 picture the Belgians agreeing on a German peace, 
 while there is a Belgian alive to argue about it. 
 They will remember the Germans a long time, 
 I think. But they need not worry: there are 
 a lot of us who will not forget, either.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 LAID UP FOB BEPAIES 
 
 One night, after I had been at Dixmude for 
 about three weeks, we made a charge in the 
 face of a veiy heavy fire. Our captain always 
 stood at the parapet when we were going over, 
 and made the sign of the cross and shouted, 
 11 For God and France." Then we would go 
 over. Our officers always led us, but I have 
 never seen a German officer lead a charge. They 
 always were behind their men, driving instead 
 of leading. I do not believe they are as brave 
 as they are said to be. 
 
 "Well, we went over this time, and the machine 
 guns were certainly going it strong. We were 
 pretty sore about the chaplain and the Swiss 
 and all that, and we put up an awful fight, but 
 we could not make it and had to come back. 
 Only one company reached the boche trenches 
 and not a man of it came back who had not 
 been wounded on the way and did not reach the 
 trench. They were just wiped out. 
 
 The captain was missing, too. We thought 
 he was done for, but about two o'clock in the 
 morning, he came back. He simply fell over 
 into the trench, all in. He had been wounded 
 
 103
 
 104 Gunner Depew 
 
 four times, and had lain in a shell crater 
 full of water for several hours. He would not 
 go back for treatment then, and when daylight 
 came, it was too late, because we were prac- 
 tically cut off by artillery fire behind the front 
 line trenches. 
 
 When daylight came, the artillery fire opened 
 up right on us, and the Germans had advanced 
 their lines into some trenches formerly held by 
 us and hardly forty-five yards away. We re- 
 ceived bombs and shells right in our faces. A 
 Tunisian in our company got crazy, and ran 
 back over the parados. He ran a few yards, 
 then stopped and looked back at us. I think 
 he was coming to his senses, and would have 
 started back to us. Then the spot where he 
 had been was empty, and a second later his 
 body from the chest down fell not three yards 
 from the parados. I do not know where the 
 top part went. That same shell cut a groove in 
 the low hill top before it exploded. He had 
 been hit by a big shell, and absolutely cut in 
 two. I have seen this happen to four men, but 
 this was the only one in France. 
 
 About seven o'clock, we received reinforce- 
 ments, and poured fresh troops over and re-took 
 the trench. No sooner had we entered it, how- 
 ever, than the Germans turned their artillery 
 on us, not even waiting for their own troops 
 to retire safely. They killed numbers of their 
 own men in this way. But the fire was so 
 heavy that, when they counter-attacked, we had 
 to retire again, and this time they kept after
 
 Laid Up for Repairs 105 
 
 us and drove us beyond the trench we had orig- 
 inally occupied. 
 
 We left them there, with our artillery taking 
 care of them, and our machine guns trying to 
 enfilade them, and moved to the right. There 
 was a bunch of trees there, about like a small 
 woods, and as we passed, the Germans concealed 
 in it opened fire on us, and we retired to some 
 reserve trenches. We were pretty, much scat- 
 tered by this time, and badly cut up. We 
 reformed there, and were joined by other of our 
 troops, in small groups what was left of 
 squads and platoons and singly. Our captain 
 had got it a fifth time, meanwhile, but he would 
 not leave us, as he was the ranking officer. He 
 had a scalp wound, but the others were in his 
 arms and shoulders. He could not move his 
 hands at all. 
 
 But he led our charge when we ran for the 
 woods. We carried some machine guns with us 
 as we went, and the gunners would run a piece, 
 set up, fire while we opened up for them, and 
 run on again. Some troops came out of a 
 trench still farther to the right and helped us, 
 and we drove the Germans out of the woods 
 and occupied it ourselves. 
 
 From there, we had the Germans in our old 
 trench almost directly from the rear, and we 
 simply cleaned them out. I think all the vows 
 were kept that day, or else the men who made 
 them died first. 
 
 I was shot through the thigh some time or
 
 106 Gunner Depew 
 
 other after the captain got back. It felt just 
 like a needle-prick at first, and then for a while 
 my leg was numb. A couple of hours after we 
 took our trench back, I started out for the rear 
 and hospital. The wound had been hurting for 
 some time. They carried the captain out on a 
 stretcher about the same time, but he died on 
 the way from loss of blood. Fresh troops came 
 up to relieve us, but our men refused to go, and 
 though officially they were not there in the 
 trench, they stayed until they took the captain 
 away. Then, back to billets not bullets, this 
 time. I believe that we received an army cita- 
 tion for that piece of work, but I do not know, 
 as I was in the hospital for a short time after- 
 ward. I do not remember much about going 
 to the hospital except that the ambulance made 
 an awful racket going over the stone paved 
 streets of Etaples, and that the bearer who 
 picked up one end of my stretcher, had eyes like 
 dead fish floating on water; also, that there 
 were some civvies standing around the entrance 
 as we were being carried in. 
 
 The first thing they do in the hospital is to 
 take off your old dirty bandages and slide your 
 stretcher under a big electric magnet. A doctor 
 comes in and places his hand over your wound, 
 and they let down the magnet over his hand and 
 turn on the juice. If the shell fragment or 
 bullet in you is more than seven centimeters 
 deep, you cannot feel the pain. The first doctor 
 reports to the chief how deep your wound is,
 
 Laid Up for Repairs 107 
 
 and where it is situated, and then a nurse comes 
 up to you, where you lie, with your clothes still 
 on, and asks you to take the "pressure." 
 
 Then they lift you on a four wheeled cart, 
 and roll you to the operating theatre. They 
 take off your clothes there. I remember I liked 
 to look at the nurses and surgeons; they looked 
 so good in their, clean white clothes. 
 
 Then they stick hollow needles into you, which 
 hurt a good deal, and you take the pressure. 
 After a while, they begin cutting away the 
 bruised and maybe rotten flesh, removing the 
 old j cloth, pieces of dirt, and so forth, and 
 scraping away the splinters of bone. 
 
 You think for sure you are going to bleed 
 to death. The blood rushes through you like 
 lightning, and if you get a sight of yourself, 
 you can feel yourself turning pale. Then they 
 hurry you to your bed, and cover yon over with 
 blankets and hot-water bottles. They raise your 
 bed OIL chairs, so the blood will run up toward 
 your head, and after a while, your eyes open 
 and the doctor says, " Oui, oui, il vivra," mean- 
 ing that you still had some time to spend before 
 finally going West. 
 
 The treatment we got in the hospital was 
 great. We received cigarettes, tobacco, matches, 
 magazines, and clean clothes. The men do not 
 talk about their wounds much, and everybody 
 tries to be happy and show it. The food was 
 fine, and there was lots of it. 
 
 I do not think there were any doctors in the 
 world better than ours, and they were always
 
 108 Gunner Depew 
 
 trying to make things easy for us. They did 
 not rip the dressings off your wounds like some 
 of the butchers do in some of our dispensaries 
 that I know of, but took them off carefully. 
 Everything was very clean and sanitary, and 
 some of the hospitals had sun parlors, which 
 were well used, you can be sure. 
 
 Some of the men made toys and fancy articles, 
 such as button hooks and paper knives. They 
 made the handles from empty shell cases, or 
 shrapnel, or pieces of Zeppelins, or anything 
 else picked up along the front. 
 
 When they are getting well, the men learn 
 harness-making, mechanical drawing, telegraphy, 
 gardening, poultry raising, typewriting, book- 
 keeping, and the men teach the nurses how to 
 make canes out of shell cases, and rings of 
 aluminum, and slippers and gloves out of 
 blankets. 
 
 The nurses certainly work hard. They always 
 have more to do than they ought to, but they 
 never complain, and are always cheerful and 
 ready to play games when they have the time, 
 or read to some poilu. And their work is pretty 
 dirty too: I would not like to have to do it. 
 They say there were lots of French society 
 ladies working as nurses, but you never heard 
 much about society, or any talk about Lord 
 Helpus, or Count Whosis, or pink teas or any- 
 thing like that from these nurses. I have heard 
 that society people from another country, who 
 go over to France, get pretty gay around Paris 
 which is as near the front as some of them
 
 Laid Up for Repairs 109 
 
 ever get and only wear a uniform if it looks 
 good on them, and do their first aid work around 
 a cafe table. It is just as well that they do 
 not get to the front line hospitals. God help the 
 poor blesses if they ever get up against that 
 bunch. 
 
 A few shells landed near our hospital, while 
 I was there, but no patient was hit. They 
 knocked a shrine of Our Lady to splinters, 
 though, and bowled over a big crucifix. The 
 kitchen was near by, and it was just the chef's 
 luck that he had walked over to our ward to see 
 a pal of his, when a shell landed plumb in the 
 center of the kitchen, and all you could see all 
 over the barracks was stew. 
 
 That was a regular Eatless Day for us, until 
 they rigged up bogies and got some more dixies, 
 and mixed up some cornmeal for us. The chef 
 made up for it the next day, though. This chef 
 was a great little guy. He was a blesse himself, 
 and I guess his stomach sympathized with ours, 
 for he certainly was the " Carry On Kid," as 
 Butler called him, when it came to food. Most 
 of the cooks are all right, any way. At the field 
 kitchens, the cooks worry a lot if the men do not 
 get enough food. They are always glad to see 
 the boys again when they are withdrawn, and 
 the first thing out of their mouths is, " Who 
 did you lose this time? " As a rule, they give 
 the boys a specially fine meal before they go 
 back to the front line trenches, for, as the cook 
 says, you do not know how many will ever get 
 it again.
 
 110 Gunner Depew 
 
 This Bill Butler I have mentioned was a great 
 card. He was from Oklahoma, I think, and he 
 must have been six foot four in his stocking 
 feet. He was always getting up some kind of 
 joke, or writing funny pieces. He thought more 
 Americans ought to get into the scrap, so he 
 wrote up a humorous advertisement, which he 
 said he would have printed on posters, and 
 stuck up on every bill board in the United 
 States. He said it with a straight face, and 
 the Frenchmen thought he meant it, until another 
 fellow and I translated it to them. 
 
 After a while, Butler got so he could walk 
 around, and he used to make regular trips to 
 different wards. The men got to know him well, 
 and they were always glad to see him. He 
 would not be in a ward a minute before he had 
 them all going. 
 
 He would come down the aisle between the 
 cots, imitating the man who drives ahead of a 
 circus in a buggy, in the small towns. 
 
 " Yore bosses! Yore hosses! Watch yore 
 bosses the elephants are now coming over the 
 bridge! '' 
 
 The Frenchmen did not know what it was 
 about at all, but he said it in such a deep voice, 
 and stuck out his chest, and " geed >;> up his 
 horses, and pulled them up, and drove on again, 
 and all this in such a funny way, that he had 
 them laughing all the time. 
 
 One of the nurses went to Paris on leave for 
 three days, and Bill got her to buy him a silk 
 hat. When she came back with it, he always
 
 Laid Up for Repairs 111 
 
 wore it when he walked around the wards, and 
 he could do all kinds of tricks with it. When 
 he left, they hung his hat on the wall and wrote 
 his name under it. 
 
 When Butler could get a bunch of blesses 
 together, he would sometimes act a whole play 
 by himself. He got some cards and lettered 
 them, " Villain," " Hero," " Heroine," " Giles 
 the Faithful Servant," " Hobbs, a Villager," 
 and so forth. When he had finished being Giles 
 the Faithful Servant, he would take off that 
 sign and put on Hero, or whatever came next, 
 and on with the play. He surely was a card. 
 
 There was a Frenchman in the bed next to 
 me who had the whole side of his face torn off. 
 He told me he had been next to a bomber, who 
 had just lit a fuse and did not think it was 
 burning fast enough, so he blew on it. It burned 
 fast enough after that, and there he was. He 
 was the only blesse who di& not seem to care 
 for Butler's comedy: it hurt him to laugh. 
 
 There was a Belgian in one of the other wards, 
 whom I got to know pretty well, and he would 
 often come over and visit me. He asked many 
 questions about Dixmude, for he had had rela- 
 tives there, though he had lost track of them. 
 He often tried to describe the house they had 
 lived in, so that I might tell him whether it 
 was still standing or not, but I could not remem- 
 ber the place he spoke of. During our talks, 
 he told me about many atrocities. Some of the 
 things he told me I had heard before, and some 
 of them I heard of afterwards. Here are some
 
 112 Gunner Depew 
 
 things that he either saw or heard of from 
 victims. 
 
 He said that when the Germans entered the 
 town of St. Quentin, they started firing into the 
 windows as they passed along. First, after 
 they had occupied the town, they bayonetted 
 every workingman they could find. Then they 
 took about .half of the children that they could 
 find, and killed them with their musket butts. 
 After this, they marched the remainder of the 
 children and the women to the square, where 
 they had lined up a row of male citizens against 
 a wall. The women and children were told that 
 if they moved, they would all be shot. Another 
 file of men was brought up, and made to kneel 
 in front of the other men against the wall. 
 
 The women and children began to beg for the 
 lives of the men, and many of them were knocked 
 in the head with gun butts before they stopped. 
 
 Then the Germans fired at the double rank of 
 men. After three volleys, there were eighty- 
 four dead and twenty wounded. Most of the 
 wounded they then killed with axes, but some- 
 how, three or four escaped by hiding under the 
 bodies of others and playing dead, though the 
 officers walked up and down firing their revolvers 
 into the piles of bodies. 
 
 The next day the Germans went through the 
 wine cellars, and shot all the inhabitants they 
 found hiding there. A lot of people, who had 
 taken refuge in a factory over night, decided to 
 come out with a white flag. They were allowed 
 to think that the white flag would be respected,
 
 Laid Up for Repairs 113 
 
 but no sooner were they all out than they were 
 seized and the women publicly violated in the 
 square, after which the men were shot. A para- 
 lytic was shot as he sat in his arm-chair, and a 
 boy of fourteen was taken by the legs and 
 pulled apart. 
 
 At one place, a man was tied by the arms to 
 the ceiling of his room and set afire. His trunk 
 was completely carbonized, but his head and 
 arms were unburned. At the same place, the 
 body of a fifteen year old boy was found, 
 pierced by more than twenty bayonet thrusts. 
 Other dead were found with their hands still 
 in the air, leaning up against walls. 
 
 At another place the Germans shelled the town 
 for a day, and then entered and sacked it. The 
 women and children were turned loose, with- 
 out being allowed to take anything with them, 
 and forced to leave the town. Nearly five hun- 
 dred men were deported to Germany. Three, 
 who were almost exhausted by hunger, tried to 
 escape. They were bayonetted and clubbed to 
 death. Twelve men, who had taken refuge in a 
 farm, were tied together and shot in a mass. 
 Another group of six were tied together and 
 shot, after the Germans had put out their eyes 
 and tortured them with bayonets. Three others 
 were brought before their wives and children 
 and sabered. 
 
 The Belgian told me he was at Namur when 
 the Germans began shelling it. The bombard- 
 ment lasted the whole of August 21 and 22, 1914.
 
 114 Gunner Depew 
 
 They centered their fire on the prison, the hos- 
 pital, and the railway station. They entered the 
 town at four o'clock in the afternoon of August 
 23. During the first twenty-four hours, they 
 behaved themselves, but on the 24th they began 
 firing at any one they pleased, and set fire to 
 different houses on five of the principal squares. 
 
 Then they ordered everyone to leave his house, 
 and those who did not were shot. The others, 
 about four hundred in all, were drawn up in 
 front of the church, close to the river bank. 
 The Belgian said he could never forget how they 
 all looked. 
 
 " I can remember just how it was," he said. 
 " There were eight men, whom I knew very 
 well, standing in a row with several priests. 
 Next came two good friends of mine named 
 Balbau and Guillaume, with Balbau's seventeen 
 year old son; then two men who had taken 
 refuge in a barn and had been discovered and 
 blinded; then two other men whom I had never 
 seen before. 
 
 11 It was awful to see the way the women were 
 crying ' Shoot me too, shoot me with my 
 husband. ' 
 
 " The men were lined up on the edge of the 
 hollow, which runs from the high road to the 
 bottom of the village. One of them was leaning 
 on the shoulders of an old priest, and he was^ 
 crying, *I am too young I can't face death 
 bravely. r 
 
 " I couldn't bear the sight any longer. I 
 turned my back to the road and covered my eyes.
 
 Laid Up for Repairs 115 
 
 I heard the volley and the bodies falling. Then 
 someone cried, ' Look, they're all down.' But a 
 few escaped." 
 
 This Belgian had escaped by hiding he could 
 not remember how many days in an old cart 
 filled with manure and rubbish. He had chewed 
 old hides for food, had swum across the river, 
 and hid in a mud bank for almost a week longer, 
 and finally got to France. 
 
 He took it very hard when we talked about 
 Dixmude, and I told him that the old church 
 was just shot to pieces. He asked about a paint- 
 ing called the Adoration of the Magi, and one 
 of the other prisoners told us it had been saved 
 and transported to Germany. If that is true, 
 and they do not destroy it meanwhile, we will 
 get it back, don't worry! 
 
 My wound was just a clean gunshot wound 
 and not very serious, so, although it was not 
 completely healed, they let me go after three 
 weeks. But before I went, I saw something that 
 no man of us will ever forget. Some of them 
 took vows just like the men of the Legion I have 
 told about. 
 
 One of the patients was a German doctor, who 
 had been picked up in No Man's Land, very 
 seriously wounded. He was given the same 
 treatment as any of us, that is, the very best, 
 but finally, the doctors gave him up. They 
 thought he would die slowly, and that it might 
 take several weeks. 
 
 But there was a nurse there, who took special 
 interest in his case, and she stayed up day and
 
 116 Gunner Depew 
 
 night for some time and finally brought hid 
 through. The case was very well known, and 
 everybody said she had performed a miracle. 
 He got better slowly. 
 
 Then a few weeks later, when he was out of 
 danger and was able to walk, and it was only a 
 question of time before he would be released 
 from the hospital, this nurse was transferred 
 to another hospital. Everybody knew her and 
 liked her, and when she went around to say good- 
 bye, all the men were sorry and gave her little 
 presents, and wanted her to write to them. She 
 was going to get a nurse she knew in the other 
 hospital to turn her letters into English, so that 
 she could write to me. I gave her a ring I 
 had made from a piece of shell case, but I 
 guess she had hundreds of them at that. 
 
 But this German doctor would not say good- 
 bye to her. That would not have made me sore, 
 but it made this French girl feel very bad, and 
 she began to cry. One of the French officers 
 saw her and found out about the doctor, and 
 the officer went up and spoke to the German. 
 Then the French officer left, and the German 
 called to the nurse and she went over to him 
 and stopped crying. 
 
 They talked for a little while, and then she 
 put out her hands as if she was going to leave. 
 He put out his hands, too, and took hold of hers. 
 And then he twisted her wrists and broke them. 
 We heard the snap. 
 
 There were men in that ward who had not 
 been on foot since the day they came to the
 
 Laid Up for Repairs 117 
 
 hospital, and one of them was supposed to be 
 dying, but it is an absolute fact that when we 
 heard her scream, there was not a man left in 
 bed. 
 
 I need not tell you what we did to the German. 
 They did not need to shoot him, after we got 
 through with him. They did shoot what was 
 left of him, to make sure, though. 
 
 Now, I have heard people say that it is not 
 the Germans we are fighting, but the Kaiser and 
 his system. Well, it may be true that some of 
 the boche soldiers would not do these things if 
 they did not have to: myself, I am not so sure. 
 
 But you take this doctor. Here he was, an 
 educated man, who had been trained all his life 
 to help people who were in pain, and not to 
 cause it. And he was not where he would have 
 to obey the Kaiser or any other German. And 
 this nurse had saved his life. 
 
 So I do not see that there is any argument 
 about it. He broke that girl's wrists because 
 he wanted to; that is all there is to it. Now, I 
 say this German doctor was a dirty cur and a 
 scoundrel. But I say that he is a fair sample 
 of most of the Germans I have met. And it is 
 Germans of this kind that we are fighting not 
 merely the Kaiser. 
 
 It is like going to college. I have never been 
 there, but I have heard some people say it did 
 not do a man any good to go. But I have never 
 heard a man who went there say that. Probably 
 you have not been over there, and maybe you
 
 118 Gunner Depew 
 
 think we are not fighting the German people, but 
 only the Kaiser and his flunkeys. 
 
 Well, nobody had better tell me that. Because 
 I have been there, and I have seen this. And 
 I know.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 HELL AT GALLIPOLI 
 
 After I was discharged from the hospital, I 
 was ordered to report to my ship at Brest for 
 sea duty. 
 
 The boys aboard the Cassard gave me a hearty 
 welcome, especially Murray, who had come back 
 after two weeks in the trenches at Dixmude. 
 I was glad to see them, too, for after all, they 
 were garbies, and I always feel more at home 
 with them than with soldiers. Then, it was 
 pretty rough stuff at Dixmude, and after resting 
 up at the hospital, I was keen on going to sea 
 again. 
 
 The Cassard was in dry dock for repairs 
 after her last voyage to the Dardanelles as con- 
 voy to the troop-ship Dupleix. Everything was 
 being rushed to get her out as soon as possible, 
 and crews were working day and night. There 
 were other ships there too superdreadnaughts, 
 and dreadnaughts, and battleships, and armored 
 cruisers, all being overhauled. 
 
 We received and placed guns of newer design, 
 filled the magazines with the highest explosives 
 known to naval use, and generally made ready 
 for a hard job. Our magazines were filled with 
 shells for our big 12 and 14-inch guns. A 14-inch 
 
 119
 
 120 Gunner Depew 
 
 shell can tear a hole through the heaviest armor 
 plate at 12,000 yards, and will do more damage 
 than you would think. 
 
 When we had coaled and had got our stores 
 aboard, we dressed for action or rather, 
 undressed. The decks were clear ; hatch covers 
 bolted and davits folded down; furniture, chests, 
 tables, chairs were sent ashore, and inflammable 
 gear, like our rope hammocks, went overboard. 
 You could not find a single wooden chair or table 
 in the ward room. 
 
 When a ship is cleared for action, a shell 
 bursting inside cannot find much to set afire, 
 and if one bursts on deck, there is nothing to 
 burn but the wooden deck, and that is covered 
 with steel plate. 
 
 Finally, we had roll call all men present. 
 Then we set sail for the Dardanelles as escort 
 to the Dupleix, which had on board territorial 
 and provincial French troops Gascons, Paris- 
 ians, Normans, Indo-Chinese, Spahis, Turcos 
 all kinds. When we messed, we had to squat 
 down on the steel mess deck and eat from metal 
 plates. 
 
 There had been a notice posted before we left 
 that the Zeppelins had begun sea raids, and we 
 kept a live eye out for them. This news proved 
 to be a fake, though, and we did not see a single 
 cigar while we were out. 
 
 We made the trip to the Dardanelles without 
 sighting an enemy craft, keeping in close touch 
 with the Dupleix, and busy every minute prepar- 
 ing for action.
 
 GALLIPOLIaruMhe 
 
 DARDANELLES
 
 Hell at Gallipoli 123 
 
 I was made gun captain and given charge of 
 the starboard bow turret, mounting two 14-inch 
 guns. I had my men at gun practice daily, and 
 by the time we neared the Dardanelles, after 
 five days, they were in pretty fair shape. 
 
 It was about five a. m. when we drew near 
 Cape Helles and took stations for action. The 
 Dupleix was in front of us. The batteries on 
 the Cape opened up on us, and a few minutes 
 later, those at Kum Kaleh joined in. 
 
 As the Dupleix made for " V " Beach and 
 prepared to land her troops, we swung broadside 
 on, raking their batteries as we did so, and 
 received a shell, which entered through a gun 
 port in the after turret and exploded. Some 
 bags of powder stored there (where they should 
 never have been) were fired, and the roof of 
 the turret was just lifted off. It landed on 
 deck, tilted up against the side of the turret. 
 
 On deck, the rain of fire was simply terrific. 
 Steel flew in all directions. It was smash, crash, 
 slam-bang all the time, and I do not mind saying 
 I never thought we would come out of it. 
 
 Some of the heavy armor plate up forward 
 was shot away, and after that the old Cassard 
 looked more like a monitor than anything else 
 to me. As we drew nearer the shore, they began 
 using shrapnel on us, and in no time at all our 
 funnels were shot full of holes, and a sieve was 
 watertight compared to them. 
 
 Naturally, we were not just taking all this 
 punishment without any comeback. Our guns 
 were at it fast, and from the way the fire slack-
 
 124 Gunner Depew 
 
 ened in certain places, we knew we were making 
 it effective. My guns did for two enemy pieces 
 that I know of, and perhaps several others. 
 
 The French garbies were a good deal more 
 excited in action than I thought they would be. 
 They were dodging around below decks, trying 
 to miss the shrapnel that came aboard, shouting, 
 swearing, singing but fighting hard, at that. 
 They stood the gaff just as well as any other 
 garbies would, only in their own sweet way 
 which is noisy enough, believe me. 
 
 One of our seamen was hit one hundred and 
 thirty times by fragments of shrapnel, so you 
 can see what they were up against in the dodging 
 line. A gun turret in action is not exactly the 
 best place on earth for a nervous man, nor one 
 who likes his comfort. There is an awful lot 
 of heat, and noise, and smell, and work, all the 
 time in a fighting gun turret. But during an 
 engagement, I would rather be in a gun turret 
 every time than between decks. At that, if any- 
 thing does happen in a turret it is good night 
 sure for all, and no rain checks needed. 
 
 One of our junior lieutenants was struck by 
 a fragment of shell as he was at his station 
 behind the wheelhouse, and a piece of his skull 
 was driven into his brain. He was carried into 
 my gun turret, but he would not let them take 
 him to sick bay to have his wound dressed. 
 There he sat, asking every now and then how 
 the fight was going, and then sort of dozing 
 off for a while. 
 
 After about half an hour of action, we put
 
 Hell at Gallipoli 125 
 
 about and started away, still firing. As a part- 
 ing slap on the back, the Turks tore off one 
 of our big gun turrets, and then away we went, 
 back to Brest with a casualty list of only fifteen. 
 We did not have much trouble guessing that it 
 was dry dock for us again. 
 
 We got back to Brest after a quiet voyage, 
 patching ourselves up where we could on the 
 way, and again there was the rush work, day 
 and night, to get into shape and do it over again. 
 They turned us out in twelve days, and back we 
 went to the Turks and their Hun assistants. 
 
 We were lucky getting inshore, only receiving 
 a nasty smash astern, when the Turks got our 
 range and landed two peaches before we got out. 
 We nearly tore our rudder off getting away. 
 But we had to come back right away, because 
 we had carried quxte a number of heavy guns 
 from Brest and were given the job of running 
 them ashore. It was day and night work, and 
 a great job for fun, because, while you never 
 knew when you would get it, you had good reason 
 to feel you would get lammed by a cute little 
 shell or a dainty bit of shrapnel before the job 
 was over. 
 
 Aboard ship it was deck work, of course, and 
 it was not much better there than ashore with 
 the guns, because the enemy trenches were near 
 the shore and they amused themselves trying 
 to pick us off whenever we showed on deck. I 
 guess we were a regular shooting gallery for 
 them, and some of our men thought they did
 
 126 Grunner Depew 
 
 not need all the practice they were getting, for 
 quite a few of us acted as bulls' eyes. 
 
 But we did not mind the bullets so much. 
 They make a clean wound or put you away 
 entirely: shrapnel tears you up and can play 
 all kinds of tricks with various parts of your 
 body without killing you. As for shells well, 
 mincemeat is the word. 
 
 The Narrows were thick with mines, and there 
 had been a great deal of damage done there, so 
 after a while, the British detailed their Yar- 
 mouth trawlers to go in and sweep up. They 
 had to go up unprotected, of course, and they 
 started off one night all serene. 
 
 Everything went well until they turned at the 
 Narrows and started back. Then, before you 
 could tell it, five or six searchlights were playing 
 on one of the trawlers, and shells were splashing 
 the water all over her. Both banks were simply 
 banging away point blank at them, and I never 
 thought they would get back. 
 
 They did get back, though, but some of them 
 had hardly enough men left to work ship. But 
 that is like the Limeys. They will get back from 
 anywhere while there is one man alive. 
 
 A chap aboard one of the trawlers said a 
 shell went through the wheelhouse between the 
 quartermaster and himself, and all the Q. M. 
 said was, " Gaw blimey, that tickled." 
 
 " But .1 know their shooting was very bad," 
 said the other chap to me. " Those Turks 
 must have thought the flue was behind them."
 
 HeU at Gallipoli 127 
 
 Coming back from the Dardanelles, a gold- 
 stripe sent for me and asked me whether I 
 thought there were other ex-navy gunners in 
 the States that would serve with the French. 
 I told him the country was full of good gunners, 
 and he wanted me to write to all I knew and get 
 them to come over. He did not mean by this, 
 and neither do I, that there were not good gun- 
 ners in the French Navy, because there were 
 lots of them. But you can never have too many 
 handy boys with the guns, and he was very 
 anxious for me to get all I could. I had no 
 way of reaching the ex-garbies I did know, so I 
 had to pass up this opportunity to recruit by 
 mail. 
 
 While we were in Brest, I got permission to 
 go aboard a submarine, and a petty officer 
 showed me around. This was the first time I was 
 in the interior of a sub, and I told the officer 
 that I would like to take a spin in the tub 
 myself. He introduced me to the commander, 
 but the petty officer said he did not think they 
 would let me stay aboard. I showed the com- 
 mander my passport, and talked to him for a 
 while, and he said he would take me on their 
 practice cruise two days later if the Old Man 
 gave me written permission. 
 
 So I hot-footed it back to the Cassard, and 
 while I did not promise that I would get any 
 American gunners for him, in exchange for the 
 written permission, he was free to think that if 
 he wanted to. It seems as though he did take
 
 128 Gunner Depew 
 
 it that way, for lie gave me a note to the sub 
 commander and sent him another note by mes- 
 senger. I wanted Murray to go too, but the Old 
 Man said one was enough. 
 
 So, two days later, I went aboard in the morn- 
 ing and had breakfast with the sub crew, and 
 a good breakfast it was, too. After breakfast 
 they took stations, and the commander went up 
 on the structure amidships, which was just under 
 the conning tower, and I squatted down on the 
 deck beneath the structure. 
 
 Then the gas engines started up and made 
 an awful racket and shook the old tub from stem 
 to stern. I could tell that we had cut loose 
 from the dock and were moving. After a while, 
 they shut off the gas engines and started the 
 motors, and we began to submerge. When we 
 were all the way under, I looked through the 
 periscope and saw a Dutch merchantman. We 
 stayed under about half an hour, and then came 
 back on the surface. One of the garbies was 
 telling me, later on, that this same sub had gone 
 out of control a few weeks before and kept 
 diving and diving until she struck bottom. I 
 do not know how many fathoms down it was, 
 but it was farther than any commander would 
 take a sub if he could help it. This garby said 
 they could hear the plates cracking, and it was 
 a wonder that they did not crumple up from 
 the pressure, but she weathered it, pressure but- 
 ton and all, and in a quarter of an hour was 
 on the surface. While on the surface they 
 sighted smoke, submerged again, and soon, over
 
 
 Gunner Dcpew in Frencli sailor uniform
 
 Hell at Gallipoli 129 
 
 the horizon came eight battleships, escorted by 
 Zepps and destroyers. 
 
 They tested their tubes before they got in 
 range. Finally they let go. The first shot 
 missed, but after that, they got into it good, and 
 the garby said all you could hear was the knock- 
 ing of the detonated gun cotton. 
 
 About five minutes later, they sighted five 
 destroyers, two on each bow, and one dead ahead. 
 The sub steered in at right angle zig-zags, and 
 the destroyers stayed with their convoy. The 
 sub launched two torpedoes at less than a mile 
 before diving, to get away from the destroyers, 
 and the garby said at least one of them was hit. 
 These ships must have been some of the lucky 
 ones that came down from the North Sea. The 
 garby said he thought they were off the Dutch 
 coast at the time, but he was not sure. 
 
 But this cruise that I was on was only a 
 practice cruise, and we did not meet with any 
 excitement in the short time that we were out.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 ACTION AT THE DARDANELLES 
 
 While we were in Brest, after the second trip 
 to the Dardanelles, the A. & H. liner Kansan, 
 out of Baltimore since torpedoed and the 
 British tramp Wellbeckhcdl were lying in the 
 harbor. There were many Americans in the 
 crews of each vessel, and I went to the com- 
 mandant of the port and asked him if we could 
 have a baseball game on the drill grounds. 
 
 He had heard about baseball just heard 
 about it and he had the same idea of it as 
 a sport that the average Frenchman gets. He 
 said he would be glad to oblige, but did not I 
 think it was too dangerous a sport for him to 
 give his official sanction to? The men used 
 masks and pads and large clubs, he understood, 
 and threw hard balls at one another. 
 
 I told him that baseball was such a gentle 
 sport that the old folks' homes in the States all 
 had teams, and that they even played it indoors, 
 and that most people thought that baseball was 
 the reason Americans were so gentle and lamb- 
 like. He said he had not heard we were quite 
 as harmless as I made us out to be. But he 
 came orer when I asked him whether he did not 
 
 130
 
 Action at the Dardanelles 131 
 
 think fencing was more dangerous than baseball, 
 and explained the game to him somewhat. 
 
