I hadn’t visited the Owl Cover for a decade—since Dad quit hunting—before that morning with Skip and Waldo.
Skip nosed the wagon up the woodsroad and stopped at the barway. “Looks different,” said Dad, peering out the window. The oaks that had been saplings the day the owl flew across the road had grown to tall mature trees. The gnarled old Baldwins were bare of fruit. “The cover’s past its prime,” he said. He turned to scratch Waldo’s ears. “Kinda gray of muzzle and slow of foot. Happens to the best of us.”
“I bet it still holds birds,” said Skip.
We climbed out of the wagon. Skip and I uncased our shotguns. “Where’s your gun?” said Skip to Dad.
“Didn’t bring one,” he said. “I can hunt without a gun. I’ll follow Bill around. I just want to see Waldo work.”
I arched my eyebrows at Skip, who refused to meet my glance.
We angled down the slope toward the brook, with Skip on my right and Waldo zig-zagging between us. Dad followed along behind me. I tried to pick easy routes so he wouldn’t lag too far behind. After a few minutes he said to me, “Hey! Hunt, will you? Don’t pussy-foot around on my account. I can still keep up with the likes of you.”
Waldo criss-crossed in front of us, working perfectly, and near the brook he locked into a point. “Woodcock,” announced Skip. “His grouse points are different.”
I stood at ready while Skip moved in. He kicked out the woodcock. It corkscrewed up between us. I shot and missed. Skip fired and the little bird toppled. “Fetch,” said Skip, and Waldo brought the bird to him.
“Tough shot,” said Dad from behind me. “He made a right-angle turn just as you touched off.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I wasn’t going to mention it.” Dad had always helped me with my excuses. I’d hunted with him for a long time before I began to notice that he didn’t make excuses for himself.
TAP AND HIS BRITTANY, BUCKY
We found no more birds in the Owl Cover that morning. It had grown elderly and no longer looked very birdy. Back in Skip’s wagon Dad said, “Thanks, men. I enjoyed it. Waldo’s something, all right. You better drop me off now, so you can get serious.”
“Oh, come along, “ said Skip. “We’ve got some good covers to hit. Besides, you haven’t seen Waldo on a grouse yet.”
“Nope. That was enough.”
Skip shrugged. He knew as well as I did that it was no use to argue with Tap.
As we drove back to Pond Road, Dad turned to me from the front seat and said, “Did that remind you of anything?”
“What, me missing a woodcock? That conjured up a thousand identical memories, all equally embarrassing.”
“Not that. I mean me tagging along behind you. Remember?”
I nodded. “Sure do. That was a while ago, huh?”
He smiled. “I was younger than you are now.”
I hunted with Dad for two years before I took my first shot at a flying grouse or woodcock. Just about every autumn weekend I trailed behind him through the thickest, muckiest terrain in New Hampshire, following, literally, in his footsteps, as I would metaphorically through much of my life. I did not carry a gun. I watched and learned, and while he did all the shooting, I did hunt.
So on that morning three Octobers ago when Dad followed me, gunless, through the Owl Cover, we both understood that a circle had been closed. I think he enjoyed the inevitable symmetry of it, although it saddened me.
That afternoon on the way back to Boston, Skip demanded his buck. I protested. “You used Waldo for a lure. Not fair. You know how he loves good dog work.”
“That wasn’t the only reason he came and you know it.”
I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “Conceded. But he didn’t hunt.”
“You mean he didn’t carry a gun,” said Skip. “There’s a difference. You know that, too.”
I forked over a dollar.
For the past two seasons Dad has stoutly declined Skip’s invitations. “This’ll be Waldo’s last season for sure,” Skip always says. “But you oughta see him. He’s better than ever.”
Dad waves his hand. “You boys go ahead, have fun.”
We do have fun. I’ve been lucky enough to form hunting and fishing partnerships with some good men through the years. But for me it’s never quite the same without Dad.
