The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1919-01-09
HE following interesting
letter was written by a
former Hastings boy,
Leslie Washbish, to his

I'4qIEt letter was written by a
H9VEgE former Hastings boy,
lAgy Leslie Washbish, to his
parents. Mr.. and Mrs. George
Washbish, now of Chicago. A
copy of the letter Was received by
Mr.. w. j. Wright, of the Wright
& Austin Co., to whom we are in
debted for the privilege of publica-
tion. No further introduction is
necessary as the letter speaks for
itself:
US. S. New York, Nov. 21, 1918.
Dear Folks:
This has been an eventful day
for me and the world as we'll, for
today l was small part in the
unit which took over the nine bat
leships and five battle cruisers of
the German navy. which the armis-
tice agreed upon. We have been
waiting for them for a long time
and have often chased some of
them, but never with results until
today, and then we met them not
as we had always expected to. We
lifted anchor at 300 o'clock this
morning and proceeded from
Rosyth, Scotland (near Edinburgh,
in the Firth of FORTH, out into
the North Sea in the direction of
Germany. and at 900 o'clock this
morning we sighted the enemy.
We had all guns trained upon
them in case of trickery, but they
very wisely did not attempt any.
1t is good thing they did not. for
besides the five American ships in
our squadron (the five which have
been over here since the begin
ning), there were about twenty
''Limy" (English) besides innum-
erable destroyers. We brought
the German ships back to the Firth
of Forth, where they will probably
be interned. They sure are pow
erful battleships, and they put the
fear of God into the British sailors
at Jutland, but the Americans over
here have always been anxious to
meet them in battle, and our squad
ron has been assigned to many
ticklish jobs that the Limys were
afraid to tackle, such as convoy
ing mine layers over to Helgoland
to lay mines. / have had one sight
of Germany. and then we were a
good ways out, but I was not de-
sirous of getting nearer.
So you see that is where l have
been since being ere-bumming
around in the North Sea in the
vicinity of Germany and in the
closer vicinity of German sub
marines, one of which we got, and
that by accident. We hit 1t with
one of our propellers one night
while out after the Hun cruisers.
We broke our propeller and had to
put back into dry dock, and while
crawling back with one propeller a
submarine fred two tin fish tor
pedoes) at US, but missed both
times. We got the submarine that
we hit, however.
1t has been a tough job all right,
standing four-hour watches in the
dead of night with wind blowing
sixty miles an hour and cold as
Greenland and the waves running
over the forecastle. But, believe
me, today made up for it, and I
would not have missed it for the
world. There is not a boy in the
navy but would not have given a.
year of his life to have been with
US today. Admiral Sims came up
from London yesterday just to 60
out with US today, and he was on
the bridge with us all the morning,
and he was as tickled as a school
boy. He il the big mucky-muck
in the navy, you know.
The King of England and the
Prince of Wales came on board
yesterday and thanked us for our
efficient work while over here, and