Chapter I: DON'T want to say anything that sounds like boasting, but the Marine

Corps is the finest branch of service in the world. No exceptions. I guess you know that marines date back to days of ancient Greece. They had them then. They were the landing party on shipboard--the fighting force. They were right there with their bows and arrows and javelins and spears, and they carried out their contract as well as the men who rowed the ship. Each one had his own particular duties. It's the same today, but somehow the nation has got into the habit of saying, "Leave it to the Marines"--and we've tried to prove that we are worthy of the trust.

In the old days there used to be a bit of feeling between the sailor and the marine. You'll find the reason for it in English history. About 1803 there was a mutiny in the British navy, and the marines helped put it down. After that they were called the Royal Marines, but the sailors got an idea that they were on board a ship to prevent mutiny and they did not like them any too well. But they soon found that the marine had his own field--and that he had just one motto--"There's nothing I can't do."

It's funny the way our men tackle everything, particularly as they have never been specialized like other branches. For instance, there is no bridge-building company, yet over and over again when there has been need of bridges the marines have just gone out and made them.

There's nothing you can think of that you won't find some of them can do, from getting up a dance to rounding up a bandit. I was in Santo Domingo with my company. Most of the men were recruits, pretty soft from life in the barracks. We were ordered to a nearby post on the trail of a desperado. Before us lay a march of about four or five days. A hike is all right over level country that is fairly dry, but ours lay through a series of marshes winding upward over a mountain.

We started off at a brisk pace and we didn't let up. There were patches of land which sent us through mud up to our knees--our feet were never dry day or night--but there was no kick coming about that. We were going to reach our base at the time planned--no later.

The last day was the worst. We were on a level stretch at last, but there was no shade, and the sun beat down like a ball of fire. Our wet shoes dried and cracked on our feet--and we were blistered from heel to toe. But that didn't prevent our making thirty miles that day or doing the last four miles in forty-five minutes.

We were tired to death when we reached our destination. It was ten o'clock at night. The men dropped where they halted, just about all in. We hadn't been there fifteen minutes when word came to us of the bandit we were rounding up. It seems he was in hiding in the hills about twenty miles north of us. A woman brought us the tip. He had thrown her down and she was taking her revenge in the usual way.

There was no mistaking her earnestness. There was just one thing to do--go out after that rebel. I sent over to the men and asked for seven volunteers. When the boys heard what was wanted, sixty per cent of the whole company offered to go. They forgot they were tired, stiff, sore--you couldn't hold them back!

I had the horses saddled and every one who could commandeer an animal mounted one. Some of them had never been on a horse's back before, but that did not stop them. They were off like a shot, the whole crowd of them--thundering up that dark road in search of the outlaw.

They caught him, too, after an all-night ride, and they brought him back with them. I tell you a good rest was coming to them after that. They certainly needed it!

The men have a great pride in our service. They show it outwardly by keeping themselves trim as a whistle. On shipboard each man is allowed a bucket of water a day for his ablutions--no more. Well, a marine makes that bucket go a long way; with it he washes himself, brushes his teeth, cleans his clothes, and scrubs the deck--anyone who claims he can do more than that with a bucket of water will have to show me!

And a marine takes his job seriously, whatever it is--yes, indeed. In the little French towns in which they have been landed they have become the traffic cops of the place. All the duties of a gendarme have been assumed by them with neatness and despatch.

The marines decided that no bluejacket was to hold conversation with a French girl. Once that was definitely passed upon they began enforcing the law. A particularly happy young bluejacket had received a flower from the hands of a little French maiden. She had pinned it to his coat. Along came the marine while Jack Tar was trying to thank her in his very best and limited French.

"Cut it out!" growled the marine.

"You beat it!" said the bluejacket.

In reply the marine quietly but quickly plucked off the flower to emphasize his command. There was nothing else to do but to fight, and the marine managed to beat up Jack mildly. Jack went to the ship's doctor to have a stitch or two taken in his ear. He was still raging, and vowed he'd get that marine as soon as he was out. The doctor stopped stitching long enough to look up over his glasses.

"I wouldn't, if I were you," he said, "that marine was very gentle with you. Next time he might do some real damage."

Yes, the sailor respects the marine as a majesty of the law. One slim, young marine is enough to make a gay and irresponsible party of bluejackets along the docks sit up and take notice.