 So we laid out a diamond on the parade 
 grounds, with rocks for the bases, and a ship's 
 skillet for the home plate. Then the French got 
 into it and arranged a programme of races, and 
 a fencing match between one of their men and 
 a German prisoner. The crew of the Kansan 
 practiced early one morning, and had pickets out 
 so that no one could see them at work, but the 
 Wellbeckhall men only played catch on deck. 
 
 We had a fine day for the game, and a mixed 
 crowd out French, civvies, soldiers, garbles, 
 prisoners, the crews of the two ships, and Lord 
 knows what. They wanted me to umpire, but 
 I was too modest! So Dow, the first mate of 
 the Kansan, was made umpire. He was manager 
 of his team, too, but the Wellbeckhall men were 
 good sports and let it go at that. 
 
 It was an awful game. I do not think that 
 anybody knew what the score was, or how many 
 innings they played, but after a time, almost 
 everybody admitted that the Kansan team had 
 won. 
 
 Then they had the fencing, which excited the 
 Frenchmen very much, and I must say they 
 are good sports, because the German put it all 
 over their man, and they did not protest at all, 
 but applauded the German and gave him ciga- 
 rettes enough to stock a store. 
 
 After that came the big event. One of the 
 Kansan 's crew was Shorty Mitchell, from Fair- 
 field, Maine the same man who shipped on the
 
 132 Gunner Depew 
 
 Virginian with us and he was said to have 
 been lightweight champion of the state at one 
 time. The Wellbeckhall champ was a lad named 
 Mike Sweeney. I do not know where he came 
 from, but he was a good man with Ms fists. 
 And the big event was a fight between these 
 two. Dow got it up and refereed the bout. 
 
 All during the scrap, there was a six-foot 
 Kanaka or Hawaiian from the Kansan, who kept 
 shouting things at Dow and getting closer all 
 the time to tlje ring. Now, this Dow was a little 
 fellow, and he had a tough bunch to handle. 
 But he was game, if ever there was a game man. 
 He always carried a rawhide whip with him, 
 and when this Kanaka jumped into the ring and 
 swore at him, Dow let him have the whip right 
 across the face. Some more men got into the 
 ring about this time, and there was a riot for a 
 while, with Dow cutting and slashing right and 
 left. Finally, he got the ring cleared, but 
 Mitchell and Sweeney were not in sight. I guess 
 they had had enough. 
 
 So the Kanaka climbed back into the ring, 
 and challenged anybody there to a fight to the 
 finish, bare fists or gloves. He certainly was a 
 burly boy, if there ever was one. Nobody took 
 him up, and he kept laughing at the audience, 
 and calling them yellow, and swearing at them 
 generally. I am not saying I offered to fight 
 him, but somebody would have had to maybe 
 it might have been me if Dow had not thrown 
 down his whip and put on the gloves. The 
 Kanaka was so glad to get a crack at Dow, he
 
 Action at the Dardanelles 133 
 
 could hardly wait to have the gloves laced on 
 him. 
 
 Then they went to it, and I wish you could 
 have seen the beating that black boy took. Dow 
 just pasted him all over the place. He would 
 get inside the Kanaka's guard and put away a 
 few body blows, and then out again, leaving 
 a few on the jaw for souvenirs as he went. 
 
 It looked funny, though, for Dow and the 
 Kanaka stacked up like Mutt and Jeff for size. 
 The black boy was bleeding like a stuck pig at 
 the mouth and nose, but he would not yell 
 enough, and Dow finally rocked Tiim to sleep 
 with a pile driver on the chin. I never saw a 
 prettier fight, because the black boy was no 
 slouch with his fists himself. But this Dow 
 was certainly a great little scrapper and a fine 
 sport. 
 
 Also, while we were in dry dock at Brest, I 
 went aboard the France IV, one of the eight 
 hospital ships that went back and forth between 
 Saloniki and Tunis. The ship was fitted up to 
 carry about nine hundred patients, and I never 
 saw a better equipped hospital anywhere 
 X-ray apparatus and glass tubes and bulbs 
 everywhere. 
 
 The saloon deck and the dining saloon were 
 filled with white beds, and the lower decks were 
 fitted up with berths. The staterooms all 
 white were filled with surgical dressings, sup- 
 plies and clothing of various kinds. 
 
 There is a priest aboard each of the hospital
 
 134 Gunner Depew 
 
 ships, and a picked staff of doctors and nurses. 
 When patients arrive on board ship, their knap- 
 sacks are taken from them and stored on deck, 
 so that there will not be any danger of infection 
 below in the wards. Then a little card is pinned 
 on each man's bed coat, telling where he is 
 wounded or what disease he has. Those who 
 can walk, even on crutches, are allowed on deck 
 as much as they please in fair weather, and 
 they gather around on the forecastle deck or 
 amidships, out of the wind, and compare wounds 
 and talk symptoms just like any other bunch 
 of sanatorium patients. Each man has his own 
 water bottle and drinking cup. 
 
 Of course, some of them die at sea, and these 
 are rolled up in a tarpaulin, sewed, weighted 
 then, over the side, after the priest has read 
 the service. I guess it is good for the patients 
 who can walk to be out in the air on deck, but 
 I wondered what the lads on crutches would do 
 in a heavy sea. It must take some hobbling 
 to keep up. 
 
 I made twelve trips to the Dardanelles in all, 
 the Cassard acting generally as convoy to troop 
 ships, but one trip was much like another, and 
 I cannot remember all the details, so I will give 
 only certain incidents of the voyages that you 
 might find interesting. We never put into the 
 Dardanelles without being under fire but 
 besides saying so, what is there to write about 
 in that? It was interesting enough at the time, 
 though, you can take it from me!
 
 Action at the Dardanelles 135 
 
 Coming up to " V " Beach, on our third trip 
 to the Dardanelles, the weather was as nasty as 
 any I have ever seen. The rain was sweeping 
 along in sheets great big drops, and driven by 
 the wind in regular volleys. You could see the 
 wind coming, by the line of white against a 
 swell where the drops hit. 
 
 As we rounded the point, the seas got chop- 
 pier, and there were cross currents bucking the 
 ship from every angle, it seemed. You could 
 not see two hundred yards away, the rain was 
 so thick, and the combers were breaking over 
 our bows three a minute. The coast here is 
 pretty dangerous, so we went in very slowly, 
 and had the sounding line going until its 
 whir-r-r-r sounded louder than a machine gun 
 in action. 
 
 I was on the starboard bow at the time, and 
 had turned to watch some garbles poking at the 
 scuppers to drain the water off the deck. But 
 the scuppers had been plugged, and they were 
 having a hard time of it. The officer on the 
 bridge, in oilskins, was walking up and down, 
 wiping off the business end of his telescope, and 
 trying to dodge the rain. All of the garbies 
 but one left the scuppers on the starboard side, 
 and started across decks to port. The other chap 
 kept on fooling around the scuppers. Then I 
 saw a big wave coming for us, just off the star- 
 board bow, and I grabbed hold of a stanchion 
 and took a deep breath and held on. When my 
 head showed above water again, the other end 
 of the wave was just passing over the place
 
 136 Gunner Depew 
 
 where the garbles had been, and the officer was 
 shouting: " Un homme a la mer! ' He shouted 
 before the man really was overboard, because 
 he saw that the wave would get him. 
 
 I rushed to the port bow and looked back, for 
 the wave had carried him clear across the 
 decks, and saw the poor lad in the water, trying 
 to fend himself off from the ship's side. But 
 it was no go, and the port propeller blades just 
 carved him into bits. 
 
 On our homeward voyage, we received word 
 again, by wireless, that there were Zeppelins 
 at sea. We did not believe this, and it proved 
 to be untrue. But there were other stories and 
 taller ones, told us by one of the wireless oper- 
 ators that some of the garbies believed. This 
 chap was the real original Baron Munchausen 
 when it came to yarning, and for a while he 
 had me going, too. He would whisper some 
 startling tale to us, and make us promise not 
 to tell, as he had picked it from some other 
 ship's message, and the Old Man would spread- 
 eagle him if he found it out. They probably 
 would have logged him, at that, if they had 
 known he was filling us full of wind the way he 
 did. 
 
 He told me one time that Henry Ford had 
 invented something or other for locating subs 
 miles away, and also another device that would 
 draw the sub right up to it and swallow it whole. 
 He had a lot of other yarns that I cannot remem- 
 ber, but I did not believe him because I saw 
 he was picking out certain men to tell certain
 
 Action at the Dardanelles 137 
 
 yarns to that is, spinning them where they 
 would be more sure of being believed, and not 
 just spinning them anywhere. 
 
 So I got pretty tired of his stuff after a while, 
 and when we put out from Brest, on the fourth 
 voyage, I got this fellow on deck in rough 
 weather, and began talking to him about the 
 chap who had gone overboard the time before, 
 and had been cut up by the propeller. I pre- 
 tended that, of course, he knew all about it 
 that the Old Man had had this garby pushed 
 overboard because he was too free with his 
 mouth. But this did not seem to do any good, 
 so I had to think up another way. 
 
 When we were out two days, I got hold of our 
 prize liar again. I figured that he would be 
 superstitious, and I was right. I said that, of 
 course, he knew that a ship could not draw near 
 Cape Helles and get away again unless at least 
 one man was lost, or that, if it did get away, 
 there would be many casualties aboard. I said 
 it had always been that way, and claimed that 
 the Old Man had pushed the garby overboard 
 because some one had to go. I said on our other 
 trips no one had been sacrificed, and that was 
 the reason we had suffered so much, and that 
 the Old Man had been called down by the French 
 Minister of the Navy. I told him the Old Man 
 would pick on whatever garby he thought he 
 could best spare. 
 
 That was all I had to tell him. Either he 
 thought the Old Man knew of his yarning, or else 
 he did not think himself of much account, for
 
 138 Gunner Depew 
 
 he -disappeared that very watch, and we did not 
 see him again until we were on the homeward 
 voyage, and a steward happened to dig into a 
 provision hold. There was our lying friend, 
 with a life belt on, another under his head, and 
 the bight of a rope around his waist, fast asleep. 
 Why he had the rope, I do not know, but he was 
 scared to death, and thought we were going to 
 chuck him overboard at once. I think he must 
 have told the officers everything, because I 
 noticed them looking pretty hard at me or at 
 least I thought I did; maybe it was my con- 
 science, if I may brag about having one and I 
 thought one of our lieutenants was just about 
 to grin at me several times, but we never heard 
 any more about it, or any more yarns from our 
 wireless friend. 
 
 The fourth voyage was pretty rough, too. The 
 old girl would stick her nose into the seas, and 
 many times I thought she would forget to come 
 out. We had a lot of sand piled up against the 
 whee T rouse, and after we dived pretty deep one 
 time, and bucked out, slowly, there was not a 
 grain of sand left. It looked like the sea was 
 just kidding us, for we were almost into quiet 
 water, and here it had just taken one sea aboard 
 to clean up the sand we had carried all the way 
 from Brest. 
 
 During the whole voyage you could not get 
 near the galley, which was where our wireless 
 friend hung out when he could. The pans and 
 dixies hanging on the wall stood straight out 
 when the ship pitched, and several heavy ones
 
 Action at the Dardanelles 139 
 
 came down on a cook's head while he was sitting 
 under them, during a very heavy sea. That 
 made him superstitious, too, and he disappeared 
 and was not found for two days. But he was 
 a landsman, and not used to heavy weather. 
 
 When we got to the Gallipoli Peninsula the 
 fifth time, our battle fleet and transports lay 
 off the Straits. We could not reach the little 
 harbor on the Turkish coast, but the whole fleet 
 felt happy and fairly confident of victory. We 
 lay off Cape Helles, and it was there we received 
 the news that there were submarines lying 
 around Gibraltar. Then they were reported off 
 Malta. We got the news from British trawlers 
 and transports. Our officers said the subs could 
 not reach the Dardanelles without putting in 
 somewhere for a fresh supply of fuel, and that 
 the Allied fleets were on the lookout at every 
 place where the subs might try to put in. But 
 they got there just the same. 
 
 Then the British superdreadnaught Queen 
 Elizabeth, " The Terror of the Turks," came in. 
 She left England with a whole fleet of cruisers 
 and destroyers, and all the Limeys said: " She'll 
 get through. Nothing will stop her." 
 
 One of the boys aboard her told me he had 
 no idea the Dardanelles would be as hot a place 
 as he found it was. " Gaw blimey," he said, 
 11 what with dodging shells and submarines, you 
 cawn't 'elp but run onto a bloomin' mine. Hi 
 don't mind tellin' you," he said, " that Hi was 
 scared cold, at first. And then Hi thinks of 
 what 'Oly Joe (the chaplain) told us one service.
 
 140 Gunner Depew 
 
 ' Hin times of dynger, look hupwards,* 'e says. 
 So Hi looks hupwards, and blimey, hif there 
 wasn't a bally plane a droppin' bombs hon us. 
 ' What price hupward looks, 'Oly Joe? ' I sings 
 out, but he weren't nowheres near. Blarst me, 
 there weren't nowhere you could look without 
 doin' yer bloody heye a dirty trick." 
 
 When the Queen Elisabeth entered the Darda- 
 nelles, the Turkish batteries on both shores 
 opened right on her. They had ideal positions, 
 and they were banging away in great style. And 
 the water was simply thick with mines, and for 
 all anybody knew, with subs. 
 
 Yet the old Lizzie just sailed right along, 
 with her band up on the main deck playing, 
 "Everybody's Doing It." It made you feel 
 shivery along the spine, and believe me, they got 
 a great hand from the whole fleet. 
 
 They say her Old Man told the boys he was 
 going to drive right ahead, and that if the ship 
 was sunk, he would know that the enemy was 
 somewhere in the vicinity. Well, they were 
 headed right, but they never got past the Nar- 
 rows. They stuck until the last minute, though, 
 and those who went up, went up with the right 
 spirit. " Are we downhearted? " they would yell. 
 " No! " And they were not, either. They did 
 not brag when they put it over on the Turks, 
 and they did not grouch when they saw that 
 their Red Caps had made mistakes. Their motto 
 was, " Try Again," and they tried day after 
 day. I do not know much about the history of 
 armies, but I do not believe there ever was an
 
 Action at the Dardanelles 141 
 
 army like that of the Allies in the Gallipoli 
 Campaign, and I do not think any other army 
 could have done what they did. I take off my 
 hat to the British Army and Navy after that. 
 
 It was hotter than I have ever known it to 
 be elsewhere, and there was no water for the 
 boys ashore but what the navy brought to them 
 sometimes a pint a day, and often none at all. 
 The Turks had positions that you could not 
 expect any army to take; were well supplied 
 with ammunition, and were used to the country 
 and the climate. Most of the British Army were 
 green troops. It was the Anzacs ' first campaign. 
 
 They were wonderful boys, those Australians 
 and New Zealanders. Great big men, all of them, 
 and finely built, and they fought like devils. It 
 was hand to hand work half the time; hardly 
 any sleep, no water, sometimes no food. They 
 made a mark there at Gallipoli that the world 
 will have to go some to beat. 
 
 Our boys were on the job, too. We held our 
 part of the works until the time came for 
 everybody to quit, and it was no picnic. The 
 French should be very proud of the work their 
 navy did there in the Dardanelles. 
 
 On our sixth trip, I saw H. M. S. Goliath get 
 it. She was struck three times by torpedoes and 
 then shelled. The men were floundering around 
 in the water, with shrapnel cutting the waves 
 all around them. Only a hundred odd of her 
 crew were saved. 
 
 One day, off Cape Helles, during our seventh 
 trick at the Dardanelles, we sighted a sub peri-
 
 142 Gunner Depew 
 
 scope just about dinner time. The Prince George 
 and a destroyer sighted the sub at the same 
 time, and the Prince George let go two rounds 
 before the periscope disappeared, but did not 
 hit the mark. Transports, battleships and 
 cruisers were thick around there, all at anchor, 
 and it was a great place for a sub to be. 
 
 In no time at all, the destroyers breezed out 
 with their tails in the air, throwing a smoke 
 screen around the larger ships. They hunted 
 high and low, all over the spot where she had 
 been sighted and all around it, thinking to ram 
 it or bring it to the surface, so we could take 
 a crack at it. All the rest of the fleet battle- 
 ships and transports weighed anchor at once 
 and steamed ahead at full speed. 
 
 It was a great sight. Any new ship coming 
 up would have thought the British and French 
 navies had gone crazy. We did not have any 
 fixed course, but were steaming as fast as we 
 could in circles and half circles, and dashing 
 madly from port to starboard. We were not 
 going to allow that sub to get a straight shot at 
 us, but we almost rammed ourselves doing it. 
 It was a case of chase-tail for every ship in the 
 fleet. 
 
 But the sub did not show itself again that 
 day, and we anchored again. That night, while 
 the destroyers were around the ships, we slipped 
 our cables and patrolled the coast along the 
 Australian position at Gaba Tepe, but we did 
 not anchor. 
 
 The following day the Albion went ashore in
 
 Action at the Dardanelles 143 
 
 the fog, south of Gaba Tepe, and as soon as 
 the fog lifted, the Turks let loose and gave it 
 to her hot. A Turkish ship came up, and with 
 any kind of gunnery, could have raked her fore 
 and aft, but the Turks must have been pretty 
 shy of gun sense, for they only got in one hit 
 before they were driven off by H. M. S. Canopus, 
 which has made such a fine record in this war. 
 
 Then the Canopus pulled in close to the Albion, 
 got a wire hawser aboard, and attempted to tow 
 her out under a heavy fire, but as soon as 'she 
 started pulling, the cable snapped. The crew of 
 the Albion were ordered aft, and jumped up on 
 the quarter deck to try and shift the bow off 
 the bank. At the same time, the fore turret and 
 the fore 6-inch guns opened up a hot fire on the 
 Turkish positions, to lighten the ship and shift 
 her by the concussions of the guns. For a long 
 time they could not budge her. Then the Cano- 
 pus got another hawser aboard, and with guns 
 going and the crew jumping and the Canopus 
 pulling, the old Albion finally slid off, and both 
 ships backed into deep water with little harm 
 done to either. Then they returned to their 
 old anchorages. 
 
 At Cape Helles, every one was wide awake. 
 We were all on the lookout for subs, and you 
 could not find one man napping. Anything at 
 all passed for a periscope tins, barrels, spars. 
 Dead horses generally float in the water with one 
 foot sticking up, and we gave the alarm many 
 a tune when it was only some old nag on his 
 way to Davy's Locker.
 
 144 Gunner Depew 
 
 On the Cqssard, the Old Man posted a reward 
 of fifty francs for the first man who sighted a 
 periscope. This was a good idea, but, believe 
 me, he would have had trouble making the award, 
 for every man on the ship would be sure to see 
 it at the same time. We were all on deck all 
 the time. Each man felt sure he would be the 
 man to get the reward. The 14-pounders were 
 loaded and ready for action on a second's notice. 
 But the reward was never claimed. 
 
 During our eighth trick off Cape Helles, I was 
 amidships in the galley when I heard our two 
 14-pounders go off almost at the same time. 
 Everybody ran for his station. Going up the 
 main deck to my turret, a man told me it was 
 a sub on the port bow, but I only caught a 
 glimpse of the little whirlpool where her peri- 
 scope submerged. I do not know why she did 
 not let loose a torpedo at us. The officers said 
 she was trying to make the entrance to the 
 Dardanelles, and came up blind among the ships 
 and was scared off by our guns, but I thought 
 we had just escaped by the skin of our teeth. 
 Later on, our destroyers claimed to have sighted 
 her off Gaba Tepe. 
 
 It was probably the same sub that launched a 
 torpedo at H. M. S. Vengeance, but missed her. 
 The Vengeance was cruising at the time. 
 
 At noon, we were at mess when one of the 
 boys yelled, " She's hit," and we all rushed on 
 deck. There was the British ship Triumph, 
 torpedoed and listing away over to starboard. 
 She was ready to turn over in a few minutes.
 
 Action at the Dardanelles 145 
 
 One battleship is not supposed to go to the 
 assistance of another one that has been tor- 
 pedoed, because the chances are the sub is still 
 in the neighborhood, laying for the second ship 
 with another torpedo. But one of the British 
 trawlers went to the assistance of the Triumph 
 to pick up the crew. 
 
 We could see the crew jumping into the water. 
 Then we breezed out toward the horizon full 
 speed ahead. All about the Triumph was a cloud 
 of black smoke, but when we looked through the 
 glasses, we could see she was going down. Then 
 our guns began to bombard the Turkish posi- 
 tions, and I had to get busy. When I saw the 
 Triumph again, she was bottom up. She must 
 have floated upside down for almost half an 
 hour; then she went down as though there were 
 somebody on the bottom pulling her. 
 
 When she went, our Old Man banged his tele- 
 scope on the bridge-rail, and swore at the Huns 
 and Turks and broke his telescope lens to bits. 
 About fifty from the Triumph were lost. 
 
 It was decided that the place was too hot for 
 us with that sub running loose, and when they 
 reported, that afternoon, that she was making 
 her way south from Gaba Tepe to Cape Helles, 
 all of the fleet but the Majestic got under way, 
 and the Majestic was the only ship left off the 
 Cape. 
 
 They said the Majestic was then the oldest of 
 the ships in that campaign, but she was the 
 pride of the British fleet just the same. She 
 was torpedoed off Cape Helles later on, when
 
 146 Gunner Depew 
 
 there were a number of men-of-war off the Cape. 
 The sea was crowded with men, swimming and 
 drowning. I saw a life boat crowded with men, 
 and other men in the water hanging onto her, 
 and there were so many hanging on that they 
 started to pull her under. Of their own accord, 
 the men in the water let go, to save those in the 
 boat. Most of them drowned. 
 
 The Majestic listed so that the men could not 
 stand on deck, and the sides were covered with 
 men hanging on to ropes, and not knowing 
 whether to jump into the sea or not. We low- 
 ered all our life boats and steam launches, and 
 so did the other ships. We picked up a number 
 of the crew and were pretty close to the Majes- 
 tic when she went down like a rock. As she 
 went down she turned over and a garby ran 
 along her side to the ram at her bow and got 
 on it without even being wet. A boat picked 
 him up off the ram, which stuck out of the water 
 after the ship had ceased to settle. 
 
 She had torpedo nets on her sides, and many 
 of the crew were unable to get clear of the nets, 
 and went down with her. Quite a lot were 
 caught below decks, and had no possible chance 
 to escape. There was a big explosion as she 
 went under probably the boilers bursting. 
 Thousands of troops on shore and thousands of 
 sailors on the ships saw the final plunge, and it 
 was a sight to remember. When the ship started 
 to go, the Old Man rushed back to his cabin, 
 got the signal book and destroyed it. Also, he 
 saved the lives of two of his men.
 
 Action at the Dardanelles 147 
 
 We gave dry clothes, and brandy and coffee 
 to the Limeys we rescued, and though they had 
 just come through something pretty tough, they 
 were very calm and cool, and started talking 
 right away about what ships they would prob- 
 ably be assigned to next.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 A PAL CRUCIFIED 
 
 "When we got to " V " Beach on the twelfth 
 trip, the weather was fine, but it did not please 
 us much, for as soon as we got in range, the 
 enemy batteries opened up on us, and the shell 
 fire was heavier than any we had been in before, 
 though not more effective. We drew in on a 
 bright morning about half past five or six, with 
 our convoy, the troop-ship Champagne ahead of 
 us, and going slowly, sounding all the way. 
 
 At this part of the shore, there is a dock 
 about a mile and a half long, running back into 
 the country and terminating in a road. The 
 Champagne was making for this dock, sounding 
 as she went. Suddenly, when she was within 
 five hundred yards of the shore, I saw her swing 
 around and steer in a crazy fashion. "We began 
 asking each other what the devil was the matter 
 with her, but we learned afterwards that her 
 rudder had been torn off, though we never found 
 out how, nor do I think anyone ever knew. 
 
 Then she went aground, with her stern toward 
 the shore, and listed over to port. You could 
 see different articles rolling out and down the 
 side. Then her back broke. The quarter deck 
 
 148
 
 A Pal Crucified 149 
 
 was crowded with men half dressed, with life 
 belts on, jumping over the side or climbing 
 down. There was an explosion and a cloud of 
 black smoke broke over us, and for a while I 
 thought I was blinded. 
 
 All the time, the shells were raining in on us 
 and on the Champagne. When I could see again, 
 I saw the men on the Champagne climbing down 
 the starboard, or shore side. One chap was 
 going down, hand over hand, along a stanchion, 
 when another fellow above him let go and slid 
 right down on him. The first man fell about 
 thirty feet, landing in the water with his neck 
 doubled under him. Our life boats and launches 
 were out picking up survivors. 
 
 Those who got safely over the side started 
 to swim ashore, but when they had gone only 
 a little way, they found they could wade in. 
 When the water was only up to their waists, 
 they came upon barbed wire entanglements, and 
 not a man got ashore that way but was scratched 
 and clawed and mangled horribly. Some of 
 them that I saw afterwards were just shredded 
 along the sides of their bodies like cocoanuts. 
 A great many of them, though, were killed by 
 shrapnel while they were in the water. 
 
 On board the Cassard, our guns had been 
 busy all the time, and it was not long before 
 we put one enemy battery out of commission. 
 We had suffered a bit, too, but not enough to 
 worry us. There were about 3,000 men on the 
 Champagne, I think, and at least a third were 
 killed or drowned, and the total casualties must
 
 150 Gunner Depew 
 
 have been almost two-thirds. The ship was just 
 a mass of wreckage. 
 
 They called for a landing party from the 
 Cassard, and officers asked for volunteers for 
 trench duty. I was not very keen about going, 
 because I had been in trenches at Dixmude, and 
 I knew how pleasant they were not, but I vol- 
 unteered, and so did Murray. We went ashore 
 in our boats under a heavy fire. There were 
 twelve men killed in the life boat in which I was. 
 I escaped without a scratch. 
 
 We were mustered up on shore, and volun- 
 teers were called for, for sentry duty. Murray 
 volunteered. If he had only gone on with the 
 rest of us, he might have come through. After 
 a short wait, we were given the order to advance. 
 The firing became heavier about this time, so we 
 went at the double. We had not got very far 
 before we had a fine little surprise party handed 
 us. 
 
 The front line was running over what appeared 
 to be good solid ground, when they broke 
 through and fell into trenches thirty to forty 
 feet deep. These trenches had been dug, covered 
 over with ^4-inch boards and then with dirt, and 
 were regular man-traps. Sharp stakes were 
 sticking out of the parapet and parados, and 
 at the bottom were more stakes and rocks and 
 barbed wire. 
 
 We were advancing with bayonets fixed and 
 arms at the cany, so, when the first line fell, 
 and some of the second, the boys of the third 
 line came running up, and in the scramble that
 
 Y-Beach 
 
 X-Beacft 
 
 15 
 
 538 
 
 Ac/?/ Baba 
 ffitt 
 
 B Where the GOLIATH was wrecked. 
 # Where the MAJESTIC was wrecfced. 
 Where the CAS SA"Rp engaged the 
 WERFT ar>d the KAISER LICHE MARINE.
 
 A Pal Crucified 153 
 
 followed, many of the chaps in the first few lines 
 were bayonetted by their comrades. I was in 
 the third line, but I was lucky enough to pull 
 up in time and did not fall in. You could not 
 look down into that trench after you had seen 
 it once; it was too sickening. Our casualties 
 were sent back to the ship. One boat was 
 sunk by a shell and all the men lost. 
 
 We remained where we were, scratching out 
 shallow trenches for ourselves, finding what nat- 
 ural cover there was, and otherwise getting 
 ready for the night, which was near. It began 
 to rain, and we could hardly keep any fires 
 going, because we had to shelter them from the 
 shore side, so the enemy could not spot us, 
 and the wind was from the sea. It was certainly 
 miserable that night. 
 
 Every once in a while, we would stand by to 
 repel an attack, whether it was a real one or 
 not, and we were under fire all the time. It 
 seemed as if morning would never come. The 
 sand was full of fleas great big boys and 
 they were as bad as any cooties I had ever had 
 at Dixmude. 
 
 The morning came at last, and I was detailed 
 with a fatigue party to go to the beach where 
 we had landed stores. When we got down to 
 the docks, I missed Murray, and asked where 
 he was. They said he had been missing from 
 his post not more than an hour from the time we 
 left. 
 
 I left my fatigue party, without orders, and 
 joined in the hunt for Murray. There were men
 
 154 Gunner Depew 
 
 searching all along the docks and on the shore 
 to each side. Finally, I saw a bunch of men 
 collect around a store house at the farther end 
 of the docks, on the shore side. I ran up to 
 them. 
 
 There was poor old Murray. They were just 
 taking him down. He had been crucified against 
 the wall of the store house. There was a bayonet 
 through each arm, one through each foot, and 
 one through his stomach. One of the garbies 
 fainted when he had to pull one of the bayonets 
 out. They had hacked off his right hand at the 
 wrist, and taken his identification disc. I lay 
 this to the German officers more than the Turks. 
 
 I do not know just what I did after this. But 
 it changed me all around, and I was not like my 
 usual self during the rest of the time. 
 
 It was still raining when we started on our 
 way to the front line. Along the road were 
 numbers of troops scoffing, and among them 
 Indian troops on sentry duty. They looked 
 like a bunch of frozen turnips, cool and uncom- 
 fortable. We were close enough to make the 
 roar of the cannonading seem intolerably loud, 
 and could see the bursting shells, particularly 
 those from the British ships. 
 
 Then we came across some Turkish prisoners, 
 who were sheltering in an old barn, I guess it 
 was, and we stopped for shelter and rest. They 
 told us that their troops were very tired from 
 long fighting, but that they had plenty of men. 
 They said a couple of shells had dropped about 
 a hundred yards from the barn just before we
 
 A Pal Crucified 155 
 
 came, so we knew the batteries were trying to 
 get our range, and we did not stay any longer, 
 but went away from there and on our road. 
 
 About 500 yards farther on, we came to a 
 ruins, and when we went inside, we found fifty 
 or sixty of our boys 'cooking and sleeping and 
 not giving a thought to the shells or shrapnel. 
 The mules outside were banging away at the hay, 
 as though there never had been a war in the 
 world. There was no shell made that could 
 budge them away from that hay unless it hit 
 them. 
 
 Then along came a cart making a lot of 
 racket. One of the fellows in it had half of 
 his face shot away and was all bandaged up, 
 but he was trying to sing and laugh just the 
 same, as the rest were doing. They were Anzacs, 
 and were pretty badly shot up. 
 
 The word " Anzac," as you probably know, 
 is made from the initials of the Australian and 
 New Zealand Army Corps. They had a regular 
 town called Anzac on the Peninsula, At Suvla 
 Bay and around Gaba Tepe, the Anzacs got 
 farther into the Turkish lines than, any other 
 unit of the Allied armies. They were wonderful 
 fighters. 
 
 By this time, the Turks were making an 
 attack, and all you could see to the front was 
 one long line of smoke and spouting earth. Then 
 our guns started, and the noise was deafening. 
 It was worse than in the turrets aboard ship 
 during an engagement. My head rang for days 
 after we left the Dardanelles.
 
 156 Gunner Depew 
 
 The Turks were getting a better idea of our 
 range now, and the shells were falling pretty 
 close to us, but finally, we tore in with the 14- 
 inch navals and ripped up three of their bat- 
 teries. In the lull that followed we made 
 good time and reached our front line positions 
 at Sedd-el-Bahr during the afternoon. 
 
 The next morning we made our first attack. 
 I had had a bad night of it, thinking about 
 Murray, and when the time came, there never 
 was a chap more glad to charge and get a chance 
 at the enemy with a bayonet than I was. 
 
 We attacked according to a regular pro- 
 gramme. Time cards were issued to the officer 
 of each section, so that we would work exactly 
 with the barrage. To be ahead of, or behind the 
 time card would mean walking into our own 
 barrage. The time of attack is called Zero 
 that is, the minute when you leave the trench. 
 Some of the Anzacs said it meant when your 
 feet got the coldest, but I do not think they 
 suffered very much with trouble in the feet 
 not when they were advancing, anyway. 
 
 The time card might read something like this: 
 First Wave, Zero, advance, rapid walk, barrage 
 twenty-five in ten seconds, take first trench, 0:20; 
 second wave, same as the first, pass first trench, 
 0:23, take second trench, 0:35. The third wave 
 is ordered to take the third trench, and so on, 
 for as many lines as the enemy is entrenched. 
 The other waves might be instructed to occupy 
 Hill 7, 12 :08, or dig in behind rock, 12 :45. Here, 
 Zero is understood, the first figures standing for
 
 A Pal Crucified 157 
 
 minutes and the others for seconds. It might 
 take several hours to carry out the programme, 
 but everything is laid out to an exact schedule. 
 
 I was in the sixth line of the third wave of 
 attack, and Zero was 4:30 a. m. Whistles were 
 to be the signal for Zero, and we were to walk 
 to the first line Turkish trench. As we came out, 
 our barrage fire would be bursting fifty yards 
 ahead of us, and would lift twenty-five yards 
 every ten seconds. Our stunt was to take advan- 
 tage of it without walking into it. 
 
