have been studying hard, for I intend to learn Russian. So many of my friends are Russian, and I like the Russians, so ... you see I am still thinking of my billet as attaché." On January 26, 1914, Ensign Koehler was given command of the , a fleet tug based at Olongapo Naval Station, Philippine Islands. Under him were three other ensigns and forty enlisted men. At one point during his command, Congress failed to pass a naval budget appropriation and Koehler paid the men on his ship and several others from his own pocket. As another eccentricity, Koehler kept a menagerie on his ship. Tragically, his pet boa constrictor swallowed his small spotted deer. Both died when the deer's sharp hooves pierced the snake's side. During the week of June 1–6, 1914, Lt. Cdr. Lewis Coxe, commanding the Naval Station at Olangapo, ordered Koehler to tow a naval coal barge that Koehler subsequently deemed unseaworthy after his ship started the tow and discovered the barge was taking on water. Koehler returned to port; however, Coxe insisted that he carry out the order. Koehler did, the barge and its $10,000 cargo capsized, Coxe was court-martialed, found guilty of neglect of duty and culpable inefficiency, and Koehler was exonerated. On June 5, 1914, Koehler was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade). That September, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels quoted Koehler's commanding officer and said, "This Koehler is very adaptable and possesses a military spirit unusual in one of his rank. At the same time he has produced a smart ship, a contented crew, and the ship in general and the engine room are the cleanest I have ever seen." Koehler detached from Piscataqua in June 1915, and returned to the Continental United States aboard the SS Chiyo Maru from Yokohama via Honolulu to San Francisco, and listed on the manifest as "Capt. H.W. Koehler". Before sailing from Japan, Koehler used his Germanic looks and "Kaiser Willie" mustache to bait the Japanese into arresting him as a suspected German spy. With no ID card, commonplace for the time, Koehler spent several days in a Japanese jail, happy to learn what the Japanese were interested in, until the U.S. naval attaché, received a cabled description of Koehler from Washington. More than fifteen years before Japanese imperialism blighted Asia, Koehler wrote, "with Japan and things Japanese... I detest them more each day". Returning