BURT HOLDS A POINT
1918
“Hey,” Dad liked to say whenever a small mishap or minor setback befell me, “life is stern and earnest.” He usually smiled when he recited this little homily, and I understood it was his way of reminding me to put things into perspective. Busting off a big trout or missing an easy straightaway shot at a grouse could seem monumentally tragic to a boy.
I didn’t buy that “stern and earnest” stuff, of course. Life—or mine, at least—was easy and carefree. It was, I figured, just Dad’s gentle way of mocking my impatience with my own fallibility. Eventually I came to realize that he meant it quite sincerely.
Dad’s legacy, of course, is mine too.
I have in my possession the diary that George Samuel Tapply kept during his second and third crossings of the North Atlantic in 1918. I don’t know if he kept a diary of his first crossing. The record of his fourth trip is forever lost. The only other remembrance of Dad’s father—my Grampie—is an intricately inlaid wooden cribbage board he made. Dad and I still peg out our games on it. I covet it.
When the United States entered the Great War, George Tapply left his wife and seven-year old son, Horace, to re-enlist in the Navy as chief quartermaster on the Ticonderoga, a transport ship that carried troops to the battlefields of France. Dad does not talk much about those years. I do know that sometime after his father went to sea, his mother sent him to live with relatives in Wells, Maine, while she remained in Waltham to nurse victims of the influenza epidemic.
Meanwhile, George was at war. In May of 1918, while anchored in a French harbor, he wrote, “I am somewhat homesick today and have been thinking lots about my dear little wife and the cutest and dearest little boy in the world, Horace my little boy. It is awful to get so blue but when I think of the many others who are over here and do not get home at all till the war is over, I think I am not so bad off. Another ship was torpedoed just outside this port last night. The subs are very busy lately.”
A few days later: “I have been very homesick today, and wrote a letter to my wife and as it had to be passed by the censoring officer I could not tell or say numerous things I should have under other circumstances. I do not like the idea of any one reading my letters to my wife because I am so lonely and homesick and feel like writing a loving letter and don’t want them to read it. I wrote a poem to my wife last night, in bed, about eleven o’clock. Was just thinking of how I should have loved to be home with her and to relieve her mind. I wrote the poem which I called ‘Longing for You.’”
By mid-June, the Ticonderoga was headed back to America to pick up another shipload of troops. “Have seen no subs yet,” wrote Chief Quatermaster Tapply, “but may before morning, as they may be following us along and close in at nightfall, a habit of theirs. It is going to be a case of ‘expecting’ all the way over this trip, because it is known there are large German submarines between here and America, some of those large ones 500 feet long and capable of 14 or 15 knots with large guns. I had just as soon meet one, but would like to be within a few hundred miles of shore.”
June 20: “Received another warning today of submarines off the coast. I guess my dear little wife is some nervous, as she probably knows I am on my way back by now. Will be very glad to get in so I can get to see her. I miss her more and more every day, and live in hope that when the war is over to be alive and well. The chances are great for getting hit while running the blockade, but I figure my chances are good if we get a chance to launch the boats. The excitement is worthwhile, though, and I shall have lots to think about when it is all over.”
Two days later he wrote, “We lost a man, or boy, seventeen years old, overboard last night
in a terrible storm, which raged all night. The poor fellow must have had a terrible feeling to be out in that rough sea and see the ship go along with no hope of getting picked up. No one saw him go over, but he was missed at 12:30. He came off watch at midnight. A search was made but could not find him. This morning some of the fellows said they thought they heard a cry of ‘man overboard,’ but as the wind was so strong it was very indistinct. Poor fellow. He could not last long in a sea like that. Oh it was a terrible night out. The wind was blowing a hurricane and I don’t think it ever rained harder, and the ship rolling terrible, with a 60-mile gale blowing. We all feel bad for him and his folks. I wish the war would hurry up and get over, for things like that kind of give one the feeling that he does not want to go to sea anymore.”
