Meade County news., 1917-10-04

heir yarn here and there and putting
on the final varnish in the letters to
the folks at home, making the censor
work overtime reading the dope.
But chewing it over among them
selves. the lads suddenly discovered
that they had been cheated. SO they
organized delegation to wait on the
gunnery officer of the ship. In the
eyes Of the young bluejackets who had
just come In and are new to the game,
the gllnnery officer stacks up highest,
for he is in charge of the shooting irons
of the dreadnaught and is the whole
thing-like the angels rolled into one,
and enameled at that. With the KIDS
he has the muzzle velocity Of 15-inch
gun, and to the youngsters the skip
per, in comparison, is just a myth
some invisible power I'm gold lace.
Now, the training given is most in
! tensive in character; each man Is
made to specialize as far as possible,
and every effort is made to perfect
each member of the crew in the work
to which he is assigned. The most
| likely youngsters, even those who have
never seen anything larger than -
bore shotgun, are assigned arbitrarily,
to start with, as gun pointers and gun
captains; the hefty, strong, well-butlt
lads are made shellmen and loa1ers;
men of quick minds are assigned ms
siglit-setters and telephone operators; ;
and these men are tfdined, trained,
trained .dnH instrT1eted' cautioned Al
ways, drilled ,tQgether, they are made
TO feel that If nny one of them fails
down in his particular job, the work
Of the dtIiefSis s6o1led. 1t is all team
wol&, Ike ON the Diamond.
so this gang lhid aft and waited on
E'the. gHnnefy officer and presented their
case thus wise: "Qf course, mister we
are going to be the next fellows in the
gun crew to go abroad, amt WEI"
."Certainly not; you had your trip;
you have just come back" g.,
,"NO, sir, we didn't just come back !;
we never got there. You know when
we left you said we were going to Eng
land and we never saw England at
all. We ai1i't going back home and
have all the fellows guy US and say
that we didn't finish the job and that
the U-boat ditched u.s." They went
back all right.
Here you have sample Of the met
tie of these youngsters, some barely
month in the outfit, but getting the
punch and absorbing the spirit Of the
service, the willingness to do the job,
the desire to play the game.
1t is now tolerably well known that
picked men from our battleship fleet
have been sent to man the guns Of the
armed American merchant vessels that
20 abroad. This started first several
months ago and gun crew and their
officer in command would make a
round trip. over and back across the
ocean and then return to their ship.
You know how well these men have
done their duty, and truthfully their
exploits have been reported in the
public press.
But in hunting the U-boat little has
been said about the long, untlring
watches and the ccaseless vigil that
these men must keep while crossing
the sea, and particularly when nearing
the danger zone. And these calls from
the fleet have been so great that raw
recruits have been specially trained to
man the comparatively small-caliber
guns which our merchant vessels carry.
Intensive training has been the order
of the day, and the feet is full of bully
stories of how these young and com
paratively inexperienced men have
taken to the game.
There is such thing as being gun
shy. and even old-time men might an