 No one man can see all of an attack, which 
 may extend over miles of ground, but during the 
 three weeks I was in the trenches on the Gallipoli 
 Peninsula, we made four grand attacks and many 
 minor ones, so I know in a general way what 
 they are like. Each wave is organized like the 
 others. First come three lines of what you might 
 call grenadiers, though they are not picked for 
 size as the old King's Grenadiers used to be. 
 They are deployed in skirmish formation, which 
 means that every man is three yards from the 
 next. They are armed only with grenades, but 
 you can take it from me, that is enough ! Behind 
 them come two lines, also in skirmish formation, 
 and armed with machine guns and grenade rifles. 
 The first men on the left carry machine guns, 
 then come three rifle grenadiers, and then 
 another machine gun and so on down the length 
 of the line. After these come two lines of 
 riflemen with fixed bayonets. 
 
 Then come the trench-cleaners, or moppers- 
 up, as we called them.-* They were some gang,
 
 158 Gunner Depew 
 
 believe me. Imagine a team of rugby players 
 spread out in two lines only with hundreds of 
 men on the team instead of eleven, and each 
 man a husky, capable of handling a baby grand 
 piano single-handed. These fellows were armed 
 with everything you could think of, and a whole 
 lot more that you could not dream about in a 
 nightmare. It used to remind me of a trial I saw 
 in New York once, where the police had raided 
 a yeggmen's flop and had all their weapons in 
 the courtroom as exhibits. 
 
 The moppers-up were heeled with sticks, clubs, 
 shillelahs, black-jacks, two-handed cleavers, 
 axes, trench knives, poniards^ up to date toma- 
 hawks, brass knucks, slung shots anything that 
 was ever invented for crashing a man with, I 
 guess, except firearms. These knock-down-drag- 
 out artists follow the riflemen very closely. Their 
 job was to take care of all the Turks who could 
 not escape, and would not surrender. 
 
 There are lots of men in any army who will 
 not surrender, but I think probably there were 
 more Turks of that gameness than men in most 
 other armies. I have heard that it is part of 
 their religion that a man, if he dies fighting, goes 
 to a very specially fancy heaven, with plenty to 
 eat and smoke. And I suppose if he surrenders, 
 they believe he will be put in the black gang, 
 stoking for eternity down below. It was awfully 
 hot at the Dardanelles, and I guess the Turks 
 did not want it any hotter, for very few of them 
 ever surrendered, and the trench cleaners had a 
 lot to do. Their job is really important, for it
 
 A Pal Crucified 159 
 
 is dangerous to have groups of the enemy alive 
 and kicking around in their trenches after you 
 have passed. Almost every prisoner we took 
 was wounded. 
 
 The one thing that I do not like to have people 
 ask me is, " How does it feel to kill a man? " 
 and I think the other boys feel the same way 
 about it. It is not a thing you like to talk about 
 or think about either. But this time at " V " 
 Beach, when we got past the first and second 
 Turk trenches and were at work on the third, 
 I do not mind saying that I was glad whenever 
 I slipped my bayonet into a Turk, and more 
 glad when I saw another one coming. I guess I 
 saw red all right. Each time I thought, ' ' Maybe 
 you are the one who did for poor old Murray." 
 And I could see Murray as he looked, when they 
 took him down from the storehouse wall. Then 
 I would stick another one. 
 
 The others from the Cassard were red-hot 
 too, and they went at the Turks in great style. 
 There was nothing to complain about in the 
 way they fought, but I wished that we had had 
 a few more boys from the Foreign Legion with 
 us. I think we would have gone clear on through 
 to Constantinople. 
 
 But the Turks were not as bad as Fritz. 
 They were just as good or better as fighters, 
 and a whole lot whiter. Often, when we were 
 frying in the trenches and not a drop of water 
 was to be had, something would land on the 
 ground near us and there would be a water 
 bottle, full. Sometimes they almost bombarded
 
 160 Gunner Depew 
 
 us with bottles. Then, too, they would not fire 
 on the Red Cross as the Germans do : they would 
 hold their fire many times when we were out 
 picking up our wounded. Several times they 
 dragged our wounded as close as they could to 
 the barbed wire, that we might find them easier. 
 
 After Murray died, I got to thinking a lot 
 more than I used to, and though I did not have 
 any hunch exactly, still I felt as though I might 
 get it too, which was something I had never 
 thought much about before. I used to think 
 about my grandmother, too, when I had time, 
 and about Brown. I used to wonder what 
 Brown was doing, and wish we were together. 
 But I could remember my grandmother 
 smiling, and that helped some. I guess I was 
 lonely, to tell the truth. I did not know the 
 other garbies very well, and the only one left 
 that I was really very friendly with got his soon 
 afterward, though not as bad as Murray. And 
 then there was no one that I was really chummy 
 with. That would not have bothered me at all 
 before Murray died. 
 
 The other lad I spoke of, as having been 
 chummy with, was named Phillippe Pierre. He 
 was about eighteen, and came from Bordeaux. 
 He was a very cheerful fellow, and he and 
 Murray and I used to be together a lot. He 
 felt almost as bad about Murray as I did, and 
 you could see that it changed him a great deal, 
 too. But he was still cheerful most of the- time.
 
 
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 CHAPTER XIII 
 LIMEYS, ANZACS AND POILUS 
 
 One night, while we were expecting to attack, 
 the word was passed down the line to have the 
 wire cutters ready, and to use bayonets only 
 for the first part of the attack, for we were to 
 try and take the first enemy trench by surprise. 
 The first trench was only about eighty yards 
 away. Our big guns opened up, and at Zero 
 we climbed out, and followed the curtain of fire 
 too closely, it seemed to me. 
 
 But the barrage stopped too soon, as it does 
 sometimes, and there were plenty of Turks left. 
 We were half way across when they saw us, 
 and they began banging away at us very hard. 
 They pounded at us as we came on until we 
 were given the order to retire, almost as we 
 were on them what was left of us. 
 
 As we turned and started back, the Turks 
 rushed out to counter-attack us, the first of them 
 busy with bombs. Then I tripped over some- 
 thing and rolled around a while, and then saw 
 it was Phillippe Pierre. His left leg was 
 dangling, cloth and flesh and all shot away, and 
 the leg hanging to the rest of him by a shred. 
 Two or three of our men, who were on their 
 way back to our trenches, tripped over me as 
 I tried to get up, and then a shell exploded 
 
 161
 
 162 Gunner Depew 
 
 nearby and I thought I had got it sure, but it 
 was only the rocks thrown up by the explosion. 
 
 Finally, I was able to stand up. So I slung 
 my rifle over one shoulder and got Phillippe 
 Pierre up on the other, with his body from 
 the waist up hanging over my back, so that I 
 could hold his wounded leg on, and started back. 
 There were only one or two of our men left 
 between the trenches. Our machine guns were 
 at it hard, and the Turks were firing and bomb- 
 ing at full speed. 
 
 I had not gone more than two or three paces 
 when I came across another of our men, 
 wounded in several places, and groaning away 
 at a great rate. Phillippe Pierre was not say- 
 ing a word, but the other chap did enough for 
 the two of them. One wounded man was all I 
 could manage, with my rifle and pack, over the 
 rough ground and the barbed wire I had to go 
 through. So I told this fellow, whose name I 
 cannot remember I never did know him very 
 well that I would come back for him, and 
 went on. I almost fell several times, but man- 
 aged to get through safely and rolled over our 
 parapet with Phillippe Pierre. They started the 
 lad back in a stretcher right away. When I 
 saw him again he gave me a little box as a 
 souvenir, but I have lost it. 
 
 The Turks 'had not got very far with their 
 counter-attack, because we were able to get our 
 barrage going in time to check them. But they 
 were still out in front of their trenches when I 
 started back after the other garby. I was not
 
 Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 163 
 
 exactly afraid, as I crawled along searching 
 for the other man, but I was very thirsty and 
 nervous for fear our barrage would begin again 
 or the machine guns cut loose. After what 
 seemed a long time, I came upon a wounded 
 man, but he was not the one I was after. I 
 thought about a bird in the hand, etc., and was 
 just starting to pick this chap up when a shell 
 burst almost on us and knocked me two or three 
 feet away. It is a wonder it did not kill both 
 of us, but neither of us were hurt. I thought 
 the fire would get heavier then, so I dragged 
 the other chap into one of two holes made by 
 the shell. Some pieces of the shell had stuck into 
 the dirt in the hole, and they were still hot. 
 Also, there was a sort of gas there that hung 
 around for several minutes, but it was not very 
 bad. 
 
 The man began talking to me, and he said it 
 was an honor to lie on the field of battle with 
 a leg shot off and dead men piled all about you, 
 and some not dead but groaning. He told me 
 I would soon be able to bear the groaning, 
 though I had not said I minded it, or anything 
 about it. Then he said again what an honor 
 it was, and asked if I had a drink for him. I 
 had not had any water all day, and I told him 
 so, but he kept on asking for it all the same. 
 Some of the Turkish bombers must have sneaked 
 up pretty close to our lines, for when I looked 
 out of the hole toward our lines, and a shell 
 burst near them, I could see a Turk coming
 
 164 Gunner Depew 
 
 towards us. We played dead then, but I had my 
 bayonet ready for him in case he had seen us 
 and decided to come up to the hole. Evidently 
 he had not, for when he got near the hole, he 
 steered to the side and went around. 
 
 The other garby was cheerful, when he was 
 not asking for water, but you could see he was 
 going fast. So we sat there in the hole and he 
 died. Shortly afterward, the fire slackened a 
 little, and I got out and started toward our lines. 
 But I remembered about the other wounded man 
 I had passed when I was carrying Phillippe 
 Pierre, so I began hunting for him and after a 
 long time I found him. He was still alive. His 
 chest was all smashed in and he was badly cut 
 up around the neck and shoulders. I picked him 
 up and started back, but ran into some barbed 
 wire and had to go around. I was pretty tired 
 by this time and awfully thirsty, and I thought 
 if I did not rest a little bit, I could never make 
 it. I was so tired and nervous that I did not 
 care much whether I did get back or not, and 
 the wounded garby was groaning all the time. 
 
 So when I thought the shells were coming 
 pretty thick again, I got into a shell hole, and 
 it was the same one I had left not long before. 
 The dead garby was there just as I had left him. 
 
 The wounded one was bleeding all over, and 
 my clothes were just soaked with blood from 
 the three men, but most of all from him. There 
 was some of my own blood on me, too, for when 
 I was knocked down by the shell, my nose, bled
 
 Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 165 
 
 and kept on bleeding for a long time, but, of 
 course, that was nothing compared to the bleed- 
 ing of the others. 
 
 The worst of all was that he kept groaning 
 for water, and it made me thirstier than I had 
 been, even. But there was not a drop of water 
 anywhere, and I knew there was no use searching 
 any bodies for flasks. So we just had to stick 
 it out. Pretty soon the wounded man quit 
 groaning and was quiet, and I knew he was going 
 to die, too. It made me mad to think that I had 
 not been of any use in carrying these two men 
 around, but if I had gone on with either of 
 them, it would have been just the same they 
 would have died, and probably I would have got 
 it, too. When I figured it out this way, I quit 
 worrying about it, only I wished the fire would 
 let up. 
 
 So the other man died, and there were two of 
 them in the hole. I read the numbers on their 
 identification discs when shells burst near enough 
 so that I could see them, and after a while, got 
 back to our lines and rolled in. I could not 
 remember the numbers or the names by that 
 time, but a working party got them, along with 
 others, so it was all right. 
 
 My clothes were a mess, as I have said, and 
 I was so tired I thought I could sleep for a 
 week, but I could not stand it in my clothes any 
 longer. It was absolutely against regulations, 
 but I took off all my clothes the blood had 
 soaked in to the skin and wrapped myself in 
 nothing but air and went right to sleep. I did
 
 166 Gunner Depew 
 
 not sleep very well, but woke up every once in 
 a while, and thought I was in the hole again. 
 
 During the night they brought up water, but 
 I was asleep and did not know it. They did 
 not wake me, but two men saved my share for 
 me, though usually in a case like that, it was 
 everybody for himself and let the last man go 
 dry. You could not blame them, either, so I 
 thought it was pretty decent of these two to 
 save my share for me. I believe they must have 
 had a hard time keeping the others off of it, to 
 say nothing of themselves, for there really was 
 not more than enough for one good drink all 
 around. It tasted better than anything I have 
 ever drunk. Go dry for twenty-four hours in 
 the hottest weather you can find, do a night's 
 work like that, and come to in the morning with 
 a tin cup full of muddy water being handed 
 to you, and you will know what I mean. 
 
 At Gaba Tepe there were steep little hills, with 
 quarries in between them, and most of the pris- 
 oners we took were caught in the quarries. We 
 found lots of dead Turks under piles of rock, 
 where our guns had battered the walls of the 
 quarries down on them. 
 
 We were fighting about this part of the coun- 
 try one time when we saw three motor trucks 
 disappear over the side of a hill going across 
 country. The detachment from the Cassard was 
 sent over on the run, and we came upon the 
 Turks from those trucks and several others just 
 after they had got out and were starting ahead 
 on foot. We captured the whole bunch I do
 
 Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 167 
 
 not know how many in all. They Were rein- 
 forcements on their way to a part of their line 
 that we were battering very hard, and by cap- 
 turing them we helped the Anzacs a great deal, 
 for they were able to get through for a big 
 gain. 
 
 We held that position, though they rained 
 shells on us so hard all that day and night that 
 we thought they were placing a barrage for a 
 raid, and stood to arms until almost noon the 
 next day. But our guns gave back shell for 
 shell, and pounded the Turkish trenches and 
 broke shrapnel over them until they had all they 
 could do to stay in them. 
 
 Finally, our guns placed shell after shell on 
 the enemy's communication trenches, and they 
 could neither bring up reinforcements nor retire. 
 So we went over and cleaned them out and took 
 the trench. But then our guns had to stop, 
 because we were in range, and the Turks brought 
 up reinforcements from other parts of the line 
 and we were driven back, after holding their 
 trench all afternoon. It was about fifty-fifty, 
 though, for when they reinforced one part of 
 the line, some of our troops would break 
 through in another part. 
 
 That night there was a terrible rainstorm. I 
 guess it was really a cloudburst. We had all 
 the water we wanted, then, and more too. A 
 great many men and mules were drowned, both 
 of our troops and the Turkish. Trenches were 
 washed in, and most of the works ruined. There 
 were several Turkish bodies washed into our
 
 168 Gunner Depew 
 
 trench, and two mules came over together, 
 though whether they were Turkish or French or 
 British I do not know. 
 
 A few days after the rain stopped, I was 
 going along the road to the docks at " V " 
 Beach when I saw some examples of the freak- 
 ishness of shells. There was a long string of 
 mules going back to the trenches with water 
 and supplies of various kinds. We drew up to 
 one side to let them pass. Two or three mules 
 away from us was an old-timer with only one 
 ear, and that very gray, loaded to the gunwales 
 with bags of water. He had had his troubles, 
 that old boy, but they were just about over, for 
 there was a flash and the next minute you could 
 not see a thing left of Old Missouri. He just 
 vanished. But two of the water bags were not 
 even touched, and another one had only a little 
 hole in it. There they lay on the ground, just 
 as though you had taken the mule out from 
 under them. The mules next him, fore and aft, 
 were knocked down by the concussion but un- 
 harmed; but the third mule behind had one ear 
 cut to shreds, and the man walking beside him 
 was badly shot up and stunned. 
 
 A little farther on, a shell had struck the 
 road and plowed a furrow two or three feet 
 wide, and just as straight as though it had been 
 laid out by a surveyor. The Turk who fired it 
 must have been a Kelley pool shark, for after 
 running as straight as an arrow for three or 
 four yards, the furrow turned off at almost a 
 right angle and continued for a yard or two
 
 Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 169 
 
 more before it burst and made a big hole. That 
 Turk gunner must have put a lot of English 
 on that shell when he fired it. He got some- 
 body's number with that shot, too, and the lad 
 paid pretty high, for there was blood around 
 the hole, not quite dry when we got to it. 
 
 Coming back along this same road, we halted 
 to let another convoy of mules go past, and an 
 officer of the Royal Naval Division came up and 
 began talking to our officers. He was telling 
 them how he and his men had landed at " X " 
 Beach, and how they had to wade ashore through 
 barbed wire. " And you know," he said in a 
 surprised way, as if he himself could hardly 
 believe it; " the beggars were actually firing 
 on usl ' That is just like the Limeys, though. 
 Their idea is not to appear excited about any- 
 thing at any time, but to act as though they 
 were playing cricket standing around on a 
 lawn with paddles in their hands, half asleep. 
 The Limeys are certainly cool under fire, though, 
 and I think that because the Anzacs did so well 
 at Gallipoli, people have not given enough credit 
 to the British regulars and E. N. D.'s, who were 
 there, too, and did their share of the work, and 
 did it as well as any men could. 
 
 After a while, this officer started on his way 
 aganv and as he cut across the road, a French 
 officer came up. The Limey wore a monocle, 
 which caused the French officer to stare at him 
 a minute before he saluted. After the English- 
 man had passed him the Frenchman took a large 
 French penny out of his pocket, screwed it into
 
 170 Gunner Depew 
 
 his eye and turned toward us so that we could 
 see it, but the Limey could not. 
 
 That was not the right thing to do, especially 
 before enlisted men, so our officers did not laugh, 
 but the men did, and so loud that the Limey 
 turned around and caught sight of the French- 
 man. He started back toward him and I thought 
 sure there would be a fight, or that, more likely, 
 the Limey would report him. Our officers should 
 have placed the Frenchman under arrest, at that. 
 
 The Frenchman expected trouble, too, for he 
 pulled up very straight and stiff, but he left 
 the penny in his eye. The Limey came up to 
 him, halted a few paces off, and without saying 
 a word, took the monocle out of his eye, twibbled 
 it three or four feet into the air, and caught it 
 in his other eye when it came down. 
 
 " Do that, you blighter," he said and faced 
 about and was on his way down the road. They 
 had it on the Frenchman after that. 
 
 This Phillippe Pierre, of whom I have spoken, 
 told me a story about two Limey officers that I 
 hardly believed; yet Phillippe swore it was the 
 truth. He had been in America before the 
 war, and he said he had seen one of the officers 
 that the story is about many times in New York. 
 
 He said there were two Limey officers going 
 along the road arguing about the German shells, 
 which the Turks were using. One of the officers 
 said they were no good because they did not 
 burst. Just about that time a shell came along, 
 and they picked themselves up quite a distance 
 from where they had been standing. Another
 
 Limeys, Anzacs and Poilus 171 
 
 shell whizzed by and landed flat on the side of 
 the road. The officer walked over, dug it out 
 of the ground, and took away the detonator 
 and fuse to prove that they did not explode! 
 The only thing that would make me believe 
 that story is that Phillippe Pierre said they 
 were Limey officers. No one but a Limey would 
 remember such an argument after being knocked 
 galley-west by a shell concussion. I do not doubt 
 that a Limey would do it if it could be done, 
 though.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 THE CROIX DE GUERRE 
 
 When we had been on shore for about three 
 weeks, we found ourselves one morning some- 
 where near Sedd-el-Bahr under the heaviest 
 fire I have ever experienced. Our guns and 
 the Turks* were at it full blast, and the noise 
 was worse than deafening. It had been bad 
 enough when only our guns were pounding, but 
 when the Turkish howitzers and rifle guns of 
 all calibres joined in, it was simply hell-all-over- 
 us, with Old Nick heating the hinges. 
 
 A section of my company was lying out in a 
 shell hole near the communication trench with 
 nothing to do but wait for a shell to find them. 
 We were stiff and thirsty and uncomfortable, and 
 had not slept for two nights. In that time we 
 had been under constant fire, and had stood 
 off several raiding parties and small attacks 
 from the enemy trenches. 
 
 We had no sooner got used to the shell hole 
 and were making ourselves as comfortable as 
 possible in it, when along came a shell of what 
 must have been the Jack Johnson size, and we 
 were swamped. We had to dig three of the men 
 out, and though one of them was badly wounded, 
 we could not send him back to hospital. In 
 
 172
 
 The Croix de Guerre 173 
 
 fact, the shelling was so heavy that none of us 
 ever expected to come out alive. 
 
 So, it was like keeping your own death watch, 
 with the shells tuning up for the dirge. It was 
 impossible to listen to the shells. If you kept 
 your mind on the noise for any length of time, 
 it would split your ear drums, I am sure. So 
 all we could do was to lay low in the shell hole, 
 and wait for something to happen. 
 
 Then they began using shrapnel on us, and 
 one of our machine gunners, who got up from 
 his knees to change his position, had his head 
 taken clean off his shoulders, and the rest of 
 him landed near my feet and squirmed a little, 
 like a chicken that has just been killed. It was 
 awful to see the body without any head move 
 around in that way, and we could hardly make 
 ourselves touch it for some time. Then we rolled 
 it to the other side of the hole. 
 
 Then, to one side of us, there was a more vio- 
 lent explosion than any yet. The earth spouted 
 up and fell on us, and big clouds of black 
 smoke, sliding along the ground, covered 
 our shell hole and hung there for some time. 
 One of our sergeants, from the regular French 
 infantry, said it was a shell from a Turkish 
 150-mm. howitzer. That was only the first one. 
 The worst thing about them was the smoke: 
 people who think Pittsburgh is smoky ought to 
 see about fifty of those big howitzer shells burst- 
 ing one after another. 
 
 We could not tell what the rest of our line 
 was doing, or how they were standing the awful
 
 174 Gunner Depew 
 
 fire, but we felt sure they were not having 
 any worse time than we were. In a few min- 
 utes, we heard the good old ' ' 75 's " start pound- 
 ing, and it was like hearing an old friend's 
 voice over the telephone, and everybody in our 
 shell hole cheered, though no one could hear us 
 and we could barely hear each other. Still, we 
 knew that if the " 75 's " got going in their usual 
 style, they would do for an enemy battery or 
 two, and that looked good to us. The " 75 's " 
 made the noise worse, but it was already about 
 as bad as it could be, and a thousand guns more 
 or less would not have made it any harder to 
 stand. 
 
 One of our men shouted in the sergeant's ear 
 that the men in the line ahead of us and to the 
 right were trying to give us a message of some 
 kind. The sergeant stuck his head above the 
 parapet and had a look. But I stayed where 
 I was; the sergeant could see for himself and 
 me, too, as far as I was concerned. 
 
 He shouted at us that the men in the other 
 trench were trying to signal something, but he 
 could not make it out because the clouds of 
 smoke would roll between them and break up 
 the words. So he laid down again in the bot- 
 tom of the hole. But after a while he looked 
 over the parapet and saw a man just leaving 
 their trench, evidently with a message for us, and 
 he had not gone five steps before he was blown 
 to pieces, and the lad who followed him got his 
 too, so they stopped trying then. 
 
 And all the time the " 75 's " were sending
 
 The Croix de Guerre 175 
 
 theirs to the Turk not far over our heads from 
 about nine hundred yards behind us, and the 
 howitzers were dropping their 240-pound bits of 
 iron in every vacant space and some that were 
 not vacant. It was just one big roar and screech 
 and growl all at once, like turning the whole 
 dog-pound loose on a piece of meat. 
 
 The concussions felt like one long string of 
 boxes on the ear, and our throats were so dry 
 that it hurt to swallow, which always makes 
 your ears feel better after a strong concussion. 
 One after another of our boys was slipping to 
 the ground and digging his fists into his ears, 
 and the rest of them sat on the parapet fire 
 step with their heads between their knees and 
 their arms wrapped round their heads. 
 
 Our sergeant came up to me after a while, and 
 began acting just like people do at a show, only 
 he shouted instead of whispered in my ear. 
 When people are looking at one show they always 
 want to tell you how good some other show is, 
 and that was the way with the sergeant. 
 
 " You should see what they did to us at St. 
 Eloi," he said. " They just baptized us with 
 the big fellows. They did not know when to 
 stop. When you see shelling that is shelling, 
 you will know it, my son." 
 
 " Well, if this is not shelling, what the devil 
 is it? Are they trying to kid us or are you, 
 man vieux? " which is a French expression that 
 means something like " old-timer." 
 
 " My son, when you see dugouts caved in, 
 roads pushed all over the map, guns wrecked,
 
 176 Gunner Depew 
 
 bodies twisted up in knots and forty men killed 
 by one shell then you will know you are seeing 
 shelling. ' ' 
 
 I told him I could get along without seeing 
 any more of it than I had, and he started kidding 
 me about it. He was a great card, this sergeant, 
 and a very brave man. He always called us his 
 children to our faces, but when he spoke of his 
 men to other sergeants he called us " lice 
 meat," because he said sailors were better fed 
 than soldiers and were regular dessert for the 
 cooties. 
 
 Then one of our men sat up straight against 
 the parapet and stared at us and began to shake 
 all over, but we could not get him to say any- 
 thing or move. So we knew he had shell-shock. 
 And another man watched him for a while, and 
 then he began to shake too. The sergeant said 
 that if we stayed there much longer, we would 
 not be fit to repel an attack, so he ordered us 
 into the two dugouts we had made in the hole, 
 and only himself and another man stayed out- 
 side on watch. 
 
 The men in the dugout kept asking each other 
 when the bombardment would end, and why we 
 were not reinforced, and what was happening, 
 and whether the Turks would attack us. It was 
 easy to see why we were not reinforced; no 
 body of men could have got to us from the 
 reserve trenches. The communication trenches 
 were quite a distance from us, and were bat- 
 tered up at that. Some of the men said we 
 had been forgotten and that the rest of our
 
 The Croix de Guerre 177 
 
 troops had either retired or advanced and that 
 we and the men in the trench who had tried to 
 signal us were the only detachments left there. 
 
 Pretty soon another man and I relieved the 
 two men who were outside on watch, and as he 
 went down into the dugout, the sergeant shouted 
 to us that he thought the Turks were afraid 
 to attack. He also ordered one of us to keep 
 a live eye toward our rear in case any of our 
 troops should try to signal us. When I looked 
 through a little gully, at the top of the hole, 
 toward the other trench, all I could see was 
 barbed wire and smoke and two or three corpses. 
 I began to shiver a little, and I was afraid I 
 would get shell-shock, too. So I began to think 
 about Murray and how he looked when they 
 took him off the wall. But that did not stop 
 the shivering, so I thought about my grand- 
 mother and how she looked the last time I saw 
 her. I was thinking about her, I guess, and not 
 keeping a very good lookout, when a man rolled 
 over the edge and almost fell on me. He was 
 from the other trenches. I carried bim into 
 the dugout, and then went out again and stood 
 my watch until the relief came. We were doing 
 half-hour shifts. 
 
 When I got into the dugout again the man 
 was just coming to. He was just about as near 
 shell-shock as I had been by this time I was 
 shivering only once in a while when I did not 
 watch myself. He said four men had been 
 sliced up trying to get to us before he came; 
 that they had lost eleven men out of their thirty-
 
 178 Gunner Depew 
 
 two, including the sergeant-major in command 
 and two corporals; that they were almost out 
 of ammunition; that the trenches on both sides 
 of them had been blown in, and that they were 
 likely to go to pieces at any moment. He said 
 they all thought the Turks would attack behind 
 their barrage, for he said the curtain of fire 
 did not extend more than a hundred yards in 
 front of their trench. What they wanted us 
 to do was to relay a man back with the news 
 and either get the word to advance or retire 
 or wait for reinforcements, they did not care 
 which only to be ordered to do something. 
 There was not a commissioned officer left with 
 either of the detachments, you see, and you 
 might say we were up in the air only we were 
 really as far in the ground as we could get. 
 
 The man thought there were other of our lines 
 not far behind us, but we knew better; so then 
 he said he did not see how any one could get 
 back from where we were to our nearest lines. 
 I did not see either. Then we all figured we 
 were forgotten and would not come out of there 
 alive, and you can believe me or not, but I 
 did not much care. Anything would be better 
 than just staying there in that awful noise with 
 nothing to do, and no water. 
 
 Our sergeant said he would not ask any man 
 to attempt to carry the message, because he 
 said it was not only certain death but absolutely 
 useless. And he began to show that he was 
 near shell-shock himself. I was just going ^ to 
 ask him if he thought it was a real shelling
 
 The Croix de Guerre 179 
 
 now when I saw that he was just about all in, 
 so I did not try to kid him. I figured, too, 
 that he had probably talked about St. Eloi just 
 to cheer us up, you might say, and make us 
 think it was not so bad after all. 
 
 Then I began to shiver again, and I thought 
 to myself that anything would be better than 
 sitting in this hole waiting to go cafard, so I 
 decided I would volunteer. I did not think there 
 was any chance to get through, but it seemed 
 as if I just had to do something, no matter 
 what. I had never felt that way before, and 
 had never been anxious to go West with a shell 
 for company, but I have felt that way since 
 then several tunes, I can tell you. 
 
 The man was telling us that some time before 
 they had seen the Turks bringing up ammuni- 
 tion from some storehouses, and that they had 
 watched through glasses to see if our guns got 
 either the ammunition trains or the storehouses, 
 but that they did not come anywhere near. He 
 said their sergeant wanted our messenger to 
 tell them that, too. He would say a few words 
 very fast, then he would shiver again, and his 
 jaws would clip together and he would try to 
 raise his hand, but could not. 
 
 Then our sergeant asked the name of the 
 other sergeant, and when the man told him, he 
 said the other man was senior to himself, and 
 therefore in command, and would have to be 
 obeyed. 
 
 He seemed to cheer up a lot after he said 
 this, and did not shiver any more, so I thought
 
 180 Gunner Depew 
 
 I would volunteer then, and I said to him, ' ' Well, 
 mon vieux, do you think we are seeing real 
 shelling now! ' And then I was going to say 
 I would go, but he looked at me in a funny 
 way for a second, and then he said, " Well, my 
 son, suppose you go and find out." 
 
 I thought he was kidding me at first, but then 
 I saw he meant it. I thought two things about 
 it : one was that anything was better than staying 
 there, and the other was that the old dugout was 
 a pretty fair place after all. But I did not say 
 anything to the sergeant or the other men 
 just went out of the dugout. The sergeant 
 and another man went with me and boosted me 
 over the back wall of the hole. I lay flat on 
 the ground for a minute to get my bearings, 
 and then started off. 
 
 I set my course for where I thought the com- 
 munication trenches were, to the right, and I 
 just stood up and ran, for I figured that as the 
 shells were falling so thick, and it was open 
 ground, I would not have any better chance if 
 I crawled. 
 
 I tripped several times and went down, and 
 each time I thought I was hit, because when I 
 got it in the thigh at Dixmude it felt a good 
 deal as though I had tripped over a rope. And 
 one time when I fell, a shell exploded near me 
 and I began to shiver again, and I could not 
 go on for a long time. All this time I did not 
 think I would get through, but finally, when 
 I reached what had been the communication 
 trench, I felt I had done the worst part of it,
 
 The Croix de Guerre 181 
 
 and I began to wish very hard that I would 
 get through I was not at all crazy about 
 going West. 
 
 The mouth of the communication trench had 
 been battered in, and the trenches it joined with 
 were all filled up. There were rifles sticking out 
 of them in several places, and I thought prob- 
 ably the men had been buried alive in them. But 
 it was too late then, if they had been caught, 
 so I climbed over the blocked entrance to the 
 communication trench and started back along it. 
 It led up through a sort of gully, and I thought 
 it was a bad place to dig a communication trench 
 in, because it gave the Turks something like 
 the side of a hill to shoot at. 
 
 Every once in a while I would have to climb 
 in and out of a shell hole, and parts of them 
 were blocked where a shell had caved in the 
 walls. In one place I saw corpses all torn to 
 pieces, so I knew the Turks had found the 
 range and had got to this trench in great shape. 
 At another place I found lots of blood and 
 equipment but no bodies, and I figured that 
 reinforcements had been caught at this spot and 
 that they had retired, taking their casualties with 
 them. 
 
 The Turks still had the range, and they were 
 sending a shell into the trench every once in a 
 while, and I was knocked down again, though 
 the shell was so far away that it knocked me 
 down from force of habit more than anything 
 else. I felt dizzy and shivered a lot, and kept
 
 182 Gunner Depew 
 
 trying to think of Murray or anything else but 
 myself. 
 
 So, finally, I got to the top of the little hill 
 over which the gully ran, and on the other side 
 I felt almost safe. Just down from the crest 
 of the hill was one of our artillery positions, 
 with the good old " 75 's " giving it to the Turks 
 as fast as they could. I told the artillery offi- 
 cers about what had happened, had a drink of 
 water and thought I would take a nap. But 
 when they telephoned the message back to 
 Division Headquarters, the man at the receiver 
 said something to the officer, and he told me 
 to stay there and be ready. I thought sure he 
 would send me back to where I came from, and 
 I knew I could never make it again, but I did 
 not say anything. 
 
 When I looked around I saw that our real 
 position was to the right of where the artillery 
 was, and that there were three lines of trenches 
 with French infantry in them. So the trenches 
 I had come from were more like outposts than 
 anything else, and were cut off. I felt pretty 
 sure, then, that the boys in them Would never 
 come back alive, because as soon as their fire 
 let up, the Turks would advance, and to keep 
 them back our guns would have to wipe out 
 our men, and if they did not, the Turks would. 
 At first I was glad I had come out, but then 
 I remembered what the artillery officer had said, 
 and I figured I would have to go back and stay 
 with them or bring them back. Either way,
 
 The Croix de Guerre 183 
 
 there was not one chance in a hundred that 
 any of us would make it. Because, when I 
 got through it was really just like a miracle, and 
 nobody would have thought it could happen. 
 
