I had the fondness for adventure usual in young men. I liked to see the wheels go round. And so it happened that, when the war was about a year and a half old, I decided to get in before it was too late.
On second thought I won’t say that it was purely love for adventure that took me across. There may have been in the back of my head a sneaking extra fondness for France, perhaps instinctive, for I was born in Paris, although my parents were American and I was brought to Boston as a baby and have lived here since.
Whatever my motives for joining the British army, they didn’t have time to crystallize until I had been wounded and sent to Blighty, which is trench slang for England. While recuperating in one of the pleasant places of the English countryside, I had time to acquire a perspective and to discover that I had been fighting for democracy and the future safety of the world. I think that my experience in this respect is like that of most of the young Americans who have volunteered for service under a foreign flag.
I decided to get into the big war game early in 1916. My first thought was to go into the ambulance service, as I knew several men in that work. One of them described the driver’s life about as follows. He said:
“The blessés curse you because you jolt them. The doctors curse you because you don’t get the blessés in fast enough. The Transport Service curse you because you get in the way. You eat standing up and don’t sleep at all. You’re as likely as anybody to get killed, and all the glory you get is the War Cross, if you’re lucky, and you don’t get a single chance to kill a Hun.”
That settled the ambulance for me. I hadn’t wanted particularly to kill a Hun until it was suggested that I mightn’t. Then I wanted to slaughter a whole division.
So I decided on something where there would be fighting. And having decided, I thought I would “go the whole hog” and work my way across to England on a horse transport.
One day in the first part of February I went, at what seemed an early hour, to an office on Commercial Street, Boston, where they were advertising for horse tenders for England. About three hundred men were earlier than I. It seemed as though every beachcomber and patriot in New England was trying to get across. I didn’t get the job, but filed my application and was lucky enough to be signed on for a sailing on February 22 on the steamship Cambrian, bound for London.
We spent the morning of Washington’s Birthday loading the horses. These government animals were selected stock and full of ginger. They seemed to know that they were going to France and resented it keenly. Those in my care seemed to regard my attentions as a personal affront.
We had a strenuous forenoon getting the horses aboard, and sailed at noon. After we had herded in the livestock, some of the officers herded up the herders. I drew a pink slip with two numbers on it, one showing the compartment where I was supposed to sleep, the other indicating my bunk.
That compartment certainly was a glory-hole. Most of the men had been drunk the night before, and the place had the rich, balmy fragrance of a waterfront saloon. Incidentally there was a good deal of unauthorized and undomesticated livestock. I made a limited acquaintance with that pretty, playful little creature, the “cootie,” who was to become so familiar in the trenches later on. He wasn’t called a cootie aboard ship, but he was the same bird.
Perhaps the less said about that trip across the better. It lasted twenty-one days. We fed the animals three times a day and cleaned the stalls once on the trip. I got chewed up some and stepped on a few times. Altogether the experience was good intensive training for the trench life to come; especially the bunks. Those sleeping quarters sure were close and crawly.
We landed in London on Saturday night about nine thirty. The immigration inspectors gave us a quick examination and we were turned back to the shipping people, who paid us off—two pounds, equal to about ten dollars real change.
After that we rode on the train half an hour and then marched through the streets, darkened to fool the Zeps. Around one o’clock we brought up at Thrawl Street, at the lodgings where we were supposed to stop until we were started for home.
The place where we were quartered was a typical London doss house. There were forty beds in the room with mine, all of them occupied. All hands were snoring, and the fellow in the next cot was going it with the cutout wide open, breaking all records. Most of the beds sagged like a hammock. Mine humped up in the middle like a pile of bricks.
I was up early and was directed to the place across the way where we were to eat. It was labeled “Mother Wolf’s. The Universal Provider.” She provided just one meal of weak tea, moldy bread, and rancid bacon for me. After that I went to a hotel. I may remark in passing that horse tenders, going or coming or in between whiles, do not live on the fat of the land.
I spent the day—it was Sunday—seeing the sights
