Battery E in France 149th Field Artillery, Rainbow (42nd) Division

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

On Board the “President Lincoln”

The mounting flames of a bonfire cast a flickering red light down the battery street. Burning the whole night through, to consume boxes, refuse and abandoned material of various kinds, these ruddy illuminations in the quarters of the 149th Field Artillery, at Camp Mills, Long Island, were omens of unusual, and unpublished, happenings. The men of the regiment felt the nearness of these events, though they had been given no warning of them, and slept, fully clothed, with their packs still rolled as they had been at inspection the afternoon before. Covered only by their overcoats, the boys tossed uneasily on their canvas cots in the chilliness of the night. When one, awakened by the cold, ventured to approach the bonfire to warm himself, the voice of a sentry warned him away: “No one is allowed around the fire. Orders are for no unusual appearance or noise.” And the chilly one would return to his tent, if not to slumber, muttering, “Tonight’s the night, all right!”

At 3:30 a. m., a whispered summons roused each man. A few, who had scoffed at the omens the previous evening, rolled their packs by feeble candles. All the cots were folded and piled in the shed at the end of the street that had housed the battery kitchen. The cooks performed their last rites there, by serving coffee and sandwiches. The last scraps of paper and other litter in the battery street were “policed up,” and added to the now dying bonfire. Then the batteries were formed, and the regiment, at 5 o’clock, October 18, 1917, marched silently out of Camp Mills.

The hike to the railroad station was a short one. There the regiment quickly boarded a waiting train, which pulled out at 6, to make the brief journey to the ferry docks in Brooklyn. Quickly and quietly, the men boarded the ferry. They had been instructed to make no noise, attract no attention, and so shield the troop movement as much as possible from public (and enemy) notice. But a ferry-boat load of khaki-clad youths, when such ferry-boat loads were not so numerous as they later became, could not fail to draw the eyes of the throngs on their way to business. The journey around the Battery and up the Hudson River was punctuated by cheers and shouts of good-bye from witnesses of our departure. At the docks of the Hamburg-American Line, where the “Vaterland” and other ocean liners had lain since the autumn of 1914, the boys filed onto the wharf and immediately over the side of the “President Lincoln.”

As he was assigned his place in the hold, each man was given two things: a printed sheet of instructions, which was to guide his actions on board, and a life-preserver, which, hanging like two sofa pillows, one on his breast, the other on his back, was to impede all his movements on board. For these must be worn night and day, whether one was eating or drinking, working or playing; and must be within reach when one slept. That last was easy, for they usually served as pillows.

That was one of the precautions against danger from a submarine’s torpedo. Another was the fire-drill, which occurred at unexpected times, either at night, in the midst of sleep, or during the day. Since there were between 5,500 and 6,000 troops on board, exclusive of the crew of 400, it was important that they should know the quickest and easiest way to escape from the ship in case of accident. The “President Lincoln,” before the war the largest freight vessel afloat, was built for the carrying trade and not at all for passengers. In each hatch were four, and in some five, decks below, and it was a feat to empty all these by the narrow iron stairways in the short space of two minutes. At the entrance to each hatch were stacked rafts, ready to be unlashed and heaved over the side, and every man had a place.

Below, each man had a bunk, a canvas stretcher hung on a frame, three tiers high, that ran the length of the hatch, narrow aisles separating each double row. Electric lights made these good places to lounge and read. But when night fell, every light in the ship was extinguished, save only the dim blue lights at the stairways. Not even a lighted cigarette was allowed on deck or at a porthole, lest it betray the fleet to some hostile submarine, lurking near under cover of darkness. And all day long and the night through, lookouts—an officer and one enlisted man—watched the waves from the mast heads and from sentry boxes along the side, fore and aft, for the ripple of a periscope.

Excessive precaution was not without good cause. This fleet was such as to spur enemy submarines to extraordinary activity for several reasons: The vessels were former Hamburg-American Line ships, making their first voyage under American colors; it was a double blow that these German boats should not only be employed in the service of the United States, but even be used to carry troops and supplies to defeat Germany herself....