A soldier's mother in France

In the quiet little hotel which is my home when I am on this side of the Atlantic, there have been staying until recently a group of army nurses. There were about one hundred and thirty of these nurses, fine, strong, skilled women, and they were in New York on their way to France.

They didn’t know where they were to be stationed. They were a California nursing unit and their goal was a base hospital—but in what part of France the base hospital was to be located, they knew no more than I did.

All they knew was that they were anxious to be off. They were as eager to get to work in that hospital as our soldiers are to get to the front. They fretted at the delay, and they asked me a thousand questions about France, about the medical service corps, about the hospitals. Soon after their arrival at the Atlantic coast the German submarines made their sudden, savage attacks on American shipping. American waters were reported full of these vipers of the sea.

They were said by some to be accompanied by a “mother ship” which would keep them supplied for an indefinite stay. There was talk of a possible base in Mexico from which whole fleets of U-boats would come and go. Did all this have the slightest effect on those nurses or on their eagerness to sail? Not a bit of it. They simply said, wouldn’t it be the limit if Secretary Daniels stopped all sailings? But of course he wouldn’t.

One morning I opened my door and saw a group of these California nurses standing guard over an enormous pile of hand luggage, suit-cases, satchels and hold-alls. The women greeted me with broad smiles.

“Well,” I said, “you look as if you had packed all your troubles in your old kit bags.”

“We have,” they chorused. “Nobody’s got a trouble in the world. We sail ‘from an Atlantic port’ this afternoon!”

Right out into the submarines. Across three thousand miles of peril. Into the unknown. Without a fear. This is not exactly what the war lords planned when they sent their biggest submarines to blockade the American coast. They did not hope, of course, to stop all shipping from this side. But they undoubtedly counted on terrorizing the American people, especially the women.

Not even the inflated German mind conceived the notion that their submarines would prevent the sailing of army transports. But we can easily imagine the kaiser and his councilors reasoning that the mothers and fathers and wives of the soldiers would be so terrified that there would be trouble in the United States, trouble for President Wilson and Congress. Riots in the streets, maybe. Breakdown of American morale. They must have licked their lips at the thought.

The German psychology has been curiously twisted before on this terror question, but it persists in spite of the fact that nothing they have done in this war, not even the ultimate horrors they committed in Belgium, Serbia and Armenia, ever frightened anybody except the immediate victims. The nations that are bent on crushing out the authors of horror have never been terrorized.

Nevertheless I know that the mothers and fathers and wives of soldiers, and the immediate relatives of trained nurses who are crossing the seas in these perilous times, must suffer great anxiety. Perhaps it may give them a little comfort to know that the travelers suffer less fear than they do. Perhaps they might like to know what a sea voyage is really like in war time. Some know, for they have crossed. The majority, however, have not.

I have crossed the Atlantic four times since we entered the war, twice in a neutral boat, once in an American, and once in a French boat. The first two voyages scarcely count because the lane through which we traveled was out of the submarine zone. Making due allowances for the shifting of the zone, and for the boche’s criminal practise of sinking neutral boats “by mistake,” our steamer was lighted up at night like Coney Island, and her name and nationality was displayed on both sides of the hull in letters which could be read at a great distance.

In sharp contrast, the American and French boats were kept as dark as pockets all the way over. They were camouflaged in a manner that made me laugh when I went aboard. All portholes were painted a dark green, and they were locked every day at sundown. No lights were shown, and travelers were strictly forbidden after dark to smoke or to light a match on deck.

Of course, there was no music, no band on board. No loud noise of any kind was permitted. The American boat was peculiarly constructed, in that the passageways leading to the main gangway had portholes and doors looking out on deck. Because of the necessity of showing no lights these passageways were inky dark at night. When we went down to dinner we found our way by taking hold of a rope stretched from one end of the passageway to the companion and then down to the dining saloon.

The first thing that happens on a voyage nowadays is a life-boat drill. A typewritten list is posted prominently, giving each passenger’s life-boat assignment. At the designated hour, shortly after sailing, the passengers all put on life preservers and report at the life-boat station to which they have been directed. A ship’s company just now is overwhelmingly masculine, and when all passengers are assembled the women find that there are about two of them to each life-boat, and that their boats are generally filled with responsible men and commanded by an officer.