They made harbor on June 25. By mid-July the Ticonderoga had begun its third crossing. “I do not feel very well today,” George wrote on July 13. “My stomach is on the blink, probably I have eaten too much watermelon, as they are very cheap in Norfolk and the commissary steward bought quite a lot and brought them along. I hope I shall feel better after today. If I was home just now I would as soon be sick a few days, because I would have my wife to take care of me…The Capt. made an inspection of the ship this A.M. and gave me quite a compliment on the room. We finished painting it the day before yesterday, and it did look good. I guess when he looked up at my bunk and saw my wife’s picture with Horace on one side of her and me on the other, he couldn’t say much else…This trip has a funny feeling to it and I can not but feel that something is going to happen. For the last week all kinds of precautions have been taken, and all the life boats have been thoroughly overhauled and everybody must take a life belt with them if they leave their quarters.”
July 24: “The ocean escort U.S.S. Galveston turned back today, so we have no protection except our own guns. It is very dangerous waters through which we will be going till we strike port—probably next Sunday if we do not get sunk. It is very hard to see a sub at night and I expect we will lose one or more ships tonight, as we know there are submarines around us.”
July 26: “Things started last night at 7:30 P.M. when we heard an explosion and saw the ship right abeam of us, and only four hundred yards away, the U.S.S. Tippicanoe, get torpedoed and start to sink. In five minutes she had three boats in the water…Somehow this trip seems kind of funny to me, and I have had a very queer feeling about it, and although we expect to arrive in port Sunday we have two more nights to put in yet, and something more is apt to happen, for we know that the subs are following us and tonight they will close in and some poor ship is going to take the deep six.”
By August 22, the Ticonderoga had delivered its troops and turned back for the States. “Warnings are coming in quite often, and there are lots of subs out operating, but we will hope they do not happen to see us. This is like a game of hide and go seek, only if you are seen you go down.”
August 28: “Our pleasure trip was rudely interrupted at sundown when a submarine came up on our port side and about three miles away…We opened up with our three-inch and then the sub went under. A few minutes after we saw the wake of a torpedo coming right toward us from the starboard side about 25 miles an hour and just by sheer luck missed us only by a few feet or went under the stern, I could not make out which.”
On September 5 the Ticonderoga had safely made port. “I heard today no one was to be granted leave, but I am going to see the First Lt. and see if mine can be granted. I am so blue now I do not know how I would feel if I had to go across again and not see my wife and boy.”
I don’t know if he was granted his leave and made it home for his son’s eighth birthday on September 18, but a couple of weeks later the Ticonderoga once again weighed anchor. I assume Chief Quartermaster Tapply kept a diary, but I have only a scrapbook of newspaper clippings for an account of his fourth crossing. One of the faded yellow clippings reprints the letter that George Tapply wrote to his mother on October 10, 1918, from aboard the British ship, R.M.S. Grampian.
“Dear Mother: I thank God I am here and alive to write to you. As you can see by the writing paper, I am on board one of your own country’s Royal Mail ships, now doing convoy duty carrying American troops across the pond. I am bound for New York.
“I have no doubt you will see in the papers of our disaster, but not knowing what might be put in and whether the names of the twenty-eight survivors would be published, I thought I would drop you a few lines as soon as possible and relieve your mind from worry. I am all right but slightly wounded in my left leg just above the ankle by shrapnel and may have to go to the hospital for a few days before I can come home to see you. The wound is not very bad, but as it was five days without any medical attention, it is somewhat sore and inflamed, but it ought to enable me to come home in a week or so.
“It is God’s will that my time has not yet arrived for me to die, for I faced death and came through alive, while 220 other men did not.
“It was on the morning of Sept. 30 in the middle Atlantic at daybreak, we were attacked by a submarine which opened up on us without any warning and the first two shots carried away our bridge, setting it on fire and killing five men who were on it. The Captain was very badly wounded, having a shrapnel cut away some of the bone at the knee and his face and head all cut up. When I came forward he was crawling off the bridge and I helped to carry him aft, away from the fire, as the bridge by that time was a roaring furnace. The three-inch forward gun had a chance to fire only one shot when a shell hit it and killed the entire crew. The sub then came down our starboard side, firing and killing men as she went. We opened up with our six-inch gun, but things were happening so quickly by that time that our men couldn’t seem to hit the attacking boat but managed to make it submerge only to come up again about two miles away.