 Then the officer told me to go back to the 
 Beach, where our naval guns were, and that 
 I was detailed to them. Maybe you do not think 
 I was glad? But there was rough work still 
 ahead of me, because when I got beyond the 
 third line I saw a wide open field that was 
 light gray from the shell smoke hanging over it, 
 and I could see the flashes where the big ones 
 were doing their work, and I had to go through 
 that field. 
 
 I fell time and time again, sometimes when I 
 thought a shell was near, and sometimes when I 
 had no reason for it only I was thirsty again, 
 and was shivering all the time, and was so weak 
 I could not have choked a goldfish. I do not 
 remember hardly anything about going through 
 that field, and you might say the next thing 
 I knew was when I was overtaken by a dispatch 
 runner, and got in a tin tub at the side of a 
 motorcycle and was taken to the guns. 
 
 I felt ready for a Rip Van Winkle nap then, 
 but the officer in command would not let me. 
 He said they were short of gunners the ter- 
 rific shelling had killed off dozens of them 
 and as he knew I could point a gun, he had 
 ordered them over the telephone to get me to 
 the Beach as fast as possible. He spotted the 
 two warehouses I have spoken of for me, and 
 said it was up to us to put them out of com-
 
 184 Gunner Depew 
 
 mission. The gun was a 14-inch naval, and that 
 looked good to me, so I bucked up a lot. The 
 warehouses were about ten or eleven miles away, 
 I should judge, and about thirty or forty yards 
 apart. 
 
 I felt very weak, as I have said, and shivered 
 every once in a while, so I did not think I could 
 do much gunning worth whistling at. But they 
 loaded the old 14-inch and made ready, and we 
 got the range and all was set. The officer told 
 me to let her ride. So I said to myself: " This 
 one is for you, Murray, old boy. Let's go 
 from here." 
 
 So I sent that one along and she landed 
 direct, and the warehouse went up in fire and 
 smoke. I felt good then, and I laid the wires 
 on the other warehouse and let her go. But 
 she was too high, and I made a clean miss. 
 Then I was mad, because I had sent that one 
 over for myself. So I got the cross wires on 
 the warehouse again, and I said to myself: 
 " This is not for anybody just for luck, 
 because I sure have had plenty of it this day." 
 
 Then the juice came through the wires and 
 into the charge and away she went, and up 
 went the second warehouse. That made two 
 directs out of three, and I guess it hurt the 
 Turks some to lose all their ammunition. The 
 officer kissed me before I could duck, and 
 slapped me on the back and I keeled over. I 
 was just all in. 
 
 They brought me to with rum, and they said 
 I was singing when I came to. When they tried
 
 The Croix de Guerre 185 
 
 to sing, to show me what song it was, I figured 
 it was " Sweet Adeline " that they meant. But 
 I do not believe I came to, singing, because I 
 never sang " Sweet Adeline ' : before, that I 
 know of, or any other song when anybody was 
 in range. But I had heard it lots of times, so 
 maybe I did sing it at that. 
 
 Then I went to sleep feeling fine. The next 
 morning the detachment from the Cassard was 
 withdrawn, and I saw some of the men who had 
 been in the two trenches, but I was not near 
 enough to speak to them. So I do not know 
 how they got out. 
 
 You never saw a happier bunch in your life 
 than we were when we piled into the life boats 
 and launches and started for the Cassard. The 
 old ship looked pretty good to us, you can bet, 
 and we said if we never put our hoofs on that 
 place again it would be soon enough. 
 
 We were shelled on our way out to the Cas- 
 sard, and one boat was overturned, but the 
 men were rescued. Two men in the launch I 
 was in were wounded. But we did not pay any 
 attention to that shelling the Turks might just 
 as well have been blowing peas at us through 
 a soda straw for all we cared. 
 
 I noticed that when we came near the Cassard 
 the other boats held up and let our launch get 
 into the lead, and that we circled around the 
 Cassard 's bows and came up on the starboard 
 side, which was unusual. But I did not think 
 anything of it until I came up over the side. 
 There were the side boys lined up, and the Old
 
 186 Gunner Depew 
 
 Man there, with the ship's steward beside him. 
 
 He took the log book from the steward and 
 showed it to me, and there was my name on it. 
 Now when you are punished for anything, you 
 are logged, but I could not figure out what I 
 had done to get punished for, so I was very 
 much surprised. But the Old Man slapped me 
 on the back and everybody cheered, and then I 
 saw it was not punishment, but just the oppo- 
 site. 
 
 When people ask me what I have received my 
 decoration for (Croix de Guerre), I tell them I 
 do not rightly know, and that is a fact. I do 
 not know whether it was for going back from 
 those trenches, or for destroying the storehouses. 
 So I always tell them I got it for working over- 
 time. That is what the Limeys say, or if they 
 have the Victoria Cross, they say they got it 
 for being Very Careless. Ask one of them and 
 see.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 JE SUIS BLESSE 
 
 All of us were certainly glad to be aboard the 
 Cassard again, and if any place ever looked like 
 home to me, it was the old ship. Our casualties 
 were very high, and we were therefore ordered 
 to put back to Brest. We had a great little 
 celebration that night, and next morning weighed 
 anchor and started back, after clearing for action. 
 
 I was still pretty blue about Murray, but very 
 much relieved as to the safety of my own skin, 
 and I figured that after the Dardanelles and my 
 last day there, they had not made the right bullet 
 for me yet. The rest of us felt about the same 
 way, and we were singing all the time. 
 
 We had been out only a short time, though, 
 when the singing stopped, for we ran into two 
 German cruisers which I afterwards heard 
 were the Werft and the Kaiserliche Marwe 
 one on the starboard and one on the port. How 
 they had managed to sneak up so near us I 
 do not know. They opened up on us at not 
 much more than a thousand yards, and gave us 
 a good deal of hell from the start, though with 
 any kind of gunnery they should have done for 
 us thoroughly. 
 
 187
 
 188 Gunner Depew 
 
 We came right back at them, and were getting 
 in some pretty good shots. I was in the 14-inch 
 gun turret, starboard bow my old hangout 
 and we were letting them have it about four 
 shots every five minutes, and scoring heavily. 
 
 I do not know how long we had been fighting 
 when part of our range-finder was carried away. 
 It was so hot, though, and we were so hard at 
 it that little things like the time did not bother 
 us. It is hot in any gun turret, but I have 
 always noticed that it is hotter there in the 
 Dardanelles than in any other place. The sweat 
 would simply cake up on us, until our faces were 
 just covered with a film of powdery stuff. 
 
 But the range-finder was carried away, and 
 although it looked bad for us, I was feeling so 
 good that I volunteered to go on deck and get 
 another one. I got outside the turret door and 
 across the deck, got the necessary parts-, and was 
 coming back with them, when I received two 
 machine gun bullets in the right thigh. One 
 went clear through bone and all and drilled a 
 hole on the other side, while the other came 
 within an inch of going through. The pecu- 
 liar thing is that these two were in a line above 
 the wound I got at Dixmude. The line is almost 
 as straight as you could draw it with a ruler. 
 
 Of course, it knocked me down, and I hit my 
 head a pretty hard crack on the steel deck, 
 but I was able to crawl on to the turret door. 
 Just as I was about to enter the gun was fired. 
 That particular charge happened to be defective. 
 The shell split and caused a back fire, and the
 
 Je Suis Blesse 189 
 
 cordite, fire and gas came through the breach 
 which the explosion had opened. 
 
 It must have been a piece of cordite which did 
 it, but whatever it was, it hit me in the right 
 eye, and blinded it. The ball of the eye was 
 saved by the French surgeons and looks normal, 
 but it pains me greatly sometimes, and they 
 tell me it will always be sightless. 
 
 I was unconscious immediately from the blow 
 and from the quantity of gas which I must have 
 swallowed. This gas did me a great deal of 
 damage, and gives me dizzy spells often, to this 
 day. I do not know whajb happened during the 
 rest of the engagement, as I did not regain con- 
 sciousness until three days later, at sea. But 
 I heard in the hospital that the French super- 
 dreadnaught Jeanne D'Arc, and the light cruiser 
 Normandy were in it as well as ourselves, though 
 not at the time I was wounded, and that we had 
 all been pretty well battered. The Cassard lost 
 ninety-six men in the engagement and had forty- 
 eight wounded. Some of our turrets were twisted 
 into all manner of shapes, and part of our bow 
 was carried away. One of our lieutenants was 
 killed in the engagement. 
 
 I was told that both the Werft and the Kaiser- 
 liche Marine were sunk in this engagement. I 
 have seen pictures of sailors from the Werft who 
 were prisoners at internment camps.* 
 
 Those who follow the progress of the war closely will not 
 find any extended account of Allied naval operations in the 
 Mediterranean between the date of the British evacuation of 
 Gallipoli Peninsula (January, 1916) and the end of the same 
 year. For sufficient reasons, doubtless, a rigid censorship was 
 in effect in England throughout this period. It is not generally 
 known, for example, that the French held strongly fortified
 
 190 Grunner Depew 
 
 When we arrived at Brest, the wounded were 
 taken from the ship in stretchers, and after we 
 had been rested for about fifteen minutes on the 
 dock, put into ambulances and rushed to the hos- 
 pital. On the way, those who could leaned out 
 of the ambulance and had a great time with the 
 people along the streets, many of whom they 
 knew, for the Cassard was a Brest ship. And, 
 of course, the women and children yelled, " Vive 
 la France! " and were glad to see the boys again, 
 even though they were badly done up. 
 
 Some of our men were bandaged all over the 
 face and head, and it was funny when they had 
 to tell their names to old friends of theirs, who 
 did not recognize them. As soon as one of the 
 Brest people recognized a friend, off he would 
 go to get cigarettes and other things for him, 
 and some of them almost beat us to the hospital. 
 
 While we were going into the hospital there 
 was a crowd of little children around the door, 
 and they began to sing the " Marseillaise," and 
 very loyal-hearted little kids they were, too, for 
 they evidently knew the whole song, which is 
 more than can be said for most Americans, many 
 of whom do not even know that we have a 
 national anthem. 
 
 It seemed like a palace that hospital. The 
 women and children the kindest hearts in the 
 world, I do believe, were right there brought 
 
 positions on the Peninsula long 1 after the British abandonment 
 of the Dardanelles expedition. An Allied naval patrol was also 
 kept up to prevent the establishment of submarine bases on 
 the Peninsula, The strategy employed, in all probability, was 
 to keep the Turks occupied, so as to prevent interference with 
 Allied operations in Saloniki and Egypt. EDITOR'S NOTE.
 
 Je Suis Blesse 191 
 
 over chairs and tables and cards and news- 
 papers and books and everything you could 
 think of, and they brought them right from their 
 own living-rooms and not from the attic, where 
 they had laid since they had become listed with 
 the casualties. 
 
 We had a fine bunch of musicians among the 
 men most of them could blow some kind of 
 horn or other, and before the week was up 
 almost every one of them had his own particular 
 kind of torture-tube placed in his hands as he 
 lay in bed. They would hardly stop to look at 
 it, but would begin blowing away for all they 
 were worth, and hardly ever did they give a 
 rap what the rest were playing. Once in a while 
 some one did happen to play the same tune as 
 another, but each had his own ideas as to how 
 it should be played, and it would take an expert 
 to discover they were the same tunes. They were 
 sure the Agony Quartette four or five quar- 
 tettes, in fact. 
 
 We also had a phonograph, but very few 
 needles, and it got to be very scratchy. They 
 had one American record, and it was supposed 
 to be a special treat for me; some well-meaning 
 Frenchwoman must have brought it as soon as 
 she heard there was an American garby there. 
 
 I never was crazy about that song, and after 
 they had played it a few times I used to throw 
 everything I could lay my hands on at the pho- 
 nograph whenever they started to give me my 
 great treat again. There was one French orderly 
 who never could get it through his thick head
 
 192 Gunner Depew 
 
 he was good hearted, though that I did not like 
 it, and he would play it time after time. I 
 guess he thought it cheered me up so much 
 that I became enthusiastic and wanted to throw 
 things because I was glad. The name of the 
 merry little ditty was " Good-bye, Good Luck, 
 God Bless You." And I am warning whoever 
 wrote it, right here, to steer clear of me if he 
 wears any signs on himself telling that he did it. 
 
 The hospital held about 1,800 patients at the 
 time, and was pretty well crowded, but every 
 one of the patients received the best of food 
 and treatment, and some of the stunts that the 
 French surgeons did were really wonderful. As 
 soon as they were able to learn, the perma- 
 nently blinded or crippled men were taught 
 various trades that their misfortune would not 
 interfere with, and many were put in the way 
 of earning more money afterwards than they had 
 been able to earn before. 
 
 I do not know, of course, just what the sur- 
 geons did to me, but I heard that they had my 
 eyeball out on my cheek for almost two hours. 
 At any rate they saved it. The thigh wounds 
 were not dangerous in themselves, and if it had 
 not been for the rough treatment they got later 
 on they would be quite healed by this time, I 
 am sure. 
 
 I really think I got a little extra attention in 
 the hospital, in many ways, for the French 
 were at all times anxious to show their friend- 
 liness to America. Every time my meals were 
 served there was a little American flag on the
 
 Je Suis Blesse 193 
 
 platter, and always a large American flag draped 
 over the bed. I had everything I wanted given 
 to me at once, and when I was able to, all the 
 cigarettes I could smoke, which were not many. 
 
 While I was still in bed in the hospital I 
 received the Croix de Guerre, which I had won 
 at the Dardanelles. The presentation was made 
 by Lieutenant Barbey. He pinned an American 
 flag on my breast, a French flag beneath it, and 
 beneath that the War Cross. He kissed me on 
 both cheeks, of course, which was taking advan- 
 tage of a cripple. But it is the usual thing 
 with the French, as you know I mean the 
 kissing, not the meanness to cripples. 
 
 When he had pinned the medal on, he said he 
 thanked me from the bottom of his heart, for 
 the French people, and also thanked all the 
 Americans who had come over from their own 
 land to help a country with which most of them 
 were not connected. He said it was a war in 
 which many nations were taking part, but in 
 which there were just two ideas, Freedom and 
 Despotism, and a lot more things that I can not 
 remember. He finished by saying that he wished 
 he could decorate all of us. 
 
 Of course, it was great stuff for me, and I 
 thought I was the real thing sure enough, but 
 I could not help thinking of the remark I have 
 heard here in the States "I thank you and 
 the whole family thanks you.'* And it was hard 
 not to laugh. Also, it seemed funny to me, 
 because I did not rightly know just what they 
 were giving me the medal for though it was
 
 194 Gunner Depew 
 
 for one of two things and I do not know to 
 this day. But I thought it would not be polite 
 to ask, so I let it go at that. 
 
 There were twelve other naval officers who 
 were present, and they and all the other people 
 did a lot of cheering and vived me to a fare-you- 
 well. It was great stuff, altogether, and I should 
 have liked to get a medal every day. 
 
 One day I received a letter from a man who 
 had been in my company in the Foreign Legion 
 and with whom I had been pretty chummy. His 
 letter was partly in French and partly in Eng- 
 lish. It was all about who had been killed and 
 who had been wounded. He also mentioned 
 Murray's death, which he had heard about, and 
 about my receiving the Croix de Guerre. I was 
 wishing he had said something about Brown, 
 whom I had not heard from, and who I knew 
 would visit me if he had the chance. 
 
 But two or three days later I got another 
 letter from the same man, and when I opened 
 it, out tumbled a photograph. At first all I 
 saw was that it was the photograph of a man 
 crucified with bayonets, but when I looked at it 
 closely I saw it was Brown. I fainted then, just 
 like a girl. 
 
 When I came to, I could hardly make myself 
 think about it. Two of my pals gone! It hurt 
 me so much to think of it that I crushed the 
 letter up in my hand, but later on I could read 
 parts of it. It said they had found Brown 
 this way near Dixmude about two days after he 
 had been reported missing. So three of us went
 
 Je Suis Blesse 195 
 
 over, and two stayed there. It seems very strange 
 to me that both of my pals should be crucified, 
 and if I were superstitious I do not know what 
 I would think about it. It made me sick and 
 kept me from recovering as fast as I would 
 have done otherwise. Both Brown and Murray 
 were good pals, and very good men in a fight. 
 I often think of them both and about the things 
 we did together, but lately I have tried not to 
 think about them much, because it is very sad 
 to think what torture they must have had to 
 stand. They were both of great credit to this 
 country. 
 
 The American consul visited me quite often, 
 and I got to calling him Sherlock, because he 
 asked so many questions. We played lots of 
 games together, mostly with dice, and had a 
 great time generally. After I became convales- 
 cent he argued with me that I had seen enough, 
 and though I really did not think so however 
 much I disliked what I had seen he got my 
 discharge from the service on account of physical 
 inability to discharge the usual duties. After 
 I had been at the hospital for a little over a 
 month I was discharged from it, after a little 
 party in my ward with everyone taking part, and 
 all the horns blowing, and all the records except 
 my favorite dirge played one after another. 
 
 Sherlock arranged everything for me my 
 passage to New York, clothing, and so forth. 
 I ran up to St. Nazaire and saw my grandmother, 
 loafed around a while, and also visited Lyons. 
 
 I met a girl there who was staying with some
 
 196 Gunner Depew 
 
 people I knew, and she told me, a little bit at 
 a time, what she had been through. I do not 
 know whether she was a Belgian or not, but 
 she was in Belgium at the outbreak of the war. 
 When the Germans took the town she was in 
 they put up signs on the doors notifying the 
 inhabitants that all the girls must report in the 
 square the following morning. 
 
 This girl and her sister reported with the rest. 
 They were divided into two classes, and the 
 class in which the two sisters were was told to 
 report at the station the next morning. They 
 went home and broke the news to their mother, 
 who was quite old and who took it very hard. 
 They had no idea what they were being sent 
 away for. The mother begged permission to 
 keep one of the girls, and the Germans placed 
 the other sister in the class that was to stay. 
 
 Three girls who refused to go were dragged 
 to the streets and killed in cold blood, and the 
 mother of one girl, who refused to let her go, 
 was shot. The girls were drilled to the court- 
 yard of a big hotel, mustered with a roll call, 
 and loaded into cars. After a nine-hour jour- 
 ney they were taken from the trains to a large 
 building partly in ruins and there the German 
 soldiers were waiting for them. The girls were 
 not given food or fire. 
 
 Late that night, after the Germans were 
 through with them, they were made to go out- 
 side and dig potatoes, from the hard ground, 
 but they were not allowed to eat any of the 
 potatoes. They also had to make beds, chop
 
 Je Suis Blesse 197 
 
 wood, haul timber and do all the dirty work 
 that has to be done wherever German swine are 
 penned. 
 
 They were not allowed to write to their people, 
 nor did they receive any word from outside. 
 Fresh batches of girls arrived from time to time, 
 but they were not allowed to mix with those who 
 had been there before them. When the girls 
 reached such a condition that they were no longer 
 of use to the Germans they were sent back to 
 Belgium. 
 
 The girl who told me all this had killed her 
 child, as all of them did. When she got home 
 she found her mother had been killed, but she 
 never saw her sister again nor did she know 
 what had become of her. 
 
 After a short time I returned to Brest, and 
 got my passage on the Georgic for New York. 
 I had three trunks with me full of things I had 
 picked up around Europe and had been keep- 
 ing with my grandmother. Among my belong- 
 ings were several things I should like to show 
 by photographs in this book, but no one but 
 mermaids can see them now, for down to the 
 locker of Davy Jones they went.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 CAPTUEED BY THE MOEWE 
 
 When the tugs had cast off, and after a while, 
 we had dropped our pilot, I said to myself: 
 " Now we are off, and it's the States for me 
 end of the line far as we go IF " But 
 the " if " did not look very big to me, though 
 I could see it with the naked eye, all right. 
 
 I went to the after wheelhouse and took a slant 
 at the compass, which read west by northwest by 
 94 west. I chatted a while with the boys there, 
 and then went to see the commissary steward 
 and laid in a supply of Capstan and Three Castle 
 cigarettes. Heeled with these, I went back to the 
 after forecastle and found a lot of firemen, oilers 
 and wipers who were off watch. I played poker 
 for cigarettes with these fellows until the game 
 broke up, with one fireman in possession of all 
 the cigarettes. After that I went to my state- 
 room and turned in. 
 
 The following morning I went to the galley, 
 and after a hard struggle with the chef got 
 something to eat. Then came boat drill. The 
 siren shrilled three times, and we were all 
 stationed at the boats, which were swung out on 
 the davits. We carried ten life boats, five on 
 the starboard and five on the port. 
 
 198
 
 Captured by the Moewe 199 
 
 When the siren blew the second time, it was 
 a sight to see the scramble on deck for the 
 boats. Some one yelled, " Submarine on the 
 port bow," and all the little fellows were 
 trampled on, and one lad was pushed down the 
 fiddley and broke his leg. I made up my mind 
 then and there that if we should happen to get 
 torpedoed it was me for a hatch cover and no 
 life boats need apply. I would rather take my 
 chances with a match for a buoy than in a rush 
 for the boats with that gang. 
 
 It was rough weather those first two days out, 
 and it was raining most of the time. I would not 
 have been on deck at all, because the dampness 
 made my legs ache, but there was one of the 
 gunners at the stern gun that was good for a 
 laugh every time I talked to him. It was a 
 shame the way that fellow was going to treat 
 any Germans he saw. No submarine would have 
 a minute's chance with him; he would put salt 
 on any boche tail in sight. I took it all in and 
 told him what a guy for gunpowder he was, but 
 after a while I got tired trying not to laugh in 
 his face and left him. 
 
 I loafed around or slept all day, and at night 
 started back to the after forecastle to have 
 another go at cigarette poker. You know, of 
 course, that ships passing through the war zone 
 cover all their portholes, allowing no lights to 
 show whatsoever, and even smoking on deck is 
 forbidden. So I was pretty sore when I .found 
 the fireman had their portholes wide open, and 
 the light shining through like a search light.
 
 200 Gunner Depew 
 
 I bawled them out, and asked them whether 
 they thought they were in London or Germany, 
 and if they did not know they were in the war 
 zone. Then one of them said, " War zone be 
 damned. There is no such thing as a war zone.'* 
 We had a little argument, and after a while they 
 closed the portholes. But we did not have a 
 poker game. 
 
 Then I got an envelope and paper from the 
 steward, and went to my stateroom with the 
 intention of writing a letter to a friend and 
 mailing it as soon as I arrived at an Atlantic 
 port. But a Limey knocked on the door just 
 after I got started, and he talked to me for a 
 long time. Finally he asked me what I was 
 doing. I felt like telling him I was doing nothing 
 but wishing he would leave me, but I said I had 
 been going to write a letter when he came in. 
 He asked me where I was going to mail it, and 
 I said I would stop the mail steamer in the 
 morning. And I think he believed me! 
 
 At last he went out, and I turned in without 
 writing the letter. I got up about four o'clock 
 the next morning, which was Sunday, December 
 10, 1916 a date I do not think I will ever 
 forget. 
 
 As soon as I was dressed I went down to 
 the forecastle peak and from there into the 
 paint locker, where I found some rope. Then 
 back again on deck, and made myself a ham- 
 mock, which I rigged up on the boat deck, fig- 
 uring that I would have a nice sun bath, as the 
 weather had at last turned clear.
 
 Captured by the Moewe 201 
 
 As soon as I had the hammock strung, I went 
 down to the baker and had a nice chat with him 
 and stole a few hot buns, which was what 
 I was really after and away to the galley for 
 breakfast. I was almost exactly amidships, sit- 
 ting on an old orange box. I had not been there 
 long when Old Chips, the ship's carpenter, stuck 
 his head in the door and sang out, " Ship on the 
 starboard bow." I did not pay any attention 
 to him, because ships on the starboard bow were 
 no novelty to me, or on the port either. Chips 
 was not crazy about looking at her either, for 
 he came in and sat on another box and began 
 scoffing. He said he thought she was a tramp, 
 and that she flew the British flag astern. 
 
 I ate all I could get hold of, and went out on 
 deck. I stepped out of the galley just in time 
 to see the fun. The ship was just opposite us, 
 when away went our wireless and some of the 
 boats on the starboard side, and then boom! 
 boom! and we heard the report of the guns. I 
 heard the shrapnel whizzing around us just as 
 I had many a time before. I jumped back in 
 the galley, and Chips and the cook were shaking 
 so hard they made the pans rattle. 
 
 When the firing stopped I went up to the boat 
 deck. I had on all of my clothing, but instead of 
 shoes I was wearing a pair of wooden clogs. 
 The men and boys were crazy rushing around 
 the deck, and knocking each other down, and 
 everybody getting in everybody else's way. We 
 lowered our Jacob's ladders, but some of the
 
 202 Gunner Depew 
 
 men and bays were already in the water. Why 
 they jumped I do not know. 
 
 There was an oiler on the Georgic named Mal- 
 len, and though he wore glasses, he was the 
 toughest bird I ever saw. He had been almost 
 stone blind for a year and a half, and he could 
 hardly see at all without his glasses, which were 
 thick and powerful. He was on the boat deck 
 when they began shelling us, and it was a miracle 
 he was not killed at once, but he was able to 
 hide behind a funnel. When they quit firing, 
 you could have worn that funnel for a peek-a- 
 boo waist, but Mallen was not scratched. I 
 guess he was so tough the shrapnel was afraid 
 of him. 
 
 When he was going down the Jacob's ladder 
 the fellow above him must have been in a hurry, 
 for he kicked Mallen in the face and broke one 
 of the lenses, which left Mallen with a monocle. 
 He held it up in front of one eye and shut the 
 other one, and that was the only way he could 
 see a foot in front of him. 
 
 Then the German raider Mo ewe headed right 
 in towards us, and I thought she was going to 
 ram us, but she backed water about thirty yards 
 away. She lowered a life boat, and it made for 
 the Georgic, passing our men in the water as 
 they came and crashing them on the head with 
 boathooks when they could reach them. I noticed 
 that there were red kegs in the German boat. 
 
 When the life boat reached the Jacob's lad- 
 ders I went over to the port side of the Georgic,
 
 Captured by the Moewe 203 
 
 'and then the Germans came over the side and 
 hoisted up the kegs. The Germans were armed 
 with bayonets and revolvers. Some of them went 
 down into the engine room and opened the sea 
 cocks. About this time some more of the Limeys 
 came up from the poop deck, and I told them 
 to stay where I was, and that the Germans 
 would take us over in life boats. Another squad 
 of Germans hoisted eight of the dynamite kegs 
 on their shoulders and down into Number 5 hold 
 with them. 
 
 Meantime the Germans saw us up on the boat 
 deck and came up after us. And over went the 
 Limeys. But I waited, and one or two more 
 waited with me. When the Germans came up to 
 us they had their revolvers out and were waving 
 them around and yelling, " Gott strafe Eng- 
 land! ' and talking about " schweinhunde. " 
 Then, the first thing I knew, I was kicked off 
 into the sea. I slipped off my trousers and coat 
 and clogs, and believe me, it was not a case 
 of all dressed up and no place to go! 
 
 Then I swam hard and caught up to the Limeys 
 who had jumped first. They were asking each 
 other if they were downhearted and answering, 
 11 Not a bit of it, me lads," and trying to sing, 
 " Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag," 
 only they could not do much singing on account 
 of the waves that slipped into their mouths every 
 time they opened them. That was just like 
 Limeys, though. They will carry on, to use a 
 well-known expression, " till hell freezes over." 
 
 Some of the boys were just climbing up the
 
 204 Gunner Depew 
 
 Jacob's ladder on the Moewe when the old 
 Georgic let out an awful roar and up went the 
 deck and the hatches high in the air in splinters. 
 One fellow let go his hold on the ladder and 
 went down, and he never came up. The Ger- 
 mans were making for the Moewe in the life 
 boat, and we reached it just before they did. 
 Up the ladder we went and over the side, and 
 the first thing we caught sight of was the Ger- 
 man revolvers in our faces, drilling us all into 
 line. 
 
 The life boat brought back the ship's papers 
 from the Georgic and we had roll call. They 
 kept us up on deck in our wet underwear, and it 
 was very cold indeed. Then the first mate and 
 the Old Man and one of the German officers 
 called off the names, and we found we had fifty 
 missing. 
 
 The boche commander had gall enough to say 
 to our Old Man that he was not there to kill 
 men, but to sink all ships that were supplying 
 the Allies! He said England was trying to 
 starve Germany, but they would never succeed, 
 and that Germany would starve the Allies very 
 soon. 
 
 After roll call some of us asked the Germans 
 for clothes, or at least a place to dry our- 
 selves in, but Fritz could not see us for the 
 dust on the ocean, and we just had to stand 
 there and shiver till we shook the deck, almost. 
 Then I went and sat down on the pipes that 
 feed the deck winches. They had quite a head 
 of steam in them, and I was beginning to feel
 
 Captured by the Moewe 205 
 
 more comfortable when I got a good clout along 
 side of the head for sitting there and trying 
 to keep warm. It was a German garby, and 
 he started calling me all the various kinds of 
 schweinhunde he could think of, and he could 
 think of a lot. 
 
 Finally they mustered us all on another part 
 of the deck, then drilFed us down into the fore- 
 castle and read the Martial Law of Germany to 
 us. At least, I guess that is what it was. It 
 might have been the " Help Wanted Dog 
 Catchers " column from the Berlin Lokal Tag- 
 gabble for all most of us knew or cared. It 
 shows what cards the Germans are reading 
 all those four-to-the-pound words to us shiver- 
 ing garbies, who did not give a dime a dozen 
 whether we heard them or not. Fritz is like 
 some other hot sketches he is funniest when 
 he does not mean to be. Every German is a 
 vaudeville skit when he acts natural. 
 
 There were hammocks there, and we jumped 
 into them to get warm, but the Germans came 
 down with their revolvers and bayonets and took 
 the hammocks away, and poured water on the 
 decks and told us to sleep there. They could not 
 have done a worse trick than that. 
 
 Then they put locks on the portholes, and 
 told us that anyone caught fiddling with the locks 
 would be shot at once. This was because we 
 might sight a British or French man-of-war at 
 any time, and as the Moewe was sailing under 
 the British flag and trying to keep out of trouble, 
 they did not want us at the ports signaling our
 
 206 Gunner Depew 
 
 own warships for help. If they had bucked any 
 of the Allied ships and had a fight, we would 
 have died down there like rats. 
 
 The Moewe had already captured the Voltaire, 
 Mount Temple, Cambrian Range and the King 
 George, and had the crews of these vessels 
 between decks with us. These men told us 
 how the Germans were treating them, and it 
 looked to me as though the evening would be 
 spent in playing games and a pleasant time 
 would be had by all not. 
 
 The crew of the Mount Temple were on deck 
 working when the raider suddenly opened fire 
 on them. Two or three men jumped into the 
 water, and the Germans turned a gun on them 
 while they were swimming and killed them. 
 That was just a sample of what had happened 
 to them. 
 
 The men now began running up and down 
 in a line to keep warm, but I took a little run 
 on my own hook and treated myself to as much 
 of a once-over of the ship as I could. I do not 
 believe the Moewe had more than a %-inch 
 armor plate, but behind that she had three rows 
 of pig iron, which made about a foot in thick- 
 ness. There was nothing but cable strung along 
 the deck, and when I saw that I would have given 
 anything to have had a crack at her with a 14- 
 inch naval. And I sure wished hard enough 
 that one of our ships would slip up on us, 
 whether we were caught between decks or not. 
 I went aft as far as the sentry would let me, 
 and I saw that she had three spare 6-inch guns
 
 PJ-AH or TUB 
 
 AFT 
 
 (Drawn from memory.) 
 
 A. Armor plate drops, placing 6-inch guns. 
 
 B. Forecastle peak. F. Poop deck. 
 
 C. Ammunition hold. G. Aft wheelhouse. 
 
 D. Torpedo tubes rails. H. Deck house. 
 B. Torpedo tubes. J. Holds. 
 
 K. Disappearing guns aft, mounted on elevator. L. Sea gates.
 
 Captured by the Moewe 209 
 
 under the poop deck and two 6-inch pieces 
 mounted astern. The guns were mounted on an 
 elevator, and when the time came they ran the 
 elevator up until the guns were on a level with 
 the poop deck, but otherwise they were out of 
 sight from other ships. 
 
 The boys from the other ships told us that 
 when the Moewe fired, it was a case for prayers, 
 because she trembled like a leaf. Besides, they 
 never knew what she was battling with, and I 
 know myself that it is an awful sensation down 
 there between decks figuring that any moment 
 your ship will be hit amidships and the whole 
 bunch of you sent West. 
 
 They said that when the Moewe was about to 
 go into action there would be a lot of yelling 
 and running around on deck, and the Huns would 
 lay below with their revolvers and bayonets or 
 cutlasses and bulldoze the whole lot, shouting 
 and poking with the bayonets. They used to 
 come down every so often and shout the schwewir- 
 hund code at us and kick us and shove us around 
 like cattle. 
 
 For our first meal they slung a big feed bag 
 half full of ship biscuit hardtack to us and 
 some dixies of tea. After this festival we began 
 roaming up and down the deck again, because 
 it was the only way to keep warm. I guess we 
 looked like some of the advertisements in mag- 
 azines, wfyere they show a whole family sitting 
 around a Christmas tree in their underwear 
 and telling each other that Whosis Unions 
 The Roomy Kind were just what they wanted
 
 210 Gunner Depew 
 
 from Santy. Only we did not have any Christ- 
 mas tree to sit around. We must have looked 
 funny, though, and I would have had a good 
 laugh if I had not been so cold. 
 
