To Kiel in the 'Hercules'
by Lewis R. Freeman · English · Gutenberg #42374 · 405,028 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: To Kiel in the 'Hercules'
Author: Lewis R. Freeman
Release date: March 19, 2013 [eBook #42374]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TO KIEL IN THE 'HERCULES' ***
TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES"
[Illustration: "THE THREE ADMIRALS:" REAR ADMIRAL ROBINSON, U. S. N.
(LEFT), VICE ADMIRAL BROWNING, R. N. (CENTER), REAR ADMIRAL GROSSET
(FRENCH) (RIGHT)]
TO KIEL IN THE
"HERCULES"
BY
LIEUT. LEWIS R. FREEMAN, R. N. V. R.
Official Correspondent with the Grand Fleet, and Member
of Staff of Allied Naval Armistice Commission
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1919
COPYRIGHT, 1919
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I INTO GERMAN WATERS 1
II GETTING DOWN TO WORK 31
III FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF "STARVING GERMANY" 61
IV ACROSS THE SANDS TO NORDERNEY 92
V NORDHOLZ, THE DEN OF THE ZEPPELINS 122
VI MERCHANT SHIPPING 154
VII THE BOMBING OF TONDERN 179
VIII THROUGH THE CANAL TO THE BALTIC 198
IX TO WARNEMÜNDE AND RÜGEN 224
X JUTLAND AS A GERMAN SAW IT 255
XI BACK TO BASE 283
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"The Three Admirals." Rear Admiral Robinson, U. S. N.
(left), Vice Admiral Browning, R. N. (center), Rear
Admiral Grosset, (French) (right) _Frontispiece_
Heligoland in sight! 18
Members of the Allied Naval Commission, Admiral Browning
in center 34
The Allied Naval Commission and Staff, taken on board
_Hercules_ 34
The Padre of the _Hercules_ talking with newly arrived
British prisoners 40
In the Elbe, Hamburg 166
Railroad station at Hamburg 166
Floating dock for lifting submarines in Kiel Harbour 182
Birdseye view of Kiel 192
In Kiel dockyard 192
H. M. S. _Viceroy_ entering Kiel Canal lock at Brunsbüttel 200
Semaphore station on Kiel Canal, from _Hercules_ 206
Kiel dockyard from the Harbour 214
Foreshore of Kiel Harbour with the Kaiserlich Yacht
Club at left of grove of trees 220
_Hindy_ (left) and German pilot who claimed to have
launched the torpedo which damaged the _Sussex_ 228
British prisoners and German sailors at Warnemünde 240
View of Kiel Canal from nearmost turret of the _Hercules_ 258
_Hercules_, with three V class destroyers in Kiel Harbour 266
H. M. S. _Hercules_ and H. M. S. _Constance_ in Kiel locks 286
TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES"
TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES"
I
INTO GERMAN WATERS
"The _Regensburg_ has been calling us for some time," said the chief
signal officer as he came down for his belated "watch" luncheon in the
ward-room, "and it looks as though we might expect to see her come
nosing up out of the mist any time after two o'clock. She excuses
herself for being late at the rendezvous by saying that the fog has been
so thick in the Bight that she had to anchor during the night. It's not
any too good a prospect for a look-see at Heligoland, for our course
hardly takes us within three miles of it at the nearest."
It was in a fog that the _Hercules_ had dropped down through the moored
lines of the Grand Fleet the previous morning, it was in a fog that she
had felt her way out of the Firth of Forth and by devious mine-swept
channels to the North Sea, and it was still in a fog that she--the
first surface warship of the Allies to penetrate deeply into them since
the Battle of the Bight, not long after the outbreak of the war--was
approaching German waters. Indeed, the whole last act of the great
naval drama--from the coming of the _Königsberg_ to the Forth, with
a delegation to receive the terms of surrender, to the incomparable
pageant of the surrender itself--had been played out behind the fitful
and uncertain raisings and lowerings of a fog-curtain; and now the
epilogue--wherein there was promise that much, if not all, that had
remained a mystery throughout the unfolding of the war drama itself
should be finally revealed--was being held up through the wilfulness
of this same perverse scene-shifter. The light cruiser, _Regensburg_,
which, "according to plan," was to have met us at nine that morning at a
rendezvous suggested by the German Naval Staff, and pilot the _Hercules_
through the mine-fields, had not been sighted by early afternoon.
Numerous floating mines, rolling lazily in the bow-wave spreading to
port and starboard and ogling us with leering, moon-faced impudence
in the fog, had been sighted since daybreak, auguring darkly of the
explosive barrier through which we were passing by the "safe course" the
Germans (in lieu of the promised charts which had failed to arrive) had
advised us by wireless to follow.
Now mines, floating or submerged, are not pleasant things to navigate
among. Although, theoretically, it is impossible for any ship to run
into a floating mine even if she tries (the bow-wave tending to throw
it off, as many experiments have proved); and although, theoretically,
a ship fitted with paravanes cannot bring her hull into contact with
a moored mine; yet the fact remained that ships were being lost right
along from both kinds. It seemed high time, then, in the case of the
_Hercules_ and her escorting destroyers, that the German Navy, which
had undertaken to see them safely through the mine barrier, and which
knew more about the pattern of its death-traps than any one else, should
begin to shoulder some of its responsibilities. It was good news that
the _Regensburg_ was about to make a tardy appearance and hand over a
hostage in the form of a German pilot.
* * * * *
The blank grey fog-curtain which trailed its misty folds across the
ward-room scuttles discouraged all of the grate-side loungers whom I
tried to bestir to go up at two o'clock to watch for the appearance of
the _Regensburg_, and, meeting, with no better success in the snugly
comfortable "commission-room" into which the former gun-room had been
converted for the voyage, I mounted alone the iron ladders which led to
the lofty vantage of the signal bridge. There was only a few hundred
yards of visibility, but the even throb of the engines, the swift run
of the foam along the sides, and the sharp sting of the air on my cheek
told that there had been little if any abatement of the steady speed of
seventeen knots at which _Hercules_ had been steaming since she passed
May Island the previous day at noon. The _Regensburg_, the chief yeoman
of signals told me, had made a W.T. to say that she had been compelled
by the fog to slow down again, and this, he figured, might make it
between three and four o'clock before we picked her up. "There's no use
waiting for the Huns, sir," he said, with a tired smile. "The hanging
back habit, which they were four years in cultivating, seems to have
grown on them so that they're hanging back even yet. Best go down and
wait where it's warm, and I'll send a boy to call you when we know for
certain when she'll turn up."
My foot was on the ladder, when the sight of a seagull dancing a giddy
_pas seul_ on the titillating horn of a mine bobbing off astern recalled
a story an Italian destroyer skipper had once told me, of how he had
seen an Albanian sea eagle blow itself up as a consequence of executing
a precisely similar manoeuvre. I lingered to get the chief yeoman's
opinion of what I had hitherto considered a highly apocryphal yarn,
and when he was called away to take down a signal to pass back to the
destroyers, the loom of what looked to me like a ship taking shape in
the fog drew me over to the starboard rail. It dissolved and disappeared
as my glass focussed on it, only to raise its amorphous blur again a
point or so further abeam. Then I recognized it, and smiled indulgent
welcome to an old friend of many watches--the first cousin to the
mirage, the looming shape which a man peering hard into thick fog keeps
_thinking_ he sees at one end or the other of the arc of his angle of
vision.
Any man actually on watch knows better than to let his mind take
liberties with "fog pictures," and not a few of those who have done so
have had the last picture of the series merge into a reality of wind and
water and a good ship banging itself to pieces on a line of submerged
rocks. But I--as so often in voyages of late--was on the bridge without
duties or responsibilities. I was free to let the pictures take what
form they would; and it must have been what the chief yeoman had just
said about the weariness of waiting for the Huns that turned my mind to
what I had heard and seen of the four-year vigil of the Grand Fleet.
There was a picture of Scapa as I had seen it on my earliest visit from
the basket of a kite balloon towed from the old _Campania_, the same
_Campania_ which now rested on the bottom of the Firth of Forth, and
the top-masts of which we had passed a half cable's length to port as
the _Hercules_ steamed out the day before. There were golden sun-notes
weaving in a Maypole dance with rollicking slate-black cloud shadows in
that picture; but in the next--where the surface of the Flow was beaten
to the whiteness of the snow-clad hills hemming it in--the brooding
light was darkly sinister and ominous of import, for that was the winter
day when we had word that two destroyers, which the might of the Grand
Fleet was powerless to save, were being banged to bits against a cliff
a few miles outside the gates. Then there was a picture of an Orkney
midsummer midnight--just such a night, the officer of the watch told me,
as the one on which he had seen the _Hampshire_, with Kitchener pacing
the quarter-deck alone, pass out to her doom two years previously--with
a fitful green light flooding the Flow, reflected from the sun circling
just below the northern horizon, and every kite balloon in the air at
the time being torn from its cable and sent flying towards Scandinavia
before the ninety-mile gale which had sprung up from nowhere without
warning.
Visions of golf on Flotta, picnics under the cliffs of Hoy, and climbs
up the peat-boggy sides of the Ward Hill of the "Mainland," gave place
to those of squadron boxing competitions--savage but cleanly fought
bouts in a squared circle under the elevated guns of "Q" turret, with
the funnels, superstructures, and improvised grandstands alive with
bluejackets--and regattas, pulled off in various and sundry craft
between the long lines of anchored battleships. A long series (these
more like panoramas) of hurried unmoorings and departures--by division,
by squadron, and with all the Grand Fleet, through every square mile of
the North Sea from the Bight to far up the coast of Norway--finished up
at Rosyth, in that strange fortnight just before the end, when all but
those on the "inside" thought the persistent "short notice" was due to
a desire to keep the men aboard on account of the 'flu, and not to the
fact of which the Admiralty appear to have been so well advised, that
the German naval authorities--for the first and last time--were making
desperate efforts to get their ships out for the long-deferred _Tag_.
Then the fog-bank ahead--or so it seemed--was splashed with the gay
colour of "Armistice Night," when all the spare signal lights (to say
nothing of a lot that couldn't be spared) of the Grand Fleet streaked
the sky with joyous spurts and fountains of fire, when stealthy pirate
bands from the K-boats dropped through the ward-room skylights of the
light cruisers and carried off prisoners who had to be ransomed with
champagne, when Admirals danced with matelots on the forecastles of the
battle-cruisers, and all the pent-up feelings of four years ascended
in one great expansive "whouf" of gladness. I recalled with a chuckle
how the "General" signal which the Commander-in-Chief had made ordering
the historic occasion to be celebrated by "splicing the main brace"
according to immemorial custom in the Navy, was preceded by "Negative
6th B.S.," in consideration of the sad fact that the Yankee ships had
nothing aboard to "splice" with. That didn't prevent them, though, from
bending a white ensign on their flag halliards, hoisting it to the main
topmast of the _New York_, and illuminating it with all the searchlights
of the squadron. That happy tribute, I recalled, to the flag of the Navy
with which the Americans had served with such distinction for a year,
had started the sacking of the signal light lockers, and that picture
ended as it began, with the dour Scotch heavens lanced with coloured
flame spurts which the dark tide of the Firth gave back in crinkly
reflections.
The next picture to sharpen into focus on the fog-curtain was that of a
long, trim three-funnelled cruiser, with a white flag at her fore and
the German naval ensign at her main, heading in toward the mouth of the
Firth of Forth under the escort of a squadron of British light cruisers
and destroyers. I had witnessed the meeting of the _Königsberg_, which
was bringing over Admiral Meurer and other German naval officers to
arrange the details of the surrender of the High Sea Fleet, from the
foretop of the _Cassandra_. The rendezvous, at which the _Königsberg_
had been directed by wireless to meet the Sixth Light Cruiser Squadron
ordered to escort her in, chanced to fall in an area under which a
German submarine, a fortnight previously, had planted its full load
of mines. These, in the regular course of patrol, had been discovered
and swept up within a day or two, but since that fact had not been
communicated to the Germans, the _Königsberg_, doubtless thinking the
English sense of humour had prompted them to prepare for her a bit of
a surprise in the way of a lift by a German petard, skulked off to the
southward, where she was only rounded up after two hours of rending the
ether with wireless calls. There were two things I remembered especially
in connection with that historic meeting--one was the mob of civilians
(probably would-be delegates from the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council)
jostling the officers on the roomy bridge of the _Königsberg_, and
the other was the fluent cursing of the gunnery lieutenant of the
_Cassandra_, who was with me in the foretop, over the unkind fate which
had robbed him of the chance of opening up with his six-inch guns on the
first Hun warship he had set eyes on since the war began. I thought I
had heard in the course of the past year all that the British sailor had
to say of the German as a naval foe; but L---- said several new things
that afternoon, and said them well.
Poor old _Cassandra_! Although we did not get word of it until a day
or two after our arrival in Wilhelmshaven, within a very few hours of
the time I was thinking of her there in the fog of the Bight, she had
collided with a mine in the Baltic and gone to the bottom.