“As our steering gear and wireless were useless, we were at the mercy of the enemy, but kept firing at the submarine. Every shot the enemy fired hit. He tried to hit our after gun, which he finally did, killing four of the men and disabling the gun. We were then helpless, and he began shelling us with shrapnel, killing men right and left. How I escaped death I don’t know. Men fell all around me and the deck was covered with blood and with dead and dying men. I know there were at least 150 men lying in pools of blood. All of our boats that had been lowered were swamped, and the men in them were drowned. There was only one boat left, and we lowered that and put in the Captain and two other badly wounded men and fourteen soldiers, and lowered it into the water, and that was the only boat I know of which got away safely.
“There were then about twenty-five men left on the then sinking ship. I did not know but that I would be hit by a shell any minute, as the ship was being punctured with holes from bow to stern. The ship was full of holes. I did not fear death, and I knew it was only a matter of a few minutes and I would be in the water.
“About that time two fellows beside me were killed. I got hit in the leg but as I could stand up I didn’t wait to see how badly. About that time, perhaps at 7:30, the sub sent a torpedo into us. We were sinking, but I guess he didn’t think he was killing us off fast enough, so he was hurrying it up. The torpedo hit us amidships and broke the steam pipes and the steam was going everywhere.
“I knew I must get ready to jump overboard with just a life preserver on. I went aft and picked up a piece of wood and as water was only a few feet from the after deck I was just going to step off. I knew it would be only be a matter of a few hours and I would die of exposure. I looked around and saw a raft, which had not been pushed off, and went up forward and climbed up to it. There were some ten fellows all lying down beside it, and I asked them why they were lying there and as I spoke I found out the reason. The sub was trying to shoot us off. It was just cold-blooded murder, that’s all.
“Well I got the fellows up, as we were sinking pretty fast, and after we had put three wounded men on top of the raft we pushed it off the top some twenty feet from the water and jumped over after it and climbed on an
d pulled the three wounded men up from the water as the raft tipped over.
“We were none two soon, for we were only ten feet away when the bow came straight up in the air and the Ticonderoga shot to the depths. There we were on an open raft 1,600 miles from any land and the wind blowing hard and a rough sea running which washed over us and made it difficult even to hold on.
“Now I can tell you, Mother, that things looked pretty bad; it seemed to us to be simply a case of waiting until overtaken by death. We got no wireless out, the convoy was miles ahead, and the sub lying around. The lifeboat was about a mile to the windward of us. I saw the sub go up to her and found out afterward that they wanted the Captain, the Chief Engineer, and the gunner. The fellows lied and said the Captain was dead. The Huns then tied the boat to the stern of the sub and started ahead, intending to drown them all, but by a chance of luck the line carried away and although the German called them back they didn’t go.
“The sub then fired three shots at the boat but did not hit it. She then came on to us on the raft and tied us alongside, covering us with their revolvers. I expected to be shot any minute. They took a moving picture of us and took our officer prisoner. When they asked me who I was, I thought sure I was a goner.
“They finally eased us off and we drifted away, and even though I knew I would die before long I was mighty glad to get away from them.
“The lifeboat kept drifting nearer and about four o’clock that afternoon came alongside and five of us got in the boat. We tried to get a line to the raft, but couldn’t. I was then wet through and very cold, but was some better off than on the raft. There were three very badly wounded men, and one died a little while after I got on the boat and we had to throw the poor fellow overboard. Mr. Ringelman, an ensign, and I were the only two in the boat who knew how to handle it, and you can believe me we had a hard job to keep it from swamping.
Sportsman's Legacy Page 3