There was a young sergeant by the name of Watson. He was a particularly efficient chap. Seats were hard to get on the train going up to Paris, and, when a party of army, navy and marine officers arrived at the little station, we found that Watson had reserved seats for all of us. On our return trip we were surprised to meet him at a station some distance from the little town that he was policing. We asked him if he, too, had been up to Paris.

"Yes, sir," he said. We asked him how it happened he was so far away from his post.

"I went up on my own, sir," he told us calmly enough. "I got to thinking that, perhaps, the bluejackets were starting something in Paris, and I thought I'd take a run up just to see they weren't putting anything over on the marine corps."

Evidently he found everything O. K. or he would have remained to adjust it.

It was Watson who had such trouble making the French peasants clean up their huts. Now, as everyone knows, the French peasant is an individual who wishes to be left alone to tend his little patch of ground. It is his own business if he has the cow beneath the same roof that covers him, and if the chickens have the freedom of the house it is, after all, an affair between himself and his poultry, so to speak. But not in Watson's eyes. He had orders to clean up that town, and there were no exceptions. Protests were in vain. He saw that sanitary conditions for the first time prevailed, and not until the houses fairly shone, and the streets resembled Spotless Town, did he relax and express himself.

"I see their point of view, of course, sir," he told me, "but if it happens to be the wrong point of view there's nothing to do but to right it."

The marines aren't beaten often at any sport, but when they are they take it as a tragedy. A ship's crew had been trained to shoot. They knew they could shoot, and, on landing, they challenged the marines to a contest. The marines, under a grizzled old sergeant, long in the service, were immensely proud of their skill on the range. They accepted the challenge. They were dead sure of the outcome. There wasn't a nickel within hailing distance that wasn't wagered!

The marines got on the range before the bluejackets. No advantage was taken. Well, the bluejackets beat them at slow fire. They beat them at rapid fire. They beat them on skirmish, which the marines had boasted most about. Altogether, it was an unhappy day for the marines.

Next day the commander of the ship, rising very early, saw a sight which fascinated him beyond words. On the range were the crack shots of the Marine Corps. Glowering above them stood the sergeant, his beard fairly bristling with anger, his back ram-rod straight. He had the men all out, and he was teaching them, with a thoroughness incomparable, the rudiments of rifle practice.

With stony faces the men submitted to the insult of being returned to the kindergarten of shooting. Again and again they went through the manual. It was a just punishment for permitting bluejackets to defeat them!

"Join the Marines--and see the world"--and to do that our boys pride themselves on extra quick obedience to orders, for there is no telling when an expedition will be pulled up in a hurry and sent to the other end of the globe. But whether they go or whether they stay, they accept it all calmly. The words of the little marine, who was plying his shovel one hot day, seem to sum up their contentment. He had been shoveling dirt since early morning. The sun was warm, and he paused in his task to mop his face. He looked up with a grin.

"I enlisted to see the earth," he said; "and here I am, digging it up, turning it over, and looking at it! . . ."

BUGLER COLBY SPEAKS:

THE WAY WITH THE FRENCHIES

I'M a home-loving man. I don't ask anything better of life than my little house in the country, with the wife bustling about and the kids waiting for a game of ball or a tramp in the woods.

Yes, I'm a peace-lover, but I'm the kind of peace-lover who wouldn't quit this war a minute before the German empire is wiped off the map. I'm going to stand by until that day comes to pass--as come it will!

I'd like to tear the heart out of every German for the work they have done to the French and British and Scotch and Irish--oh, I know what I'm talking about. Yes, you do, if you stay in Havre long enough. You can get all your facts first hand.

Just wander down to the station every other evening when the big seven-thirty express thunders in with her load of returned British prisoners. Yes, you can see with your own two eyes what German methods are, and I tell you it makes a man, who is a man, ready to give the last drop of blood in him to stamp out a nation that treats men that way--and what's worse--women and children. . . .

I'd been in the navy five years as a bugler. You are on the bridge all the time, standing by for duty. We were assigned to one of the prettiest yachts afloat. It was originally the famous pleasure boat of a great New York multi-millionaire. She certainly was a nifty craft--about three hundred feet long, almost as big as a destroyer, and graceful as a swan in the water.

There must have been great parties aboard her in the old days, and I wonder how she felt when they knocked out her mahogany staterooms and hauled down her real lace curtains and tore up her fine saloons, for transport duty.

