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Show j GUNNER MPEWl S ' By Ex-Gunner and Chief Petty Officer, U.rS. Navy 1 SI A T TTZT2T TT IFTr:i; 7 Member of the Foreign Legion of France Ei LLfi5lx A IN. JjJbJrJb W CaPtain Gu" Turret, French Battleship Cassard i Winner of the Croix de Guerre . Copyright, 1918, by Rellly and Brltton Co., Throngh Speaial Arrangement With the George Matthew Adams Service :!.i"iiii!iniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiini;iii;iiiii!iii!niiiii!ni!iniiii!iini!iMi!!iiii:iiiiiniiiniiiiiiiniiiKHiiii!M!iiiiMiiiiiiiini ummmmimM ..........,,..,.,.,, T '3 CHAPTER XIV Continued. 13 When I looked around I saw that our real position was to the right of where the artillery wan, and that there were three lines of trenches with French Infantry In them. So the trenches I had come from were more like outposts thun anything else, and were cut off. I felt pretty sure, then, that the hoys In them would never come hack alive, because as soon as their tiro let up the Turks would advance, ad-vance, and to keep them hack 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 ollicer had said nnd I figured I would have to go back and stay with them or bring them back. Kither way there whs not one chance In a hundred that any of us would make It. Because when I got through It was really just b miracle and nobody would have thought It could happen. Then the ollicer 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? Iiut there was rough work still ahead of me, because when I got behind 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 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, nnd was so weak I could not have choked a goldfish. gold-fish. I do not remember hardly anything any-thing about going through that field, nnd you might say the nest 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 Kip Van Winkle nap then, but the officer in command would not let me. lie said they were short of gunners the terrific 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 nie to the beach as fast as possible, possi-ble, lie spotted the two warehouses I have spoken of for me and said it .was up to us to put them out of commission. com-mission. The gun was a 14-inch naval, nnd that looked good to me, so I liucked up a lot. The warehouses were about 10 or 11 miles away, I should judge, and about 30 or 40 yards apart, i I felt very weak, as I have said, nnd 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 ollicer told me to let her ride. So I said to myself, "This is one for you, Murray, old boy. Let's go from -here." So I sent that one along and she lauded direct and the warehouse went So 1 Sent That One Along, and She Landed Direct. np In fire and smoke. I felt good then, nnd I laid the wires on the other warehouse ware-house 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, any-body, just for luck, because I sure have had plenty of It today." Then the juice came through the wires and into the charge, and away she went, and up weut the second warehouse. That made two directs out uf three, and I guess It hurt the Turks some to lose all their ammunition. The officer kissed me before I could flack and slapped me on the back and I keeled over. X was just all In. They broug'n me to with rum, and niey said I was singing when I came :o. When they tried to sing, to show : what song it was, I figured it v.d.3 v t Adeline" they meant But I do not believe I came to, singing, because be-cause I never sung "Sweet Adeline" before, that I know of, or any other song when anybody was in range. But I heard it lots of times, so maybe I did sing it at that-Then 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 lifeboats 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 Cassard, and one boat was overturned, over-turned, 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 Cas-sard's Cas-sard's bows and came up on the starboard star-board side, which was unusual. But I did not think anything of it until I came over the side. There were the side boys lined up, and the Old Man was there, with the ship's steward beside him. He took the log book from the steward stew-ard and showed .lt 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 opposite. op-posite. 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 W'hether it was for going back from those trenches or for destroying the storehouses. So I always tell them I got it for working overtime. 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. 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 or-dered 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, Mur-ray, 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 sing-ing all the time. I ,,.1 -'' CHAPTER XV. Je Suis Blesse. As usual, when we got to Brest there was rush work day and night on the Cassard to get her out and supplies of all kinds were loaded for our next visit to the Turks. The French garbles gar-bles were always keen for the trip back to Brest they were sure of loading load-ing up on tobacco and other things they needed. My twelfth trip to the Dardanelles was different from the others. The Cassard was doing patrol work at the time in the neighborhood of Cape Helles. Those of us who had served on the Peninsula before were thanking thank-ing our stars for the snap we were having just cruising around waiting for something to happen, i, We had not been there very long before be-fore something unexpected did happen, for we ran into two enemy cruisers which I