The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1918-04-20

VfWAfM WHO urlNe the swift war boats
H1&EM to their double task of Staying and
FMNMO@ saving makes fine and joyous telling.
lkSSM To the credit of the killers of the u
" boats and guardians of the convoy let
1t be said that a half Of the splendid tale has
not yet been told.
The men of the lean hunter craft are the pick
OF the navy and their ships come close to be-
Ing the best in the world. They know it, their
countrymen know 1t, and Fritz of the submarine
Is learning it to his own sorrow.
Much honor is also PAID to the men of the
grand heet-the bluejackets who are waiting at
some unnamed sea rendezvous for a chance to
loose the destruction Of their great guns upon
the ships of Wilhelm, sea lord of the Kiel canal.
These are our buckler, and our shield. They
man the first line of the nations defense. They
are fighters, skilled in their appointed tasks, and
eager for that battle that they believe cannot
be so far off now.
No one tells of their brethren of the trans
port service. Only the brief official announce
ment gives their history, and this comes but
rarely. Occasionally the powers at Washing
ton lift the curtain of secrecy that hangs be-
tween our coast line and the Atlantic to an
ncunce that troops have been landed to an un-
mentioned number at an unnamed port in France.
Only once so far has 1t named the ships that car
ried those troops.
To the average American mind the transports
leave our shores and reach those of France, and
that is all there is to 1t.
There is much more. Most Of this probably
will never be told. The endless chain Of ships,
most of them built in Germany, that carry
men and supplies to the immediate rear of the
war, and then return for more, have no his
tory.
Yet the history is there, latent and waiting
for birth. The fate of Americas part in the
war, perhaps the fate of the war itself, rests
on the blue-jumpered shoulders of the transport
men. Their business is not to fight, unless cor
nered. Their task is not to defend so much as
m avode Thav rnSnoncihIa for Tho 1ivao of
thousands of temporarily helpless soldiers. They
and their ship play a desperate game of tag, in
which every U-boat the kaiser owns is 'it' and
they and their vessel the lone and unhappy tagee.
Day by day they come and day by day they go,
and of their doings only the high lords of the
navy know. Peril of storm and torpedo are
theirs. Unrelaxed vigilance and eternal weari-
ness are their duty. And they are doing their
work. They are getting the men across. Up
to the time this was written, no transport fly
ing the Stars and Stripes and carrying her pre-
cious load of men and munitions to France has
lost in her deadly game of tag. The Tuscania. it
should be remembered, was a British ship.
That is what the men of the transport serv-
ice, most of whom enlisted to fight and were
chosen to run, are doing. How they are doing 1t
is only a partly told tale, caught here and there
from letters sent home from French ports by
sailors; from descriptions of the trip over "Over
There recounted by soldiers, recovered from the
terrible qualms of seasickneSs and filled with
a new-found gratitude and admiration. for their
brothers in the navy blue who brought them safe
ly across.
Let us call her the Ramapo, because that isn't
her name. Let us say still further that she was
formerly, before she hauled down the red,
white and black and hoisted the Stars and Stripes,
the Fuerst Adolph, which she wasn't, and one Of
the crack liners in the German merchant ma
rine, which she was.
In the dusk of a winter afternoon she slip
ped down the river and out to sea, unobtrusive
in her war paint. Several thousand troops
were in the troop spaces below decks.
The troops were all kept below while the trans
port slowly slipped down the stream and the
shores grew blurred behind her. Then her en-
gines quickened. Her bow made its first curtsey
to the ominous Atlantic swell, and she was on
her way across. From now on, for day on. day,
a torpedo rightly placed might cause a greater
loss than the attack of an army corps ashore.
Down in the troop spaces soldiers were singing
to keep up their courage. In the quarters of a
negro regiment at least a hundred crap games
were already in progress. Up in the crows
nests lads only a few times at sea were already
on the watch for submarines and seeing peri
scopes in every wave top.
That night, the storm hit them.
All through the night, the section on watch
had no time for peaceful thought. They pro-
crossed pussin-the-corner fashion across the
heaving decks in the inky darkness, making fast
davits that were wrenching free with the roll
ing, securing a hundred different objects that
strove to burst away.
The phosphorescence of the wave tops was the
only light they saw. Save for two or three e-
eeptions there was absolutely no Illumination on