With Britain faring badly due to unchecked U-boat attacks on commercial shipping in the North Atlantic, President Woodrow Wilson ordered Division 8 to Queenstown, Ireland in May 1917, the first group of American destroyers sent abroad during World War I. After a 9-day Atlantic crossing most of the time in a severe southeast gale, the destroyer division arrived at Queenstown with orders to cooperate with the British Royal Navy. At a dinner in the Americans' honor the night of their arrival, the RN Commander-in-Chief, Coast of Ireland, Vice Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly asked Commander Taussig, "When will you be ready to go to sea?" Taussig replied in the now famous words; "We are ready now, sir, that is, as soon as we finish refueling." For an attack on a German U-boat on 29 July 1917, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, at that time the navy's second highest valor award. In December 1917, he returned to the U.S. to take command of the newly commissioned destroyer . By May 1918, was in Europe, patrolling off the coast of France. The journal that Commander Taussig kept of his service in World War I was published in 1996 by the Naval War College Press under the title, "The Queenstown Patrol, 1917". With the war winding down, he was detached to the Bureau of Navigation in August 1918. Conflict with Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt Promoted to captain in September 1918, he was assigned to head the Division of Enlisted Personnel of the Bureau of Navigation. Aware of the inadequacies of manpower from his experience in the fleet during World War I, in 1920, he was embroiled in a publicized dispute with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt and testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Navy Affairs regarding the personnel shortage in the navy, stating that navy department heads had failed "to take adequate steps to provide personnel necessary for the proper conduct of the navy during the war." For his outspoken views, Taussig earned the lifetime enmity of Roosevelt, who was in a political fight with the Republican Party over his nomination as Vice President, and wrote a sharp letter to the navy subcommittee denying Taussig's charges. Taussig candidly maintained that, "the Navy was far from being ready for War... and the enlisted personnel was entirely inadequate for the proper manning of our already completed ships on