Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/258

 the fifty-six men in the crew. It starts out with twelve Americans and ends up with one Hollander, one Pole and a Swiss. The latter is really French, I think; at least he knows Paris pretty well. I'm the only one on the ship who can understand him, since he only speaks a few words of English and he comes to me and tells me all his troubles. They call him "third cook," which position covers all the dirty work in the kitchen; and both of the other men jump on him if he peels potatoes when they say to sweep out the pantry and he doesn't understand.

Today was bath day for the gun crew and for some of the rest of us too; the chief petty officer got permission to use the big fire hose, and then he squirted us while we stood stripped, on the iron deck, near the aft hatches. It was an Adam and Eve affair which I suppose doesn't often happen on the Mauretania or the Espagne. The bath freshened the gunners up so much that they fired four or five practice rounds from the three-inch gun on the stern and a good many more afterwards, from the machine-gun. They aimed at a soap box at several hundred yards, but the ship was rolling so badly they couldn't make a direct hit. They were good shots though, and handled the gun well.

My work after supper this evening might well come under the comic section title, "New Occupa -