 We could not go to sleep because the decks 
 were wet, nor could we sit down with any com- 
 fort for the same reason. Besides, we thouarht 
 we might buck up against a British or a French 
 cruiser at any minute, and most of us thought 
 we would stay up and get an eye full before we 
 started for Davy's well-known locker. 
 
 About two bells the following morning the 
 Moewe's engines began to groan and shake her 
 up a bit, and we could hear the blades jump 
 out of the water every once in a while and tear 
 away. She went ahead in this way for some 
 time, and we were hoping she was trying to get 
 away from a cruiser, and some of us were pull- 
 ing for the cruiser to win and others hoping the 
 Mo ewe would get her heels clear and keep us 
 from getting ours. 
 
 The Huns were running up and down the deck 
 yelling like wild men, and one of our men began 
 to yell too. He was delirious, and after he 
 yelled a bit, he jumped up and made a pass at 
 the sentry, who shot at him but missed. The 
 shot missed me, too, but not very much. Then 
 they dragged the delirious man up on deck, and 
 Lord knows what they did with him, because we 
 never saw him again. But we did not hear any 
 sound that they might have made in shooting 
 him. 
 
 Then the Huns began shelling, and they kept
 
 Captured by the Moewe 211 
 
 it up for some time. About the time the firing 
 quit, this man Mallen the chap who had his 
 glasses broken was walking up and down the 
 deck holding the one lens to his eye, when he 
 bumped up against a sentry on his blind side. 
 The sentry began to smash him all over the 
 deck. He knocked him down several times, and 
 split his lip for about four inches with the butt 
 of his revolver. The rest of us were just aching 
 to lay our hands on the sentry, but the other 
 sentries warned us off with their revolvers, and 
 one of them clipped me in the head with the hilt 
 of his bayonet when I started forward. 
 
 When we picked Mallen up he had lost his 
 monocle and was as blind as a bat, but as tough 
 as ever. In a minute or two one of the men 
 came up with his monocle. He had found it 
 far away from where Mallen had been, and 
 there was not so much as a scratch on the lens. 
 Mallen was sure glad to get it. Part of the gold 
 band that fitted over the nose was still on it, 
 so we broke this off and rubbed it until the edge 
 was smooth as the gold rim, and to cheer Mal- 
 len up a bit I told him about the Limey officer 
 at " V " Beach who had twibbled his monocle 
 in the air and caught it in his other eye. Mal- 
 len said he would learn to do that if it took him 
 a hundred years. He started to practice right 
 away. Anyone else would have held on to the 
 lens and not monkeyed with it, but that was not 
 Mallen. He was throwing the glass into the air 
 all the time and trying to catch it in his eye, 
 when it was all he could do to hold it there like
 
 212 Gunner Depew 
 
 / 
 
 a monocle. I have seen him twibble it and let 
 it drop a dozen times, and yet it never broke. 
 
 Then the Huns ordered us up on deck to see 
 the ship they had been firing at, and when we 
 came up the companion way they were just bring- 
 ing the other ship's skipper aboard. It was the 
 French collier St. Theodore, hove to off the 
 starboard side with a prize crew from the Moewe 
 aboard and wigwagging to the raider. 
 
 I looked around while we were taking the air 
 and shivering, and I never saw a stronger watch 
 than they were standing on the Moewe. There 
 were two men up forward on the forecastle peak, 
 one on the starboard and one on the port bow, 
 one up in the crow's nest, about twelve on the 
 bridge and four on the poop deck. I do not 
 believe that gang could miss a splinter in the 
 water, and every one of them had binoculars. 
 
 There was nothing to be seen on deck but the 
 torpedo tubes up against the sea gates, with tar- 
 paulins over them, and piles of life belts thrown 
 on top of the hatches. On the bridge they had 
 wicker baskets with carrier pigeons in them, and 
 near the funnels they had live stock a cow, 
 pigs, dogs and chickens all caged in. 
 
 Then the Huns began shouting, and they 
 rousted us below deck again. The place where 
 we had been was filled with smoke, from what or 
 why I do not know, but it was almost impos- 
 sible to breathe in it. When the smoke cleared 
 up a bit the Marathon started again, for we 
 were still in our underwear only. One of the 
 boys had asked Fritz for clothing, and Fritz
 
 Captured by the Moewe 213 
 
 said the English had tough enough skins and they 
 did not need clothing. Then he said: " Wait 
 until you see what our German winters are like. ' ' 
 
 The following morning the engines began to 
 tear away again, and the guns started firing. 
 After a while the firing stopped and the engines 
 too, and after about an hour they had the Old 
 Man of the Yarrowdale aboard. She was a 
 British ship chartered by the French and bound 
 for Brest and Liverpool with a very valuable 
 cargo aboard aeroplanes, ammunition, food and 
 automobiles. 
 
 When they rousted us on deck again, the 
 St. Theodore was still in sight, but she had the 
 Yarrowdale for company. Both were trailing 
 behind us and keeping pretty close on. While we 
 were on deck we saw the German sailors at work 
 on the main deck making about ten rafts, and 
 when they began to place tins of hardtack on the 
 rafts, a tin to each, we imagined they were 
 going to heave us over the side and let us go on 
 the rafts. But instead, they began telling us 
 we would land in the States, and then they 
 rousted us between decks again. 
 
 We had only been there a short time when 
 some of the German officers came down and 
 asked if any of the men would volunteer to go 
 firing on the Yarrowdale, and we almost mobbed 
 them to take us. They began putting down the 
 names of the men who were to go, and I talked 
 them into putting mine down too. Then I felt 
 about five hundred pounds lighter. 
 
 Five o'clock came, and by that time I had for-
 
 214 Gunner Depew 
 
 gotten to do any worrying. We received our 
 usual rations, and most of us who had volun- 
 teered figured that we would receive clothes and 
 shoes. In the morning an officer came down 
 below and read out the names of those who were 
 to go, and I felt even lighter when he called mine. 
 We were each given a life belt and mustered 
 on deck. 
 
 There was a moving picture machine on the 
 boat deck, and as we came up the hatchway the 
 operator began turning the handle. I was whis- 
 tling, " Hello Hawaii, How Are You? " and one 
 of the sentries said to me in English: " That's 
 all Americans are good for anyway." Then he 
 started to whistle, " Good Bye, My Blue Bell, 
 Farewell to You." He said some more then, 
 to the effect that we Americans had very little 
 on our minds and, generally speaking, were not 
 responsible. I never was guilty before, and never 
 have been since, but I must confess that at 
 this moment I made up some poetry. It came 
 to me just as easy as if I had been in the busi- 
 ness, and I said to him: " We can smile when 
 we fight, and whistle when we're right, and 
 knock the Kaiser out of sight. ' ' They were shov- 
 ing us over the side and down the Jacob's lad- 
 der, and this lad took hold of me where my collar 
 would have been, if I had one, and gave me a 
 boost that brought me up against the rail before 
 my turn. 
 
 The sea was pretty nasty, and some of the men 
 had narrow escapes from falling between the 
 Mo ewe and the life boats when the swells rocked
 
 Captured by the Moewe 215 
 
 us. One man fell from the ladder and broke 
 his neck on the gunwale of the life boat. They 
 took over boat after boat to the Yarrowdale 
 until, finally, we were all there. Then they mus- 
 tered us on deck and warned us not to start 
 anything, because they had a time bomb in the 
 engine room and two on the bridge. Meantime 
 they had brought over several boatloads of hard 
 tack, and we threw it into No. 3 hold. This 
 was to be our food for some time.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 LANDED IN GERMANY 
 
 They had a coolie crew on the Yarrowdale, 
 and when they routed them on deck, the coolies 
 began to pray, and though it is nothing to laugh 
 at, I could not help but chuckle at the way some 
 of them went about talking to their various gods. 
 They were beginning to smell danger and were 
 pretty nervous. Every one of the coolies had 
 a cane and a pair of palm beach trousers. The 
 Huns were loading them in the life boats to be 
 taken back to the Moewe with their sea bags, 
 .and one of them got too nervous and was slow 
 about getting into the life boat, so the Germans 
 shot him without saying a word. 
 
 Then the Germans called out the names of 
 those who had volunteered to go stoking, and 
 this included me. We were drilled down the 
 fiddley into the fire room. The fiddley is a shaft 
 that runs from the main deck of a ship to the 
 engine room. I looked around a bit and saw a 
 German standing not very far from the fiddley, 
 so I asked him if we would be given shoes. He 
 said no. Then I asked him if we had to fire in 
 our bare feet and he said yes that we did not 
 need shoes. Then he went into the engine room. 
 
 I looked at the narrow passage he went 
 
 216
 
 Landed in Germany 217 
 
 through, and at the narrow passage of the fiddley 
 to the main deck, and I talked to iny feet like 
 I used to at Dixmude. I said: " Feet, do your 
 duty." They did it and I flew up the fiddley. 
 I never wanted to see that stoke hole again. 
 
 I sneaked up to where the rest of the fellows 
 were and the guards drilled us into No. 4 hold. 
 There was nothing but ammunition in it. They 
 battened the hatches down on us, which made 
 the hold waterproof. And as that made it prac- 
 tically air-tight, the only air the five hundred 
 and eighty of us got was through the ventilators. 
 That hold was certainly foul. 
 
 The next day some of the men had got cig- 
 arettes somewhere. Lord knows how they did 
 it, but Mallen had quite a lot of them and he 
 passed them around. Some of the men would 
 not take any of his because they said they had 
 some of their own, and sure enough, in a few 
 minutes they, as well as the rest, had lit up and 
 were puffing away in great style. I divided a 
 cigarette with another fellow. Remember, we 
 were sitting and standing on ammunition all this 
 time. It shows how much we cared whether 
 school kept or not. 
 
 The Germans saw the smoke coming out of the 
 ventilators and they were crazy with fright. A 
 gang of them laid below and rousted us out with 
 whips. Mallen and I were toward the head of 
 the line going up the ladder, and Mallen was 
 swearing because he had just lost his monocle 
 and could hardly see a foot in front of him. He 
 said a sentry had tripped him or knocked him
 
 218 Gunner Depew 
 
 down, and that when he got up his monocle was 
 gone. 
 
 They lined us up on deck and read us the riot 
 act. As we stood there I could see one man 
 after another put his hands behind his back and 
 then bring them to the front again. Finally, the 
 man next to me nudged me with his elbow. I 
 put my hands behind my back and he slipped 
 something into them, and I passed it to the next 
 man. Then the first thing I knew there was 
 Mallen with his monocle in his eye again. Some- 
 body had found it and brought it up with him, 
 and we had passed >it along almost the whole 
 line before it got to Mallen. 
 
 They drilled us down into the coal bunkers. 
 It was simply hell there. Coal dust to breathe 
 and eat and sleep on, only we could not sleep 
 because we had to use the coal bunkers for all 
 purposes, including that of the toilet, and after 
 a short time not one of us could sleep. 
 
 Also, by this time, some of the men had lost 
 their heads completely ; in fact, had gone violently 
 crazy, and the rest of us were afraid of them. 
 We were all thinking of the fight that might 
 occur any moment between the Yarrowdale and 
 some other vessel, and we knew we were in the 
 likeliest place for the vessel to be struck. Even 
 though we were not hit amidships, if the ship 
 were sinking, we did not think the Germans 
 would give us a chance to escape. We figured 
 from what they had said that we would go down 
 with the ship. And going down on a ship in 
 which you are a prisoner is quite different from
 
 Landed in Germany 219 
 
 going down with one for which you have been 
 fighting. You arrive at the same place, but the 
 feeling is different. 
 
 Some of us thought of overpowering the crew 
 and taking the vessel into our own hands, and 
 we got the rest of the sane or nearly sane men 
 together and tried to get up a scheme for doing 
 it. I was strong for the plan and so were Mal- 
 len and several others, but the Limey officers 
 who were with us advised against it. They said 
 the Germans were taking us to a neutral coun- 
 try, where we would be interned, which was just 
 what the Germans had told us, but what few of 
 us believed. 
 
 Then some others said that if we started any- 
 thing the Germans would fire the time bombs. 
 We replied that at least the Germans would go 
 West with us, but they could not see that there 
 was any glory in that. For myself, I thought 
 the Germans would not fire the bombs until the 
 last minute, and that we would have a chance 
 at the boats before they got all of us anyway. 
 Old Mallen put up quite a talk about it, and it 
 was funny to see him sitting there on the coal 
 with his monocle slipping out of his eye every 
 once in a while, arguing that we would all have 
 an equal chance of getting away, even if many 
 of us did go West. There were only thirteen 
 German sailors on board, besides their com- 
 mander. This last Hun was named Badewitz. 
 
 So the pacifists ruled, because we could not do 
 anything unless we were all together, and there 
 was no mutiny. They said we were hotheads,
 
 220 Gunner Depew 
 
 the rest of us, but I still think we could have 
 made a dash for it and overpowered our sentries, 
 and either gone over the side with the life boats, 
 or taken over the whole ship. It would have 
 been better for us if we had tried, and if the 
 pacifists had known what was coming to us they 
 would have fired the time bombs themselves 
 rather than go on into that future. However, 
 that is spilt milk. 
 
 We were not allowed to open the portholes 
 while we were in the bunkers, under penalty of 
 death, and there in the dark, in that stinking 
 air, it is no wonder many of us went crazy. 
 Among us was a fellow named Harrington, 
 about six feet tall and weighing around 250 
 pounds. He seemed to be all right mentally, 
 but some of us thought afterwards he was crazy. 
 Anyway, I do not blame him for what he did. 
 Harrington rushed up the fiddley and opened 
 the door. There was a German sentry there, 
 and Harrington made a swing at him and then 
 grabbed his bayonet. The sentry yelled and some 
 others came down from the bridge and shot Har- 
 rington through the hand. After they had beaten 
 Harrington pretty badly, the bull of the bunch, 
 Badewitz himself, came over and hammered Har- 
 rington all around the deck. Then they put him 
 in irons and took him to the chart room. 
 
 The next day we were sitting in the fiddley 
 getting warm when the door opened and there 
 was Badewitz. He yelled " Heraus! " and began 
 firing at us with a revolver, so we beat it back 
 onto the coal. The others would not go back
 
 Landed in Germany 221 
 
 after this, but Mallen and I did. We had sat 
 there about three-quarters of an hour when Mal- 
 len lost his monocle. It fell all the way down 
 to the stoke hole, and I thought for sure it was 
 gone this time, and so did Mallen. Badewitz 
 poked his ugly face in the door again, but we 
 were too quick for him and he did not catch 
 us. I had to shove Mallen over though, because 
 he could not see. 
 
 Then the first thing we knew, back came the 
 monocle. One of the stokers had found it on 
 his scoop just as he was about to swing the 
 scoopful into the fire door, and there it was, 
 still unbroken. Mallen was so glad he almost 
 went crazy, too. 
 
 Pretty soon the door opened again, and Mal- 
 len gave me his monocle and ran into the fur- 
 thermost corner of the bunkers, because he 
 thought it was Badewitz come to shoot at us 
 again, and he was afraid he would lose his 
 eye-glass. But it was only a German sentry. 
 He threw down a note. It was written in Eng- 
 lish and read, " Pick out eight men for cooks.'* 
 So we picked out eight men from the various 
 vessels, and they went on deck and rigged up a 
 galley aft. 
 
 But we did not receive any knives, forks, 
 spoons or plates. The first meal we got was 
 nothing but macaroni, piled up on pieces of 
 cardboard boxes. Then we appointed four men 
 to serve the macaroni, and they got four pieces 
 of wood, the cleanest we could find, which was 
 not very clean at that, and they dug around in
 
 222 Gunner Depew 
 
 the macaroni and divided it up and put it in our 
 hands. We had to eat it after that from our 
 grimy fingers. Those who were helped first had 
 to go farthest back on the coal to eat it, and 
 those who were helped last got less, because the 
 dividers got more careful toward the end and 
 gave smaller portions. 
 
 But we did not get macaroni very long. A cook 
 from the Voltaire was cleaning a copper dixie 
 that the macaroni had been cooked in, and he 
 was holding it over the side when the vessel 
 rolled heavily, and dropped the dixie into the 
 drink. A sentry who saw him drop it forced him 
 up to Badewitz, who began mauling him before 
 the sentry even had told his story. After a while 
 Badewitz quit pounding the cook, and listened 
 to the sentry. Then Badewitz said the cook had 
 put a note in the dixie before he dropped it, so 
 they beat him up again and put him in irons. 
 After that they sent the rest of the cooks back, 
 and would not let them up on deck again. They 
 had plenty of canned goods and meat aboard, 
 but they would not give us any. 
 
 Five of the men were buried at sea that day. 
 More men were going mad every minute, and 
 it was a terrible place; pitch dark, grimy, loose 
 coal underfoot, coal-dusty air to breathe, body- 
 filth everywhere. Some of the crazy men howled 
 like dogs. But we were not as much afraid of 
 these as we were of the others who kept still, 
 but slipped around in the dark with lumps of 
 coal in their hands. We got so we would not 
 go near each other for fear we were running
 
 Landed in Germany 223 
 
 into a crazy man. Those of us who were sane 
 collected as near the fiddley as we could, and we 
 would not let the others get near us, but shoved 
 them back or shied lumps of coal at them. And 
 every once in a while some one of us would begin 
 to act queer. Maybe he would let out a howl 
 suddenly, without any warning. Or he would 
 just quit talking and begin to sneak around. Or 
 he would squat down and begin to mumble. We 
 could not tell just when a man had begun 
 to lose his mind. He would seem just like the 
 rest of us, because none of us was much better 
 than a beast. 
 
 We could not take turns sleeping and stand- 
 ing watch against the crazy men, because when 
 we talked about it, we agreed that none of us 
 could tell whether or not the sentries would go 
 crazy while on watch and have the rest of us at 
 their mercy. It was awful to talk about going 
 crazy in this way, and to figure that you your- 
 self might be the next, and that it was almost 
 sure to happen if you did not get some sleep 
 soon. But it was worse to find a man near 
 you going, and have to boot him out with the 
 other insane men. 
 
 I began talking with Mallen about what would 
 happen if there were more lunatics than sane 
 men, and he said then the sane men would be 
 the crazy ones, because he said the only thing 
 that makes one man sane is that there are more 
 like him than there are insane men. He said 
 whichever kind was in the majority was the nor- 
 mal or sane kind, it did not make any difference
 
 224 Gunner Depew 
 
 which. It began to get too deep for me, so I 
 quit arguing. But Mallen kept it up until I 
 told him it looked like he was going, too, and 
 then he shut up. I think it was not good for us 
 to talk or think much about it, or we would have 
 gone, too. 
 
 That night two of the garbies got out of the fid- 
 dley, somehow, into No. 3 hold, and brought 
 back some bologna and leaf tobacco. I got hold 
 of quite a bit of the leaves, rolled them, dampened 
 the roll, corded it and let it dry. Two days later 
 I had a fine twist, hard as a bullet. That is a 
 trick I had picked up from the Limeys. If the 
 Germans knew we had got hold of this stuff 
 they would have strung us up, I am sure. 
 
 The days passed like that, with nothing to do 
 but suffer, and starve and freeze. It got colder 
 and colder, and all we could wrap ourselves in 
 was the coal. We began to speculate on where 
 we were. It was not till later that an old 
 skipper in our bunch told us that we had rounded 
 the .northern coast of Iceland. 
 
 Every once in a while some of our men 
 in the fiddley would shout, " British cruiser 
 on the horizon ! ' > and we would shake like leaves, 
 and sing and dance around, and shout ourselves 
 hoarse, until the Germans had to shoot down 
 on us to make us quit. But no cruiser ever came. 
 It seemed like months when only days passed. 
 
 Finally, one day, a lad yelled down " Land! " 
 and we all dove for the fiddley like wild men, 
 and those who could get near enough looked 
 out, and sure enough! there was the coast of
 
 Landed in Germany 225 
 
 Norway, very ragged and rocky and covered with 
 snow. We thought it was all over then, and 
 that we would be landed at Bergen sure. Then 
 there was the usual running around and yelling 
 on deck, and we were not so sure we would be 
 landed, and very suddenly it got colder than 
 ever. 
 
 I was in the fiddley, aching to get out, and 
 ready for anything that might happen, when the 
 door opened suddenly and Badewitz grabbed me, 
 and asked me in English if I was a quarter- 
 master. I said yes, and he pulled me by the 
 arm to a cabin. I did not know what was going 
 to happen, but he took an oilskin from the wall 
 and told me to put it on. 
 
 There were two sailors there also, and they 
 put life belts on, and then I was more puzzled 
 than ever, and scared, too, because I thought 
 maybe they were going to throw me overboard, 
 though what that had to do with being a quar- 
 termaster I could not see. 
 
 But they drilled me up on to the bridge and 
 told me to take the wheel. What their idea was 
 I do not know. Possibly they wanted a non- 
 combatant at the wheel in case they were over- 
 hauled by a neutral vessel. We were going full 
 speed at the time, but as soon as I took the wheel 
 she cut down to half speed, and stayed that 
 way for half an hour. Then up to full speed 
 again. 
 
 Pretty soon there was a tramp steamer on the 
 starboard bow, and almost before I saw it, there 
 were two more sentries on each side of me, prod-
 
 226 Gunner Depew 
 
 ding me with their revolvers, and warning me to 
 keep on the course. They had civilian clothes on. 
 
 Then we went through the Skager Back and 
 Cattegat, which are narrow strips of water lead- 
 ing to the Baltic, and we were only a mile from 
 shore, with vessels all about us. It would have 
 been an easy thing for me to signal what our 
 ship was and who were aboard, but they had six 
 sentries right on my neck all the time to keep 
 me from it. I never wanted to do anything worse 
 in my life than jump overboard or signal. But 
 I would have been shot down before I had more 
 than started to do either, so I just stayed with 
 the wheel. 
 
 As we were Hearing Jutland we sighted a boat 
 that looked like a tug, and she began to smoke up 
 and blow her siren. The sailors got very excited 
 and ran around in crazy style, and Badewitz 
 began shouting more orders than they could get 
 away with. The sentries left me and ran with 
 the rest of the Fritzies to the boat deck and 
 started to lower one of the life boats. But 
 Badewitz was right on their heels, and kicked the 
 whole bunch around in great shape, roaring like 
 a bull all the time. 
 
 I left the wheel and ran to the end of the 
 bridge, to jump overboard. But the minute I 
 let go of the wheel the vessel fell off of the 
 course, and they noticed it, and Badewitz sent 
 five of them up on the bridge and three others 
 to the side with their revolvers to shoot me if 
 I should reach the water. I think if I had had 
 any rope to lash the wheel with I could have
 
 Landed in Germany 22T 
 
 got away and they would not have known it. 
 
 When the five sailors reached the bridge one 
 of them jumped for the cord and gave our siren 
 five long blasts in answer to the tug. The tug 
 was about to launch a torpedo, and we whistled 
 just in time. One of our men was looking from 
 the fiddley, and he saw the Huns making for 
 the life boat, so he got two or three others and 
 they all yelled together, " Don't let them get 
 away! " thinking that they would get the boat 
 over and leave the ship, and trying to yell loud 
 enough for the tug to hear them. Badewitz took 
 this man and two or three others, whether they 
 were the ones who yelled or not, and beat them 
 up and put them in irons. I thought there was 
 going to be a mutiny aboard, but it did not 
 come off, and I am not sure what the Huns were 
 so excited about. 
 
 The other four sailors who came up on the 
 bridge did not touch me, but just kept me cov- 
 ered with their revolvers. That was the way 
 with them they would not touch us unless 
 Badewitz was there or they had bayonets. The 
 old bull himself came up on the bridge after he 
 had beaten up a few men, threw me around quite 
 a bit and kicked me down from the bridge and 
 slammed me into the coal bunkers. I felt pretty 
 sore, as you can imagine, and disappointed and 
 pretty low generally, but when I sailed through 
 the fiddley and landed on the coal I had to laugh, 
 no matter how bad I felt, for there was Mallen 
 just finding his monocle again. Every time you
 
 228 Gunner Depew 
 
 saw him he was losing it or having it brought 
 back to him. 
 
 After a while we heard the anchor chains 
 rattling through -on their way to get wet, and 
 we pulled up. Then every German ship in the 
 Baltic came up to look us over, I guess. They 
 opened up the hatch covers, and the Hun garbies 
 and gold-stripes came aboard and looked down 
 at us, and spit all they could on us, and called 
 us all the different kinds of swine in creation. 
 They had them lined up and filing past the hatch- 
 ways all of them giving us the once over in 
 turn. Maybe they sold tickets for this show 
 it would be like the Huns. 
 
 At first we were milling around trying to get 
 out from under the hatch openings and the 
 shower of spit, but some Limey officer sang out, 
 " Britishers all! Don't give way! " and we stood 
 still and let them spit their damned German 
 lungs out before we would move for them, and 
 some Cornishman began singing their song about 
 Trelawney. So we made out that we did not 
 know such a thing as a German ever lived. 
 
 We got better acquainted with German spit- 
 ting later' on, and believe me, they are great 
 little spitters, not much on distance or accu- 
 racy, but quick in action and well supplied with 
 ammunition. Spitting on prisoners is the favor- 
 ite indoor and outdoor sport for Germans, men 
 and women alike. 
 
 When the show was over, they rousted us up 
 on deck and put us to work throwing the salt
 
 Landed in Germany 229 
 
 pork and canned goodb into two German mine- 
 layers. While we were at it, a Danish patrol 
 boat came out and tied alongside us, and some 
 of her officers came aboard and saw us. They 
 knew we were prisoners-of-war, and they knew 
 that a vessel carrying prisoners-of-war must not 
 remain in neutral waters for t>ver twenty-four 
 hours, but they did not say anything about it. 
 
 That night two men named Barney Hill and 
 Joyce, the latter a gunner from the Mount 
 Temple, sneaked up on deck and aft to the poop 
 deck. There was a pair of wooden stairs lead- 
 ing to the top of the poop deck, and Joyce and 
 Hill lifted it and got it over the side with a rope 
 to it. The two of them got down into the water 
 all right, but Joyce let out a yell because the 
 water was so cold, and a German patrol boat 
 heard him and flashed a searchlight. They 
 picked up Joyce right away, but Barney was 
 making good headway and was almost free when 
 they dragged him in. They beat them up on the 
 patrol boat, and when they put them back on the 
 Yarrowdale, Badewitz beat them up some more 
 and put them in irons. Then he began to shoot 
 at their feet with his revolver, and he had a 
 sailor stand by to hand him another revolver 
 when the first one was empty. Then he would 
 gash their faces with the barrel of the revolver 
 and shout, "I'm Badewitz. I'm the man who 
 fooled the English," and shoot at them some 
 more. 
 
 When they searched them they found papers 
 under their shirts wrapped in oilskin and writ-
 
 230 Gunner Depew 
 
 ten in English, French, Italian and Spanish, 
 that they were supposed to take to different con- 
 suls if they got ashore, and all the notes had 
 different signatures. I do not know where they 
 got the paper, but they used coal to write with. 
 But the oilskin they tore out of the oilskin coat 
 Badewitz had given me when I took the wheel 
 and which they forgot to take away from me, 
 because they were so busy with their boots when 
 they slammed me into the bunkers again. When 
 I saw that they had Hill and Joyce on board 
 again, I threw the oilskin away, so they would 
 not find out I had given them the wrappers for 
 the notes. 
 
 All the while the sailors were celebrating, 
 drinking and eating and yelling, as usual, and 
 the whistles on all the German ships were blow- 
 ing, and they were having a great fest. After 
 about thirty hours we left Jutland, escorted by 
 a mine-layer and a mine-sweeper. I asked a 
 German garby if that was the whole German 
 navy, and he looked surprised and did not know 
 I was kidding him, and said no. Then I said, 
 " So the English got all the rest, did they? " 
 and he handed me one in the mouth with his 
 bayonet hilt, so I quit kidding him. One of them 
 hit Mallen, too, so Mallen laid for him with a 
 lump of coal, waiting for him to pass the fiddley 
 door, but he never came. 
 
 We saw rows and rows of mines, and the Ger- 
 man sailors pointed out what they said were 
 H. M. SS. Lion and Nomad, but I do not know 
 whether they were the same ones that were in
 
 Landed in Germany 231 
 
 the Jutland battle or not.* Finally we landed 
 at Swinemimde just as the bells were ringing the 
 old year out and the new year in. We were a 
 fine bunch of blackbirds to hand the Kaiser for 
 a New Year's present, believe me. 
 
 They mustered us up on deck, and each of us 
 got a cup of water for our New Year's spree. 
 Then we saw we were in for it, and all hope 
 gone, but we were glad to be released from our 
 hole, because we had been prisoners since De- 
 cember 10th three days on the Mo ewe and 
 eighteen on the Yarrowdale, and the coal was 
 not any softer than when we first sat on it. 
 
 So we began singing, " Pack up your troubles 
 in your old kit bag and smile, boys, smile. 
 What's the use of worrying? It's never worth 
 while, ' r and so forth. They made us shut up, 
 but not before we asked ourselves if we were 
 downhearted, and everybody yelled " No! " 
 
 And that is how we gave our regards to 
 Swinemiinde. 
 
 According- to the British Admiralty, H. M. S. Nomad was one 
 of the British men-of-war sunk in the Battle of Jutland. The 
 Lion was Admiral Beatty's flagship, and came out of the battle 
 unscathed. The German sailors, in conveying this information 
 to Gunner I>epew, either must have been deceived themselves, 
 or deliberately sought to add to the misery and discouragement 
 o* their prisoners. The Germans are known to have picked up 
 many British sailors from warships that were sunk in the Jut- 
 land engagement. This would account for the presence of the 
 Nomad'9 crew at Brandenburg, where Gunner Depew later met 
 them. EDITOR'S NOTE.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 11 PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES " 
 
 We arrived at Swinemiinde, on the east bank, 
 and after we had had our drink of water and 
 had been rousted back into the bunkers, Bade- 
 witz went across to the west side in a launch 
 with Joyce and Hill and a guard of sailors. 
 They were to be shot the next morning, with 
 some others, at a public shooting-fest. The rest 
 of us wrapped ourselves in lumps of coal as 
 best we could and tried to sleep. 
 
 In the morning crowds of Germans came 
 aboard us and were turned loose on the boxes 
 in the hold. It was a sight to see them rip off 
 the covers and gobble the salami and other stuff 
 that we carried. Table manners are not needed 
 when there is no table, I guess, but if you had 
 seen them, you would say these Germans did not 
 even have trough manners. I have seen hogs 
 that were more finicky. 
 
 While they were at it, hand to hand with the 
 chow, giving and receiving terrible punishment, 
 we prisoners were mustered on deck, counted, 
 kicked onto tugs and transferred to the west 
 bank, where the mob was waiting for us. My 
 wounds, as you can imagine, were in a pretty 
 bad state by this time, and were getting more 
 
 232
 
 " Pack Up Your Troubles > 233 
 
 painful every minute, so that I found I was 
 getting ugly and anxious for an argument. I 
 knew that if I stayed this way I would probably 
 never come out alive, for there is every chance 
 you could want to pick a quarrel while you are 
 a prisoner that will mean freedom for you but 
 only the freedom of going West, which I was 
 not anxious to try. 
 
 I had been delirious a bit, I think, and dreamed 
 much about Murray and Brown. Once I saw 
 myself crucified, too, and although I would not 
 let myself get superstitious, it seemed to me that 
 it would be all I could expect. I do not know 
 what that feeling should be called, but it was 
 about like this: Three of us had started; two 
 had gone West; would not all three go West? 
 And the two who had gone were crucified; 
 would not the third go that way too? Some- 
 times it seemed almost wrong that I should ever 
 get away like deserting Murray and Brown, 
 almost. But then I would figure that all that 
 was foolish, and I would say, like the Limeys, 
 11 There are just two ways of looking at it: 
 either you die or you do not die. If you die, you 
 are dead. If you do not die, you will have to 
 some time, anyway. Either way, you are safe. 
 So why choose? ' 
 
 Then I would figure that if you could not 
 help yourself, the only thing to do was to throw 
 a front and let on that you liked your medicine. 
 So I would say, " Carry on, Chink," and go 
 around as though I did not give a damn. But 
 I never could handle myself so that the Huns
 
 234 Gunner Depew 
 
 would think I did not mind their rough stuff, 
 and I guess I was pretty sassy. When I think 
 of it now, it is a wonder I did not get it 
 for being too mouthy, if for nothing else. 
 
 When we got near the west bank, on the tugs, 
 we could see that we were up against a battle 
 with our arms tied. Over half the crowd was 
 women and children, I should say, and the rest 
 were laborers, and old civvies, and reserve sol- 
 diers, and roughnecks generally. We could see 
 the spit experts the spit snipers, deployed to 
 the front, almost. 
 
 As we went ashore, the bombardment began, 
 and we were not only under fire of spit, if you 
 could call it that, but also of rocks and bottles 
 and sticks and most anything that could be 
 thrown. I discovered then why so many of our 
 major league ball players have German names. 
 As we were marched along, the crowd drilled 
 along the street with us, heaving bricks and spit- 
 ting and working the changes on schweinhund. 
 We had an armed guard, of course, but all they 
 did was to guard the crowd when some of us 
 could not stand it and tried to get back at some 
 of the mob. In a civilized country, as you prob- 
 ably know, prisoners are protected from mobs 
 by their guards. 
 
