The Rathdrum tribune. (Rathdrum, Idaho) 1903-1963, 1919-11-14

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Little Harder Work Than Usual.
Perils Of the Officers and Suckers.
There is a man in the navy who is
too often forgotten, even by the au-
| thorities. when they are "dishing out"
rewards and praise for successful op
erations at sea, and that man is the
man who makes the wheels go round
inside the ship
If the wheels stop then the modern
warship lies on the water like an arm
ed tin can, waiting for some one to sail
round it. plug it full of holes and
sink it.
A lighting ship. to put up any sort
Of battle at all. must be able to get on
with it at the rate Of knots, as the sail
ors say when they mean at high speed,
and the men who make that possible
are the engineers and the stokers. The
engineer officers are highly skilled
scientists, with no use for the fear of
death.
The stoker, far below the waterline.
shovels coal, and he gathers there is a
battle on, when there is, by the sfact
that he has to work twice as hard as
he thought he could, and by the infer
nal racket made by the guns, and by
the projectiles of the enemy, which
have found new home aboard the
ship.
In ha of q oil a nd
thrill of battle-onl an increase III
his ordinary work.
He works by lamplight to keep steam
up, and he knows there has been vic
tory when some one tells him, unless
he happens to be working in his
spare" time at the ammunition hoists
near the roaring guns..
Even now in many ships and once in
all the engineer officers and their men
are shut down in their working place.
and they cannot get out, for 1t is nee
essary for them to so be closed up. 1t is
not, of course, necessary to keep them
there to make them do their work. but
because the ships engines run under
forced draft, and the only way TO get
that Is to batten down the stokeholds.
They become, in fact. part of the pipe.
if one can call it that, along which the
air Is pumped to the fires to make them
burn more fiercely, just as one bucks up
the kitchen range with the bellows. If
the matches leading to the upper decks
were open the air would be pumped
out through them and would not pass
through the white hot furnaces.
If she is torpedoed and sinks sud
denly down go the engineers and the
stokers without the chance of swim
ming for it as the others have when
the order Each man for himselfr' Is
given by the executive officer in charge
of the vessel.
In the case of the oil driven war
ships there is not. 1t need hardly be
said. that added risk for the engine
them down. and in case OF sinking
they have no further risk than that
entailed by the time taken for the or
der to get down to them and for them
to get up on deck. They are. however.
the .'eople most likely to go to frag-
ments when torpedo comes knocking
on the ships side, or. rather. down
among her foundations.
And there are steam pipes filed with
scalding and sudden death. flooding the,
engine room in an instant with biting.
binding, soaring fog, somewhere above
boiling point. for high pressure steam
is hotter stuff than comes out of the
spout of kettle. A shell through the
main steam pipes. and goodby to those
who are near the damage.
The engineer officer knows all this
and often has seen some of the things
chat can happen taking place on
small but significant scale. While the
gunners get the glory he watches the
wheels go round. listens not to the
scream of the shells or the hammer
strokes of projectiles on armor plate,
but to the telltale songs of the COM
pick mechanisms over which he pre-
sides with the GOODNESS of naval Of
ficer, the skill of a man of science and
the tenderness of Red Cross nurse
Every moment may be the last mo-
ment the life In his body has. but he
must not think OF that.
Down there In the bowels of the
fighting ship he must keep his mind
clear to think Of thousand details,
and he must do It without any of the
exhilarati0n that comes from watching
the effect OF the guns on the enemy,s
ships.
He never sees shot go home; he
never sees an enemy's flag pulled down
in defeat
He sees only his engines and the men