Nothing classy about her then--just dirt and grease and the smell of pork and beans. As for her color, she was gray, same as any little ten-cent tug. But her lines didn't change. She was like a fine lady who takes off her ball gown and puts on rags, and in spite of it you can tell she's a fine lady through and through.

We carried the first American troops to land in France. The very first. That was making history, wasn't it? It seemed right and fit that the proud little yacht should have the glory of taking the first batch of Yankees to foreign shores.

It was a rough trip, though, and we felt sorry for the boys whose sea travels had been limited to the ferryboat between Hoboken and New York. Rough weather on shipboard is no joke. You can talk about the hardships of the trenches, but how about being aboard a pitching vessel, when you can't even get a light in your galley ranges, which means no food can be cooked and a steady diet of hard tack and bully beef?

Oh, we hadn't any kick coming. It was all part of the game, but we did wish the sea would calm down a bit and the fog lift. I never saw such a fog in all my days. From the minute we left, it wrapped itself around us like a damp blanket. You could hardly see your hand before your face. We didn't need a smoke curtain that trip--nature provided one for us, all made to order.

Our first taste of excitement was on the thirteenth day out. We were just wishing for something, when we saw, through the mist that had let up a little, a strange ship ahead of us. We signalled her to make her colors, but instead she started off as though she were trying to run away. That promised hot excitement, so we went after her. We chased her for five hours--now losing her in the fog, now sighting her again, gaining on her inch by inch. We were sure she was a blamed German merchant vessel trying to sneak back to her base, and we had the guns primed to send her straight to the place all Germans come from.

When we got within a few hundred yards of her we hauled up the battle ensign on the foremast. We meant business. The gunners stood by. Just as they expected to hear the command, "Fire when ready," up came the British Jack to her mast!

Say, but we felt foolish, chasing one of our own allies all over the broad Atlantic. We asked her why the deuce she hadn't made her colors before, and she signalled back that she was under the impression we were an enemy raider.

We calmed down after that and made port without pursuing the rest of the British navy to cover.

The base we established was the first naval base in France. We kind of like to think that some day, when our grandchildren cross the Atlantic on a pleasure trip--it having been made safe by us from those German vipers--they'll hunt out the little harbor, tucked away in a corner, where their grandfathers landed that June day, and went ashore with the first handful of American soldiers to set foot in France. They were there for just one purpose--to show what red, white and blue blood could do toward making the world a safe place to live in.

No fogs in France--just yellow sunshine and soft air and eager crowds waiting for us with open arms. Flags everywhere. It certainly made you catch your breath to see your own star-spangled banner flying from the windows of the little French town.

We went ashore pretty flush. Some of us had as much as a couple of hundred dollars, I suppose. We made our way to the railroad station. We wanted to get up to the "gay Paree" we'd been hearing about all our lives. We couldn't believe we were within hailing distance of it. It had always been a bright red spot on the map that we hoped to visit some day--and here we were just a few hours away from the liveliest city of Europe.

We made for the railroad station double quick. It was there I had my first real taste of French big-heartedness. In the crowd I noticed a beautifully dressed woman. She had all the French zip about her, but when she saw us she began to cry, and she just let the tears roll down her cheeks as though she didn't know she was doing it.

She stepped forward as we were passing, and the crowd let her through. They seemed to know who she was, for they whispered together and pointed her out. She hurried toward us and began to talk in broken English.

"You must be careful," she begged us. "All this money you have--it may tempt some of these poor people. Put it away, I implore you. Use only as much as you need. . . ."

Then she caught my hands. "Oh, how glad I am that you have come at last! How I bless you and your country!"

She bought our tickets to Paris for us and saw us safely on the train, putting us wise to the ropes. Nothing was too much trouble for her to do for us. I tell you we never forgot it. Even after the train pulled out of the station we could see her standing a little apart from the rest, waving her lace handkerchief to us until we rounded a curve and lost her from sight.

Now that we were started on our journey we felt great and I began to tune up. I can sing a little, my mates say, so I let out a few songs that made us think of home. While I was giving them "'Way Down upon the Suwanee River" the door of the compartment opened and a big chap in a British uniform stood there grinning.

"Don't stop, boys," he said. "It sounds bully!"