 All this time, " lest you forget," we had no 
 shoes, and no clothing only what had once 
 been our underwear. It is all right to be a 
 Coney Island snowbird and pose around in your 
 bathing suit in the drifts, because you are in 
 good condition, and last but not least, because
 
 " Pack Up Your Troubles 235 
 
 you do not have to do it. Figure out the other 
 side of it for yourself. 
 
 They marched us into a field where there was 
 nothing much but guns and ammunition and 
 snow, and set us up in something like skirmish 
 formation. We stood there for some time, and 
 then we saw a lot of Huns with the new long 
 rifles coming toward us, yelling just as they did 
 in battle, and we thought sure we were being 
 used for practice targets. It is a good thing 
 they halted and stopped yelling when they did, 
 or we would all have started for them to fight 
 it out, for we were not the kind that likes to be 
 butchered with hands in the air, and we would 
 have been glad for a chance to get a few of 
 them before they got us. But they did halt, and 
 then surrounded us, and drilled us away through 
 swamps and woods and shallow water or slush. 
 The women followed, too, and there were plenty 
 of bricks and spit left. Women as well as men 
 are the same the world over, they say. I won- 
 der? You can just picture the women of, say, 
 Eockland, Maine, following a crowd of German 
 prisoners that way, can't you! Not! But of 
 course the women of Eockland are pretty crude 
 no kuMur at all and Gott never commis- 
 sioned President Wilson to take the lid off the 
 strafe-pot for him. 
 
 They drilled us along the docks, and it looked 
 as though the whole German navy was tied up 
 at Swinemiinde. We saw many of the ships 
 we had heard about, among them being the 
 famous Vulcan, the mother-ship for submarines.
 
 236 Gunner Depew 
 
 There were many sailors loafing along the docks, 
 and they gave the women a hand with their 
 day's work. They were no better with a brick, 
 but they had more ammunition when it came to 
 spitting. One of them tripped a young boy by 
 the name of Kelly, and as you would never 
 doubt, Kelly picked up a rock and crashed the 
 sailor with it. He was then bayonetted twice 
 in the left leg. We began singing then, our pop- 
 ular favorite, " Pack up your troubles, etc." 
 and when they heard us, how the swine stared! 
 
 Then they drilled us past the German soldiers' 
 quarters. The men were at rifle practice, and 
 I guess all of us thought how handy we would 
 be as targets. But when we got near them, 
 they quit practicing and crowded around us 
 yelling: " 'RausI Zuriickl " 
 
 Finally we got to the top of the hill, and were 
 halted near the barracks while an officer read 
 the Martial Law of Germany to us. At least we 
 thought maybe that was it. Merry wags, these 
 Germans are. They will have their little joke. 
 I do not know why it is, but there is something 
 funny about the German language to most peo- 
 ple who are not Germans. I have known sailors 
 who had heard almost every language in the 
 world, from Chinese to Finnish, and they never 
 could help laughing when they heard Fritz begin 
 to swallow his palate and cough, which is what 
 you must do to speak German. 
 
 So many of us had all we could do to keep 
 from laughing, and to make it worse, Mallen, 
 who stood behind me, monocle and all, began
 
 . . 
 
 Pack Up Your Troubles " 237 
 
 whispering a story to me which was old stuff, 
 as I had heard it before about two women 
 coming out of church in Hull, England, and one 
 of them said the minister had preached that the 
 only way the Allies could win the war was to 
 pray to God for victory. Another woman butted 
 in and said, " But can't the Germans do that, 
 too f ' and the first woman said, * ' Yes, but 
 would He understand them? " 
 
 The lads near him began laughing, and farther 
 up the line some more men saw Mallen was 
 doing something, and he looked so funny stand- 
 ing there in his underwear and one sock and a 
 monocle that they began laughing, too. So one 
 fellow snickered, and then another one, and 
 pretty soon the whole gang of us were just 
 roaring. You would have thought we were at a 
 burlesque show. 
 
 At first the Germans did not know what to 
 make of it. It was not their idea of how 
 prisoners should act. And then they got very 
 angry, because when a German cannot under- 
 stand anything it makes him mad, and if it is 
 an invention, or something like that, he has to 
 steal it before he can calm down. But if it is 
 only men that puzzle him " 'Raus! ' 
 
 The officer shout ad around for a while, and 
 then the sentries snouted, too, and that made it 
 funnier, and we laughed all the harder. But 
 after a while they got busy with bayonets on 
 every fifth or sixth man, and that spoiled the 
 joke. So we stopped laughing. Then the officer 
 started bawling us out until- he saw that we were
 
 238 Gunner Depew 
 
 likely to break out again, so lie stopped. Then 
 he asked in English, of a kind, and in German, 
 if any of us could understand Deutsch. I guess 
 it was a German law that this little sketch had 
 to be read to prisoners. 
 
 So, finally, we got what he wanted into our 
 heads, but not a man budged. The officer got 
 very mad then, and it looked as though we might 
 be in for rough weather. Now I had picked up 
 a few words in several languages, including 
 Eussian, and, of course, French, but I did not 
 know enough German to damn the Kaiser in, 
 which is about all the use I ever thought I would 
 have for the gargle. 
 
 But I figured that if the martial law did not 
 get read to us, we would never get into the 
 barracks, which could not be any colder than it 
 was outside, so I stepped out. I was supposed 
 to be a civilian, but the officer spotted me for 
 a man who had seen some military service, and 
 he tried to find out what army I had been in. 
 He learned every thing about me but the truth. 
 
 Then he read the law to me, and I did not get 
 one word of it. When he had finished he told 
 me to translate it to the men; at least, I figured 
 that was what he wanted. So they drilled me 
 up in front of our men between four sentries 
 and I opened up. 
 
 The first thing I said to our boys was that if 
 they did not want to see me shot, please not to 
 laugh, only I put it stronger. Because I figured 
 that I probably looked pretty funny as an inter- 
 preter, and that if they laughed, the Germans
 
 " Pack Up Your Troubles '' 239 
 
 would think I was kidding them or otherwise 
 not on the job, and that would mean the finish 
 of my career not only as a language expert but 
 as everything else. 
 
 Then I said that if the boys wanted to get by 
 with the Germans, they would have to cut out 
 the rough stuff, and that the reason I was pull- 
 ing this line of talk was so we could get into the 
 barracks. I then said that the law was so long 
 that I would have to stall for a few minutes 
 more of talking, because otherwise the Huns 
 would know I had not repeated the meaning of 
 all of it, and I begged them not to laugh again 
 at whatever I might say, and to pretend that 
 they were understanding what the officer wanted 
 them to. 
 
 Now I think this officer knew enough English 
 to gather what I was driving at, but he let me> 
 go on, because it would amount to the same thing 
 in the long run. So I went on, trying to talk 
 about something and yet not make the men laugh. 
 And they would nod their heads once in a while 
 and pretend that they were getting the officer's 
 drift. But Mallen and his monocle almost 
 wrecked me, he looked so funny, and I had to 
 move a foot or two so as to bring another man 
 between him and my eyes. I do not know just 
 what I said, but finally I thought I had talked 
 about as long as it would take to explain the 
 German law in English, and I shut up and 
 turned to the officer. He drilled me back to the 
 line. Then a cockney, who seemed to think I 
 really knew German or had a drag with the
 
 240 Gunner Depew 
 
 officer, told me to ask the officer if we would get 
 a meal in the barracks. I was afraid to do it, so 
 I told the cockney that the officer had said to 
 me that we would be fed if we behaved, and 
 the cockney was surprised that I had not told 
 all the men that. So I told the cockney that 
 the officer had told me not to tip it off, because 
 he wanted to see how the men would act. That 
 satisfied the cockney, and he let it go at that. 
 
 Finally they let us into the barracks, and the 
 first thing we saw was a great big pile of hay. 
 That looked good to us, and we made a rush 
 and dived into it. But the Huns told us to take 
 the hay out and throw it in the middle of the 
 road. They had to use force before we would 
 do it. Finally we gave in, however, and started 
 to carry it out. Some of the young boys were 
 crying, and I do not blame them much. 
 
 But one of the boys tried to hide some of the 
 hay behind a box and was caught doing it, and 
 two sentries clouted him from one end of the 
 barracks to the other. His nose was broken and 
 his face mashed to a jelly. But there was noth- 
 ing we could do, so we just wandered up and 
 down the barracks, about as we did between 
 decks on the Moewe, trying to keep warm. 
 
 While this Marathon was on we heard a whistle 
 blown very loudly, and when we looked out we 
 saw a wagon piled up with old tin cans. Then 
 we were told to form single file, walk out to the 
 wagon and each get a can for himself. Each 
 man had to take the first can he laid his hands 
 on, and many of us got rusty ones with holes
 
 " Pack Up Your Troubles ' 241 
 
 in them. So that about half an hour later, 
 when we received barley coffee, and all we had 
 to drink it from was the cans, lots of the men 
 had to drink theirs almost in one gulp or lose 
 half of it. 
 
 The barracks were very dirty and smelled hor- 
 ribly, and the men were still not even half 
 clothed. We all looked filthy and smelled that 
 way, and where the coal dust had rubbed off, we 
 were very pale. And all of us were starved 
 looking. Every time we wanted to go to the 
 toilet we had to tell a sentry, and he would 
 drill us outside to a very shallow trench, dug 
 too near the barracks, and not covered at all 
 except for narrow planks thrown across it at 
 intervals. You could see that the Huns were 
 not anxious about us as far as sanitation went. 
 
 About eleven o'clock that morning the whistle 
 blew again, and we came out and were given an 
 aluminum spoon and a dish apiece. Then we 
 cheered up and saw corned beef and cabbage 
 for ourselves. An hour later they drilled us 
 through the snow to the kilche. When we got 
 there we stood in line until at least half past 
 twelve, and then the Germans shouted, " Niclits 
 zu essen." But we did not know what that 
 meant, so we just hung around there and waited. 
 Then they started shouting, " Zuriick! Zu- 
 ruckl " and drove us back to the barracks. 
 
 Later we heard the words " nichts zu essen! ' 
 (or " nix essen,'* as Mallen said) so often that 
 we thought probably they meant " no eats." 
 We had our reasons for thinking so, too. Those
 
 242 Gunner Depew 
 
 words, and " zuruck " and " 'raus," were prac- 
 tically all we did hear, except, of course, various 
 kinds of schweinhunde. 
 
 It was awful to see the men when we got back 
 to the barracks. Some of the boys from the 
 Georgia, not much over twelve years old, were 
 almost crazy, but even the older men were cry- 
 ing, many of them. It was nothing but torture 
 all the time. They opened all the windows and 
 doors in the barracks, and then we could not 
 heat the room with our bodies. When we started 
 to move around, to keep warm, they fired a few 
 shots at us. I do not know whether they hit 
 any one or not; we had got so that we did not 
 pay any attention to things like that. But it 
 stopped us, and we had to stand still. The Huns 
 thought we would take the rifles from the sen- 
 tries and use them, too. 
 
 I never saw a yellower bunch of people in my 
 life. I do not mean people. I wish I could 
 publish what I really do mean. 
 
 We had stoves in the barracks, but no coal 
 or wood to burn. There were many boxes piled 
 up there, but they belonged to the Germans. 
 We would have burned them if we could, but 
 the Germans made us carry them out across the 
 road. They weighed about 150 pounds apiece, 
 and we were so weak that it was all two men 
 could do to budge them. And we had to carry 
 them ; they would not let us roll them. We were 
 so cold and hungry that even that exercise did 
 not warm us. 
 
 About 2:30 the whistle blew again, and the
 
 " Pack Up Your Troubles >: 243 
 
 Huns picked out a few men and took them down 
 the road. We could not figure out why, but they 
 came back about 3 o'clock, all of them with 
 bread in their arms. They were chewing away 
 on it when they had a chance. Whenever the 
 sentries were not looking they would bite at it 
 like a fish going after a worm. Each man car- 
 ried five loaves. 
 
 When they got in the barracks the sentries 
 made them put the bread down on the floor, and 
 then, with their bayonets, the sentries cut each 
 loaf once down the center lengthwise and four 
 times across, which meant ten men to a loaf 
 about the size of an ordinary ten-cent loaf in 
 this country now. They gave each of us a piece 
 a little larger than a safety-match box. 
 
 The bread was hard and dark, and I really 
 think they made it from trees. It had just 
 exactly the same smell that tile dirt around trees 
 has. Mallen called it mud as soon as he tried 
 it, and that was the name we had for it after 
 that. 
 
 We filed past the sentries single file to get 
 our ration of this mud, and there was no chance 
 of getting in line twice, for we had to keep 
 on filing until we were out in the road, and 
 stand there in the snow to eat it. We could not 
 go back in the barracks until every man had 
 been served. 
 
 Our meals were like this: A can of barley 
 coffee in the morning; cabbage soup, so called, 
 at noon; a tenth of a loaf of bread at 3 p. m. 
 That was our menu day in and day out, the
 
 244 Gunner Depew 
 
 Kaiser r s birthday, Lincoln's, May Day, or any 
 other time. 
 
 This cabbage soup was a great idea. We 
 called it shadow soup, because the boys claimed 
 they made it by hanging a cabbage over a bar- 
 rel of water and letting the shadow fall on the 
 water. We pretended, too, that if you found any 
 cabbage in it, you could take your dish back for 
 a second helping. But I never saw anybody 
 get more than one dishful. All it was, was just 
 spoiled water. 
 
 We tried to go to sleep that night, but there 
 were so many sentries around us and those of 
 us who were not sick were wounded that I do 
 not think a man of us really slept. After a 
 while I asked a sentry if I could go to the 
 toilet, but for some reason he would not let 
 me. I had different ideas about it, so I stood 
 around near the door, and when he turned his 
 back, out I went and around the corner of the 
 barracks. 
 
 But one of the sentries there saw me and blew 
 his whistle, and a guard of eight came up from 
 somewhere and grabbed me. I tried to explain, 
 but it was no use, because every time I said 
 a word it meant another swat over the ear, so 
 finally I gave it up. 
 
 Then they drilled me across the road to the 
 officers' quarters. There wejre three officers 
 there, and each of them asked me questions 
 about all kinds of things, but never once men- 
 tioned my running out of the barracks. Then 
 they gave the sentries some commands, and four
 
 " Pack Up Your Troubles ' 245 
 
 of the sentries took me out and over to the 
 barbed wire fence. There they tied me, face 
 to the fence, arms over my head, and hands and 
 feet lashed to the wire, and with a rope around 
 my waist, too. I thought, then, that my hunch 
 had come true, and that I would be crucified, 
 like Murray and Brown. 
 
 They posted a sentry there in addition to the 
 regular guards, and every time he walked past 
 me he would kick me or spit on me, or do both. 
 
 One time he kicked me so hard that a prong 
 of the barbed wire gashed me over the left eye 
 the only one I can see with and when the 
 blood ran into my eye it blinded me. I thought 
 both eyes were gone then, and I hoped they 
 would shoot me. It seemed to me that I had got 
 my share by this time without losing the other 
 eye, and if it was gone, I wanted to go too. 
 
 I could not put up my hand to feel where the 
 prong had jabbed me, and it kept on bleeding 
 and smarting. I had on practically no clothing, 
 you remember. The wounds in my thigh had 
 opened, and it was bitter cold and windy. So 
 you can picture to yourself how gay and care- 
 free I was. 
 
 When I had been there for an hour and a 
 half they untied me from the wire, and I keeled 
 over on my back. They kicked me until I had 
 to stand up, but I fell down again, and all the 
 kicking in Germany could not have brought me 
 to my feet. I was just all in. So they blew 
 their whistles and the sentries in the barracks
 
 . 
 
 246 Gunner Depew 
 
 awakened two of the boys, who came and car- 
 ried me in. 
 
 All the time the sentries were yelling, " Gott 
 strafe England!" and " schweinhund! ' ' until 
 you would have thought they were in a battle. 
 What their idea was I do not know. 
 
 The boys had a little water in a can, and one* 
 of them tore off part of the sleeve of his under- 
 shirt. So they washed the gash and bandaged, 
 it. Believe me, I was glad when I could see 
 again. I was so tired and worn out that I went 
 to sleep at once, and did not wake up until 
 they were giving us our barley coffee next 
 morning.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 GERMAN PRISON CAMPS 
 
 A few days after I had been lashed to the 
 barbed wire fence some of the German officers 
 came to the barracks, and one of them who spoke 
 very good English said : 1 l All of the neutrals 
 who were on unarmed ships step out." Only a 
 few stepped out. 
 
 Then he called for all the neutrals, and the 
 Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Brazilians and 
 Spaniards stepped out. But when I did, he said, 
 " No, not Americans. Americans are not neu- 
 tral. America supplies our enemies with food 
 and ammunition." He raised his fist, and I 
 thought he was going to hit me, but instead he 
 gave me a shove that caused me to fall and get 
 a little cut on the head. Then the sentries 
 pushed me over with the British and the French. 
 
 After that they took the Norwegians, Swedes 
 and Danes to separate barracks, and gave them 
 clothes and beds and the same rations as the 
 German soldiers. When I saw this I made a 
 kick and said I was a neutral, too, and ought to 
 get the same treatment as the Scandinavians. 
 They took me to the officers again, kicked me 
 about and swore at me, and the only answer I 
 got was that America would suffer for all she 
 
 247
 
 248 Gunner Depew 
 
 had done for the Allies. Then I was sent back 
 to the barracks again. 
 
 The next day at about 1 o'clock they took us 
 from the barracks and drilled us through the 
 swamps. The men began to fall one by one, 
 some crying or swearing, but most of them going 
 along without a word. Those who went down 
 were smashed in the head with rifle butts or 
 belts. 
 
 Finally we arrived at a little railroad station, 
 and had to stand in the snow for over an hour 
 while the engine ran up and down the tracks 
 hooking on cars. When we finally got in the 
 cars we were frozen stiff. I could hardly walk, 
 and some of the boys simply could not move 
 without intense pain. 
 
 They loaded twelve men into each compart- 
 ment, and detailed a guard of six men to each 
 car. The windows in the cars were all smashed, 
 and everything about the cars was dirty. 
 
 The sentries in our compartment took some 
 bread out of their knapsacks and began to 
 nibble it. They also had tobacco plenty of 
 it. And all this just to torture us. They could 
 hardly eat the bread, because they were not 
 hungry at all. When they had showed it to us, 
 and pretended to eat it, and had laughed all they 
 wanted to, they put it back in their knapsacks 
 and started smoking. 
 
 The train stopped at every little station along 
 the way, and the engineer always started up 
 again with awful jerks. Sometimes he would 
 jerk the whole train two or three times before
 
 German Prison Camps 249 
 
 he got going again, and from what the sentries 
 said, we thought he was doing it on purpose. 
 You would not think the Huns would go to all 
 that trouble to annoy us, but it is a fact that 
 they think up all the things they can do to tor- 
 ture one. 
 
 Finally the train stopped at a town named 
 Alt-Damm, and there was a mob of women and 
 children around, as usual, ready for us with 
 bricks and spit. They stoned us through the 
 car windows, and laughed and jeered at us, but 
 by this time we were so used to it that we did not 
 mind much. Only, every now and then some 
 fellow would get all he could stand, and either 
 talk back or make a pass at somebody. Then 
 he would get his either a bayonet through the 
 arm or leg, or a crash on the head with a gun 
 butt. 
 
 For the last few stations before we got to 
 Alt-Damm the engineer had not jerked the train 
 much, and some of the men had climbed up on 
 the little shelves in the cars, which are for bag- 
 gage, but which the men were sleeping on. As 
 we pulled out of Alt-Damm the train gave a worse 
 jerk than usual, and almost all of the men fell 
 down to the floor. One of them broke his arm 
 at the elbow. These shelves are just about as 
 roomy as the hammocks on the Pullman cars, 
 so you can see what we were up against in the 
 way of comfort when such small shelves looked 
 good to the men as bunks. When the sentries 
 learned that this man had broken his arm they 
 laughed a lot, and one of them went up forward
 
 250 Gunner Depew 
 
 to tell the engineer. So, then we were sure he 
 had done it on purpose. We pulled a strap from 
 one of the car windows and tightened up the 
 broken arm, but the man was in great pain, and 
 became delirious shortly afterwards. 
 
 When w had pulled up at the station in 
 Stettin one of the men jumped out of the car 
 window to get some snow to eat, because we 
 had received absolutely no water, to say nothing 
 of food, on the way. A sentry saw him as he 
 climbed out of the car window, but being yellow, 
 did not go for him, but just stood where he was 
 and yelled until four or five more Huns came 
 up. The man kept going until he reached the 
 snow. While they were still running toward 
 him, he ate several mouthfuls and made snow- 
 balls to carry back to the rest of us. 
 
 When the men in the cars saw the sentries 
 going toward him, they all tried to get out of 
 the window at onoe, and there would have been 
 a great little argument, because the men were 
 desperate, and these Huns, like all the rest of 
 them, were yellow. But the man started back 
 to the car as fast as he could go, and the other 
 men were stuck in the windows and had to get 
 back into the car to let him in. The Huns got 
 him just as he was about to climb back through 
 the window, and bayonetted him twice in the 
 arm. But he held on to the snowballs and 
 divided them up with us. The sentries came 
 into the car and took the snow from us, though, 
 and threw it away. 
 
 After an eighteen hour ride, without food or
 
 German Prison Camps 251 
 
 drink, we arrived at Neustrelitz. It was raining 
 as we pulled in. As we went up the grade to 
 the town, we could see lights about a mile away, 
 and we figured that that was the camp. The 
 rain stopped and we remained in the cars for 
 some time. Then after a while, we knew our 
 new guards were coming: long before we could 
 see them, we could hear the racket they made. 
 Somehow, a German cannot do anything ship- 
 shape and neatly, but always has to have a lot 
 of noise, and running around, and general con- 
 fusion. Four-footed swine are more orderly in 
 their habits than the Huns. 
 
 When they came up, we were rousted from 
 the cars and drilled up the road to the camp. 
 When we got near the German barracks, we 
 were halted and counted again, and made to 
 stand there for at least an hour after they had 
 finished counting us, shivering like leaves. At 
 last they placed us in barracks, and those who 
 could went to sleep. 
 
 There were about forty barracks in the Limey 
 group at Neustrelitz and two large Zeppelin 
 sheds. The barracks were just about like those 
 at Swinemiinde at least, they were no better. 
 Along the sides of the rooms were long shelves 
 or benches, and every three feet were boards 
 set in grooves. The shelves were what we had 
 to sleep on, and the boards in the grooves 
 divided them up so that only a certain number 
 of men could use each bench. 
 
 The following morning we nearly dropped 
 dead when the Huns pulled in a large wagon
 
 252 Gunner Depew 
 
 full of clothing. We thought we never would 
 have anything to wear but our underclothes.. 
 They issued to each man a pair of trousers, 
 thin model, a thin coat about like the seersucker 
 coats some people wear in the summer, an over- 
 coat about as warm as if it had been made of 
 cigarette papers, a skull cap and a pair of shoes, 
 which were a day's labor to carry around. Not 
 one of us received socks, shirts or underwear. 
 
 The toe was cut from the right shoe of the 
 pair I received, and as my wounds were in the 
 right thigh and my leg had stiffened up con- 
 siderably and got very sore, I got pretty anxious, 
 because there was nothing but slush underfoot, 
 and I was afraid I might lose my leg. So I 
 thought that if I went to the commander and 
 made a kick, I might get a good shoe. I hesi- 
 tated about it at first, but finally made up my 
 mind and went to see him. 
 
 I told him that it was slushy outside, and that 
 the water ran through the hole in my shoe and 
 made it bad for my whole leg, which was 
 wounded. He examined the shoe, and looked 
 at the open toe for some time, and I thought 
 he was going to put up an argument, but would 
 give in finally. 
 
 Then he asked me what I wanted. I thought 
 that was plain enough to see, but I said just 
 as easily as 1 could that I wanted a shoe without 
 a hole in the toe. 
 
 " So the water runs into it, does it? " he 
 said. " Well, my advice to you is to get a 
 knife, cut a hole in the heel, and let the water
 
 German Prison Camps 253 
 
 out." All the other swine in the room laughed 
 very loud at this, and I guess this Fritz thought 
 he was a great comedian. But somehow or other, 
 it did not strike me so funny that I just had 
 to laugh, and I was able, after quite a struggle, 
 to keep from even snickering. It was a harder 
 struggle than that to keep from doing something 
 else, though! 
 
 Our meals were just about the same as at 
 Swinemunde the bread was just as muddy, 
 the barley coffee just as rank, and the soup 
 just as cabbageless. The second morning after 
 we had had our barley coffee, one of the sentries 
 came to our barracks, which was number 7-B, 
 and gave each of us an envelope and a sheet of 
 writing paper. Then he told us to write to 
 anybody we wanted to, after which he chalked 
 on the door in H" T etters 
 
 KBIEGSGEFANGENENLAGER 
 
 and told us it was the return address. We were 
 all surprised, and asked each other where the 
 hell we were, because we had thought we were 
 in Neustrelitz. After a while, we learned that 
 it means " Prisoner-of- War-Camp. " At first, 
 though, many of us thought it was the name of 
 the town, and we got to calling it The Brewery, 
 because the name ended in Lager. Whatever 
 beer was brewed there was not for us, though. 
 I noticed that all the time he was writing 
 the word and giving us the stationery, the sentry 
 was laughing and having a great time with his
 
 254 Gunner Depew 
 
 own little self, but I figured he was just acting 
 German, and that nothing was important about it. 
 
 We were all tickled to death to get a chance 
 to let our people know where we were, and 
 each man thought a long time about what he 
 would say, and who he would write to, before 
 we ever started to write. Each man wanted to 
 say all he could in the small space he had, and 
 we wanted to let our friends know how badly 
 they were treating us without saying it in so 
 many words, because we knew the Huns would 
 censor the letters, and it would go hard with 
 anyone who complained much. So most of the 
 men said they were having a great time and 
 were treated very well, and spread it on so thick 
 that their friends would figure they were lying 
 because they had to. 
 
 One fellow had an idea ^at was better than 
 that, though. He had been in jail in Portsmouth, 
 England, for three months, for beating up a con- 
 stable, and he had had a pretty rough time. 
 So he wrote a pal of his that he had been cap- 
 tured by the Germans, but that everything was 
 going along pretty well. In fact, he said, the 
 only other trip he had ever been on, where he 
 had a better time, was the three months' vaca- 
 tion he had spent in Portsmouth two years 
 before, which he thought the friend would remem- 
 ber. He said that trip was better than this 
 one, so the friend could figure out for himself 
 how pleasant this one was. Everybody thought 
 this was a great idea, but unfortunately not all 
 of us had been in jail, so we could not all use
 
 German Prison Camps 255 
 
 it. "Which was just as well, we thought, because 
 the Germans would be suspicious if all of us 
 compared this vacation with others. 
 
 A few of the men did not have anybody they 
 could write to, and some did not know their 
 friends * addresses, so they would write letters 
 to friends of the other men, and sign it with 
 the friend's nickname. In this way Mallen got 
 letters written to three people he knew, one 
 signed Mallen, another Mai Brown or Black or 
 Smith, and the third, " Swipe " Robinson or 
 Jones. " Swipe " was a nickname that he said 
 he used to have. He told about his monocle 
 and asked for a whole pair of glasses in the 
 first letter, for tobacco in the second, and some- 
 thing else in the third, and whatever supplies 
 the letters pulled, he promised to give to the 
 men who let him use their last names and their 
 stationery. 
 
 As soon as a man had finished his letter, he 
 had to go out to the center of the camp, where 
 they had built a raised platform. There the 
 sentries took the letters, and the men formed 
 around the square. There were officers on the 
 platform reading the letters. We thought they 
 read them there in the open, before us, so that 
 we would know they were not tampering with 
 the letters, and we thought the heavens would 
 fall if they were getting so unkultured as that. 
 
 Finally, all the men had finished their letters 
 and turned them over to the officers, who read 
 them. And then we saw why the sentry laughed. 
 
 The officers tore up every one of the letters.
 
 256 Gunner Depew 
 
 They were anxious that we would see them do 
 it, so none of us would have any hope that our 
 friends would get word. 
 
 But we said to ourselves that, if it was infor- 
 mation they wanted, they had as much as was 
 good for them, which was none at all, because 
 I do not think one letter in the bunch had a 
 single word of truth in it. But we were all very 
 angry and pretty low after that, because it 
 showed the Huns still had plenty of kultur left, 
 after all, and we knew there was rough sledding 
 ahead of us. Also, some of the men were sore 
 because they had wasted their time thinking up 
 different ways of tipping their friends off to the 
 real state of affairs, and all for nothing. Mallen 
 was about ready to tear his hair out. Why they 
 should worry about time, I could not see. Time 
 was the only thing we had plenty of, and I for 
 oney thought we were going to have still more 
 of it. 
 
 Going back to the barracks we tried to sing 
 " Pack up your troubles," but there was not 
 much pep in it. We were not down-hearted, 
 though : at least, we said we were not. 
 
 I saw the L-29, a very large Zeppelin, flying 
 low over the field at Neustrelitz, and I would 
 have liked to have a crack at it with an anti- 
 aircraft gun. It made an awful racket, like 
 everything else German, and one of the sentries 
 was veiy much to the cheer-oh when he saw 
 and heard it. He seemed to think it was great 
 stuff. He said it would give somebody hell-for- 
 breakfast, or words to that effect, and finished
 
 Kriegsgefangenensendung 
 
 ^usblfis /^m 
 
 
 PHtSnMF.aQF WAR MAIL. 
 
 
 .{gyORp-V. 
 
 Diilmeh (Westf.). 
 
 I am prisoner of war and stationed at Oiilmen, Westf. 
 
 My address is: 
 
 Name and Christian name: 
 
 Rank: 
 
 Regiment; 
 
 Gefangenenlager Oiilmen i. \V. 
 
 Germany 
 
 Postcard sent by Gunner Depew from the prisoner-of-war camp 
 at Diilmen, Westphalia, Germany
 
 German Prison Camps 257 
 
 up by saying, " By and bye, England 
 which means finished. But I have learned since 
 that the L-29 was brought down by the English 
 before it Jcaputted. them very much.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 KULTUR THE KEAL STUFF 
 
 Neustrelitz was mainly for Russian prisoners, 
 and there were neither British nor French sol- 
 diers interned there only sailors of the mer- 
 chant marine such as the men I was with. The 
 Russians were given far worse treatment than 
 any other prisoners. This was for two reasons, 
 as near as I could make out. One was that the 
 Russian would stand most anything, whereas 
 the British and French could only be goaded 
 to a certain point, and beyond that lay trouble. 
 The other reason was that the Russians sent 
 German prisoners to Siberia, or at least, so the 
 Huns thought, and Fritz hates the cold. So, 
 hating the Russians, and realizing that they 
 were used to being under-dogs, Fritz picked on 
 them and bullied them in a way that the rest 
 of us would not have stood. We would have 
 rushed them and gone West with bayonets first. 
 
 One of the Russians told me that at the begin- 
 ning of the war, there were no Barracks at 
 Neustrelitz. There were only barbed wire 
 entanglements surrounded by a high fence, and 
 into this bare place thousands of prisoners were 
 driven. All their clothes were taken from them, 
 
 258
 
 Kultur The Real Stuff 259 
 
 and they were compelled to sleep on the ground 
 without any covering. After they had been liv- 
 ing in this way for quite a while, the Germans 
 took them into the forest, where they cut down 
 trees, hauled them to the camp and built the 
 barracks that we were now in. 
 
 He said that in the early days, while they 
 were at work on the barracks, the Germans put 
 them in stables from which manure had been 
 removed, and that whenever it rained the floors 
 of the stables would be nothing but stinking 
 pools. While some were at work, the others had 
 to stay in these stables, and all had to sleep in 
 them. They also dug holes in the ground about 
 six feet deep for protection against the weather. 
 The Germans would not let them have any tools, 
 so they used pieces of wood, and in many cases, 
 only their hands. The dugouts frequently caved 
 in on them. 
 
 The barracks were made of spruce, and were 
 about ninety feet long and twenty-five feet wide, 
 and you can take it from me that as carpenters, 
 whoever made them were fine farmers. There 
 were cracks in them that you could drive an 
 automobile through. When we were there, each 
 barracks had a stove in the center, a good stove 
 and a big one, but at first it was of no use to 
 us, because the Germans would not give us coal 
 or wood fornit. But after shivering for a while, 
 we began ripping the boards out of the barracks, 
 and taking the dividing boards from the benches 
 that we used for beds. 
 
 Later, they gave each of us a mattress filled
 
 260 Gunner Depew 
 
 with wood shavings, and a blanket that was 
 about as warm as a pane of glass. The mat- 
 tresses were placed on the ground in the bar- 
 racks, which were very damp, and after three 
 or four days, the shavings would begin to rot 
 and the mattress to stink. In order to keep 
 warm we slept as close together as we could, 
 which caused our various diseases to spread 
 rapidly. 
 
 When we were receiving our rations, the sen- 
 tries would offer us an extra ration if we would 
 take a lash from their belts. We were so hungry 
 that many and many a man would go up and 
 take a swat in any part of his body from the 
 heavy leather belts with brass tongue and buckle, 
 just to get a little more " shadow " soup or 
 barley coffee or mud bread. 
 
