Memoirs of 2dLt W. B. Jackson, USMC
ACROSS THE POND ON THE USS DeKALB
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Finally, about the 1st of December orders came through for the battalion to proceed by train to Newport News, Virginia there to board ship for France. Our ship was the Baron De Kalb which had been a German auxiliary cruiser the Prinz Eitel Friederich. All the notices in the ship were still in German and translations had been printed on cards and stuck up near the German signs. The Navy had been coaling ship. Everything was in disarray and quite dirty. We worked all day the day of our arrival and all that night getting the battalion gear aboard and stowed. Here I ran into one wonderful Navy custom. The mess crews kept plates of hot meat sandwiches and hot coffee on the shelf for us all the loading time. The snacks were wonderful and used frequently.
As we neared the end of loading I asked the 1st Sergeant where we were to sleep. I got my introduction to war necessity right then. "Anywhere on deck," he replied. Wood decks and only two blanket per man did not make too comfortable a mattress. Jack and I went up on the poop deck (highest aft deck) and found that there was room enough under a slanted emergency life raft to bed-down which we did right there for the next month. We were right above the two stern five inch guns and right beside the fire control officer's office.
The next day we took off up the Atlantic coast to New York harbor where the convoy we were to join was being gathered. The weather was gray and cold. We lay in the harbor not far from the Statue of Liberty and fully exposed to the sky line of New York City. Our only outside occupation was watching the harbor activity-ships going and going-ferrys crossing from side to side-tug boats etc. The rest of our time was spent in chow lines, sleeping, writing letters.
Then one morning I awoke to the realization that the ship was moving and the propellers were turning. As the morning lightened, the Statue of Liberty and New York City skyline had receded and were becoming farther and farther to the rear-finally to disappear. It was what we had asked for but we watched the shoreline recede with a considerable feeling of nostalgia. We were on our way to France and the war.
A day or so later we steamed out of winter into balmy springtime. We were crossing the Gulf Stream and the
weather was beautiful. Our duties aboard ship were minimal-a short attempt at platoon formations-we land lubbers had not
acquired our sea legs and the platoon lines which were supposed to stand at attention and steady in place would break and
surge forward and back with every roll of the ship. So formations etc. did not last long. We chowed late morning and late afternoon. The ship was blacked out from dark to daylight so we sacked in from late afternoon to morning. During the day we watched the ocean and the horizon. Occasionally we would see a whale spout but not much else but waves and sea roll. While in
the Gulf Stream the nights were beautiful-golden moon and spring like atmosphere. One night Jack and I were awakened in the middle of the night by singing. The gun crews on the after 5 inch guns were harmonizing-really quite passable quartets. And the songs-Long Long Trail-Tipperary- Old Kentucky Home and when I dream about the Moonlight on the Wabash. It rather filled you up, out there somewhere on the Atlantic in the moonlight.
Our escort was a cruiser-one of the Carolinas-which headed the convoy. Along the flanks were lines of torpedo boat destroyers and at the aft end the auxiliary cruiser Baron De Kalb erstwhile the Prinz Eitel Friederich.
Suddenly one night we awakened to find it was snowing and bitterly cold. We had left the Gulf Stream. From now on it would be the gray-cold and stormy Atlantic in December. Things ran on monotonously for some days, then one day-Tremendous excitement. A sighting had been made that could have been a submarine periscope. It had come through the convoy and the gun crews of the De Kalb began firing-first with the 3 inch guns up forward and then suddenly with the 5 inch immediately below us. Jack and I could see nothing identifiable, but the fire control kept giving firing direction and the crews kept at it. The destroyers began pouring smoke from their funnel-practically stood up on their sterns as they came about and raced back past us and on to the rear. They dropped a few depth charges which exploded with a display of waterworks but we never did learn if there was actually a U-boat there.
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