“Our third day in the zone, after the little toy-boats, or destroyers as they called them, bobbed up, gave us a little fun. One of the guys on watch—that’s the same thing as guard in this man’s army—swore he saw a submarine on the starboard railin’ or somethin’ like that. Everybody rushed to that side of the ship until we like to have tipped over. You might think that we would have had sense enough, knowin’ it was a German submarine, to have ducked behind something so as to get out of the way of anythin’ that the Dutchmen would shoot over. But no, just like Americans, they had to run out and see what was goin’ on. “The captain had ’em blow the bugle to call everybody, ’cept the gunners and crew, to the life-boats. ’Bout the time that the racket started Samson and me was just gettin’ away with a big pan full of bread-puddin’ that the chinks and Japs had made for their own dinner. I heard ’em yellin’, ‘Submarine, submarine!’ But hell, I didn’t want to lose that puddin’, not after gettin’ away so clean, so Samson and I ran down the ladder that goes from the smokestack room down to the hold and hid the stuff. When I got upstairs—I mean on deck again—the bow-gun crew had a gun trained on the German and banged away once or twice. Some of the fellows swear that they saw the wake of a torpedo ’way behind us as if the Boche had fell short by a good many yards. But guess they was seein’ things. “That was the last fun we had until we hit the harbor of Brest after bein’ at sea twenty-three days. A Frenchman pilot got on aboard. Believe me it was a hell of a funny thing—he couldn’t speak a word of English and none of the officers could say a line of French. In them days I was just as bad as the officers as I couldn’t even say good mornin’ or ask for a drink of water in the Frog stuff. They got a buck private by the name of St. Gabriel or somethin’ like that who was a French Canuck to parley for them. That was one day that the privates had the officers at parade rest. Gabriel was the only man that knew what was up beside the pilot, and they had each other bluffed I believe. Well, buddy, that’s how I got to this sunny France business. Sunny! We ain’t had two whole clear days since we hit the country.” Jimmy McGee started running his hand under his shirt and scratched away in a professional manner. CHAPTER IV—“SUNNY FRANCE!” “You sure had a tough time getting here, Jimmy, compared to me. I came over on an old ocean liner. We had good clean bunks and three settings at table. There were regular bill o’ fares and live waiters. Only took eight days to come over. What was your first impression of France and where did you land at Brest?” O. D.’s brown eyes didn’t show a bit of sleepiness and his ears were cocked for every word that Jimmy McGee was willing to spill.