Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/256

 operating with the airplanes. And then one morning almost without a word of warning we were told to pack up our personal equipment. We turned over the wireless apparatus to the supply officer of the company and by evening we were on our way to, which was one of the ports of embarkation for overseas men. We spent ten glorious days at Camp Mead without a tap of work to do.

On the morning of the eleventh day we boarded a big three stack troop-ship, weighed anchor and by noon we were off for France. To most of the men aboard, many of whom had never seen the ocean before, and some of them were never to see it after, the voyage was a great joy or a big sorrow according to the states of their stomachs, but to me it was a long and tiresome trip. The ship had been altered from a floating palace into a purveyance which would earry the greatest number of men it was possible to crowd into her.

On the morning of the eighth day after we had embarked we landed at Liverpool and were given a royal reception by the enthusiastic Britons. The way they warmed up to us was a revelation to me for I had no more idea that an