 One morning the sentries picked out ten men 
 from our barracks, of which I was one, and 
 drilled us over a field near the kuche. There 
 was a large tank in the field and we had to pump 
 water into it. It was very cold, and we were 
 weak and sick, so we would fall one after 
 another, not caring whether we ever got up or 
 not. Fritz would smash those who fell with his 
 rifle butt. We asked for gloves, because our 
 hands were freezing, but all we got was 
 " Nichts." 
 
 After we had been there for about an hour and 
 a half, one of our men became very sick, so that 
 I thought he was going to die, and when he 
 fell over, I reported it to a sentry. The sentry 
 came over, saw him lying in the snow, yelled,
 
 Kultur The Real Stuff 261 
 
 " Schwein, nicht krank! " grabbed him by the 
 shoulder, and pulled him all the way across the 
 field to the office of the camp commander. Then 
 he was placed in the guard house, where he 
 remained for two days. The next thing we knew, 
 the Russians had been ordered to make a box, 
 and were being marched to the guard house to 
 put him in it and bury him. 
 
 I went over to the guard house at the time, 
 and struck up quite a friendship with one of the 
 Russians. I would talk to him in Russian, and 
 he would try to reply in English, because he 
 wanted to practice it. After a while we would 
 switch I would talk in English, and he in 
 Russian, so that we would also get practice 
 in understanding each other's language. 
 
 He said he did not know how long he had been 
 there, but that it had been long enough, and 
 also that when he was taken prisoner, he was 
 transferred from camp to camp so many times 
 that he had lost count, and that each time he 
 and the other prisoners were without food on 
 the journeys, which they had to make on foot. 
 He said that some of the marches had been six 
 days long and one was nine, and that they were 
 not given any food at all on the way, but had 
 to live off of whatever weeds or vegetables they 
 could find as they went along the way, or take 
 when the guards were not looking. Whenever a 
 prisoner was caught getting food from a field, 
 he was killed immediately. He said that those 
 who could not hold out would fall all along the 
 road, and that the next guard who came along
 
 262 Gunner Depew 
 
 on the flank of the column would simply stick his 
 bayonet into the prisoner and leave him there. 
 
 There were two brothers in the party of pris- 
 oners, and when one of them became very sipk 
 and weak, the other carried him on his shoulder. 
 A guard saw it and killed them both with his 
 rifle butt. 
 
 Another thing at Neustrelitz, that was pretty 
 hard to stand, was the pretty habit the Huns had 
 of coming up to the barbed wire and teasing 
 us as though we were wild animals in a cage. 
 Sometimes there would be crowds of people lined 
 along the wire throwing things at us, and spit- 
 ting, and having a great time generally. It was 
 harder than ever when a family party would 
 arrive, with Vater und Mutter, and maybe Gros- 
 vater und Grosmutter and all the little boche 
 kinder, because, as you probably know, the Ger- 
 mans take food with them whenever they go 
 on a party, no matter what kind, and they would 
 stand there and stare at us like the boobs they 
 were, eating all the time and we so hungry 
 that we could have eaten ourselves, almost. 
 After they had stared a while, they would begin 
 to feel more at home, and then would start the 
 throwing and spitting and the " schweinhund ' 
 sangerfest, and they would have a great time 
 generally. Probably, when they got home, they 
 would strike off a medal for themselves in honor 
 of the visit. Wearing medals for sinking the 
 Lu-sitania, and playing hell generally, is the 
 favorite German exercise. 
 
 Then, too, there were always Hun soldiers on
 
 Kultur The Real Stuff 263 
 
 leave or off duty, who made it a point to pay 
 us a visit, and though I do not think they were 
 as bad as the civvies, especially the women, they 
 were bad enough. Mallen was telling me once 
 that this Kipling, who is a British writer, and 
 as you probably know, has written lots of books 
 about Limey soldiers, wrote some poetry once 
 which says that women are worse than men at 
 this kind of thing. I really believe he must 
 have meant German women. If he did not, he 
 could get some pointers from them, and if any- 
 body ever argues with Kipling about his poetry 
 not being right, he can prove it is, by the way 
 the German women treat all the Allied prisoners. 
 
 I never spoke to one of our boys in the prison 
 camps who did not hate the Hun women worse 
 than the men. We heard there was a law in 
 Germany against any women wearing corsets, 
 and Mallen said he thought that would start a 
 revolution, because he said if any women ever 
 needed corsets, it was the German women. 
 
 We had one bucket in each barracks, and as 
 these buckets were used for both washing and 
 drinking, they were always dirty. We boiled 
 the water when we washed the clothes, to get 
 rid of the cooties, and that left a settling in it 
 that looked just like red lead. We had to get 
 the water from a hydrant outside of the bar- 
 racks, and for a while we drank it. But after 
 several of the boys had gone West and we could 
 not figure out why, a man told us he thought 
 the water was poisoned, and a Russian doctor, 
 who was a prisoner, slipped us word about it
 
 264 Gunner Depew 
 
 also. So, after that, very few of us drank 
 water from the hydrant. I was scared stiff at 
 first, because I had had some of the water, but 
 after that I did not touch hydrant water. 
 
 It was a good thing for us that there was 
 always plenty of snow in Germany, and even 
 luckier that the Huns did not shoot us for eating 
 it. It was about the only thing they did not 
 deprive us of it was not verboten. 
 
 I thought I knew what tough cooties were, in 
 the trenches, but they were regular mollycoddles 
 compared to the pets we had in the prison camps. 
 After we boiled our clothes, we would be free 
 from them for not more than two hours, and 
 then they would come back, with reinforcements, 
 thirsting for vengeance. 
 
 The men would sit in the barracks with their 
 shirts off searching for the cooties, and they 
 got to calling it * * reading the news. ' ' It looked 
 just as though they were reading a newspaper. 
 It is not a very nice thing to talk about, but 
 you can figure for yourself how swarming with 
 lice we were when I tell you that we even had 
 them on our shoestrings and in our eyebrows. 
 
 It is real labor " reading the news," and I 
 got sick of doing it, so I figured out a way of 
 getting rid of my little friends. It was bitter 
 cold at night, so I soaked my shirt in the water- 
 bucket and then hung it on the barbed wire, 
 thinking I could freeze them out. Next morning 
 it was frozen stiff and hard as a rock, and I 
 took it back in the barracks and dried it. It 
 took a long time, and I did not see a single
 
 Kultur The Real Stuff 265 
 
 cootie. So I was all swelled up about it, and I 
 told the other fellows I had done the trick at 
 last, and the boys figured that they would have 
 the barbed wire covered with shirts every night. 
 
 But when it was dry and I had put it on, I 
 found out that you cannot freeze them. And 
 how they did kick me! I think they were hun- 
 grier than ever, because they had not had any- 
 thing to nibble at all night, and the fresh air 
 gave them an extra appetite. So there were no 
 more shirts hung out on the barbed wire. 
 
 The camp at Neustrelitz was surrounded by 
 big dogs, which were kept just outside the barbed 
 wire. We had them going all the time. Every 
 once in a while, some fellow would throw a 
 stone at a dog and he would make an awful 
 racket, and the next thing we knew, there was 
 Fritz coming like a shot, with musket at his hip, 
 just as they carry them in a charge, and blowing 
 whistles at each other until they were blue in 
 the face. Whenever they thought some one was 
 escaping, they ran twice as fast as I ever saw 
 them run, except when the Foreign Legion was 
 on their heels at Dixmude. 
 
 When they got up to the dogs, they would 
 first talk to them and then kick them, and after 
 that, they would rest their rifles on the wire 
 and yell " Zuruck! " at us. We all enjoyed 
 this innocent pastime very much, and we were 
 glad they had the dogs. 
 
 There were some things the Huns did that you 
 just could not explain. For instance, one of the 
 Eussians walked out of the ktiche, as we were
 
 266 Gunner Depew 
 
 passing, and we heard a bang! and the Russian 
 keeled over and went West. Now, he had not 
 done anything, and the other Russians said he 
 had behaved himself, worked hard and had never 
 had any trouble. They just killed him, and that 
 is all there is to it. But not one of us could 
 figure out why. 
 
 After we had been at Neustrelitz for three 
 weeks, they drilled us out of the camp to a 
 railway station, and stood us in the snow for four 
 hours waiting for the train. We were exhausted 
 and began falling, one by one, and each time one 
 of us fell, the sentries would yell, " Nicht 
 krank! " and give us the rifle butt. We had our 
 choice of standing up and dying or falling down 
 and being killed, and it was a fine choice to have 
 to make. 
 
 The cars finally pulled in, and as usual, the 
 windows were smashed, the doors open, and the 
 compartments just packed with snow. When we 
 saw this, we knew we were going to get worse 
 treatment, even, than we had been getting, and 
 many of us wanted to die. It had not been 
 unusual for some of the men to tell the Germans 
 to shoot them, at Neustrelitz, but they never 
 would when we wanted them to, and it seemed 
 as though it was always a man who wanted to 
 live who did get it and went West. 
 
 But when they were drilling us into the cars, 
 one of the men had all he could stand, so he 
 got out of the car they had just put him in, 
 and began to dance around so that they could 
 not help seeing him. A sentry yelled at him
 
 Kultur The Real Stuff 267 
 
 and started over to where he was jumping 
 around, and the Limey yelled back, " Who the 
 hell do you thing you are, you dirty German 
 
 ! " and we thought he surely would 
 
 get his. 
 
 But instead of plugging him, the sentry took 
 him by the arm and put nim in his own compart- 
 ment, and late that night gave him a cigarette 
 stub. So you see, when you want to die, they 
 will not kill you. 
 
 However, all of us nearly got killed when we 
 reached Wittenberg. When the train stopped 
 there, we saw a big wagon-load of sliced bread 
 on the station platform and we all stared at it 
 We stood it as long as we could, and then we 
 made a rush for it. But when we got nearer, 
 we saw that there were four sentries guarding 
 it and four women issuing it out to the German 
 soldiers. They would not give us any, of course. 
 
 So we stood around and watched the Huns 
 eat it, while they and the women laughed at us, 
 and pretended that they were starving and would 
 groan and rub their stomachs and say, " NicJits 
 zu essen," to each other, and then grab a big 
 hunk of bread and eat it. What we did not say 
 to them was very little indeed. We were cer- 
 tainly wild if any men ever were. 
 
 Then some of us said we were going to get 
 some of that bread if we went West for it So 
 we started a fight, and while they were attending 
 to some of us, the others grabbed and hid all 
 the bread they could. They rousted us back 
 into the cars and we were just starting to divide
 
 268 Gunner Depew 
 
 up the bread when they caught us with it and 
 took it away. We were wilder than ever then, 
 but we could not do anything. 
 
 It got colder after we left Wittenberg, and 
 the snow blew into the cars through the windows 
 and doors until we were afraid to sleep for fear 
 of freezing. It was the worst night I have ever 
 seen, and the coal bunkers on the Yarrowdaie 
 seemed like a palace compared to the compart- 
 ments, because we could at least move around 
 in the ship, while in the train we could not 
 move at all, and were packed so close that we 
 could not even stretch our legs and arms. Some 
 of the men did die, but not in my compartment, 
 though most of us were frost-bitten about the 
 face. 
 
 We thought- that night would never end, but 
 day came finally, and though it seemed to get 
 colder and colder, we did not mind it so much. 
 At about eleven that morning, we arrived at a 
 place called Minden and saw a prison camp 
 there just a stockade near the tracks with the 
 boys out in the open. We waved to them, and 
 they waved back and gave a cheer-oh or two. 
 We felt sorry for them, because we knew we 
 were not going to that camp, and from what 
 little we saw, we knew we could not be going 
 to a worse place than they were in. I shall 
 never forget Minden, because it was here that I 
 received the only cigarette I had while I was 
 in Germany. 
 
 Minden is quite a railway center, I guess, and 
 when we pulled into the depot, we saw many
 
 Kultur The Real Stuff 269 
 
 troops going to the front or coming back. As 
 at all important German railway stations, there 
 was a Eed Cross Booth on the platform, with 
 German girls handing out barley coffee and other 
 things to the German soldiers. I saw a large 
 shanty on the platform, with a Bed Cross painted 
 over the door. I saw the girls giving barley 
 coffee to the soldiers, and 1 thought I would 
 have a try at it and at least be polite enough 
 to give the girls a chance of refusing me, I 
 was refused all right, but they were so nasty 
 about it that I put down my head and let some- 
 thing slip. I do not remember just what it 
 was, but it was not very complimentary, I guess. 
 Anyhow, I did not think anyone near there 
 understood English, but evidently some one 
 heard me who did, for I got an awful boot that 
 landed me ten or twelve feet away. I fell on 
 my hands and knees, and about a yard away I 
 saw a cigarette stub. I dived for it like a man 
 falling on a football, and when I came up, that 
 stub was safely in my pocket. And it stayed 
 there until I reached Diilmen and had a chance 
 to light it behind the barracks. If any of the 
 other men had smelled real tobacco, they would 
 probably have murdered me, and I could not 
 have blamed them for it. 
 
 That was the first and the last cigarette I got 
 in Germany, and you can believe me when I say 
 that I enjoyed it. There was not much to it, 
 but I smoked it until there was not enough left 
 to hold in my mouth, and then I used what was 
 left and mixed it with the bark that we made
 
 270 Gunner Depew 
 
 cigarettes out of. Incidentally, this bark was 
 great stuff. I do not know what kind of tree 
 it was from, but it served the purpose. When- 
 ever a fellow wanted to smoke and lit one of 
 these bark cigarettes, a few puffs were enough. 
 He did not want to smoke again for some time 
 afterward, and like as not, he did not want to 
 eat either. They were therefore very valuable. 
 
 It is very hard to get matches in the camps, 
 and when any prisoner does get hold of one, 
 it is made to last a long time. Here is how we 
 make a match last. Some one gives up the sleeve 
 of his coat, and the match is carefully lit, and 
 the coat sleeve burned to a crisp. Then we 
 take a button from our coats the buttons are 
 brass with two holes in them pass a shoe- 
 string through the holes, knot the ends, and with 
 the button in the center of the string, buzz it 
 around as you have seen boys do, with the string 
 over both hands, moving the hands together and 
 apart until the button revolves very fast. 
 
 We then put a piece of flint against the crisped 
 cloth, and buzz the button against it until a spark 
 makes the crisp glow, and from this we would 
 light our bark cigarettes. I do not think any 
 man in the world could inhale one of these bark 
 cigarettes: some of us tried and went right to 
 sleep.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 A VISIT FROM ME. GERARD 
 
 Late that night we arrived at Diilmen, West- 
 phalia. "VVe were rousted out of the carriages, 
 mustered on the platform, counted, then drilled 
 through the streets. In spite of the lateness, 
 the streets were pretty well filled with people, 
 and they zig-zagged us through all the streets 
 they could, so that all the people would have a 
 chance to see the crazy men, as they called us. 
 Most of the people were women, and as soon 
 as they saw us coming, they began singing the 
 Watch on the Rhine or some other German song, 
 and it was funny to see windows opening and 
 fat fraus, with night-caps on, sticking their heads 
 out of the windows. They would give us a quick 
 once-over, and then pipe up like a boatswain: 
 "Schwewhund Vaterland Wacht am Rhein" 
 all kinds of things and all mixed up. 
 
 So we gave them " Tipperary " and " Pack 
 up Your Troubles," and showed them how to 
 sing. Our guards had no ear for music and 
 tried to stop us, but though they knocked several 
 men down, we did not stop until we had finished 
 the song. Then, after we had admitted to each 
 other that we were not downhearted, we shut up. 
 
 We would have done so, anyway, because by 
 
 271
 
 272 Gunner Depew 
 
 this time we were on the outskirts of the town, 
 and we needed all the breath we had. The road 
 we were on was just one long sheet of ice, and 
 we could hardly walk more than four steps 
 without slipping and falling. My shoes had 
 wooden soles, and it was just one bang after 
 another, with the ice and myself trying to see 
 which could hit the hardest. Every time we fell 
 smash! came a rifle over the back. 
 
 I was getting pretty tired, so I said to some 
 of the fellows that I was going to sit down and 
 rest, and they said they would be damned if 
 they did not, also. So we dropped out and 
 waited until the guards behind had just about 
 caught up with us, and then we would go on. 
 We did this several times until they got on to 
 us, and we could not do it any more. 
 
 Up the road a piece I fell again, and this 
 time I thought I did not care what happened, 
 so I just sat there in the middle of the road 
 until Fritz came up. But instead of giving me 
 the bayonet, he made me take off my shoes 
 that is, he took them off of me with a knife 
 through the strings and I had to walk the 
 rest of the way in my bare feet. It was about 
 four miles altogether from the station to the 
 camp. 
 
 When we got near the camp, all the boys came 
 out of the barracks and lined up along the 
 barbed wire, and yelled us a welcome. We asked 
 them if they were downhearted, and they said 
 no, and we said we were not either. We could 
 hardly see them, but they began yelling again
 
 A Visit from Mr. Gerard 273 
 
 when we got nearer, and asked us, " Is there 
 anyone there from Queens town? " and then Hull, 
 and Portsmouth, and Dover, and Toronto and a 
 lot of other places. 
 
 I did not pay much attention until I heard, 
 " Any Americans there? " and I yelled back, 
 " Yes, where are you? " 
 
 " Barracks 6-B, Gruppe 3." 
 
 " Where from? " I yeUed. 
 
 " Boston. Where 're you from? " 
 
 " The U. S. A. and Atlantic ports. See you 
 later. " 
 
 So, the next morning, I went over to his bar- 
 racks and asked for the Yank. They pointed 
 him out to me, where he was lying on the floor. 
 I went over and laid down with him, and we 
 had quite a talk. I will not give his name 
 here for certain reasons. 
 
 He had received several wounds at the time 
 he was taken prisoner. He had been in the 
 Canadian service for two years. We used to talk 
 about New York and Boston and the different 
 places we knew in both towns, and we also 
 talked a lot about the rotten treatment we were 
 receiving, and tried to cook up some plan of 
 escape. But every one we could think of had 
 been used by some one else, and either had 
 failed, or the Huns had fixed it so the plan 
 could not be tried again. We doped out some 
 pretty wild schemes at that. Altogether, we 
 became great pals, and were together as much 
 as possible at Diilmen. The day I left the camp, 
 he gave me a ring made from a shell, and told
 
 274 Gunner Depew 
 
 me to get it safely back to the States, but some 
 one stole it at Brandenburg. 
 
 One day while I was in his barracks, an Eng- 
 lishman stepped out of the door for some reason 
 or other, and though he did not say a word to 
 Fritz, in two minutes he was dead, in cold blood. 
 We never knew why they killed him. 
 
 At Swinemunde and Neustrelitz, I must admit 
 that the Germans had us pretty badly buffaloed, 
 but at Diilmen the prisoners were entirely dif- 
 ferent. Diilmen was the receiving camp for the 
 whole western front, and the prisoners there got 
 to be pretty tough eggs, as far as Fritz was 
 concerned, before they had been in camp many 
 days. They thought nothing of picking a fight 
 with a sentry and giving him a good battle, even 
 though he was armed with rifle and bayonet. 
 We soon learned that unless his pals are around, 
 a German will not stand by his arguments with 
 his fists. In other words, if he can out-talk you, 
 he will beat you up, but if he cannot, it is a 
 case of " Here comes Heinie going back." 
 
 The Russian prisoners at Diilmen were cer- 
 tainly a miserable looking bunch. They spent 
 most of their time wandering around the Russian 
 barracks, hunting for rotten potato peelings and 
 other garbage, which they would eat. When they 
 saw Fritz throw out his swill, they would dive 
 right through the barbed wire one after another, 
 and their hands and face and clothes were 
 always torn from it. It was unhealthy to stand 
 between the Russians and their garbage prey 
 they were BO speedy that nothing stopped them.
 
 A Visit from Mr. Gerard 275 
 
 One morning, just after barley-coffee time, I 
 came out of the barracks and saw an Australian 
 arguing with the sentry. I was not only curious, 
 but anxious to be a good citizen, as they say, 
 so I went up and slung an ear at them. The 
 Australian had asked Fritz what had been done 
 with the flag that the Huns were going to fly 
 from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. 
 
 That was too deep for Fritz, so the Australian 
 answered it himself. " Don't you know, Fritz? 
 Well, we have no blankets, you know." 
 
 Still the sentry did not get it. So the Aus- 
 tralian carefully explained to me so that Fritz 
 could hear that the Germans had no blankets 
 and were using the flag to wrap their cold feet in. 
 
 This started a fight, of course the German 
 idea of a fight, that is. The sentry, being a 
 very brave man for a German, blew his whistle 
 very loudly, and sentries came from all direc- 
 tions. So we beat it to the Australian's bar- 
 racks, and there I found the second American 
 in the camp. He was a barber named Stimson, 
 from one of the western states. He had heard 
 I was there as well as the Boston man in the 
 Canadian service, but he had been too sick to 
 look us up, and in fact did not give a damn 
 what happened, he was so miserable. He had 
 been wounded several times, and died in a day 
 or two. I never knew how he came to be in the 
 Australian service. 
 
 Those two and myself were the only Ameri- 
 cans I knew of in this prison camp whether 
 in Canadian, Australian, or French service. The
 
 276 Gunner Depew 
 
 other two had been captured in uniform, so 
 there was no chance of their being released. 
 
 Diilmen was very near the Dutch border, and 
 as it was quite easy to get out of the camp, 
 attempts at escape were frequent. Most of 
 those who ran away were brought back, though. 
 The Germans were so easy on those who tried 
 to run away that I almost thought they were 
 encouraging them. One chap was doing his ten 
 days in the guard-house for the sixth time while 
 I was there that is, he had just about com- 
 pleted his period of detention. He claimed that 
 the sixth time he had really got across the 
 border, and was arrested in a little town by the 
 Dutch authorities and turned over to the Ger- 
 mans. That is against the law in most coun- 
 tries, but he swore it was the truth. I am not 
 so sure, myself. He got away for the seventh 
 time while I was at Diilmen and was not 
 returned. 
 
 Ten days in the guard-house is not such a light 
 punishment after all, because water three times 
 a day is all the prisoner receives during that 
 time, but it is pretty mild compared to some of 
 the things the Huns do. 
 
 One morning I thought for sure I was going 
 cafard. I was just fed up on the whole business, 
 and sick of doing nothing but suffer. So I 
 strolled along, sticking my head into barracks 
 doors, sometimes trying to have a talk,, other 
 times trying to pick a fight. It was all one to 
 me: I just wanted something to do. I found 
 what I wanted, all right.
 
 A Visit from Mr. Gerard 277 
 
 I had quite a talk with a sentry in front of a 
 barracks. It must have lasted three-quarters of 
 an hour. He did not know what I was calling 
 him, and I did not know what he was calling me. 
 I could have handled him all right, but another 
 sentry came up on my blind side and grabbed 
 me, and the talk was over. 
 
 They dragged me to the commander of the 
 camp and he instructed them to give me a bath. 
 So they took me to the bath-house, where I was 
 stripped and lashed. All the time they were 
 whipping me, I was thinking what a joke it was 
 on me, because I had been looking for excitement 
 and had got more than I wanted, so I laughed, 
 and the Huns thought I was crazy sure. 
 
 Now, the Germans have a 'kind of blue salve, 
 on the order of soft soap. When you rub it on 
 your face and take it off with a stick, it gives 
 you as close a shave as any barber could. So 
 they smeared it all over me, and I quit laughing. 
 It felt like lye, where I had been lashed. I was 
 dumped into a vat of hot water, and at the same 
 time my clothes were given a boiling, which was 
 good for them. 
 
 When I came out of that bath, there was not 
 a hair on my body, except my head. I was just 
 like a peeled onion, but far weaker. And how 
 I did itch when the hair began to sprout again 
 a few days later! It was a torture that lasted, 
 I can tell you. 
 
 Then I was forced into my wet clothes and 
 marched back to the barracks. This bath and 
 the stroll through the snow in wet clothes just
 
 278 Gunner Depew 
 
 about did for me. Nowadays, when I sit in a 
 draft for a second and catch cold, I wonder 
 that I am still alive to catch it. Having gone 
 through Dixmude, and the Dardanelles, and the 
 sinking of the Georgia, and four German prison 
 camps, and a few other things I shall probably 
 trip over a hole in a church carpet and break 
 my neck. That would be my luck. 
 
 The Eussians were very fond of this blue 
 salve. As they did most of the cooking, and 
 were near the bath-houses, they had a fine 
 opportunity for stealing lots of it. What they 
 used it for I do not know, but their barracks 
 were full of it. 
 
 There were all the diseases you can think of 
 in this camp, including black cholera and typhus, 
 and somebody was always dying. We had to 
 make coffins from any wood we could find. So 
 it was not long before we were using the divid- 
 ing boards from our bunks, pieces of flooring, 
 and in fact, the walls of the barracks. The 
 officers were quartered in corrugated iron bar- 
 racks, so they had to borrow wood from us for 
 their coffins. We would make the box and put 
 the body in it, give it as much service as we 
 could, in the way of prayers and hymns, and 
 put it away in a hole near the barracks. There 
 was so much of it that a single death passed 
 unnoticed. 
 
 One morning the German sentries came to our 
 barracks they never came singly and told 
 us that an officer was going to review the pris- 
 oners, and ordered us to muster up, which we
 
 A Visit from Mr. Gerard 279 
 
 did. I was the last man out of the barracks, and 
 on account of my wounds I was slower than the 
 rest. 
 
 You understand, I had had no medical treat- 
 ment except crepe-paper bandages and water; my 
 wounds had been opened by swimming from the 
 Georgia to the Mo ewe, and they had been put 
 in terrible shape in the coal bunkers. On 
 account of the poor food and lack of treatment, 
 they had not even started to heal. Incidentally, 
 the only cloth bandages that any of us had were 
 what we would tear from our clothes, and I have 
 seen men pick up an old dirty rag that some 
 one else had had around his wound for a long 
 time, and bandage his own wounds with it. 
 
 So it was all I could do to drag myself along. 
 The officer noticed that I was out of line, and 
 immediately asked my name and nationality. 
 When he heard " American," he could not say 
 enough things about us, and called me all the 
 swine names he could think of. 
 
 I was pretty thin at this time and getting 
 thinner, so I figured I might just as well have 
 it out before I starved. Besides, I thought, he 
 ought to know that we are not used to being 
 bawled out by German swine in this country. 
 
 So I told him so. And I said that he should 
 not bawl Americans out, because America was 
 neutral. He then said that as America supplied 
 food and munitions to the Allies, she was no 
 better than the rest. 
 
 Then I said : "Do you remember the Deutsch- 
 landf When she entered Baltimore and New
 
 280 Gunner Depew 
 
 London, she got all the cargo she wanted, didn't 
 she? " 
 
 11 Yes." 
 
 * * Well, if you send over your merchant marine, 
 they will get the same." For that answer, he 
 gave me ten days in the guard-house. He did 
 not like, to be reminded that their merchant 
 marine had to dive under to keep away from 
 the Limeys. 
 
 I admit I was pretty flip to this officer, but 
 who would not be, when a slick German swine 
 officer bawled him out? 
 
 The only fun I had in the camp was while I 
 was in the guard-house. There were Belgians, 
 Frenchmen, Russians, Montenegrans, Limeys, 
 Australians, Turcos, and Canadians all talking 
 at once and trying to make themselves under- 
 stood. I could get by with the Britishers, the 
 French, the Belgians and the Russians, but the 
 Turcos and Montenegrans were beyond me. 
 Some of the Britishers could talk a little French, 
 and many of the Russians could. And quite a 
 few of the French and Belgians could talk Eng- 
 lish, and one or two knew a little Russian. But 
 no one in the bunch, except myself, knew more 
 than one language except his own, so our talks 
 were always three- or four-cornered, and the 
 last man to get the news generally had it all 
 bawled up by the time it got to him. 
 
 It was while I was in the guard-house that 
 Mr. Gerard, the American ambassador, visited 
 the camp. He came to this camp about every 
 six months, as a rule. Even in the German
 
 rO 
 
 o
 
 A Visit from Mr. Gerard 281 
 
 prison camps, the men had somehow got infor- 
 mation about Mr. Gerard's efforts to improve 
 the terrible surroundings in which the men lived. 
 Some of the men at Diilmen had been confined 
 in various other camps, and they told me that 
 when Mr. Gerard visited these camps, all that 
 the men did for a week or so afterwards was to 
 talk about his visit and what he had said to them. 
 We knew Mr. Gerard had got the Germans to 
 make conditions better in some of the worst hell- 
 holes in Germany, and the men were always glad 
 when he came around. They felt they had some- 
 thing better to look forward to, and some relief 
 from the awful misery. 
 
 Mr. Gerard was passing through the French 
 barracks, and a man I knew there told him there 
 was an American there. The Germans did not 
 want him to see me, but he put up an argument 
 with the commanding officer, and they finally 
 said he could interview me. I never was so glad 
 to see anyone as I was to see him. The picture 
 is still with me of him coming in the door. 
 We talked for about an hour and a half, I guess, 
 and then he got up to go, and he said I would 
 hear from him in about three weeks. Just think 
 what good news that was to me! 
 
 They let me out of the guard-house, and I 
 celebrated by doing all the damage to German 
 sentries that I could do. The men in the camps 
 went wild when they learned that Ambassador 
 Gerard was there, for they said he was the only 
 man in Germany they could tell their troubles 
 to. The reason was that he was strong for the
 
 282 Gunner Depew 
 
 men, no matter what nationality, and put his 
 heart into the work. I am one of those who 
 cannot say enough good things about him. Like 
 many others, if it had not been for Mr. Gerard, 
 I would be kaput by now. 
 
 A few days after this, I was slow again as 
 we were marching to the bread house, and the 
 guard at the door tripped me. When I fell, I 
 hurt my wounds, which made me hot. Now, I 
 had decided, on thinking it over, that the best 
 thing to do was to be good, since I was expecting 
 to be released, and I thought it would be tough 
 luck to be killed just before I was to be released. 
 But I had been in the American navy, and any 
 garby of the U. S. A. would have done what I 
 did. It must be the training we get, for when 
 a dirty trick is pulled off on us, we get very 
 nervous around the hands and are not always 
 able to control them. 
 
 So I went for the sentry, and walloped him 
 in the jaw. Then I received his bayonet through 
 the fleshy part of the forearm. Most bayonet 
 wounds that we got were in the arm. But those 
 arms were in front of our faces at the time. 
 The sentries did not aim for our arms, you can 
 bet on that. A wound of the kind I got would 
 be nothing more than a white streak if properly 
 attended to, but I received absolutely no atten- 
 tion for it, and it was a long time in healing. 
 At that, I was lucky; another bayonet stroke 
 just grazed my stomach. 
 
 I had been at Diilmen for three weeks when 
 we were transferred to Brandenburg, Havel,
 
 A Visit from Mr. Gerard 283 
 
 which is known as " The Hell Hole of Ger- 
 many " to the prisoners. It certainly is not too 
 strong a name for it, either. 
 
 On the way we changed trains at Osnabriick, 
 and from the station platform, I saw German 
 soldiers open up with machine guns on the 
 women and children who were rioting for food.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 " THE HELL HOLE OF GERMANY 
 
 On arriving at Brandenburg, we were marched 
 the three or four miles northwest to the camp. 
 While we were being marched through the 
 streets, a woman walked alongside of us for 
 quite a ways, talking to the boys in English and 
 asking them about the war. She said she did 
 not believe anything the German papers printed. 
 She said she was an Englishwoman, from Liver- 
 pool, and that at the outbreak of the war, not 
 being able to get out of Germany, she and her 
 children had been put in prison, and tha.t every 
 day for over a week they had put her through 
 the third degree; that her children had been 
 separated from her and that she did not know 
 where they were. 
 
 She walked along with us for several blocks, 
 until a sentry heard her say something not very 
 complimentary to the Germans, and chased her 
 away. When we arrived at the camp, we were 
 put into the receiving barracks and kept there 
 six days. The condition of these barracks was 
 not such that you could describe it. The floors 
 were actually nothing but filth. Very few of 
 the bunks remained: the rest had been torn 
 down for fuel, I suppose. 
 
 284
 
 " The HeU Hole of Germany " 285 
 
 The day we were transferred to the regular 
 prison barracks, four hundred Russians and Bel- 
 gians were buried. Most of them had died from 
 cholera, typhoid, and inoculations. We heard 
 from the prisoners there before us that the Ger- 
 mans had come through the camps with word 
 that there was an epidemic of black typhus and 
 cholera, and that the only thing for the men to 
 do was to take the serum treatment, to avoid 
 catching these diseases. Most of the four hun- 
 dred men had died from the inoculations. They 
 had taken the Germans' word, had been inocu- 
 lated, and had died within nine hours. Which 
 shows how foolish it is to believe a German. 
 None of us had any doubt but what the serum 
 was poisonous. 
 
 The second day that we were in the regular 
 camp, the Germans strung barbed wire all around 
 our barracks. They told us we had a case of 
 black typhus among us. This was nothing more 
 nor less than a bluff, for not one of us had 
 typhus, but they put up the wire, nevertheless, 
 and we were not allowed to go out. 
 