There was another picture of the _Königsberg_ ready to follow on as the
first dissolved. This was the brilliantly lighted hull of her--the only
undarkened ship of the hundreds in the Firth of Forth that night--as I
saw it an hour before daybreak the following morning, when I set off
from the _Cassandra_ in a motor launch to be present in the _Queen
Elizabeth_ during the historic conference which was to take place there
that day. Admiral Beatty had refused to receive the revolutionary
delegates at the preliminary conference which had been held in the
British flagship the previous night, and as a consequence it appears
that Admiral Meurer and his staff were summoned to make a report
to their "superiors" on their return. This strange meeting had been
convened shortly after midnight (so the captain of the M.L., which had
been patrolling round the _Königsberg_ all night, told me), but still,
five hours later, as "M.L. 262" slid quietly by at quarter speed, the
rumble of guttural Teutonic voices raised in heated argument welled
out of the open scuttles of what had probably been the ward-room. It
occurred to me even then that this rumble of angry dispute was prophetic
of what Germany had ahead in the long night that was closing upon her.
Although "M.L. 262" ended up an hour later with her propellers tangled
in the cable of Ox-Guard boom, I managed to get on the flagship in time
to see Admiral Meurer and his party come climbing up out of the fog to
her quarter-deck. The conference lasted, with short intervals, until
long after dark, and the next picture I saw was that of five German
naval officers, chagrined and crestfallen, being piped over the side to
the barge which was to take them to the destroyer standing by in the fog
to return with them to the _Königsberg_ at her anchorage, Inchkeith.
It was "Officers' Night" for the kinema in the "Q.E.," and they were
showing a "made-in-California" film called the "Rise and Fall of Julius
Cæsar." I remember distinctly that Casca had just driven the first
thrust, and the mob of conspirators were thronging upon Cæsar round the
"base of Pompey's statue," when the commander sent me word that the
guests were about to depart.
The captain of the fleet, the captain, the commander, the officer of
the watch and the boatswain were waiting at the head of the starboard
gangway as I stepped on deck, and out of the fog, which had thickened
till I could not see the muzzles of the guns of "Y" turret, the Germans
were advancing from aft. The frown on Admiral Meurer's heavy brows was
magnified by the cross light of the "yard-arm group" at the gangway, and
his mouth, with its thin hard lips, showed as a straight black line.
With a click of the heels and the characteristic automaton bow of the
German, he saluted the British officers in turn, beginning with the
captain of the fleet, stepped down the short gangway and disappeared
into the waiting barge to the shrilling of the pipes. Bowing and
clicking, the others followed suit, a weedy "sub," with an enormous roll
of papers under his arm, going over last.
The _Oak_, herself invisible in the fog, groped blindly with her
searchlight to pick up the barge. "We must hold the light steady,"
facetiously quoted the Press correspondent at my elbow from a speech of
President Wilson's which had appeared in the morning papers, and then
added thoughtfully, "It may be a _light_ that kind need for guidance,
but if I had the leading of them for the next generation it would be by
a ring in the nose."
Now, panorama resumed. It was the day of the surrender, and the
_Cardiff_, with her high-flown kite balloon in tow, was leading the
line of German battle-cruisers out of the eastern mist. I was watching
from the bridge of the _Erin_, and an officer beside me, recognizing
the _Seydlitz_, flying the rear-admiral's flag, in the lead, with the
_Moltke_ and _Derfflinger_ next in line, told how, from the light
cruiser in which he had chased them at Dogger Bank, he had seen at
least two of the three, leaving the _Blücher_ to her fate, dashing
for the shelter of their minefields with flames swirling about their
mastheads. Another spoke casually of how, in the _Tiger_ at Jutland, he
had been for a wild minute or two, while his ship was rounding a "windy
corner" as Beatty turned north to meet the British Battle Fleet, under
the concentrated fire of all the battle-cruisers--with the exception
of the _Hindenburg_, but with the _Lützow_ added--now steaming past
us. We remarked the "flattery of imitation" in the resemblance of the
_Hindenburg_ with her long run of forecastle and "flare" bows, to the
_Repulse_ and _Renown_, and of the symmetrical, two-funnelled _Bayern_
as she appeared between the _Kaisers_ and the _Königs_ in the German
battleship line to the British _Queen Elizabeth_ class laid down before
the war. The _Queen Elizabeth_ herself, falling out of line to take the
salute of the ships of the fleet she had led to victory as they passed,
brought that reel of panorama to an end.
The next was of five ships of the _Kaiser_ class, as they had appeared
from the _Emperor of India_, which, with the rest of the Second
Division, was escorting a squadron of the enemy to Scapa for internment.
We saw the German ships at closer range now, and the better we saw them
the worse they looked. Their fine solidity was less impressive than from
a distance, for now our glasses revealed the filth of the decks, the
lack of paint, and the slovenly, sullen attitude of the motley garbed
figures lounging along the rails. We passed within a biscuit toss of
the _Kaiserin_ when their leading ship, the _Friedrich der Grosse_,
lost her bearings in some way and failed to follow the _Canada_ through
the anti-submarine boom off the end of Flotta, an action which only the
smartest kind of seamanship on the part of the division of _Iron Dukes_
prevented from developing into a serious disaster. Most of the Huns--to
judge by the expression on the faces leering across at us--would have
welcomed a smash; but it was avoided by a hair, and they ultimately
straightened themselves out, straggled through into the Flow, and on to
their more or less final resting-place, off the inner entrance to Gutter
Sound.
The final picture, as it chanced, which my fancy projected on the
curtain of the fog was one that embraced what I saw from the steam
pinnace which was taking me to the _Impérieuse_, on my way back to
Rosyth. An angry Orkney sunset was flaring over the hills of Hoy--a
sullenly red glow, gridironed by thin strata of black cloud like
the bars of a grate--and a sinister squall was advancing from the
direction of Stromness to the northward. For a few moments the hot
light of the sunset had silhouetted the confused hulls of battleships
and battle-cruisers against the silvered seas beyond, and revealed the
disordered phalanx of the moored destroyers blocking the mouth of Gutter
Sound; then it was quenched by the onrush of the storm clouds, and all
that was left of the High Seas Fleet disappeared into shadow and driving
rain.
It was a far cry, I reflected, from the Kaiser's "Our future lies upon
the seas!" and Admiral Rodman's "The German ships are of no use to
anybody; the simplest solution of the problem of their disposition is
to take the whole lot to sea and sink them." And yet--
Suddenly, stereoscopically clear, on the blank sheet of the fog left
as the High Sea Fleet faded from sight, the head-on silhouette of an
unmistakably German light cruiser appeared. For an instant the soaring
mast and the broad bridge suggested that my fancy had materialized the
_Königsberg_ again. Then the rat-a-tat of a signal searchlight recalled
me to my senses, and it did not need the chief yeoman of signals' "There
she is, sir; sending away a boat to bring us a pilot," to tell me we
had finally rendezvoused with the _Regensburg_. I descended to the
quarter-deck to see the pilot come over the side.
Very smartly handled was that cutter from the _Regensburg_. I remember
that especially because it was almost the only German boat that came
alongside during all the visit which did not either ram the gangway, or
else miss it more than the length of a boat-hook. They explained this by
saying that most of the skilled men had left the navy, and that their
boats, as a consequence, were in the hands of comparative novices. At
any rate, at least one first-class crew of boat-pullers had remained in
the _Regensburg_, and they brought their cutter alongside the gangway as
neatly as though the _Hercules_ were lying in harbour.
Three men, each carrying a small suit-case, came over the side and
saluted the officer of the day and the intelligence officer of
the admiral's staff, who awaited them at the head of the gangway.
The first was a three-stripe officer of the rank the Germans call
Korvettenkapitän, the second a warrant officer, and the third
(as we presently were informed) a qualified merchant pilot. The
Korvettenkapitän was slender of figure, and had a well-bred, gentlemanly
appearance not in the least suggestive of the "Hunnishness" one
associated--and with good reason, too, as subsequent experience
proved--with the German naval officer. His flushed expression showed
plainly that he felt deeply the humiliation of the task assigned him of
taking the first enemy warships into a German harbour. His head remained
bowed a moment after his final salute; then he took a deep breath,
squared his shoulders, and asked to be conducted to the bridge at once
in order to take advantage of the improved visibility in pushing on in
through the minefields.
If one felt a touch of involuntary sympathy for the senior naval
officer, a glance at the sinister figure of the merchant pilot was
an efficacious antidote. Thick-set and muscular of build, with
slack-hanging ape-like arms and bandy legs, his corded bull neck
was crowned with the prognathous-jawed head of a gorilla, and a
countenance that might well have been a composite of the saturnine
phizzes of Trotsky and Liebknecht. One knew in an instant that here was
the super-Bolshevik, and looked for the red band on his sleeve, which
could only have been temporarily removed while he appeared among the
Engländers to spy upon the naval officer whom the revolutionists would
not permit to act alone. The way things stood between the two became
evident almost at once, for the officer informed the British interpreter
at the first opportunity that he could not be responsible for the pilot,
while the latter, when some query from the Korvettenkapitän respecting
the position of a certain buoy was repeated to him, contented himself
with drawing his fingers significantly across his throat, clucking in
apparent imitation of a severed wind-pipe, and continuing the guzzling
of the plate of "kedgeree" which had been engaging his undivided
attention at the moment of interruption.
[Illustration: HELIGOLAND IN SIGHT!]
After putting a German pilot aboard each of the four destroyers, the
_Regensburg's_ cutter was hoisted in, and we got under weigh again. The
visibility had improved considerably, and presently a darker blur on the
misty skyline resolved itself into the familiar profile of Heligoland.
At first only the loom of the great cliff was discernible, but by the
time this had been brought abeam a slender strip of low-lying ground
with warehouses, cranes, and the masts of ships, was distinctly visible.
All hands crowded to the starboard side to have a glimpse of Germany's
famous island outpost, but the nearest thing to a demonstration I saw
was by two marines, who were doing a bit of a shuffle on the precarious
footing of a turret top and singing lustily:
"Oh, won't it be grand out in Hel-i-go-land,
When we've wound up the Watch on the Rhine!"
Whatever illusions they had formed of the "grandness" of Heligoland they
were allowed to keep, for the only ones who were given to see at close
range the dismal greyness of the island fortress were the members of
one of the "air" parties, who made a hurried visit in a destroyer to
see that the provisions of the Armistice had been carried out at the
seaplane station.
The thickening fog-banks which shut off our view of Heligoland were not
long in thinning the guiding _Regensburg_ to a dusky phantom nosing
uncertainly into the misty smother in the direction of where our charts
indicated the Bight should be narrowing to the shallow waters of Jade
Bay, in an inner corner of which lay Wilhelmshaven. We had counted on
getting there that evening, and a wireless had already been received
saying that a German Naval Commission was standing by to come off for a
preliminary conference. After heading in for a couple of hours through
seas which I heard an officer coming off watch describe as "composed
of about equal parts of water, misplaced buoys and floating mines,"
all hopes of arriving that night were dashed by a signal from the
_Regensburg_, saying that she had been compelled to anchor on account
of the fog. Calling her destroyer "chicks" about her to mother them for
the night, the _Hercules_ let go what was probably the first anchor a
British surface ship had dropped into German mud since the outbreak of
the war.
The unexpected delay made it necessary for both the _Hercules_ and the
destroyer to put up their pilots for the night. This was managed in the
former by giving the officer the flag captain's sea-cabin, and slinging
hammocks for his two assistants outside. Doubtless the opportunity to
enjoy a change of food was not unwelcome to any of them. They were
served with the regular ward-room dinner. The officer declined the
offer of drinks, and said he had his own cigarettes. The other two made
a clean sweep of anything that they could get hold of. Even these had
cigarettes, but the young signalman who had the temerity to smoke one
which was proffered him in exchange for one of his own, advanced that as
an excuse for a mess he made of taking down a searchlight signal from a
destroyer two hours later.
"That ---- Bolshevik," said the lad the next day, in telling me about
the tragedy, "declared the fag he giv' me was made of baccy smuggled
into Germany by a friend of his. I tells him that was no kind of reason
for him using me to smuggle the smoke out of Germany. And I tells him it
tastes to me like rope end, that baccy, and, what's more, that I'd be
very happy to return it to him with a rope end. I can't say for certain
whether he twigged that little joke or not."
From one of the destroyers, too, there came the next day a story of
similar friction in the matter of dispensing hospitality to the guest of
the night. The latter, unlike the one who was sent to the _Hercules_,
appears to have been a typical Hun. Beginning by introducing himself
as a relative of the ex-Kaiser, he ended up by all but going on
strike because no sheets could be provided for the bunk in the cabin
which--through turning out its owner to "sling" in the ward-room--had
been given him for the night. That alone had been a considerable
concession under the circumstances, for, through the presence of two
extra flying officers, two "subs" had given up their cabins, and were
sleeping in the ward-room already. It must have been a really amusing
show that young sprig of Junkerism put up. He mentioned the matter of
linen several times, finally rising to the crescendo of "I must have the
sheets by nine o'clock, and it now lacks but five minutes of that time."
I was never able to verify the story that the steward really gave him
the sheets of notepaper that one of the Yankee officers volunteered to
contribute. How mad the young exquisite was about the whole affair may
be judged from the fact that he left behind him in the morning his own
personal and private cake--only slightly used--of toilet soap. Whether
this was pure swank--high princely disdain of an object of value--or
whether he was blind with passion and overlooked it, they could never
quite make up their minds in the _V----_.