It was Paul Rainey, the great hunter. Say, we certainly were glad to meet him, not only because he spoke our language, but because we knew from hearsay that he wasn't afraid of man or beast, and that's the kind of a fellow you like to know. He stayed with us the rest of the journey, and as he was to be in Paris a day on his way to Belgium, he took us with him to the American Ambulance Quarters, where he was stationed.

We arrived there in the evening. Next day he had to go on, so we found ourselves wandering around the Place de la Concorde and the Place Vendôme and the Champs Elysées without compass or rudder.

It was a pretty city, but all of a sudden I felt awfully blue. Everywhere you turned somebody hollered something at you in a language you couldn't make head or tail of--even the hack drivers and little kids in the street talked French.

I took a room at the Continental, and say, they almost robbed the shirt off me. Next morning I was wishing so hard for home you could almost hear me coming down the street. I found the American Express office and lingered there listening to people speaking English. I wondered where the gay part of "Paree" came in. It looked busy and prosperous and warlike to me--but gay? Nothing doing.

Just then someone spoke in my mother tongue and I whirled to see a French army officer at my elbow.

"If you have not already seen the sights of Paris, it will give me great pleasure to show them to you," he said.

I hadn't, so he proceeded to do the honors, and, like everything the French do--be it big or small--he made a thorough job of it. He was my host for two days and a half, and I'll guarantee I saw every little thing in Paris from the Apaches up. I wouldn't have missed that sight-seeing trip for all the gold in Europe. That's the French for you. Their hearts and their homes were opened wide to us. I bet there isn't a Yank living who wouldn't fight to the last breath for them.

Next I fell in with two French privates on furlough. They took me home with them and to show my gratitude I sang our songs for them and taught them some real live United States slang. They were good pupils, too, and were proud as peacocks of startling a crowd by calling out, "Wash you step!"

It was from them that I bought my best little souvenir--a German officer's helmet one of the Frenchies had picked up after shooting his man. It was a peach of a helmet, slashed across the patent leather crown, and still stained with blood. Inside was stamped the officer's name and regiment. He was of the Death Head Huzzars--the Kaiser's own.

I asked Frenchie if he didn't want to keep it, but he shrugged. He could get plenty more, I made out he meant. He was going back to the front soon; they'd be picking helmets off the trees once the French got really started. So I bought it from him for forty francs.

Our boat lay in the harbor. They were coaling it, and, once ready, we started our work of patrolling the coast. It was on one early afternoon that we got sudden orders to put to sea, and we started out at a fast clip. Somebody passed the word that we were on a rescue party and to keep a sharp watch out for rafts or lifeboats.

Rescue party! Ever see men who have faced death in a leaky boat all through a black night? I'll never forget their faces--something was stamped there that will never come out--a grim, strained, white look you don't like to see. The few boats we spotted bobbed about like corks on the waves. The men were too numb to pull on their oars. They had been rowing all night. Some of them were half dressed.

Once we pulled them in and helped fit them out with clothes we heard their story. They had been struck amidships by a blasted torpedo along about midnight. Their boat was a yacht something like our own; the impact of the shell blew her to a thousand bits. The men asleep were killed like rats in a trap. The few on deck managed to launch some boats and rafts before they were sucked down with the vessel.

That midnight attack made our score against the Hun a little higher, not that I needed any incentive to hate him another notch. I had a vision stamped on my mind I could never forget. I could still see that black snake of a train crawling into the crowded station at Havre--hear the long-drawn grinding of the brakes and hissing of steam--see the guards keeping back the mob surging forward for a chance to welcome home its sons. There was endless noise and confusion--but occasionally you would find a silent watcher--a woman and sometimes a man, who stood motionless, staring at the cars--muscles taut, waiting for God knows what horror.

Yes, you don't forget the first sight of the returned prisoners, in their worn uniforms. White-faced boys looking about eagerly for the face of friends--friends at last, after three long years! No, you never forget those battle-scarred men, with here an arm gone, or a leg--or worse, the eyes blinded forever.

Oh, my God! you dream of it nights afterward; you see that endless line of maimed and broken men. . . .

Hate Germans! I tell you I'm a peace-loving man and all I want is my little home, with the wife and the kids, but do you think I'd stop fighting in this war while there is yet a drop of blood left in me? Not much! I love my own too well to let them suffer as those French and Belgian women have--that's the answer!

ENSIGN STAFFORD SPEAKS:

A YANKEE STANDS BY