 One day when I was loafing around our bar- 
 racks door, and not having anything particu- 
 larly important to do, I packed a nice hard snow- 
 ball and landed it neatly behind the ear of a 
 little sentry not far away. When he looked 
 around, he did not blow his whistle, but began 
 hunting for the thrower. This was strange in 
 a German sentry, and I thought he must be 
 pretty good stuff. When he looked around,
 
 286 Gunner Depew 
 
 however, all he saw was a man staggering 
 around as if he were drunk. The man was the 
 one who had done the throwing, all right, but 
 the sentry could not be sure of it, for surely, 
 no man would stay out in the open and invite 
 accidents like that. But still, who had done it? 
 
 So I just kept staggering around, and the 
 sentry came up to me and looked me over pretty 
 hard. Then I thought for the first time that 
 things might go hard on me, but I figured that 
 if I quit the play-acting, it would be all over. 
 So I staggered right up to the sentry and looked 
 at him drunkenly, expecting every moment to 
 get one from the bayonet. 
 
 But he was so surprised that all he could do 
 was stare. So I stared back, pretending that 
 I saw two of him, and otherwise acting foolish. 
 Then I guess he realized for the first time that 
 the chances of anybody being drunk in that 
 camp were small -at least, for the prisoners. 
 He was rubbing his ear all the time, but finally 
 the thought seeped through the ivory and he 
 began to laugh. I laughed, too, and the first 
 thing you know he had me doing it again 
 that is, the imitation. One snowball was enough, 
 I figured. 
 
 I used to talk to him quite often after that. 
 We had no particular love for each other, but 
 he was gamer than the other sentries, and he 
 did not call me schwemhimd every time he saw 
 me, so we got on very well together. His name 
 must have been Schwartz, I guess, but it sounded
 
 " The HeU Hole of Germany ' 287 
 
 like " Swatts " to me, so Swatts he was, and 
 I was " Chink " to him, as everybody else called 
 me that. 
 
 One day he asked me if I could speak French, 
 and I said yes. Italian; yes. Russian; yes. No 
 matter what language he might have mentioned, 
 I would have said yes, because I could smell 
 something in the wind, and I was curious. Then 
 he told me that if I went to the hospital and 
 worked there, I might get better meals and 
 would not have to go so far for them, and that 
 my knowing all the languages I said I did would 
 help me a great ways toward getting the job. 
 
 Evidently he had been told to get a man for 
 the place, because he appointed me to it then 
 and there. He put me to work right away. 
 We went over to one of the barracks, where a 
 case of sickness had been reported, and found 
 that the invalid was a big Barbadoes negro 
 named Jim, a fireman from the Voltaire. At 
 one time Jim must have weighed 250 pounds, 
 but by this time, he was about two pounds 
 lighter than a straw hat, but still black and full 
 of pep. Light as he was, I was no " white 
 hope/* and it was all I could do to carry him to 
 the hospital. Swatts kept right along behind 
 me, and every time I would stop to rest, he would 
 poke me with a broom the only broom I saw 
 in Germany and laugh and point to his ear. 
 
 Then I thought it was a frame-up and that 
 he was getting even with me, but I was in for 
 it then, and the best I could do was to go through 
 with it. But I was all in when we reached the
 
 288 Gunner Depew 
 
 hospital. The first thing I saw when we got in 
 the door was another negro, also from Barba- 
 does, and as tall and thin as Jim had once been 
 short and fat. This black boy and I made a 
 great team, but I never knew what his name was. 
 I always called him Kate, because night and day 
 he was whistling the old song, " Kate, Kate, 
 Meet Me at the Garden Gate,'* or words to that 
 effect. I have waked up many 'a night and 
 heard that whistle just about at the same place 
 as when I had fallen asleep. It would not have 
 been so bad if he had known all of it. 
 
 I took Swatts' broom and cleaned up, and 
 then asked where the coal or wood was. This 
 got a great laugh. It was quite humorous to 
 the men who had shivered there for weeks, 
 maybe, but to me it was about as funny as a 
 cry for help. I got wood, though, before I had 
 been there long. 
 
 There was a great big cupboard, that looked 
 more like a small house, built against the wall 
 of the hospital barracks in one corner of the 
 room, and not far from the stove. Kate was 
 the only patient able to be on his feet, so I 
 thought he would have to be my chief-cook and 
 bottle-washer for a while; .and besides, there was 
 something about him that made him look pretty 
 valuable. I had not recognized his whistling 
 yet, so Slim looked to be the right name for him. 
 " Slim, what's that big cupboard for? ' 
 " How'd I know? Nuthin' in it." 
 " Slim, that would make a fine box for coal 
 or wood, wouldn't it? "
 
 o 
 
 *. 
 <o 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 Si 
 o 
 
 >
 
 " Um. Whar de coal an' wood? " 
 "I'm going out and take observations, Slim. 
 Take the wheel while I'm gone, and keep your 
 eye peeled for U-boats." So I sneaked out the 
 door, and began looking around. 
 
 If you look at the sketch I have made, it will 
 not take you long to see that next to us was a 
 vacated Russian barracks. And it did not take 
 me much longer to see it, too. Back to the 
 hospital and Slim. 
 
 " Slim, what barracks are next to us? " 
 " Russian burracks, only dey ain't dere now. 
 Been sick." 
 
 " And you mean to tell me you don't know 
 where to get wood? " 
 " Sick men been in dem burrucks." 
 " Sick men here, aren't there? Let's go." 
 That did the trick. The black boy would 
 watch from the hospital windows until he saw 
 the coast was clear, then we would slip into the 
 barracks next door, and he would watch again. 
 When there was no sentry near enough to hear 
 us, crash! and out would come a dividing board 
 from the bunks. When we had an armful apiece, 
 and had broken them up to the right lengths, all 
 we needed was a little more watching, and then 
 back to the hospital and the big cupboard. Later 
 on, our men told me they used to watch the 
 smoke that poured from the hospital chimney all 
 the time, and wonder where on earth we got the 
 wood. 
 
 We got the same kind of food in the hospital 
 that was served in the other barracks, and I
 
 292 Gunner Depew 
 
 would not have had any more than I used to, 
 except that sometimes, some of the twenty-six 
 patients could not eat their share, and then, 
 of course, it was mine. One day, though, we all 
 had extra rations. 
 
 Two Russian doctors came to visit us each 
 day, and once they were foolish enough, or kind 
 enough, to ask if we had received our rations 
 we had received them earlier than usual and they 
 were finished at the time. Of course, I said 
 no, so they ordered the Russian in the kitchen 
 to deliver twenty-eight rations to us, which was 
 not quite three loaves of bread. We were that 
 much ahead that day, but it would not work 
 when I tried the trick again. 
 
 One day a German doctor came to the hospital 
 barracks. He would not touch anything while 
 he was there not even open the door. All 
 of the patients had little cards attached to their 
 beds charts of their condition. When the Ger- 
 man wanted to see these charts, the Russian 
 doctors had to hold them for him. 
 
 I was having a great time at the hospital, 
 wrecking the barracks next door each day for 
 wood, along with Kate, and getting a little more 
 food sometimes, and was always nice and warm. 
 I thought myself quite a pet. Compared to what 
 I had been up against, it seemed like real com- 
 fort. But the more food I got, the more I 
 wanted. And it was food that brought me down, 
 after all. 
 
 Across from us, was a barracks in which there 
 were English officers, and somehow it seemed
 
 " The HeU Hole of Germany " 293 
 
 to me that they must have had a drag. Every 
 once in a while, I saw what looked like vegeta- 
 bles, and bags of something that was a dead 
 ringer for brown flour. So I told Slim, or Kate, 
 as I was calling him by then, and with him on 
 guard, I sneaked out. 
 
 After two or three false starts, I got over our 
 barbed wire and their barbed wire, and in 
 through a window. 
 
 There I saw carrots ! And graham flour 1 
 
 I took all I could carry, to divide up with 
 Kate, and then started eating, so as not to waste 
 anything. It was certainly some feast the only 
 thing besides mud bread and barley coffee and 
 " shadow " soup that I had to eat in Germany. 
 Then I started back to the hospital. I got over 
 their barbed wire all right, and Kate gave me 
 the go-ahead for our entanglements, but just as 
 I was going over them, a sentry nabbed me. 
 At first I thought Kate had turned traitor, 
 because we had had a little argument a short 
 time before, when I got tired of his whistling 
 and told him to eat a little cuttle-fish and begin 
 moulting. 
 
 But later on, I figured that he would not have 
 done a trick like that, and besides, he knew I 
 was bringing him something to eat. So the 
 sentry must have sneaked up without Kate seeing 
 him. Who got the carrots and graham flour that 
 I was carrying, I do not know. The sentries 
 booted me all the way back to my old barracks.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 DESPAIE AND FREEDOM 
 
 While I was working at the hospital, conditions 
 at my old barracks had been getting worse and 
 worse. Very few of the men were absolutely 
 right in the head, I guess, and almost all had 
 given up hope of ever getting out alive. Though 
 they put up a good front to the Huns, they really 
 did not care a great deal what happened to 
 them. The only thing to think about was the 
 minute they were living in. 
 
 The day I came back, two Englishmen, who 
 had suddenly gone mad, commenced to fight each 
 other. It was the most terrible fight I have ever 
 seen. It was some time before the rest of us 
 could make them quit, because at first, we did 
 not know they were crazy. When we had them 
 down, however, they were scratched and bitten 
 and pounded from head to foot. Both of them 
 bled from the nose all that night, and toward 
 morning, one of them became sane for a few 
 minutes and then died. The other was taken 
 away by the Germans, still crazy. 
 
 Another time an Australian came into our 
 barracks, and very seriously told us that he had 
 a drag with the German officers and that he had 
 been to dinner with them, and had had turkey, 
 
 294
 
 Despair and Freedom 295 
 
 potatoes, coffee, butter, eggs, sugar in his coffee, 
 and all the luxuries you could think of. We 
 just sat and stared at him. It seemed impos- 
 sible that any of our own men would have the 
 gall to torture us like that, and yet, we could 
 not possibly believe that it had really happened. 
 Finally, one fellow could not stand it any longer. 
 He was nothing but skin and bones, but he 
 grabbed a dividing board and there were just 
 two wallops: the board hit the Australian's head, 
 and the head hit the floor. Then half a dozen 
 more bounced onto him and gave him a real 
 licking. When he came to, he had forgotten all 
 about the wonderful dinner he did not have. 
 
 Not long after this, the Russian doctors proved 
 to the Germans that there was no black typhus 
 in our barracks, and we were allowed the free- 
 dom of the camp, except that we could not visit 
 the Russian barracks. That was no hardship to 
 me, nor to the rest of us, except one chap from 
 the Cambrian Range, who had a special pal 
 among the Russians that he wanted to see. And 
 of course, when it was verboten, he wanted to see 
 him all the more. 
 
 A day or two after the order, I was standing 
 outside the barracks door when I saw this fellow 
 come out, with a dividing board in his hand. I 
 thought he was going to smash somebody with 
 it, so I stood by. But he stooped over and 
 jammed one end of the board against the 
 threshold of the door, scratched the ground 
 with the farther end of the board, and 
 measured again. He kept this up, length by
 
 296 Gunner Depew 
 
 length, in the direction of the Russian barracks. 
 The sentry in the yard stopped and stared at 
 him, but the fellow kept right on, paying no 
 attention to anybody. Pretty soon, he was right 
 by the sentry's feet and I thought any minute 
 the sentry would give him the butt, but he just 
 stared a while and let him pass. That lad meas- 
 ured the whole distance to the Russian barracks, 
 went inside, stayed a while, and calmly strolled 
 back with the board under his arm. When he 
 reached our barracks again, he told us he had 
 found a vino mine. What he really had found 
 was something not so unusual a boneheaded 
 German. 
 
 There was a lot of bamboo near the Russian 
 barracks, and the Russians made baskets out of 
 it and turned them in to the Germans. For 
 this they got all the good jobs in the kitchen, 
 and had a fine chance to get more to eat. But 
 they were treated like dogs that is, all except 
 the few Cossacks that were in the bunch. The 
 Huns knew that a Cossack never forgets, and 
 will get revenge for the slightest mistreatment, 
 even if it means his death. I have seen sentries 
 turn aside from the beat they were walking, and 
 get out of the way when they saw a Cossack 
 coming. There were very few Cossacks there, 
 however. I do not think they let themselves 
 get captured very often. 
 
 We had roll call every morning, of course, 
 and were always mustered in front of our bar- 
 racks, the middle of the line being right at the 
 barracks door. Sometimes when the cold got
 
 Despair and Freedom 297 
 
 too much for them, the men nearest the door 
 would duck into the barracks. As they left the 
 ranks, the other men would close up and this 
 kept the line even, with the center still opposite 
 the barracks door. Finally, almost all of the 
 men would be in the barracks, and by the time 
 the roll was over, not one remained outside. 
 This seemed to peeve the German officers a great 
 deal, but they did not punish us for it until we 
 had been doing it for some time. 
 
 For several days I had noticed that some one 
 else answered for two men who had disappeared ; 
 at least, I had not seen them for some time. I 
 did not think much about it, or ask any ques- 
 tions, and I did not hear anyone else talk about 
 it, but I was pretty sure the two men, a Russian 
 and a Britisher, had escaped. But they were 
 marked present at roll call, and all accounted for. 
 Everything went along very well, until one day 
 when the name l ' Fontaine ' ' got by without being 
 answered. Fontaine was a French fireman from 
 the Cambrian Range, and that was the first time 
 he had not been present. We saw what was 
 coming, and we began to get pretty sore at Fon- 
 taine for not telling us, so we could answer for 
 him and keep the escape covered. 
 
 The minute they found our count one short, 
 they blew the whistles, and a squad of sentries 
 came up as an extra guard. They counted us 
 again, but by sneaking back of the line and 
 closing up again, we made the count all right 
 except for one man Fontaine. We would have 
 tried to cover up for him, except that they had
 
 298 . Gunner Depew 
 
 already discovered his absence. Now, we thought, 
 they will nab Fontaine but will not discover the 
 escape of the others. 
 
 But evidently they suspected something, for 
 soon they brought over a petty officer from 
 H. M. S. Nomad, who had not been with us 
 before, and forced him to call the roll from the 
 mustering papers, while they watched the men 
 as they answered. Then they discovered that 
 two more besides Fontaine were missing, and 
 began to search for them. 
 
 The other two spoke German and had been 
 missing for at least three days, and, I think, had 
 escaped by this time. They were not returned 
 while I was at Brandenburg. 
 
 This was about 7 a. m. They drilled us 
 down to the little lake, where the cold was much 
 greater, and kept us there until 5 p. m., with- 
 out food or drink. At about 8 that morning 
 they found Fontaine in a French barracks, and 
 kicked him all the way to the lake where we were. 
 
 All day long we stood there, falling one by 
 one and getting kicked or beaten each time, until 
 we dragged ourselves up again. Two or three 
 died I do not know the exact number. But we 
 had enough strength, when ordered back to the 
 barracks, to kick Fontaine ahead of us all the 
 way. We did not get anything to eat until 7 the 
 next morning twenty-four hours without food 
 and water, ten of which were spent in the snow 
 without any protection from the cold and wind. 
 No wonder we kicked Fontaine for bringing this 
 punishment on us and endangering the two who
 
 Despair and Freedom 299 
 
 had escaped lie had simply strolled over to 
 the French barracks and forgot to return. 
 
 Now, the food received was just about enough 
 to keep us alive. I suppose, with true kultur, 
 the Huns had figured out just how much it would 
 take to keep a man on this side of the starvation 
 line, and gave us that much and no more. So 
 we were always famished always hungrier 
 than you probably ever have been. But some- 
 times when we were ravenously hungry and could 
 not hold out any longer, we would trade rations. 
 
 One man would trade his whole ration for the 
 next day for a half ration today. That is, if you 
 you were so hungry that you thought you could 
 not last out the day on your regular share, you 
 would tell some one else that if he gave you 
 half his share today, you would give him all of 
 yours tomorrow. If he was a gambler, he would 
 take you up. That is, he would gamble on his 
 being alive tomorrow, not on your keeping your 
 word. He knew you would come across with 
 your ration the next day, and like as not, if you 
 tried to keep it from him, he would kill you, 
 and nobody would blame him. 
 
 It certainly was hard, when the next day came, 
 to give up your whole ration and go without 
 that day. But I never saw a man hedge, or 
 even speak of it. And we did not have any 
 food pirates among us either: we were not cap- 
 tains of industry by any means. 
 
 There were times when some of us could not 
 eat certain of our rations. For instance, many 
 and many a time I was as hungry as anybody
 
 300 Gunner Depew 
 
 could be, and I wanted to eat my mud bread, but 
 it seemed as if I could not get it into my mouth. 
 Then I would trade it with some one else for 
 his " shadow " soup, or his barley coffee. 
 
 We were dying every day in Brandenburg, and 
 after each death, the senior men of that barracks 
 would detail twelve of their number to go out 
 for half an hour and dig the grave, while others 
 made little crosses, on which they wrote or 
 carved the man's name, when he was captured, 
 and his regiment or ship. In the middle of the 
 cross was always the letters, R. I. P. Eest in 
 Peace. 
 
 One time we were ordered to report to the 
 German doctors for a serum treatment of some 
 kind to receive an injection, in other words. 
 There was no choice about it this time, as we 
 were simply herded together to the hospital 
 barracks. Now, I knew what these things were 
 like, and how brutal the German doctors were 
 in giving an injection, so I wanted to be the very 
 first man and not have to witness the other men 
 getting theirs. 
 
 So I pushed up to the head of the line, with 
 the crew of H. M. S. Nomad, who had been 
 captured in the Jutland battle, and by the time 
 we got to the hospital, was the very first man 
 in line. But the sentry threw me back, and 
 there were several men ahead of me. 
 
 Each of them bared his chest, and the doctors 
 slashed them across the breast with a very thin 
 knife, so you can see that it was very painful. 
 When it came to my turn, they slashed me three
 
 Despair and Freedom 301 
 
 times in the shape of a triangle just to one 
 side of the breast. And that was all there was 
 to it: no injection, nothing on the knife that I 
 could see. But it hurt like hell. 
 
 Now, I do not know what the idea was. Every 
 man of us was dizzy for the rest of the day, and 
 could not do anything but lay around the bar- 
 racks. And hardly any of us bled a drop, though 
 the gashes were deep. I do not think we had 
 any blood in us to run, and that is the truth 
 of it. It was just another German trick that no 
 one could explain. 
 
 One day a war correspondent named Bennett, 
 from a Chicago paper, came to the camp, and 
 went through all the barracks. When he came 
 to our barracks, I told him I was an American 
 and asked for the news. Instead of answering, 
 he began to ask all sorts of questions. Finally, 
 after I had told him I had been in the French 
 service, I asked him if he could help me in any 
 way. He answered that I had only myself to 
 blame, and that it served me right, if I had 
 been in one of the Allied armies. 
 
 I did not like his looks much, and he seemed 
 unfriendly, but when he began smoking a ciga- 
 rette, it almost drove me crazy, and I could not 
 help asking for one. He refused me, and said I 
 should have stayed in my own country, where 
 I could have had plenty of cigarettes. 
 
 After a while he threw away a cigarette stub, 
 and not only I but three or four others, who 
 were near, made a dive for it. A man named 
 Kelley got it a crazy man who went around
 
 302 Gunner Depew 
 
 trying to eat wood and cloth and anything he 
 could find. 
 
 When my three weeks were up and I had not 
 heard from Mr. Gerard, I was just about ready 
 to go down to the lake and pick out a vacant 
 spot and lay down in it. I really do not think 
 I could have lasted two weeks longer. And just 
 about that time, as I was walking back to bar- 
 racks one day, a Frenchman showed me a Ger- 
 man newspaper, and there, in large type, on the 
 top of the first page, it said that Mr. Gerard had 
 left the country, or was getting ready to leave.* 
 They had to drag me the rest of the way to the 
 barracks, and throw snow on me before I came to. 
 
 I do not know what happened during the next 
 few days. 
 
 But a week or so later, the Spanish ambassador 
 and four German officers and Swatts came to our 
 barracks, and the ambassador told me I would 
 be released! It was all I could do to keep from 
 fainting again. Then Swatts asked me in Eng- 
 lish if I had anything to say about the treatment 
 in the camp, and I began to think maybe it was 
 a frame-up of some kind, so all I said was, 
 " When will I get out of here? " and he said, 
 *' Why, you will be released tomorrow." 
 
 I did not wait to hear any more, but rushed 
 
 Gunner Depew's interview with Mr. Gerard took place at 
 the Diilmen prison-camp on or about February 1, 1917. On Feb- 
 ruary 3, our State Department demanded the release of sixty- 
 two Americans captured on British vessels and held as prison- 
 ers in Germany. On the same day, President Wilson severed 
 diplomatic relations with Germany. Ambassador Gerard left 
 Germany exactly one week later. The newspaper that Gunner 
 Depew saw must have been issued after February 10. It was 
 not until March 9, 1917, however, that Gunner Depew was 
 actually released from Brandenburg. EDITOR'S NOTE.
 
 Despair and Freedom 303 
 
 into the barracks again, singing and whistling 
 and yelling as loud as I could. The boys told 
 me my face was very red, and I guess what 
 little blood I had in my body had rushed to my 
 head, because I could hardly walk for a few 
 minutes. 
 
 Then the men began to think I was crazy, and 
 none of them believed I would really be released, 
 but that I was going to be sent to the mines, as 
 so many were. But I believed it, and I just sat 
 there on my bunk and began to dream of the 
 food I would get, and what I would eat first, and 
 so on. 
 
 I did not go to sleep that night just walked 
 from barracks to barracks until they chased me 
 away, and then walked up and down in my own 
 barracks the rest of the night. When I got to 
 the Russian barracks and told the two doctors 
 my news, they would not believe me at all, 
 although they knew there had been some impor- 
 tant visitor at the camp 
 
 But when I walked out of their door, I said, 
 " Dobra vetshq,v," which means " Good night! " 
 Then they must have believed me, for they called 
 me back, and all the men gave me addresses of 
 people to write to, in case I should get away. 
 
 They were all talking at once, and one of the 
 doctors got very excited and got down on his 
 knees with his hands in the air. " Albert," he 
 said, " if you have the God-given luck to get 
 out of Germany not for my sake, but for the 
 sake of us who are here in this hell-hole, promise 
 me you will tell all the people wherever you go
 
 304 Gunner Depew 
 
 what they are doing to us here. Tell them not 
 to send money, for we can't eat money, and not 
 meat just bread, bread, bread " 
 
 And when I looked around, all the men were 
 sitting on their beds, crying and tearing their 
 hair and saying, " bread, bread, bread," over 
 and over again. Then each tried to give me 
 something, as if to say that even if they did not 
 get out, perhaps thfcir button or belt or skull-cap 
 would get back to civilization. 
 
 When I left their barracks, I began to cry, 
 because it did not seem possible that I was 
 going away, and already I could see them starv- 
 ing slowly, just as I had been starving. 
 
 The next morning a sentry came to my bar- 
 racks, called out my name and took me to the 
 commander of the camp. They searched me, and 
 then drilled me back to barracks again. Then 
 the men all thought they were just playing a 
 joke on me, and they said so. 
 
 The same thing happened the next day, and 
 when one of the men said that probably I would 
 be slammed up against a wall and shot, I began 
 to feel shaky, I can tell you. 
 
 But the third morning, after they had searched 
 me, the commander said, " Well, you'll have to 
 have a bath before you leave the country," and 
 I was so glad that I did not mind about the 
 bath, although I remembered the last one I had, 
 and it did not agree very well with me. After 
 the bath, they drilled me out into the road. 
 
 There were four sentries with me, but not 
 Swatts, nor did I see him anywhere around, for
 
 Despair and Freedom 305 
 
 which I was sorry. But all the boys came down 
 to the barbed wire, or to the gate, and some were 
 crying, and others were cheering, and all of them 
 were very much excited. But after a minute or 
 two, they got together again and the last thing 
 I heard was the song about packing up your old 
 kit bag, and then, " Are we downhearted! 
 No! " They were certainly game lads. 
 
 They did not take me straight to the station, 
 but took me through all the streets they could 
 find, and as usual, the women were there with 
 the bricks and spit. But I did not mind: I was 
 used to it, and besides, it was the last time. So 
 I just grinned at them, and thought that I was 
 better off than they, because they had to stay in 
 the hole called Germany. 
 
 I was still half naked, but I did not mind the 
 two-hour wait on the station platform. I noticed 
 a little sign that read, " Berlin 25 miles north," 
 and that was the first time I had much of an 
 idea where Brandenburg was. 
 
 When we got into the compartment and I 
 found that the windows were not smashed, I 
 could not believe it at first, until I remembered 
 that this was not a prisoner-train. We had a 
 forty-eight hour ride to Lindau, which is on the 
 Lake of Constance, and no food or water in 
 that time. But still I did not mind it much. 
 At Lindau, they drilled me into a little house, 
 and took away all the addresses that I had, 
 and then marched me over to the little boat 
 which crosses the lake. 
 
 As I started up the gangway, the last thing
 
 306 Gunner Depew 
 
 I received in Germany reached me a crack 
 across the back with a rifle! 
 
 The women and children on the dock had their 
 fists up and were yelling, " American swine! " 
 But I just laughed at them. And when I looked 
 around the boat and saw no German soldiers 
 only Swiss civilians I rubbed my eyes and 
 could not believe it. When they gave me bread, 
 which was what I had decided I wanted most 
 of all back in the camp, I thought I was in 
 heaven sure enough, and when, forty-five minutes 
 later, we arrived at Rorschach in Switzerland, 
 I finally knew I was free.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 BACK IN THE STATES 
 
 After I arrived at Horseback, I was taken to 
 a large hall, where I remained over night There 
 were three American flags on the walls, the 
 first I had seen in a long time. I certainly did 
 a fine job of sleeping that night. I think I 
 slept twice as fast to make up for lost time. 
 
 In the morning I had a regular banquet for a 
 breakfast eggs, coffee, bread and a small glass 
 of wine. Even now, although I never pass up 
 a meal, that breakfast is still easy to taste, and 
 I sometimes wish I could enjoy another meal 
 as much. But I guess I never shall have one 
 that goes as good. 
 
 After breakfast they took me out on the steps 
 of the hall and photographed me, after which 
 I went to the railway station, with a young mob 
 at my heels. It reminded me a bit of Germany 
 it was so different. Instead of bricks and 
 bayonet jabs, the mob gave me cigarettes and 
 chocolate and sandwiches. They also handed me 
 questions enough to keep me busy answering 
 to this day if I could. 
 
 I got on the train to Zurich, and at every 
 stop on the way there were more presents and 
 more cameras and more questions. At St. 
 
 307
 
 308 Gunner Depew 
 
 Gallon, they had cards ready for me to write 
 on, and then they were going to send them to 
 anybody I wished. The station at Ziirich was 
 packed with people, and I began to think I was 
 a star for sure. 
 
 Francis B. Keene, the American consul-general 
 at Zurich, and his assistant, were there to meet 
 me. We walked a few blocks to his office, and 
 all the way, the cameras were clicking and the 
 chocolates and cigarettes piling up until I felt 
 like Santa Claus on December 24th. After a 
 little talk with Mr. Keene, he took me to the 
 Stussehof Hotel, where my wounds were dressed 
 and believe me, they needed it. 
 
 The Swiss certainly treated me well. Every 
 time I came out on the streets they followed me 
 around, and they used to give me money. But 
 the money might just as well have been leather 
 or lead I could not spend it. Whenever I 
 wanted to buy anything, the shopkeeper would 
 make me a present of it. 
 
 I also visited the Hotel Baur au Lac, the home 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Harold McConnick of Chicago, 
 who are doing such fine work with the Bed 
 Cross and are looking after the Belgian and 
 French refugees in Switzerland. It was a din- 
 ner, and much appreciated by one guest, at least. 
 I need not mention his name, but he ate so 
 much that he felt ashamed afterwards. 
 
 I do not think he got in bad for it, though, for 
 afterwards Mr. and Mrs. McConnick each gave 
 him a valuable present, which he needed badly. 
 After the dinner Mrs. McConnick made a little
 
 SEAMAN'S IDKNTIHIYFIOX CKRTIFICAT 
 
 (To be limed only I" scamtt, uming American citizenship.) 
 (See General InslructiiXNo. 474. July >2. 1916.1 
 
 cocr over right arc 
 
 Tins ,,ai*r IH i>, u ,l For pur|.,i^- f.l temj 
 
 identification only, uutil the holder is able 
 Ti, upon producing tin necessary <ioruuieiitarv 
 
 my signature and the seal of tin- ',{<>* tlii.-- 
 
 
 
 
 ,< 
 
 enient concernii7^))8 birthplace, residence (nstaralitati
 
 Back in the States 309 
 
 patriotic speech, in which she said that the Huns 
 would never trample on the United States flag, 
 and some other things that made all the Ameri- 
 cans there very proud, especially Mr. Keene and 
 myself. So you can see I was having a great 
 time. 
 
 But the crowd that I drew was nothing to the 
 mob that followed a big negro all around. I do 
 not know who he was, and when we talked, I 
 could not understand him, but he certainly was 
 the F. X. Bushman of that place. Wherever I 
 saw a big crowd of people, I knew he was in 
 the middle of it, and when I caught sight of 
 him, he was sure to have both hands loaded with 
 presents. I figured that negroes were scarce in 
 Switzerland. What a treat it would be for a 
 Swiss to visit the black belt down south! 
 
 But I was having a little trouble, all the time, 
 for this reason : there were quite a few Germans 
 interned in Zurich, and they went about in uni- 
 form. Now, when I saw one of these birds and 
 remembered what had been happening to me just 
 a short time before, my hands began to itch. 
 Believe me, it was not " good morning " that 
 I said to them. I enjoyed it all right; they were 
 not in squads and had no arms, so it was hand 
 to hand, and pie for me. 
 
 But Mr. Keene did not like it, I guess, for he 
 called me to his office one morning and bawled 
 me out for a while, and I promised to be good. 
 " You're supposed to be neutral," he said. And 
 I said, " Yes, and when I was torpedoed and 
 taken prisoner, I was supposed to be neutral,
 
 310 Gunner Depew 
 
 too." But I said I would not look for trouble 
 any more, and started back to the hotel. 
 
 But no sooner was I under way than a Hun 
 private came along and began to laugh at me. 
 My hands itched again, and I could not help but 
 slam him a few. We went round and round for 
 a while, and then the Hun reversed and went 
 down instead. Mr. Keene saw us, or heard about 
 it, so he told me I had better go to Berne. 
 
 So off I went, with my passport. But the 
 same thing happened in Berne. I tried very 
 hard, but I just could not keep my hands off 
 the Germans. So I guess everybody thought it 
 was a good thing to tell me good-bye anyway, 
 I was shipped into France, going direct to St. 
 Nazaire and from there to Brest. 
 
 I made a short trip to Hull, England, with a 
 letter from a man at Brandenburg to his wife. 
 She was not at home, but I left the letter and 
 returned to France. I was in France altogether 
 about three weeks, and then went to Barcelona, 
 Spain. 
 
 There I met Jack Johnson, the negro prize 
 fighter, and went to a bull fight with him. He 
 has been run out of several countries, and it may 
 be that he has left Spain by this time. He was 
 in the insurance business there, but did not seem 
 to be very popular. About the first thing he 
 asked me was, " How's Chicago? " and as I 
 had never been there at the time, I could not 
 give him very much dope. I did not advise 
 him to return to the States. 
 
 Then, I took passage for the States on the
 
 Back in the States 311 
 
 C. Lopez y Lopez, a Spanish merchantman. We 
 had mostly " Spigs " on board, which is navy 
 slang for Spaniards. Almost every one of them 
 had a large family of children and a raft of 
 pets. We sailed down through Valencia, Almeria, 
 Malaga, Cadiz, and Las Palmas in the Canary 
 Islands. When we left Las Palmas, we had a 
 regular menagerie aboard parrots, canary 
 birds, dogs, monkeys and various beasts. The 
 steerage of that boat was some sight, believe me. 
 
 We had boat drill all the way across, of course, 
 and from the way those Spigs rushed about, I 
 knew that if a submarine got us, the only thing 
 that would be saved would be monkeys. But 
 we did not even have a false alarm all the way 
 over. 
 
 I arrived in New York during the month of 
 July, 1917 two years and a half from the 
 time I decided to go abroad to the War Zone 
 to get some excitement. I got it, and no mis- 
 take. New York harbor and the old Statue of 
 Liberty looked mighty good to me, you can bet. 
 
 So here I am, and sometimes I have to pinch 
 myself to be sure of it. I certainly enjoy the 
 food and warmth I get here, and except for 
 an occasional pro-German, I have no trouble 
 with anybody. My wounds break open once in 
 a while, and I am often bothered inside, on 
 account of the gas I swallowed. They say I 
 cannot get back into the service. It is tough 
 to be knocked out before our own boys get into 
 the scrap. 
 
 But I do not know. I am twenty-three years
 
 312 Gunner Depew 
 
 old, and probably have a lot to live yet. I gueee 
 I ought to settle down and be quiet for a while, 
 but comfortable as I am, I think I will have to 
 go to sea again. I think of it many times, and 
 each time it is harder to stay ashore.
 
 ie fighting, laughing Jimerican bailor DOif 
 
 unne- 
 
 Bynimse 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 757 765 3 
 
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