The wife wasn't well and she was always frettin' at the thought of me enlistin', so I told her I'd wait, but I warned her that it was entirely responsible she'd be if Germany tied the Allies in a show-down. I told her I was a sharpshooter with a record in the Northwest to be proud of. I asked her why she was keepin' me back. Sure, I demanded what business she had to be hamperin' the Allies' chances like that! Well, me humor fell on deaf ears and I stayed until me own country, the United States of America, declared war, and that same afternoon, by the grace of God, I walked meself up, bought tickets for the States, packed me family aboard and two days later joined the navy. It's compromisin' I was when I joined. I told the wife that the fear of trenches or gas attacks need never enter her heart, but I knew as well as me own name the danger on the seas of Fritz gettin' playful and stickin' a torpedo in your ribs--but why worry her? Better than me prayers I knew firearms. I could take a rifle apart and put it together again with me eyes closed. I had had as many machine guns jam on me as the next fellow. I was entirely qualified to be a gunner's mate, which, I assure you, I wasted no time becomin'. They shipped me over on a British auxiliary--a cargo ship. For the two months they held me at the trainin' station. The wife had been knittin' and knittin'! If I'd been bound straight for the North Pole I couldn't be after havin' more helmets or sweaters or socks or wristlets than she sent me. Whist! how these women do slave for us. It was askin' her not to, that I did at first, until I saw it was givin' her the only mite of pleasure she could squeeze out of me goin' away. Women is like that. They wants to be babyin' their men folks until the end of the story. What I valued most of all was a picture she had taken with the kid. That nearly finished me. I was after winkin' and blinkin' over it like an old fool parted from his senses. But she looked so sweet smilin' at me there and the kid looked so clean it almost broke me up. I set sail on a warm June day. There was no chance to go home and say good-bye. In a way I was glad of that. She was, too. It's rough weather we had all the way and plenty of work, but I liked the life. I was hard as nails. I was strong from bein' outdoors twenty-nine years of me thirty. Weather didn't worry me--rain or shine was all the same. We came to the Zone. "Aha!" says I to meself, "so this is the patch Fritz has picked to try his luck with us as a target!" I kept wishin' for a sight of him. Sure, I stayed awake nights worryin' for fear the convoy sent out to meet us would be so good it would scare all the subs away. It was nearin' the point where we expected the sub chasers to meet us that I got me wish.