The last post includes Major Allworth's description of his
experiences in the Meuse Argonne Campaign while the subject of the April 26
post was the role of the U.S. Navy during World War I. The Benton County Historical Museum's
collection includes a number of other first-hand accounts of resident's
experiences during World War I. The
following account includes portions from the transcript of an interview of R.
C. Dickinson, U.S. Navy, by Jane Van Sickle. (2013-073.0001)
...when I was still in training in Key West, Florida, the
only backdrop they had for bullets that we were shooting at the target was just
the ocean. So we were shooting at
targets at 600 yards with an old Springfield rifle, and they put me on the stand
down there...and [the officer] said, “If you see any fishing boats come by, the
command is cease fire” so you don't want to shoot the fishing boats. So I'm up there and sure enough here comes a
motor boat towing six fishing boats and a man in each one and he's coming
right—the boats were splashing out there in the water. So I yelled, “Cease fire!”....He didn't hear
me. “Cease fire.” Nothing happened. So I
was getting pretty desperate so I
hollered, “Hey, cut it out!” So...the drill officer, comes running down
there...he said, “The command is cease fire.” I said, “I know that, but you
couldn't hear me.” ....So he put another man up there that was more voice than
anything else.
 |
| A 1903 Springfield model rifle, standard equipment for the U. S. armed forces in World War I, from the BCHM collection. |
I became an engineer office in the black gang they call
it—the engine room—and on the submarine
I just kept the diesel engine going and if they said to stop it I knew what to
do, and if they said half speed I knew what to do. I didn't need to know very much but I
couldn't have used a voice in the engine room anyway because the diesel engines
were making so much noise nobody could
hear so it wasn't necessary....
They put us in a shipping out company. Here'd be the name of they ship—they wanted
300 men or so. I didn't want on a battleship cause that's too many men in one
place. You have to get in line for everything, from washing your teeth
to eating to washing your clothes....so one day the bulletin board said, “Two men wanted for dangerous duty in
the North Seas on U. S. Submersible K-7” It didn't say submarine, it said
submersible, and, well,it knew what it was, there was nobody there.....[So he
signed up]
In the Caribbean Sea there was a German ship they called a Q
boat. That's a freighter with eight-inch guns that are not visible...if you
look at the ship. But we knew the Q
boats were waiting for us
because it was going from Germany to Old Mexico to get supplies that Germany
couldn't get anywhere else. This was when the war was getting critical...there
were 800 men on there, and we're just traveling at periscope depth, and the
only man that can look outside is the
captain.,,,he sees the Q boat and ...he calls these figures and the man that's
navigating heads the boat in that
direction. Then he says, “Fire #1
torpedo.” They fire and immediately after you make what they call a crash
dive—that is done not by taking on ballast but by turning the horizontal
rudders, ... the tail of the submarine comes up—you really go down
quick....then we wondered what happened to the ship....But you can walk up and
see what they wrote on the log book.
Then you know you killed 800 men....
[another time] We were down at 200 feet—ashcans (300 pounds
of TNT) began to drop around us and explode.
And the ship would tremble so it was terrible. I was young—I was 17 so I
look at these regular Navy men and they're not bothered a lot but one of them
came up to me and he said, “Have you got a sharp knife? “
I said,
“Well I have this knife they issued me when I joined the Navy.”
“Oh,” he
said, “you should keep one blade razor sharp; it's better than smothering.”
By
Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath,
Oregon
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