The fog lapped and curled dankly round the _Hercules_ that night,
wrapping the ship in a clammy shroud of cold moisture that dripped
eerily from the rigging and sent a chill to the marrow of the bones of
the men and officers on watch. But below there was warmth and comfort.
The ward-room celebrated the occasion with a "rag" to the music of its
own Jazz band, while in the admiral's cabin the kinema man, who had been
brought along to film the historic features of the voyage, entertained
with a movie of a South American revolution, a picture full of the play
of hot passion and fierce jealousy, enacted in and around an ancient
castle which none but a Californian could have recognized as a building
of the recent San Diego Exposition. "The Admiral's Movies," "With a
Complete Change of Program Nightly," became one of the star turns of the
voyage from that time on.
Cut off though we were by the fog from sighting anything farther away
than the riding lights of the nearest destroyer, strange voices of the
new world we had moved into since morning kept reaching the _Hercules_
on the wings of the wireless. Now it was the _Regensburg_ calling to
say, "I am lying off Outer Jade Lightship and illuminating it with my
searchlight." Not much help, that, on a night when a searchlight itself
was quenched to a will-o'-the-wisp at a cable's length. Then there was
a message from the main fount of some "Workmen's and Soldiers' Council"
requesting that the Allied Naval Commission should receive a delegation
of its members at Wilhelmshaven. It was not a long message, but the
reply flashed back to it was, I understand, a good deal shorter. There
was chatter between ship and ship, and even the call--from somewhere
in the Baltic, I believe--of a steamer in distress. The name of the
_Moewe_, in an otherwise unintelligible message, caused hardly the
flutter it would have had we picked it up in the same waters a month
earlier.
There was little news to us in a message from some land station telling
all and sundry that the "high-sea-ship" _Regensburg_ was "_zu Anker bei
aussen Jade Feuerschiff_," that the _Hercules_ and destroyers were "_zu
Anker bei Weser Feuerschiff_," and that there was "_noch Nebel_." The
_Regensburg_ had already told us where she was and our own position we
knew: also the fact that "fog continues."
A groan from Germany in travail reached us in a message from the
"Soldatenrat" of the "Fortress of Borkum" to the Council in Berlin.
They disapproved most heartily of the attitude of the meeting of the
"_Gross Berliner_" councils for Greater Germany. They greatly regretted
the attempt of one part of the people to establish a dictatorship over
another, and considered that this showed a lamentable lack of confidence
in "_unserem Volke_"--"our people." "_Wir wollen Demokratie und keine
Diktatur_," they concluded; "we want a democracy and no dictator."
Then we heard the German battleship _König_ (which, in company with the
_Dresden_, a destroyer and two transports, we had sighted that morning
tardily _en voyage_ to make up the promised quota at Scapa) calling to
the _Revenge_--at that time the flagship of the squadron watching the
interned ships--for guidance. "Am near to the point of assembly with
the other ships," she said in German, "and bad weather is coming on.
Cannot stop with _Dresden_ in tow. What course can I take from point of
assembly?"
Deep called to deep when the C.-in-C. of the Grand Fleet at Rosyth told
the C.-in-C. of the High Sea Fleet what arrangements were being made
to send back the surplus crews of the interned ships, and for a while
the vibrant ether let fall such familiar names as _Karlsruhe_, _Emden_,
_Nürnberg_, _Hindenburg_, _Kaiser_, _Von der Tann_ and _Friedrich der
Grosse_, men from all of which, we learned, were to be started homeward
in a transport called the _Pretoria_.
There was hint of "family trouble" in the German Navy in a signal from
Admiral Von Reuter at Scapa to the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea
Fleet at Wilhelmshaven. "Request that third group (of transports) may
include a flag officer to relieve me," it ran in translation, "as I am
returning home with it on account of sickness."
That signal, I think, gave the ward-room more quiet enjoyment than any
of the others, for it was the first forerunning flutter of the German
wings beginning to beat against the bars of Scapa. "I've often been a
prey to that same complaint during our four years at Scapa," said the
commander musingly, in the interval following the passing round of the
wireless wail. "Of course Admiral Von Reuter is sick--homesick. Who
wasn't? _Who isn't?_ But there was no use in sending a signal to any one
complaining about it. But isn't it worth just about all we went through
in sticking it there for four years to be able to think of the Huns
being interned there, and in their own ships? They're not quite so comfy
as ours to live in, you know. I wonder what Herr C.-in-C.'s answer will
be."
That answer was picked up in good time. "First group of transports have
arrived back safely," the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea Fleet began
inconsequentially, adding abruptly, "Admiral Von Beuter is advised to
stay where he is, if at all possible." That pleased the ward-room so
much that the Junior Officers' Glee Club was sent to the piano to create
a "Scapa atmosphere" by singing songs of the strenuous early months of
the war. "Coaling, coaling, coaling, always jolly well coaling," to the
air of "Holy, Holy, Holy!" reached my ears even in the secluded retreat
of the "commission-room," to which I had retired to write up my diary.
But the most amusing message of all was one which the senior
interpreter--one time a distinguished Cambridge professor of modern
languages--was dragged out of his bunk at something like three o'clock
in the morning to translate. Everything sent out in German was being
meshed in our wireless net on the off-chance that information of
importance might be picked up, and, for some reason, the message in
question impressed the night operator--as it lay before him, fresh
caught, upon his pad, as being of especial significance. This was
what I deciphered on the sheet of naval signal paper which the senior
interpreter, returning all a-shiver to his bunk after making the desired
translation in the coding room, threw at my head when I awoke in the
next bunk and asked sleepily for the news.
(?) to (?).
"Good morning. Request the time according to you. My watch
is fast, I think."
It was probably from the skipper of one trawler to his "opposite number"
in another. It was on my lips to ask Lieut. B---- if he expected to
be called when the reply was picked up, but the ominous glare in the
unpillowed eye he turned in my direction as I started to speak made me
change my mind.
The fog was still thick at daybreak of the following morning, but by
ten o'clock the visibility had improved sufficiently to appear to make
it worth while to get under weigh. Heading easterly at twelve knots,
we shortly came to a buoy-marked channel which, according to our
directions, promised to lead in to the anchorage off Wilhelmshaven we
desired to reach. The _Regensburg_, which had evidently gone in ahead,
was not sighted again, but two powerful armed patrol boats came out to
keep us company. It was soon possible to see for several miles, the low
line of the Frisian coast coming into sight to port and starboard.
Presently we passed, on opposite courses, a German merchant steamer.
Luckily, some one on the bridge observed in time that she had a man
standing by the flag halyards at her stern, and so we were prepared to
return with the white ensign what must have been the first dip a British
ship had had from a German since August, 1914. When the second and third
steamers encountered also dipped their red, white, and black bunting,
followed by similar action on the part of two tugs and a lighthouse
tender, it became evident that general orders in that connection had
been issued. That was our first hint of the "conciliatory" tactics which
it soon became apparent all of that part of Northern Germany with which
there was a chance of any of the Allied Naval Armistice Commission
coming in contact had been instructed to follow.
The steeples and factory chimneys of Wilhelmshaven began appearing over
the port bow at noon, and a half-hour later _Hercules_ had dropped
anchor about a mile off a long stone mole which curved out from the
dockyard. Almost immediately a launch was seen putting out of the
entrance, and presently it came bumping alongside the starboard gangway.
Rear-Admiral Goette, a smooth-shaven, heavy set man of about fifty, was
the first up to the quarter-deck, where his salute was returned by the
captain, commander, the officer of the day, and several officers of
Admiral Browning's staff. His puckered brow indicated something of the
mental strain he was under, a strain the effects of which became more
and more evident every time he came off for a conference.
The thirteen other members of the Commission under Admiral Goette's
presidency followed him up the gangway. The first of these, a tall blond
officer of fine bearing, was on the list as Kapitan z. S. von Müller,
but it was not until after the final conference, over a fortnight later,
that we learned for certain that he was the able and resolute commander
of the _Emden_, famous in the first year of the war for her destruction
of Allied commerce and the fine fight he had put up before being forced
to the beach of North Cocos Island by the faster and heavier armed
_Sydney_. If it was a fact, as has been suggested, that the Germans put
Von Müller on their Naval Armistice Commission because of the admiration
that had been expressed in the British papers of his brave and sporting
conduct on the latter occasion, the effect of this fine piece of
Teutonic subtlety was completely lost. As I have said, his real identity
was not discovered until the last of the conferences was over.
As soon as the last of the German officers had reached the quarter-deck
and completed his round of heel-clicking salutes, the party was
conducted directly to Admiral Browning's cabin, where the first of a
series of conferences calculated deeply to influence Germany's naval
future for many years to come was entered into without delay.
II
GETTING DOWN TO WORK
An unfailing test of the treatment the Germans would have meted out
to the Allies had their respective positions been reversed during the
armistice interval, was furnished by the attitude of all the enemy
people--from the highest official representatives to the crowds on the
streets--with whom Admiral Browning's Naval Commission was thrown in
contact. This was especially noticeable in the case of naval officers,
and with none of these more so than with the greater part of those
constituting the commission, presided over by Rear-Admiral Goette,
which met the Allied Commission to arrange the details of carrying out
the provisions of the armistice relating to maritime affairs. Fully
expecting from the representatives of the victorious Allies the same
treatment they had extended to the beaten Russians at Brest-Litovsk,
and the beaten Rumanians at Bucharest, they adopted from the outset an
attitude of sullen distrust, evidently with the idea that it was the one
best calculated to minimize the concessions they would be called upon to
make. When it transpired that the Allied commissioners appeared to have
no intention of exercising their victor's prerogative of humiliating the
emissaries of a beaten enemy--as no Prussian could ever have refrained
from doing in similar circumstances--but that, on the other hand, the
former were neither disposed to bargain, "negotiate," nor in any way
to abate one whit from their just demands, the attitude of the Germans
changed somewhat. They were more reasonable and easy to deal with; yet
to the last there was always discernible that feeling of thinly veiled
contempt which the beaten bully cannot conceal for a victor who fails to
treat him as he himself would have treated any adversary he had downed.
The opening conference between the Allied and German commissions was
held in Admiral Browning's dining cabin in the _Hercules_, as were all
of those which followed. The German officers, leaving their overcoats
and caps in a cabin set aside for them as an ante-room, were conducted
to the conference room, where the heads of the Allied Commission were
already assembled and in their places. Most of the Germans were in frock
coats (of fine material and extremely well cut), with small dirk-like
swords at hip, and much-bemedalled. There was none of them, so far as
one could see, without one grade or another of the Iron Cross, worn
low on the left breast (or just about over the liver, to locate it more
exactly), with its black-and-white ribbon rove through a lapel. Only
Captain Von Müller wore the coveted "Pour le Mérite," doubtless for his
commerce destruction with the _Emden_. Admiral Goette wore two rows of
ribbons, but none of the decorations themselves.
The Allied delegates rose as the Germans entered, remaining standing
until the latter had been shown to the places assigned them. At the
right of the main table, as seen from the door, was seated Admiral
Browning, with Rear-Admiral Grasset, of the French Navy, on his right,
and Rear-Admiral Robinson, of the American Navy, on his left. Captain
Lowndes, Admiral Browning's Chief of Staff, sat next to Admiral
Robinson, in the fourth chair on the Allied side of the table. The Flag
Lieutenants of the French and American Admirals, and the two officers
representing respectively Japan and Italy, occupied chairs immediately
beyond the senior officers of the Commission. At two smaller tables
in the rear were several British Flag officers, with secretaries and
stenographers. The official British interpreter, Lieut. Bullough,
R.N.V.R., sat at the head of the table. The heads of the Allied
sub-commissions representing the flying services and shipping did not
occupy seats during all of the conference, but were called in during the
discussion of matters in which they were interested.
Admiral Goette was seated directly opposite Admiral Browning at the
main table, with Commander (or Korvettenkapitän) Hinzman on his right,
and Commander Lohman on his left. The former--a shifty-eyed individual,
with a pasty complexion and a "mobile" mouth which, in its peculiar
expansions and contractions, furnished an accurate index of the state
of its owner's mind--was from the General Naval Staff in Berlin, which
accounted, doubtless, for the fact that Admiral Goette turned to him
for advice in connection with practically every question discussed.
Commander Lohman had charge of merchant shipping interests, which were
principally in connection with the return of British tonnage interned in
German harbours at the outbreak of the war. Captain Von Müller sat at
the left-hand corner of the table, and Captain Bauer, Chief of Staff, in
the corresponding place on the right. At a smaller table opposite the
door the eight remaining German officers were seated. These were mostly
engineers, or from the flying or submarine services, and were consulted
as questions in their respective lines arose from time to time.
