"SHALL I LIVE TO FIGHT?"

The United States Navy took over interned vessels as well as all available American ships and sailed them throughout the war as transports. The imminent danger of attack by enemy submarines forced several innovations. Life preservers were worn by soldiers at all times. After dark no lights were permitted, not even cigarettes; while all the day’s garbage was collected in a huge bin on the forward deck and thrown overboard at midnight, so as to leave no trail. Preceded by a cruiser, the huge convoys zig-zagged apparently all over the ocean for twelve days.

 June, 1917.

-Captain Alban B. Butler

 

ship cartoon

Above: “Shall I Live to Fight?”, from Cpt. Alban B. Butler’s “Happy Days, A Humorous Narrative in Drawings of the Progress of American Arms 1917-1919”
From the Col. Robert R. McCormick Research Center.