Dan Quin of the Navy

0/5 ( ratings)

I INTRODUCE MYSELF DAN QUIN is speaking to you, Dan Quin of the United States Navy. If you wish to know who Dan Quin is and happen to be in Mexico, ask any prominent citizen from Vera Cruz. If in Haiti, ask President Dartigucnave or Secretary of State Louis Borno. In Santo Domingo inquire of Archbishop Noel, or Don Frederico Velasquez. Aboard thc battleship Massachusetts ask the admiral or captain. Once, on the forecastle of the 1Massachusetts, a few days after the German fleet surrendered to us, while AdrniraI Beatty, commander in chief of the British Grand Fleet, was making a speech to our crew, an incident happened which perhaps would cause that officer to remember who Dan Quin is. If in Chicago, you would find out by inquiring at the church on the corner of AshIand and Ogden avenues. I am just mentioning these names and places so that any one who reads this story of mine will know I am giving him straight goods and not trying to work any fairy tale. I am going to telI about the times I have had in the navy I have been in tight places, have heard bullets whistle and cannon roar I have becn shipwrecked, have given hard bIows, and carry scars. All of the time I kept a diary and rco-ded events as they happened. This account will give my impressions at the time things occurred, as recorded in my diary. It should be remembered that with growing experience and fuIler knowledge my views in some instances have changed from those originally recorded. But this story is to tell without exaggeration exactly how matters seerned to me at the time they occurred, rather than what I think of them now. I will first explain why I enlisted in the navy. I was born in Texas and lived there until I was seventeen years old. My father had a cattle ranch near the Mexican border, so of course I spoke Spanish from childhood. Everybody does down there, whether educated or illiterate. And this Spanish is real Spanish, incorrect, perhaps, with many localisms, but still it is not a patois. bly mother was French, born in Paris. She did not come to this country until after she had married my father. She never learned to speak English, though she under stood perfectly anything said to her in that language. French was always spoken at home. That was a glorious life, my boyhood in Texas. Father made me study hard, but there never passed a day but what I spent hours in my saddle, riding about, rifle in hand. I became a good shot, practicing every day, not in a gallery at a tame target, but from the back of a galloping horse at a flying bird or a running chipmunk. And I was pretty sure to hit, too if you think this easy, you who pride yourselves on being expert marksmen, just try it a few hundred times. One night whcn I was about seventeen years old some Mexican bandits came across the border to raid our ranch. Thy werent successful. Father got three of them. Then a miserable ingrate, Josi Ramos, whom father had always treated kindly, shot him in the back...