[Illustration: MEMBERS OF THE ALLIED NAVAL COMMISSION, ADMIRAL BROWNING
IN CENTER]
[Illustration: THE ALLIED NAVAL COMMISSION AND STAFF, TAKEN ON BOARD
"HERCULES"]
Without wasting time in preliminaries, Admiral Browning got down
to business at once by intimating that, since the time which he could
remain in German waters was limited, it would be desirable that the
very considerable number of visits of inspection necessary to satisfy
the Commission that the terms of the armistice had been complied with
should begin without delay. The Germans had a formidable array of
reasons ready to show why all, or nearly all, of these visits would be
practically out of the question. The disturbed state of the country,
the uncertain situation in Berlin, the lack of discipline among the men
remaining in the ships and at the air stations, the shortage of petrol,
the possibility of the hostility of the people in some sections--such as
Hamburg and Bremen--to Allied visitors--these were a few of the reasons
advanced why it would be difficult or dangerous to go to this place or
that, and why the best and simplest way would be to be content with the
assurance of the German Commission that everything, everywhere, was just
as the armistice terms had stipulated. Of course, at Wilhelmshaven,
where things were quiet at the moment, and where they still had a
certain amount of authority, there should be no great difficulty in
going over the remaining warships and visiting the air-station; but as
for going to Hamburg, or Bremen, or visiting any of the more distant
naval air stations--that was impossible at the present.
Asked bluntly, if the search of the warships could begin that afternoon,
Admiral Goette replied that it was impossible, for the reason he was
not yet in a position to guarantee the personal safety of any parties
landing even at the dockyard. Moreover, he would not be in position
to give such a guarantee until the matter had been discussed with the
Workmen's and Soldiers' Council. Of course, if the party cared to take
the chance of landing without a guarantee of safety--
That was really just about as far as that first conference got in the
way of definite arrangements, or even assurances. Admiral Goette was
given very plainly to understand, however, that it was the intention
of the Allied Commission to visit and inspect, in accordance with the
terms laid down in the armistice, not only all of the remaining German
warships, but also all interned British merchantmen, irrespective of
where they were, and all naval airship and seaplane stations, on the
Baltic as well as the North Sea side. Also, that full and complete
guarantee of the safety of every party landed must be given before
the first visit was made. Failing this, it would be necessary for the
Commission to return to England and report that the assistance promised
by Germany in carrying out the armistice terms had not been given.
The deep corrugation in Admiral Goette's brow grew deeper still when he
heard this plain warning, and the corners of his hard cynical mouth drew
down at the corners as the thin lips were compressed in his effort at
self-control. Shuffling uneasily in his chair, he leaned over as though
to speak to the sardonic Hinzman on his right, but thought better of
it, and straightened up again. Then his deep-set eyes wandered to the
large-scale map of the Western Front which occupied most of the wall
of the cabin toward which he faced. The row of pins, which had marked
the line of the Front at the moment of the armistice, but had now been
moved up and over the Rhine in three protuberant bridgeheads, evidently
brought home to him the futility of any further circumlocutions for the
present. The muscles of the aggressively squared shoulders relaxed, the
combative lines of the face melted into furrows of deepest depression,
and the pugnacious jaw was drawn in as the iron-grey head was bowed in
submission. His throaty "It shall be done as you say, sir," told that
the first lesson had sunk home.
An undertaking on the part of the German Commission to secure, and to
send off at an as early hour as practicable the following morning, the
required "safe conduct," brought the first conference to a close. The
kinema man, who endeavoured to take a picture of the departure from
cover, in order not to offend the sensibilities of his distinguished
subjects, spoiled a film as a consequence of his consideration.
Observing that the galley scuttle opened out upon the quarter-deck, but
not (in his haste) that the pots of beans simmering on the range were
filling the air with clouds of steam as thick as fragrant, set up his
machine just inside. Engrossed in turning the crank as one Hun after
another went through his heel-clicking round of salutes, he failed to
notice the translucent mask of moisture condensing on his lens. The
natural result was that this particular reel of film, when it came to
be developed, had very little to differentiate it from another reel he
exposed the following morning on the men "doubling round," the latter
having been taken with the cap over the lens.
The situation as it presented itself that evening was far from
encouraging. Having no information whatever of our own as to conditions
ashore, we had, perforce, to take the word of the Germans that many of
the projected visits of inspection could only be undertaken subject
to much difficulty and delay, if at all. There was not even positive
assurance that a safe conduct would be forthcoming for the landing in
Wilhelmshaven, where the headquarters of the German Naval Command were
located at the moment, and where there had been a minimum of disorder.
The wireless caught ominous fragments pointing to an imminent _coup
d'état_ in Berlin, while rioting was already taking place in Hamburg
and Bremen, and Kiel was completely under the control of the workmen
and soldiers. It certainly looked as though, the armistice agreement
notwithstanding, we had struck Northern Germany in the closed season for
touring.
A ray of light in the gloom which hung over the ship that night came in
the form of two British prisoners of war who managed to induce a German
launch they had found at the quay to bring them off to the _Hercules_.
Cheery souls they were, after all their two years of starvation and
rough treatment in one of the worst prison camps in Germany. When the
armistice was signed, they said, they had been released, given a ticket
which was made out to carry them in the Fourth or "Military" class on
any German railway, and told they were free to go home. This appears to
have been done at a good many prison camps, and where these were within
a few days' march of the Western Front, or of Holland, it probably
saved a good deal of time over waiting for regular transport by the
demoralized and congested railway systems. The cruelty of this criminal
evasion of responsibility was most felt in the parts of the country
more remote from the Western Front, where many hundreds of miles had to
be covered before the prisoners had any chance of getting in touch with
friends. In the cases of most of these unfortunate derelicts long delays
were inevitable, and, not infrequently, much hardship. There was little
interference, apparently, with the exercise of the travel privilege, but
the almost total absence of authoritative information concerning the
departure of ships from Baltic ports, by which considerable numbers of
British were repatriated _viâ_ Denmark and Sweden, resulted in an almost
interminable series of wanderings.
[Illustration: THE PADRE OF THE "HERCULES" TALKING WITH NEWLY ARRIVED
BRITISH PRISONERS]
The case of the two men I have mentioned was typical of the experiences
undergone by prisoners from camps in northern or central Germany.
Released, as I have described, when the armistice was signed, they had
broken away from their fellows, the bulk of whom were starting to drift
toward the Western Front, and struck out for the North Sea coast, acting
on the theory that navigation would be opened up at once, and that this
route, therefore, would offer the easiest and quickest way of getting
home. Well off for money and fairly considerately treated on the food
score, they found travelling simple enough, but extremely tedious and
full of delays. Arriving at Emden, they learned that there had been
no provision whatever made for dispatching ships with prisoners from
there, and that--both on account of the lack of shipping and the danger
of navigating the still unswept minefields--there was no prospect of
anything of the kind in the near future. Instead of crossing over the
neighbouring frontier of Holland, as they might easily have done, they
pushed north to Bremen and Hamburg on the chance that there might be
ships from one of these formerly busy ports by which they could find
their way back to England. Disappointed again, they were about to go
on to Kiel, when they read in a newspaper of the arrival of a British
battleship at Wilhelmshaven. Rightly conjecturing that they were at
last on the "home trail," they effected the best series of connections
possible to the once great naval base, where no obstacles were placed in
the way of their getting put off to the _Hercules_ without delay.
As the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council had been endeavouring to
establish touch with the Commission ever since the arrival of the
_Hercules_ in German waters, and as the way the "authorities" had
co-operated in getting these men put off to the ship looked just a
bit suspicious, it was only natural that the latter should be put
through a very thorough examination calculated to establish their
identity as British prisoners beyond a doubt. This was being proceeded
with by the Commander and the Major of Marines in a room of the after
superstructure, when a steward came up from the galley to ask what the
new arrivals would like to have for supper. There was quite a list to
choose from, it appears. They could have roast beef, said the steward,
or sausage and "mashed," or steak and kidney pie, or--"Stop right there,
mytey," cut in one of the men, raising his hand with the gesture of a
crossings policeman halting the flow of the traffic. "No use goin' any
further. 'Styke an' kidney' fer mine." Then, turning to the Commander
apologetically, "Begging your pardon, sir, but wot was it you was askin'
'bout wot engagement we wus captured in?" "I don't think we need trouble
any further about that, my man," replied the Commander with a grin.
"That 'styke an' kidney' marks you for British all right, and if you'll
vouch for your mate here, we'll take your word that he's on the level
too. We'll send you home by the first mail destroyer, and be glad of the
chance to do it. That won't be for a couple of days yet, but I dare say
you'll be able to make yourself at home in the _Hercules_ until then."
As the first of the hundred or more prisoners for whom the _Hercules_
ultimately acted as a "clearing house" in passing home to England,
these two men were very welcome on their own account, but especially so
for the news they brought of conditions ashore. It was quiet everywhere
they had been in Northern Germany, they said. Nobody was starving, and
where the people took any notice of them at all, it was--since the
armistice--invariably of a friendly character. "W'y, 'pon my word, sir,"
said one of them, where I found him that night in a warm corner of one
of the mess decks, the centre of an admiring circle of matelots, who
were crowding in with offerings of everything from mugs of bitter beer
to cakes of chocolate; "'pon my word, all you 'ave to do is to tyke a
kyke o' perfumed soap to the beach when you land, an' they'll all come
an' eat right out o' yer 'and. W'y, the gurls--"
Although the Allied Naval Armistice Commission could hardly be expected
to smooth its way with "kykes o' perfumed soap," yet all these men had
to tell, in that it went to prove how greatly the officers of the German
Commission had (to use a charitable term) exaggerated the difficulties
to be encountered in getting about ashore, was distinctly encouraging.
Indeed, it left those of us who talked with them quite prepared to
expect the "guarantee of safety," which came off in the morning, with
word that arrangements had been made for parties to land at once for
the inspection of warships and the seaplane station. It even forecasted
the message received in the course of the afternoon, to the effect that
conditions now appeared to be favourable to the arranging of visits
to Norderney, Borkhum, Nordholz, and the other seaplane and Zeppelin
stations which the Allied Commission had expressed a desire to see. The
Hamburg visit was still in the air, pending the receipt of guarantees
of safety, but there was no longer any doubt that it would be arranged,
and, moreover, as promptly as the Commission saw fit to insist upon.
For the purpose of the search of warships, and the inspection of
merchant ships and air stations, the staff of the Allied Commission
had been divided into several parties. The senior party, which was to
confine its work entirely to warships and land fortifications, had at
least one member of each of the Allied nationalities represented in the
Commission. The head of it was the Flag Commander of the _Hercules_, and
the technical duties in connection with its work devolved principally
upon the British and American naval gunnery experts which it always
included, and at least one engineer officer.
There were two "air" parties, one for the inspection of seaplane
stations, and the other for that of airship stations. The senior
flying officer was Brigadier-General Masterman, R.A.F., who was one of
England's pioneers in the development of lighter-than-air machines, his
experience dating back to the experiments with the ill-fated _Mayfly_.
His interest was in Zeppelins, and he had the leadership of the party
formed for the inspection of airship stations. This party included one
other British officer and two Americans.
Colonel Clark-Hall was the head of the second "air" party, which had
charge of the inspection of seaplane stations. He had flown in a
seaplane in the first year of the war at Gallipoli, and more recently
had directed flying operations from the _Furious_, with the Grand Fleet.
Having sent off the aeroplanes whose bombs had practically wiped out
the Zeppelin station at Tondern, near the Danish border, the previous
summer, he had an especial interest in seeing at first hand the effects
of that raid, though otherwise his interest was centred in seaplane
stations. Two American flying officers, and one British, completed the
"seaplane station" party.
The Shipping Board, which had in hand the matter of the return to
England of the two score and more of British ships in German harbours,
was headed by Commodore George P. Bevan, R.N., the Naval Adviser of the
Minister of Shipping, who had distinguished himself earlier in the war
as commander of the British trawler patrol in the Mediterranean. With
him were associated Commander John Leighton, R.N.R., who had achieved
notable success in effecting the return to England of the numerous
British merchant ships in Baltic ports at the outbreak of the war, and
Mr. Percy Turner, a prominent shipbuilder and Secretary to the Minister
of Shipping. The actual inspection of the ships in German harbours was
to be done by Commander Leighton, with such assistance as was needed
from officers of the _Hercules_.
It fell to the lot of the senior of the warship-searching party to make
the first landing. As this party, with at least one member from each
nationality, was more or less a "microcosm" of the Commission itself, it
was decreed that it should make its visits in state, in the full pomp
and panoply of--peace. This meant, one supposed, frock coats, cocked
hats, and swords, but as all the former had been sent ashore, by order,
early in the war, and as none of the Americans had even the latter, it
was evident at once that there was no use competing in a dress parade
with the Germans, who were operating at their own base, so to speak. The
best that could be done was to borrow swords--from any of the ward-room
officers chancing to have theirs along--for the Americans, and let
it go at that. The "International" members, whose principal duty, in
connection with the searches, was to walk about the upper decks and
look dignified, managed to wear their swords from the time they left
the _Hercules_ to their return; the others, who had really to look for
things, and, therefore, to clamber up and down steel ladders of boiler
rooms and the "trunks" of turrets, after numerous annoying trippings up,
had finally to "stack arms" in order to get on with their search.