afterwards heard were the Werft and Kaiserliche Marine 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 hot time from the start, though with any kind of gunnery they should have done for us thoroughly. We came right back at them and were getting in some pretty good shots. I was in the 14-inch gun turret, starboard star-board bpw my old hangout and v were letting them have it about feur shots every five minutes and scWag heavily. I do not know how long we h?a been fighting when part of our rangre finder was carried away. It was so hot, though, and we were so hard at it that such a little thing like that 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 sake up on us, until our faces were just covered with a film of powdery pow-dery stuff. But the range finder was carried away, and although it looked bad foi s I was feeling so good that I volunteered vol-unteered to go on deck and get an other one. I got outside the turret door and across the deck, got the necessary nec-essary 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 peculiar 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 I Was Able to Crawl on to the Turret Door. 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. .de-fective. The shell split and caused a back fire and the cordite, fire and gas came through the breech, which the explosion had opened. It must have been a piece of cordite which did it, but whatever it was. It hit me Ln 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. sight-less. 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 what happened during the rest of the engagement, as I did not regain consciousness until three days later at sea. But I heard in the hospital that the French super-dreadnaught 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 96 men in the engagement engage-ment and had 48 wounded. Some of our turrets were twisted into all manner man-ner of shapes and part of our bow was carried away. One of our lieutenants lieu-tenants was killed in the engagement. I was told that both the Werft and the Kaiserliche Marine were sunk in this engagement. I have seen pictures of sailors from the Werft who were prisoners at interment camps. When we arrived at Brest the wounded were taken from the ship in stretchers and after we had been rested rest-ed for about fifteen minutes on the dock put into ambulances and rushed to the hospital. 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. I do not know, of course, just what the surgeons 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 treat-ment they got later on they would be quite healed by this time, I am sure. I really think I got a little extra attention at-tention in the hospital in many ways, for the French were at all times aaj ious to show their friendliness to America. Every time my meals were served there was a little American flag on the 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 hos-pital I received the Croix de Guerre, which I had won at the Dardanelles. Te presentation was made by Lieu- """iitiiiiiiiuiiiHiiiiiHiiiiaj tenant Bttrbey. He pinned an American Ameri-can flag on my breast, a French flag beneath it and beneath that the war cross, ne kissed me on both cheeks, of course, which was taking advantage 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 bot-tom of his heart for the French people, and also thanked all the Americans who had come over from their own lund to help a country with which most of them were not connected. He said It was a war In which many nations na-tions were taking part, but in which there were Just two ideas, freedom and despotism, and a lot more things that I cannot remember. He finished by saying that he wished he could decorate dec-orate all of us. Of course it was great stuff for ma 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 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 offi cers who were present and they and all the other people did a lot of cheep' ing and vived me to a fare-you-well-It was great stuff, altogether, and 1 should have liked to get a medal every day. One day I received a letter from & 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 English. It was all about who had been killed and who had been wounded. wound-ed. He also mentioned Murray's death, which he had heard about, and about my receiving the Croix do 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 an and when I opened it out tumbled a photograph. photo-graph. 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 I It hurt m so much to think of it that I cruslfied 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 re-ported missing. So three of us went 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 ma 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 convalescent he argued with me that I had seen enough, and though I really did think so however much I disliked what I had seen he got my discharge from the service on account of physical phys-ical inability, to discharge the usual duties. After I had been at the hospital hos-pital 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, cloth-ing, etc. I ran up to St Nazaire and saw my grandmother, loafed around a while and also visited Lyons. 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 keeping with my grandmother. Among my belongings were several things I should like to show by photographs pho-tographs in this book, but no one but mermaids can see them now, for down to the locker of Davy Jones they went (TO BE CONTINUED.) |