The officer in command of the life-boat visits each boat station and calls the roll to make sure that no one has failed to attend the drill. The officer makes a speech at each station, telling the passengers exactly what to do if the danger signal is sounded. They must immediately make for their assigned places, fastening on their life belts as they go. The sailors assigned to the various boats will be the first to arrive, and they know their duties. As for the passengers, the women are to get into the boats before the men. When all are in their seats the boat will be lowered.

You get into the habit of lingering near your assigned life-boat. The locality has a homelike feel. You time yourself to see how long it takes to get from your stateroom to the life-boat, and it gives a certain confidence to learn that you can easily make it in two or three minutes without running.

At night you put your warmest clothes where you can get into them quickly. Your life belt is always where you can grasp it in a second. When you approach the danger zone the life belt is never out of sight. It hangs on the arm of your steamer chair, it goes to the table with you. Soldiers, officers, nurses and Red Cross members are required to wear their life belts all the time while in the zone.

No fear enters into these things. Nobody shows fear, nor do I think that many feel fear. The vision of sudden death is present, but only as a mental conception. Like being at the front. One gets used to it.

On my American boat there was a very fine young naval officer in command of as splendid a gun crew as you would care to see. The ship was mounted with eight guns, and one day in mid-ocean we had a gun drill. The gunners, who had never left a single piece unmanned for a minute, night or day, now had an opportunity to show the passengers that they could shoot as well as they could keep guard.

A target hardly larger than the periscope of a submarine was nailed to an empty barrel and thrown overboard. When it was distant a quarter of a mile, and only faintly to be seen by unpractised eyes, the commander gave the word and the six-inch guns forward blazed away at it. The ship meanwhile was zigzagging just as she would in a real submarine attack. In a minute or two this brought the aft guns into play. One after another they flashed and roared; and although the target was not struck at the first shots, every shell fell near enough to have struck the U-boat had the target been its periscope.

The firing kept up for twenty minutes or more, the boat continuing its gyrations the while, then she settled down to her steady gait, and the commander came in for felicitations.

“That zigzag the captain has figured out,” he said, modestly ignoring his own part in the performance, “would make a submarine crew cross-eyed trying to follow it.”

Three days before we reached the British shores both the captain and the commander vanished from sight. They never came into the dining saloon again during the voyage. They spent their time on the bridge tirelessly watching. Up in the crow’s nest two sailors also watched. With strong glasses they swept the horizon and never ceased.

The life-boats which hitherto had been swung high up and level with the boat deck, now were lowered to the level of the promenade deck. Everything was in readiness. Far out across the gray and tumbling sea the early dawn had seen the approach of two American destroyers, the swiftest, slimmest, smartest little craft afloat. It is no secret that these American destroyers are and have for some time been patrolling British waters, and magnificent work they have done.

Exactly how many submarines our little destroyers have sent to the bottom has not been given out, but Mr. Lloyd George has more than once in the House of Commons reported that the American boats were having continuous successes.

All the rest of the way those two swift destroyers convoyed us. They swept in great circles all around us. They plowed through the waves like dolphins, the water sometimes completely engulfing them. They never rested, and the passengers sat all day and watched them with fascinated eyes. Nothing could happen with those destroyers at hand.

Such is the sea voyage on which our sons and our daughters are traveling in these times of great peril and uncertainty. As far as it is humanly possible their lives are safeguarded against the enemy. There is little difference in the precautions taken to defend the transports. That each ship has traveled back and forth so many times in safety is one of the marvels of the war.

To sink an American transport with several thousand soldiers on board, any U-boat commander in the Germany navy would almost barter his chances in the next world. Can you imagine to what fame he would spring overnight? They would have to invent a new decoration to express the kaiser’s gratitude—his and Gott’s. But nobody has won that decoration yet, and nobody stands much chance of winning it, if only the American father and mother keep cool and stand by their government.

We have sent over, Secretary Baker told us in early July, more than a million soldiers, and we have lost less than three hundred men at sea. Think of it! The sea at that rate, even now, with U-boats on both sides of the Atlantic, is safer to cross than Broadway and Forty-second Street. Shall we keep it safe? Or shall we do what the kaiser is probably praying for every day of his life? Shall we please him, help him, by demanding that some of those destroyers be sent home to guard our shores? Never, while we keep our intelligence.