Although none of the officers of the Commission had taken part in the
search of the German ships interned at Scapa, they had heard enough of
their filthiness and lack of discipline to be prepared to encounter the
same things when the inspection of the ships still remaining in home
waters was undertaken. In spite of this, the conditions--the dirtiness,
the slothfulness, the apparent utter disregard of the men for such few
of their officers as still remained--were everywhere much worse than
had been anticipated. This may well be accounted for by the fact that
the surrendered ships were manned entirely by volunteers, and these,
naturally, being the men less revolutionary in spirit and more amenable
to discipline, had taken better care of themselves and their quarters
than those who remained behind. At any rate, every one of the ships
remaining to the German Navy was an offence to the eye, and most of them
to the nose as well. If it was true, as had been said, that sloth and
filth are the high hand-maidens of Bolshevism, there is little doubt
that these twin trollops were in a position to hand the dregs of the
ex-Kaiser's fleet over to their mistress any day she wanted it.
We had, as yet, no definite hint of what attitude the men of the
Workmen's and Soldiers' Council were going to take toward parties landed
to carry out the work of the Allied Commission, and that was one of the
things which it was expected this first search of the warships in the
Wilhelmshaven dockyard would reveal. The beginning was not auspicious,
for in the very first ship visited the whole of the remaining crew were
found loitering indolently about the decks, in direct contravention of
the clause in the armistice which provided that all men should be sent
ashore during the visits of Allied searching parties. The captain, on
being appealed to, shrugged his shoulders and said that he was quite
helpless. "I ordered them to leave half an hour ago," he explained to
the interpreter, "and here they are still. I have no authority over
them, as you see; so what is there to do? I am sorry, but you see the
position I am in. I trust you will understand how humiliating a one
it is for an officer of the Imperial"--he checked himself at the word
_Kaiserliche_, and added merely, "German Navy."
"And, believe me, it _was_ humiliating," said one of the American
officers in telling of the incident later. "I had to keep reminding
myself that the man was a brother officer of the swine that sank the
_Lusitania_, and so many hospital ships, to stop myself from telling him
how gol darned sorry I was for any one that had got let in for a mess
like that."
The situation was scarcely less embarrassing for the officer at the head
of the Allied party than for the Germans. Fortunately the Flag Commander
was fully equal to the emergency. "If these men are not out on the dock
in ten minutes," he said to the captain, "I shall have no alternative
but to return at once to the _Hercules_ and report that the facilities
for search stipulated in the armistice have not been granted me."
Glancing at his wrist-watch, he sauntered over to the other side of the
deck.
The effect of the words (which appeared to have been understood by some
of the men standing near even in English) was galvanic. Blue-jackets
were streaming down the gangways before the orders had been passed
on to them by their officers, and the ship, save for a few cooks in
the galley, was emptied well within the time-limit assigned. It had
evidently been an attempt upon the part of the men to show contempt
for their officers, and was not intended to interfere with the work
of the searching party. Although we observed countless instances of
indiscipline in one form or another, on no subsequent occasion did it
appear in a way calculated to annoy or delay one of the Allied parties.
On the contrary, indeed, the men--and especially the representatives of
the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council--were almost invariably more than
willing to do anything to help. This spirit, it is needless to say, made
progress much faster and easier, and a continuance of it boded hopefully
for the completion of the Commission's program within the limit of the
original period of armistice.
It seems to have been the strong--and, I have no doubt, entirely
sincere--desire of both the German naval officers and the members of
the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council to get the inspection over and the
Allied Commission out of the way that led to a co-operation between
the two which I can hardly conceive as existing in connection with
their other relations. The representatives of the Workmen and Soldiers
appeared quite reconciled to the ruling of the Commission that the
latter was to have no direct dealings with them, and they exhibited no
evidences of ill-feeling over the failure of their attempts to establish
such relations. The Naval authorities and the Council had evidently
come to an agreement by which the latter were to be allowed to have
a representative--"watching" but not "talking"--with every Allied
party landing, in return for which privilege the Council undertook
to prevent any interference from the men remaining in ships or air
stations visited. Later, when journeys by railway were undertaken, and
a guarantee of freedom from molestation by the civilian population was
required, a second Workmen's and Soldiers' representative--a sort of a
"plain clothes" detective--was added. Both white-banded men were there
to help, not to interfere. Indeed, the men seemed fully to realize the
need of a higher mentality than their own in the conduct of the more or
less complicated negotiations with the Allied representatives, and were
therefore content to support their officers in an attempt to make the
best of what was a sorry situation for both.
A slight hitch which occurred in the arrangements of the "seaplane
station" party one morning, when the officer who was to have accompanied
it failed to turn up on the landing at the appointed hour, showed
how slender was the thread by which the authority of the once proud
and domineering German naval officer hung. After cooling their heels
in the slush of the dockyard for half an hour, the party returned
to the _Hercules_ to await an explanation. This came an hour later,
when the officer in question, very red in the face, came bumping up
to the gangway in a madly driven motor-boat, and clambered up to the
quarter-deck to make his apologies.
"I am very sorry," he ejaculated volubly, "but it was not understood
by the _Arbeiter und Soldatenrat_ that it was I who was to go with you
today. In consequence, the permit to wear my sword and epaulettes and
other markings of an officer was not sent to me, and so I could not be
allowed to travel by the tramway until I had made known the trouble by
telephone and had the permit sent. It was even very difficult for me to
be allowed to speak over the telephone. You must see how very hard life
is for us officers as things are now."
It appears that even the officers going about with the Allied naval
sub-commissions were only allowed to wear their designating marks for
the occasion, and that, unless a special permit from the Workmen's and
Soldiers' Council was shown, these had to be removed as soon as they
went ashore. The constant "self-pity" which the officers kept showing
in the matter of their humiliating predicament was the one thing needed
to extinguish the sparks of sympathy which would keep flaring up in
one's breast unless one stopped to think how thoroughly deserved--how
poetically just--it all was.
With one or two exceptions, all the best of Germany's capital ships
were known to have been surrendered, and this applied to light cruisers
and destroyers as well. The U-boat situation was somewhat obscure, but
it was supposed--incorrectly, as transpired later--that a fairly clean
sweep of the best of the under-water craft had also been made. The
most interesting ships which the Allied Commission expected to see in
German waters were the battleship _Baden_, sister of the surrendered
_Bayern_, and the battle-cruiser _Mackensen_, sister of the surrendered
_Hindenburg_. The _Regensburg_ and _Königsberg_, which had been left
to the Germans to "get about in," were also considered worthy of study
at close range as examples of the latest type of German light cruiser.
The _Mackensen_, still far from completed, was in a yard on the Elbe at
Hamburg. The others were inspected at Wilhelmshaven.
I think I am speaking conservatively when I say that all of the Allied
officers who saw them from the inside were distinctly disappointed in
even these most modern examples of German naval construction. After
the extremely good fight that practically every one of them--from the
_Emden_ and _Königsberg_ and the ships of Von Spee's squadron at the
Falklands to the battle-cruisers of Von Hipper at Jutland--had put up
when it was once drawn into action, it was only natural to expect that
some radical departures in construction, armament, and gunnery control
would be revealed on closer acquaintance. This did not prove to be the
case, though it is only fair to say that, in the matter of gunnery
control, there was little opportunity to pass judgment, owing to the
fact that, in every instance, the Germans--as they had a perfect right
to do--had removed all the instruments and gear calculated to give any
indication of the character of the installation.
The German ships were found to be extremely well built, especially in
the solidity of construction of their hulls, the fact that they were not
intended to be lived in by a full ship's company all of the time making
it easy to multiply bulkheads and dispense with doors. But there was
nothing new in this fact to those who knew the amount of hammering the
_Seydlitz_ and _Derfflinger_ had survived at Dogger Bank and Jutland.
Even so, however, there was nothing to indicate that these latest of
German ships would stand more punishment than any unit of the Grand
Fleet after the stiffening all British capital ships received as a
consequence of what was learned at Jutland.
In several respects it was evident that the Germans had merely become
tardy converts to British practice. The tripod mast, which dates back
something like a decade in British capital ships, and which has, since
the war, been built in light cruisers and even destroyer leaders, was
only adopted by the Germans with the laying down of the _Bayern_ and
_Hindenburg_. Similarly, the armament--both main and secondary--of the
respective classes of battleship and battle-cruiser to which these two
ships give the name, is a frank admission on the part of the Germans
that the British were five years ahead of them in the matter of guns.
Gunnery control, the one thing above all others which the British Navy
was interested in when it came to an intimate study of the German
ships, is, unfortunately, one of the things upon which the least light
has been shed. The German, since he had to disarm, did the job with
characteristic Teutonic thoroughness. The transmitting stations in all
of the modern ships--the one point where there would have been a great
concentration of special instruments of control--looked like unfurnished
rooms in their emptiness. So, too, the foretops and what must have
been the director towers. One moot point may, however, be regarded as
settled. There have been many who maintained that, since the German fire
was almost invariably extremely accurate in the opening stages of an
action, and tended to fall off rapidly after the ship came under fire
herself, the enemy gunnery control involved the use of a very elaborate
and highly complicated installation of special instruments, many of
which were too delicate to stand the stress of continued action. The
British and American officers who went over the latest of the enemy's
ships, however, are agreed that all the evidence available points
to this not being the case--that the German gunnery control, on the
contrary, was undoubtedly as simple as it was efficient, and that the
fact that it had not stood up well in action was probably more due to
human than mechanical failure.
It is considered as by no means improbable that the good shooting of
the German ships was largely traceable to the excellence of their
range-finders and the special training of those who used them. Whether
it is true or not that France and England have succeeded since the war
in making optical glass equal to that of Jena, there is no doubt that
the latter was superior in the first years of the war. The German ships
unquestionably had more accurate range-finders than did the British,
and it is also known now that the Germans took great care in testing the
eyesight of the men employed to handle these instruments, and that much
attention was given to their training. It is believed that upon these
simple points alone, rather than upon the use of a highly complicated
system of control, the admitted excellence of German gunnery was based.
There is no reason to believe that they had anything better than the
British for laying down the "rate of change," and keeping the enemy
under fire once he had been straddled.
Although it was known to the British sailor in a general sort of way
that the Germans only spent a comparatively small part of their time
aboard their ships, the tangible evidence of this remarkable state of
affairs--in the vast blocks of barracks at Wilhelmshaven and the very
crude, inadequate living quarters in even the most modern of the ships
searched--gave him only less of a shock, and aroused in him only less
contempt, than did the filth and indiscipline of the German sailors. The
German officer who assured one of the searching parties that their ships
were made "to fight in, not to live in," told the literal truth, and it
only accentuates the bitter irony of the fact that, when finally they
refused to fight, they had to begin to be lived in willy-nilly.
"You can't tell me there isn't a God in Israel, now that we've got the
Huns at Scapa living in their own ships," said an officer on coming off
to the _Hercules_ one night after his first day spent in going over
some of the remnants of the German Navy at Wilhelmshaven. That same
thought is awakening no end of comfort in the breast of many a British
naval officer this winter, who would otherwise have been down on his
luck for having still to stand to his guns after the war was over. In a
previous chapter I have told how we intercepted a wireless from Admiral
Von Reuter, saying that he had "gone sick" at Scapa and asking to be
relieved. That was not the last by any means that we were to hear of
the "hardships" of life in those German "fighting ships" at good old
Scapa. The veritable howls of protest rising from the Orkneys were
echoing in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel during all the time the Commission
spent in German waters. Some mention of the "sad plight" of the German
sailors there was made at every conference, and it was at the final
one, I believe, that Admiral Goette said that the "cruel conditions"
under which the men in the interned ships were being compelled to live
at Scapa Flow was alone responsible for the fact that it had been so
far impossible to find a crew to man the _Baden_, which he had agreed
some days previously should be delivered in place of the uncompleted
_Mackensen_.
Except for the several modern ships I have mentioned, the search of the
naval units remaining in German ports resolved itself into a more or
less monotonous clambering over a lot of obsolete hulks--from many of
which even the guns had been removed--to see that no munitions remained
in their magazines. There was always the same inevitable filth to be
waded through, always the same gloweringly sullen--or, worse still by
way of variation, cringingly obsequious--officers to be endured. The
sullen ones usually improved when they found that no "indignities" were
to be heaped upon them, and that they had only to answer a few questions
and show the way round; but you had to keep a weather eye lifting for
the obsequious ones to prevent their helping you up ladders by steadying
your elbow, rubbing imaginary spots of grease off your monkey jacket,
and--the invariable finale--offering you a limp, moist hand to shake at
parting. The latter, like the ruthless U-boat warfare, was dangerous
principally on account of its unexpectedness. When adequate "counter
measures" were devised against it, it became less threatening, but had
always to be looked out for. I don't recall, though, hearing any one
confess to having been "surprised" into shaking hands after the first
day or two.
The search of the warships at Wilhelmshaven was finished in a couple of
days, while the few old cruisers and destroyers at Emden were inspected
in the three hours between going and returning railway journeys,
taking about the same length of time. At Hamburg and Bremen there
were principally merchant ships and U-boats, and the search of--and
for--both of these is a story of its own. The remainder of the work on
the North Sea side consisted in journeys--by train, motor, destroyer,
or launch--to, and the inspection of, Germany's principal seaplane and
airship stations, and of these highly interesting visits I shall write
in later chapters.
III
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF "STARVING GERMANY"
Our visit to the island of Norderney was a memorable one for two
reasons--first, because we inspected there what is not only the largest
of Germany's seaplane stations, but also probably the largest and best
equipped in all Europe; and second, because the journey there gave
us, all in the course of a few hours, our first after-the-war glimpse
of a German city, German countryside, a German railway, and what had
once been a German summer resort. The couple of days spent in the
search of the German warships had given no opportunity whatever to see
anything more than an interminable succession of dirty mess decks, empty
magazines, disgruntled officers, slovenly sailors, and cluttered docks.
Steeples and factory chimneys and the loom of lofty barracks located
Wilhelmshaven without revealing it. The steady dribble of pedestrians
along the waterfront road might have been made up of Esquimaux or
Kanakas, for all that we could see. One wondered if their emaciated
frames were dressed in paper suits, and if their tottering feet clumped
along in wooden clogs. The excellence of the material of the untidy
garb of the sailors, and the well-fed appearance of the latter, seemed
to point to the contrary. But still one couldn't be sure. We knew that
Germany had never made the mistake of under-feeding or under-clothing
her soldiers and sailors, and that where any one had to go without
it was always the civilians who suffered. We wanted to see how those
civilians had stood the "starvation blockade" against which they had
protested so loudly, and now--through our visits to the various naval
air stations--the veil was about to be lifted.
The fog--the interminable fog which never lifted for more than a
few hours at a time during the whole of our three weeks in German
waters--banked thick above the green stream of the swift-running tide
as our picket boat shoved off from the _Hercules_ at eight o'clock
that morning, and there was just sufficient visibility to pick up the
successive buoys marking the course to the entrance to the basin.
Running in just ahead of an antique torpedo-boat with the usual indolent
sailors slouching along its narrow decks, we stepped out upon the
longest pontoon landing I have ever seen. Twenty yards wide, and over a
hundred in length, it was constructed so as to rise and fall with flow
and ebb of what must have been a very considerable tide.
No one being on the landing to receive the party, we started walking
in toward its shoreward end. The men on the torpedo-boats stared at
us with insolent curiosity, without the suggestion of the shuffle of
a foot toward standing at attention as even the "brassiest" of our
several "brass-hats" passed by; but from the galley of a tug moored
on the opposite side the cook grinned wide-mouthed welcome. She was a
fine, upstanding, double-braided blonde of generous proportions, and the
bulging bulk of her overflowed the narrow companion-way into which she
was wedged as the raw red flesh of her arm swelled over the line of its
rolled-up sleeve.
"No traces of under-feeding in that figure," said a British flying
officer, with the critically impersonal glance he would have given to
the wings of a machine he was about to take the air in. "No," acquiesced
one of the Americans; "and there's no fear of _schrecklichkeit_ in that
face, either. Pipe that 'welcome-to-our-fair-city' grin, won't you.
Could you beat it for a display of ivories?"
And so we came to "starving Germany."
A bustling young flying lieutenant came hurrying to meet us at the shore
end of the landing, apologizing for his tardiness by saying that it was
due to "trouble about the cars." After seeing the motley collection
of motors which awaited us outside the gate, one had no difficulty in
believing him; indeed, it was hard to see how there could be anything
but "trouble about the cars." The best of them was an ancient Mercedes,
the pneumatic tyres of which, worn down to the treads, looked as
though they would puncture on the smooth face of a paving stone. Two
others--one of them looked like a sort of "perpetuation" of a collision
between a Daimler lorry and a Benz runabout, and the other was an
out-and-out mongrel with no visible marks of ancestry--had the remains
of what had once been solid tyres of _ersatz_ rubber bound to the rims
with bits of tarred rope. The fourth and last was _ersatz_ throughout.
That is to say, it seemed to be made--from its paper upholstery to its
steel-spring tyres--of "other things" than those from which the normal
cars one has always known are made of.
I had heard much of those spring tyres, so, taking advantage of
the general rush for the pneumatically tyred Mercedes and the
"rheumatically" tyred nondescripts, I lifted an oiled-paper curtain and
plumped down on the woven paper cushion of old "_Ersatz_." As the other
cars were quite filled up with the remainder of our party, the escorting
German officer came in with me.
"The imitation rubber," he began slowly and precisely, "makes many good
things, but not the good motor tyres. It is resilient, but not elastic.
It will stand the pushing but not the pulling. It is not strong, not
tough, like the rubber from the tree. Ah, the English were very lucky
always to have the real rubber. If that had been so with Germany--"
Just to what extent a continuous supply of real rubber would have
modified the situation for Germany I did not learn, for we started up
just then, and the rest of the sentence was lost in the mighty whirl of
sound in which we were engulfed. The best comparison I can make of the
noise that car made--as heard from within--is to a sustained crescendo
of a super-Jazz band, the cymbals of which were represented by the
clankity-clank of the component parts of the steel tyres banging against
each other and the pavement, and the drums of which were the rhythmic
thud-thud of the _ersatz_ body on the lifeless springs. Although the
other cars were rattling heavily on their own account, the ear-rending
racket of the steel-tyres dominated the situation completely, and at the
first turn I caught an impressionistic blend of blue and khaki uniforms
as their occupants leaned out to see what was in pursuit of them.
"It was unlike any sound I ever heard before," said one of them in
describing it later. "It was positively Bolshevik!" All in all, I
think "Bolshevik" is more fittingly descriptive than "Jazz-band-ic." It
carries a suggestion of "savageness" quite lacking in the latter, and
"savage" that raucous tornado of sound surely was. I could never allow
myself to contemplate the primal chaos one of the American officers
tried to conjure up by asking what it would be like to hear two motor
convoys of steel-tyred trucks passing each other during a bombardment.
The only sensible comment I heard on that question was from the
officer who cut in with, "Please tell me how you'd know there _was_ a
bombardment?"
There was one thing that steel-tyred car did well, though, and that
was to respond to its emergency brake. The occasion for the use of
the latter arose when a turning bridge was suddenly opened fifteen or
twenty yards ahead of the leading car, imposing upon the latter the
necessity of stopping dead inside that distance or taking a header into
a canal. The Mercedes, skating airily along on its wobbly tyres, managed
it by inches after streaking the pavement with two broad belts of the
last "real tree rubber" left in Germany. The leading nondescript--the
Benz-Daimler blend--gave the Mercedes a sharp bump before losing
the last of its momentum, and all but the last of its fluttering
"rope-_ersatz_-rubber" tyres, while its mate only came to a standstill
after skidding sideways on its rims. But my steel-tyred chariot, the
instant its emergency brake was thrown on, simply set its teeth into the
red brick pavement, and, spitting sparks like a dragon, stopped as dead
as though it had run against a stone wall. My companion and I, having
nothing to set _our_ teeth into, simply kept going right on. I, luckily,
only butted the chauffeur, who--evidently because the same thing had
happened to him before--took it all in good part; but the dapper young
officer, who planted the back of his head squarely between the shoulder
blades of the august Workmen's and Soldiers' representative riding
beside the driver, got a good swearing at for not aiming lower and
allowing the back of the seat to absorb his inertia. Quite apart from
the sparks kicked up by the tyres, and the stars shaken down by my jolt,
it was a highly illuminating little incident.
We ran more slowly after we crossed the bridge--which also meant more
quietly, or rather, less noisily--and for the first time I noticed what
a new world we seemed to have come into since we left the immediate
vicinity of the docks. It was not so much that we were now passing down
a street of small shops, where before we had been among warehouses and
factories, as the difference in appearance and spirit of the people. No
one--not even the labourer going to his morning work--had anything of
the slovenly hang-dog air of the sailors we had seen in the ships and
about the dockyard. The streets and the shops were clean, and even the
meanest of the people neatly and comfortably dressed. We had come out of
the atmosphere of revolution into that of ordinary work-a-day Germany.
As we rounded a corner and came clattering into the main street of the
city, the change was even more marked. At first blush there was hardly a
suggestion of war, or of war's aftermath. The big shop-windows were full
of goods, with here and there the forerunning red-and-green decorations
of the coming holidays. Here was an art shop's display of etchings and
coloured prints, there a haberdasher's stock of scarves and shirts
and gloves. Even a passing glance, it is true, revealed a prominently
displayed line of false shirt fronts; but, then, your German always was
partial to "dickeys." A florist's window, in which a fountain plashed
above a basin of water-lilies, was golden with splendid chrysanthemums,
and in the milliner's window hard by a saffron-plumed confection of
ultra-marine held high revel with a riotous thing of royal purple plush.
Noting my eager interest in the gay window panorama, my companion,
leaning close to my ear to make himself heard above the clatter of the
tyres, shouted jerkily with the jolt of the car, "We are fond of the
bright colours, we Germans, and we make the very good dyes. I think you
have missed very much the German dyes since the war, and will now be
very glad of the chance to have them again. We have learned much during
the war, and they are now better than ever before. We laugh very much
when we capture the French soldier with the faded blue uniform, for then
we know that the French cannot make the dye that will hold its colour.
But the German--"
"Waiting with the goods," I said to myself as I drew away from the
dissertation to watch a tramcar disgorging its load at a crossing.
We were now running through the heart of Wilhelmshaven, and it was the
early office crowd that was thronging the streets. How well they were
dressed, and how well fed they looked! There were no hollow eyes or
emaciated forms in that crowd. One who has seen famines in China and
India knows the hunger look, the hunger pallor, the hunger apathy. There
is no mistaking them. But we had not seen any of them in the German
ships or dockyards, we did not see them that day in Wilhelmshaven,
and we were not destined to see them in Bremen, Hamburg, Kiel, or
anywhere else we went in the course of our many hundreds of miles
of travel in Northern Germany. So far as Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and
Schleswig-Holstein were concerned, I have no hesitation in saying that
the starvation whine, which arose from the moment the ink was dry upon
the armistice agreement and which still persists, was sheer--to be
charitable, let us say--panic.
Presently, as we began to pass some huge masses of buildings which,
four or five stories in height, appeared to run on through two or three
blocks of the not unattractive park-like grounds with which they were
surrounded, my companion, indicating them with a proud wave of his
hand, started speaking again. I could not hear him distinctly--for we
were speeding up faster now, and consequently making more noise--but I
thought I caught the drift of what he was trying to say.
"Ja, ja," I roared back. "Ich verstehe sehr gut. Der naval barracks.
Der German High Sea Fleet Base." I think that was hardly the way he
was trying to put it, but his vigorous nod of assent showed that I had
at least gathered the sense of his observations. As we slowed down at
the next corner he put me completely right by saying, "Not for the
ships themselves, the big barracks, but for the men when the ships were
here. I think you make a joke." I admitted the shrewd impeachment
with a grin, but hardly thought it necessary to add that I was afraid
he had still missed the best part of the joke. He was a diverting lad,
that young flying officer, and he told me many interesting things in
the course of the day. Some of them were true, as subsequent events
or observations proved; but one of them at least was a calculated and
deliberate lie, told with the purpose of inducing one of the "air"
parties to give up the plan it had formed of visiting a certain station.
I will set down that significant little incident in its proper place.
Although, as we learned later, the fact that a party from the Allied
Commission was to land and pass through the city that day had been
carefully withheld from the people, the latter exhibited very little
surprise at the appearance of officers in uniforms which they seemed to
recognize at once as foreign. They had been instructed that they were to
make no demonstration of any kind when Allied officers were encountered
in the streets, and, docile as ever, they carried out the order to the
letter. A mild, unresentful curiosity would perhaps best describe the
attitude of all the people who saw us that day, both in Wilhelmshaven
and at the country stations.
The fact that many of the streets were dressed with flags and greenery,
and that all of the children, both boys and girls, trudging along
to school carried the red, white, and black emblem in their hands,
suggested to me at first that it was part of a patriotic display, a sort
of flaunting the new-found freedom in the face of the "invader." But my
companion assured me that the decorations were in honour of the expected
arrival home of two regiments of Wilhelmshaven Marines from the Front.
"We have been _en fête_ for a week now in hourly expectation of their
coming, and every day the children have put on their best clothes and
carried flags in their hands. But the railway service is very bad, and
always are they disappointed. You will see the arch of welcome at the
railway station. Wilhelmshaven is very proud of its Marine soldiers."
The "arch" at the station turned out to be the evergreen and
bunting-decorated entrance to a long shed set with tables, at which
refreshments were to be served to the returning warriors. It was
surmounted with a shield bearing the words "Willkommen Soldaten," and an
eight-line stanza of verse which I did not have time to copy. The gist
of it was that the soldiers were welcomed home to "Work and Liberty."
It was thoroughly bad verse, said one of our interpreters, but the
sentiments were--for Germany--"restrained and dignified." There was
nothing about the "unbeaten soldiers," of whom we had been reading as
welcomed home in Berlin and other parts of Germany.
There was a small crowd at the station entrance as our cars drove
up, but it parted quietly and made way for us to pass inside. One or
two sailors stood at attention and saluted--though whether German or
Allied officers it was impossible to tell--and several civilians bowed
solemnly and took off their hats. One of these reached out and made
temporary captive an irreverent street gamin who--purely in a spirit
of fun, apparently--started "goose-stepping" along in our wake. A bevy
of minxes of the shop-girl type giggled sputteringly, getting much
apparent amusement the while out of pretending to keep each other
quiet. One gaudily garbed pair, standing easily at gaze in the middle
of the waiting-room, stared brazenly and ogled frank invitation. An
austere dame--she might have been an opulent naval captain's frau--drew
a languid hand from what looked like a real ermine muff to lift a
tortoise-shell lorgnette and pass us one by one in critical review. Then
the old ticket-puncher, touching his cap as though he had recognized the
party as the Board of Directors on a surreptitious tour of inspection,
passed us through the gate and on the platform and our waiting train.
Our special consisted of a luggage van and a passenger coach, drawn
by an engine in a very advanced state of what appeared to be neglect.
Though all its parts were there, these, except where rubbed clean by
friction, were thick with rust and scaled with flaking paint. The worst
trouble, however, seemed to come from lack of lubrication, for in the
places where every other locomotive I had seen before was dripping with
oil, this one showed only caked graphite and hard, dry steel. While
there is little doubt that the Germans made a point of turning out their
worst engines and motor cars for the use of the Allied sub-commissions
in order to give an impression that things were really in a desperate
way with them, it is still beyond question that their railway stock
deteriorated greatly during the war, and that a shortage of lubricating
oils was one of their very worst difficulties.
The passenger coach was equally divided between first- and second-class
compartments. Entering at the second-class end, our party distributed
itself between the first two compartments reached. By the time one of
the several German officers who had now joined us pointed out the big
figure "2" on the windows, we were so comfortably settled that no one
deemed it worth while to move. As a matter of fact, on the German
railways, with their four or five classes, there is gentler gradation
between class and class than in France or England; and between first and
second--save that the former is upholstered in dark-red plush and the
latter in light-green--the difference is hardly noticeable. The main
difference is, I believe, in the price, and the fact that only six are
allowed in the first-class against eight in the second. We extracted a
good deal of amusement out of the fact that the several Workmen's and
Soldiers' representatives made no mistake, and lost no time, in marking
a first-class compartment for their own.
We had been somewhat perplexed on our arrival at the station to note
that the two uniformed Workmen's and Soldiers' representatives had
been joined by two civilians, each wearing the white arm-band of the
revolutionary council. But presently one of the latter, hat in hand,
came to the door of our compartment to explain. The naval authorities,
he said, had requested that the Workmen and Soldiers should guarantee
the safety of all Allied parties landing from civilian attack, and in
consequence he had been sent along as a "hostage." At least the German
term he used was one which could be translated as hostage, but after
talking it over we came to the conclusion that the man's _rôle_ was
more analogous to that of a "plain clothes" special policeman. There
was one of these men attached to every party that made a train journey
on the North Sea side (all stations in the Baltic littoral were reached
by destroyer, so that no "protection" from the civilian population was
necessary), and they were neither of any trouble nor--so far as I was
ever able to discern--any use.
Leaving a handful of morning papers behind him as a propitiatory
offering, our "hostage" bowed himself out of the door and backed off
down the corridor--still bowing--to rejoin his colleagues in the
first-class section of the car. In the quarter of an hour there was
still to wait before the line was clear for the departure of our train,
we had our first chance for a peep into Germany through the window of
the Press.
The four-page sheets turned out to be copies of _Vorwärts_, the
_Kölnische Volkszeitung und Handels-Blatt_, the _Weser Zeitung_, of
Bremen, the _Wilhelmshavener Tageblatt_, and the _Republik_. The
latter styled itself the _Sozialdemokratisches Organ für Oldenburg und
Ostfriesland_, and the _Mitteilungsblatt der Arbeiter und Soldatenräte_.
It claimed to be in its thirty-second year, but admitted that all this
time, except the fortnight since the revolution, it had borne the name
of _Oldenburger Volksblatt_. It had little in the way of news from
either the outside world or the interior, the few columns which it
gave up to this purpose being filled with accounts of the formation
of republics in various other provinces, and attacks upon members of
the acting Government in Berlin. Evidently under some sort of orders,
it mentioned the arrival of the _Hercules_ at Wilhelmshaven without
comment. A socialistic sheet of Hamburg, which turned up the next
day, showed less restraint in this connection, for it stated that the
Allied Commission had altered its decision not to meet the Workmen's
and Soldiers' representatives, and that negotiations were now in
progress in which the latter were taking a prominent part. Tangible
evidence of the truth of this statement, it added, might be found in the
fact that delegates from the Workmen and Soldiers accompanied Allied
parties whenever they landed. _Vorwärts_ tried to convey the same false
impression to its readers, but rather less brazenly. The _Kölnische
Volkszeitung_ printed a dispatch from London, in which the _Daily Mail_
was quoted as supporting the "_australischen Premierministers Hughes'_"
demand of an indemnity of "_acht milliarden Pfund Sterling_" from
Germany, and proceeded to prove in the course of an impassioned leader
of two columns why the demanding of any indemnity at all was in direct
violation of the pledged word of the Allies, to say nothing of Wilson's
Fourteen Points. A significant circumstance was the inclusion in each
paper of a part of a column of comment on the movement of prices of
"_Landesprodukte_" on the American markets.
The advertisements, which took up rather more than half of each sheet,
proved by long odds more interesting than the news. These were quite
in best "peace time" style. The _Metropol-Variete_ (_Neu renoviert!_)
informed all and sundry that "_Vier elegante junge Damen!_" disported
themselves in its "_Kabarett_" every evening. The head-line of the great
"_Spezialitäten Programm_" in the theatre was "_Die Grosse Sensation:
Martini Szeny, genannt der 'Ausbrecher-König'!_" A number in the
_Metropol's_ program which appealed to us more than all the others,
however, was one which was featured further down the list, for there,
sandwiched between "KITTY DEANOS UND PARTNER, _Kunstschutzen_," and
"HANS ROMANS, _Liedersanger_," appeared "LITTLE WILLY, _Trapez-Volant_."
"And all the time we thought he was in Holland," dryly commented the
American officer who made the discovery.
One could not help wondering respecting the "etymology" of "Little
Willy," and whether that "Flying Trapezist" knew that he bore the
favourite Allied nickname for His ex-Royal and Imperial Highness,
Frederick Wilhelm Hohenzollern, Crown Prince of Germany, etc., etc.
Evidence that Hun "piracy" had not been confined to their U-boats was
unearthed in the discovery that the Adler-Theatre of Bremen advertised
two performances of "DIE MODERNE EVA" for that very day--_Heute
Sonntag_! "I ran across the chap who wrote 'The Modern Eve' somewhere
out California way," said the same American who had spoken before. "He
was some bore, too, take it from me; but he never deserved anything
as bad as this, for the show itself was pretty nifty," and he began
humming, in extemporaneously translated German the words of "Good-bye
Everybody," the popular "song hit" from "The Modern Eve."
It was a Berlin theatre which advertised "2 _Vorstellungen_ 2" of
"Hamlet," which ended up the notice with "RAUCHEN STRENG VERBOTEN!" in
large type. "If they burn the same stuff in Berlin that our Workmen and
Soldier friends in the first-class are putting up that smoke barrage in
the corridor with," said an airship officer, "it would have to be a case
of '_Rauchen Streng Verboten_' or gas masks."
A number of booksellers advertised long lists of "_Neue Werke_,"
but one searched these in vain for any of the notorious polemics
directed against the Allies, or yet for the writings of any of the
great protagonists of the "Deutschland Ueber Alles" movement. Most of
them appeared to be "Romances" or out-and-out "Thrillers." Bachem, of
Köln, described "_Der Meister_" as "_Der Roman eines Spiritisten_";
"_Wettertannen_" as a "_Tiroler Roman aus der Gegenwart von Hans
Schrott_"; "_Wenn Irland dich ruft_" as "_Der Roman eines Fliegers_";
and "_Der blutige Behrpfennig_" as "_Erzählung aus dem Leben eines
Priesters_." Although one would have thought that the German people had
had quite enough of that kind of thing from their late Government, every
book I saw advertised in any of these papers was fiction.
Perhaps the most optimistic of all these advertisements was that of the
"Kismet Laboratorium," of Berlin, in the _Republik_, which claimed to
make a preparation for the improvement of the female form divine. Now
that the war was over, it read, they no longer felt any hesitation in
announcing that their great discovery was based on a certain product
which could only be obtained from British India. As their pre-war stock
had only been eked out by dilution with an not entirely satisfactory
substitute, it was with great pleasure that they informed their many
customers that they hoped shortly to conclude arrangements by which
the famous "Bakatal-Busenwasser" could again be furnished in all its
pristine purity and strength.
So here, it appears, was an indirect admission to prove wrong the
individual who averred that the German chemists could make out of coal
tar anything in the world except a gentleman. It seems that all the time
they had been dependent upon British India for even the "makings" of a
lady. It would have been interesting to know what the "arrangements"
were by which the supply was to be renewed. We were discussing that
question when the train started, and a "flat" wheel on the "bogey"
immediately under our compartment put an end to casual conversation.
On the outskirts of the town we passed by a great series of sidings
closely packed with oil-tank-cars from all parts of the Central Empires.
The most of them were marked in German, but with names which indicated
beyond a doubt that they had been employed in serving the Galician
fields of Austria. On many more the name of Rumania appeared in one
form or another, and several bore the names of the British concerns
from which they had been seized when the rich oilfields of that unlucky
country fell to Mackensen's armies. A considerable number of cars
were marked with Russian characters, which led to the assumption that
they had been seized in Courland or the Ukraine, and that they had
originally run to and from the greatest of the world's oilfields at
Baku, on the Caspian. There was a persistent report at one time that
Germany was constructing an oil-pipe-line from the Galician fields to
Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. Although quite practicable from an engineering
standpoint, this appears never to have been seriously considered,
probably on account of the great demand for labour and material it would
have made at a time when both could be used to better advantage in other
ways.
Seeing me standing at the window in the corridor looking at the
oil-cars, my young companion of the steel-tyred auto came out of his
compartment and moved up beside me. "As you will see," he said with his
slow precision, "we never lacked badly for the oil for our U-boats.
The one time that we had the great worry was when the Russians had the
fields of Galicia. That cut off our only large supply. But luckily we
had great stocks in hand when the war started, and these were quite
sufficient for our needs until the Russians had been driven out of
Austria. If they had remained there, it is hard to see how we could have
kept going after our reserve was finished. But they did not stay, the
poor Russians, and they did not even have the wits to destroy the wells
properly. We had them producing again at full capacity in a few months.
Now, if they had been destroyed like the English destroyed the wells in
Rumania it would have been different. _There_, in many places, we found
it the cheaper to drill the new wells. Ah, the English are very thorough
when they have the time, both in making and un-making."
As we passed through the suburbs of Wilhelmshaven we began to get some
inkling of where the food came from. All back yards and every spare
patch of ground were in vegetables. Nowhere in England or France have I
seen the surface of the earth so fully occupied, so thoroughly turned
to account. Some thrifty cultivators, after filling up their available
ground with rows of cabbages and Brussels sprouts, appeared to have been
growing beans and peas in hanging baskets and boxes of earth set up on
frames. One genius had erected a forcing bed for what (to judge from
the dead stalks) looked like cucumbers or squashes on the thatched roof
of his cowshed. The only thing needed to cap the climax of agricultural
industry would have been a "hanging garden" suspended from captive
balloons.
As we ran out of the suburban area and into the open country the
allotments gave place to large and well-tilled farms, or rather to farms
which had been well tilled in the season favourable to cultivation.
At the moment work was practically at a standstill on account of the
incessant rains which had inundated considerable areas and left the
ground heavy, water-logged, and temporarily unfit for the plough.
The results of a really bountiful harvest, however, were to be seen
in bulging barns and sheds and plethoric haystacks and fodder piles.
The surest evidence that there had actually been an over-supply of
vegetables was the careless way in which such things as cabbages,
swedes, and beets were being handled in transport. A starving people
does not leave food of this kind to rot along the road nor in the
station yards, evidences of which we saw every now and then for the next
forty miles.
Practically the whole of the North Sea littoral of Germany between the
Kiel Canal and the Dutch border--across the central section of which we
were now passing--is the same sort of a flat, sea-level expanse, and has
the same rich, alluvial soil, as the plains of Flanders. This region,
like Denmark and Holland, had been largely given over to dairying
before the war. The conversion of it from a pastoral to an agricultural
country, by ploughing up the endless miles of meadows, has resulted
in a huge output of foodstuffs, and has put the people inhabiting it
well beyond the risk of anything approaching starvation, no matter how
long the blockade might be kept up. The officers accompanying us were
quite frank in stating that the farmers had prospered and waxed wealthy
by selling their surplus in the nearest industrial centres, such as
Bremen and Hamburg. The pinch, they said, would come when the people
began trying to restock their dairy farms again, for at least a half
of the cattle had been killed off as their pastures had been put under
cultivation.
Judging by the very few cattle in sight--in comparison with the number
one has always seen in the fields in dairying regions--one would be
inclined to estimate the reduction of stock at a good deal more than
half. The fact that it is the local custom to keep the best of their
stock stabled during the most inclement months of the winter doubtless
had a good deal to do with the few animals in sight. As a matter of
fact, there was really very little grazing left for those that might
have been turned out. Sheep were also extremely scarce, but as this was
not a region where they were ever found in great numbers one remarked
their absence less than that of cattle.
But the most astonishing thing of all was that not a single pig was
sighted on either the going or returning journey. The sight of what
appeared to be a long-empty sty started a comparison of observations
from which it transpired that no one watching from either of our two
compartments had so much as clapped an eye on what the world has long
regarded as Germany's favourite species of live stock. After that we all
began standing "pig lookout," but the only "View Halloo" raised was a
false one, the "_schwein_" turning out to be a _dachshund_, and a very
scrawny one at that. Piqued by this astonishing porcine elusiveness,
the "air" parties (upon which most of the land travel devolved) met
in the ward-room of the _Hercules_ that evening and contributed to
form a "Pig Pool," the whole of which was to go to the first member
who could produce incontestable evidence that he had seen a pig upon
German soil. Astounding as it may seem, this prize was never awarded.
The claim of one aspirant was ruled out because, on cross-questioning,
he had to admit that his "pig" wore a German naval uniform and had
tried, by vigorous lying, to head him off from a hangar containing a
very interesting type of a new seaplane. Another claimant proved that
he had actually seen a pig, but only to have the prize withheld when it
transpired that he had flushed nothing more lifelike than the plaster
image of a pig which, cleaver in hand, stood as a butcher's sign in a
village on the island of Rügen. A third claimant _would_ have won the
award had he chanced along five minutes sooner when the villagers were
butchering a pig on the occasion when his party visited the Great Belt
Islands to inspect the forts. Even in this case, though, we should have
had to weigh carefully the evidence of an Irish-American officer of the
same party, who said that it was "a dead cert that pig had died from hog
cholera a good hour before it was killed!"
Although the fact that none of the members of the various Allied
sub-commissions saw so much as a single live hog during the course of
the many hundred miles travelled by train, motor, carriage, or foot
in North-Western Germany, does not mean that the species has become
extinct there by any means, there is still no doubt that the numbers of
this popular and appropriate symbol of the Hun's _grossness_ have been
greatly reduced, and that _schweine_ will be among the top items on
their list of "immediate requirements" forwarded to the Allied Relief
Committee.
Hurried as was this first of our journeys across Oldenburg, I was still
able to see endless evidence not only of the intensive cultivation,
but also the careful and scientific fertilization, which I had good
opportunity to study later at closer range in Mecklenburg and
Schleswig. Stable manure and mulches of sedulously conserved decaying
vegetable matter were being everywhere applied to the land according to
the most approved modern practice. This I had expected to see, for I
already knew the German as an intelligent and well-instructed farmer,
but what did surprise me was clear proof that the supply of artificial
fertilizers--phosphates, nitrates, and lime--was being fairly well
maintained. Truck loads of these indispensable adjuncts to sustained
production standing in station sidings showed that, and so did the state
of the fields themselves; for the fresh young shoots of winter wheat,
which I saw everywhere pushing up and taking full advantage of the
almost unprecedentedly mild December weather, showed no traces of the
"hungriness" I have so often noted during the last year or two in some
of the over-cropped and under-fertilized fields of England.
What with prisoners and the unremitting labour of women and children,
Germany accomplished remarkable things in the way of production. The
area of cultivation was not only largely increased, but the production
of the old fields was also kept at a high level. In no part of the world
have I ever seen fairer farmsteads than those through which the party
inspecting the Great Belt forts north of Kiel drove for many miles one
day. They struck me as combining something of the picturesqueness of a
Somerset farm with the prosperous efficiency of a California ranch. And
it is as a California rancher myself that I say that I only wish I had
soil and outbuildings that would come anywhere nearly up to the average
of those throughout this favoured region of Schleswig. It is true that
many of the people thereabouts are Danish, and I even saw a Danish flag
discreetly displayed behind the neat lace curtains of one farmhouse.
But, Danish or German, they are producing huge quantities of good
food, enough to keep the people of less fertile regions of "starving
Deutschland" far from want.
It was just before our arrival at Norddeich at the end of this first
day's railway journey that I spoke to the German officer who had joined
me at the window of the corridor about the very well-fed look of the
people we had seen on the streets of Wilhelmshaven and at the stations
of the towns and villages through which we had been passing. "It is
true," he replied, "that we have never suffered for food in this part
of the country, and that is because it is so largely agricultural. But
wait until you go to the industrial centres. In Hamburg and Bremen, it
is there that you will see the want and hunger. It is for those poor
people that the Allies must provide much food without delay."
Personally, I did not go either to Hamburg or Bremen, being absent with
parties visiting the Zeppelin stations at Nordholz and Tondern at the
time the Shipping Board of the Naval Commission was inspecting British
merchantmen interned in these once great ports. A member of that board,
however, assured me that he had observed no material difference in the
appearance of the people in the streets of Bremen and Hamburg and those
of Wilhelmshaven. His party had taken "potluck" at the Hotel Atlantic
in Hamburg, where the food had been found ample in quantity and not
unappetizing, even on a meatless day.
"But what of the poor?" I asked. "Did you see anything of the quarters
that would correspond to the slums of London or Liverpool?"
"Germany," he replied, "to her credit, has very few places where the
housing is outwardly so bad as in many British industrial cities I could
name. We did not see much of the parts of Bremen and Hamburg where
the working-classes live; but we did see a good deal of the workers
themselves. I know under-feeding when I see it, for I was in Russia
but a few months ago. But, so far as I could see, the chief difference
between the men in the dockyards and shipbuilding establishments
of Hamburg and those of the Tyne and Clyde was that the former were
working harder. They merely glanced up at us as we passed, with little
curiosity and no resentment, and went right on with the job in hand.
No, everything considered, I should not say that any one is suffering
seriously for lack of food in either Bremen or Hamburg."
"No one is suffering seriously for lack of food." That was the feeling
of all of us at the end of our first day in "starving Germany," and (if
I may anticipate) it was also our verdict when the _Hercules_ sailed for
England, three weeks later.
IV
ACROSS THE SANDS TO NORDERNEY
The names of "Norderney" and "Borkum" on the list of seaplane stations
to be inspected seemed to strike a familiar chord of memory, but it
was not until I chanced upon a dog-eared copy of "The Riddle of the
Sands" on a table in the "Commission Room" of the _Hercules_ that it
dawned upon me where I had heard them before. There was no time at
the moment to re-turn the pages of this most consummately told yarn
of its kind ever written, but, prompted by a happy inspiration, I
slipped the grimy little volume into my pocket. And there (as the
clattering special which was to take us to Norddeich, _en route_ to
Norderney, turned off from the Bremen mainline a few miles outside of
Wilhelmshaven) I found it again, just as the green water-logged fields
and bogs of the "land of the seven _siels_" began to unroll in twin
panoramas on either side. Opening the book at random somewhere toward
the middle, my eye was drawn to a paragraph beginning near the top of
the page facing a much-pencilled chart. "... The mainland is that
district of Prussia that is known as East Friesland." (I remember now
that it was "Carruthers," writing in the _Dulcibella_, off Wangerogg,
who was describing the "lay of the land.") "It is a short, flat-topped
peninsula, bounded on the west by the Ems estuary and beyond that by
Holland, and on the east by the Jade estuary; a low-lying country,
containing great tracts of marsh, and few towns of any size; on the
north side none. Seven islands lie off the coast. All, except Borkum,
which is round, are attenuated strips, slightly crescent-shaped, rarely
more than a mile broad, and tapering at the ends; in length averaging
about six miles, from Norderney and Juist, which are seven and nine
respectively, to little Baltrum, which is only two and a half."
As I turned the book sideways to look at the chart the whole fascinating
story came back with a rush. What man who has ever knocked about in
small boats, tramped roads and poked about generally in places where he
had no business to poke could forget it? The East Friesland peninsula,
with its "seven little rivers" and "seven channels" and "seven islands,"
was the "take off" for the German army which was to cross the North
Sea in barges to land on the sands of "The Wash" for the invasion of
England. And this very line over which our rickety two-car special
was clinkety-clanking--I wished that "Carruthers" could have seen what
a pitiful little old single-track it had become--was the "strategic
trunk" over which the invading cohorts were to be shunted in their
thousands to the waiting deep-sea-going barges in the canalized _siels_.
There was Essen, which was to have been the "nodal centre" of the
great embarkation, and scarcely had I located it on the map before its
tall spire was stabbing the north-western skyline as we drew in to the
station.
A raw-boned, red-faced girl, her astonishingly powerful frame clad in a
man's greasy overall, lowered the barrier at the high-road crossing, the
same barrier, I reflected, which had held up "Carruthers," Von Brunning,
and the two "cloaked gentlemen" on the night of the great adventure.
Four "land girls," in close-fitting brown corduroys, with great baskets
of red cabbages on their shoulders, were just trudging off down the road
to Dornum, the very "cobbled causeway flanked with ditches and willows,
and running cheek by jowl with the railway track" which "Carruthers" had
followed by midnight, with "fleecy clouds and a half moon overhead,"
in search of the Benser Tief. There was even a string of mighty barges
towing down the narrow canal of the "Tief" when we crossed its rattling
bridge a few minutes later. And just as "Carruthers" described, the road
and railway clung closely together all the way to Dornum, and about
halfway were joined by a third companion in the shape of a puny stream,
the Neues Tief. "Wriggling and doubling like an eel, choked with sedges
and reeds," it had no more pretensions to being navigable now than then.
It still "looped away into the fens out of sight, to reappear again
close to Dornum in a more dignified guise," and it still skirted the
town to the east, where there was a towpath and a piled wharf. The only
change I was able to note in the momentary halt of the train was that
the "red-brick building with the look of a warehouse, roofless as yet
and with workmen on the scaffolds," had now been covered with red tile
and filled with red cabbages.
It was at Dornum that "Carruthers" (who was masquerading as a German
sailor on his way to visit a sister living on Baltrum) fell in at a
primitive _Gasthaus_ with an ex-crimp, drunken with much _schnappsen_,
who insisted on accompanying him on a detour to Dornumersiel, where he
had planned to do a hasty bit of spying. From the right-hand window I
caught a brief glimpse of the ribbon of the coastward road, down the
length of which the oddly-assorted pair--the Foreign Office _précis_
writer and the one-time "shanghai" artist--had stumbled arm-in-arm,
treating each other in every gin-shop on the way.
"Carruthers'" detour to the coast carried him out of sight of the
railway, so that he missed the little red-brick schoolhouse, close up by
the track, where the buxom mistress had her whole brood of young Fritzes
and Gretchens lined up along the fence of the right-of-way to wave and
cheer our train as it passed. How she received word of the coming of the
"Allied Special" we could only conjecture, but it was probably through
some Workmen's and Soldiers' Council friend in the railway service. But
even so, as the schoolhouse was three miles from the nearest station
and had nothing suggestive of a telephone line running to it, she must
have had her _banzai_ party standing by in readiness a good part of
the forenoon session. Hurriedly dropping a window (they work rather
hard on account of the stiffness of the thick paper strap), I was just
able to gather that the burden of the greeting was "Good morning, good
morning, sir!" repeated many times in guttural chorus. If any of them
were shouting "Welcome!" as one or two of our party thought they heard,
it escaped my ears. They did the thing so well one was sure it had been
rehearsed, and wondered how long it had been since those same throaty
trebles had been raised in the "Hymn of Hate." If "Carruthers" spying
visit to Dornumersiel resulted in anything more "revealing" than the dig
in the ribs one of the youngsters got from the mistress for (apparently)
not cheering lustily enough, he neglected to set it down in his story.
This little incident prepared us for much we were to see later in the
way of German "conciliation" methods.
"Carruthers," when he returned to the railway again and took train at
Hage, made the journey from the latter station to Norden in ten minutes.
The fact that our special took twenty is sufficient commentary on the
deterioration of German road-beds and rolling stock. Norden, which
is the junction point for Emden, to the south, and Norddeich, to the
north, is a good-sized town, and we noticed here that the streets were
beflagged and arched with evergreen as at Wilhelmshaven, doubtless in
expectation of returning troops. While our engines were being changed,
a couple of workmen, standing back in the depths of a tool-house, kept
waving their hands ingratiatingly every time the armed guard (who always
paced up and down the platform while the train was at a station) turned
his back. What they were driving at--unless co-operating with the
children in the general "conciliation" program--we were not able to make
out.
From Norden to Norddeich was a run of but three or four miles, but a bad
road-bed and a worse engine made the journey a tedious if fitting finale
to our painful progress across the East Frisian peninsula. Halting but a
few moments at the main station, the train was shunted to a spur which
took it right out to the quay where the great dyke bent inward to form a
narrow artificial harbour. A few steps across the slippery moss-covered
stones, where the falling tide had bared the sloping landing, took us to
where a small but powerfully engined steam launch was waiting to convey
the party to Norderney. Manned by naval ratings, it had the same aspect
of neglect which characterized all of the warships we had visited. The
men saluted smartly, however, and on our expressing a wish to remain in
the open air in preference to the stuffy cabin, they tumbled below and
brought up cushions and ranged them along the deck-house to sit upon.
The Allied officers dangled their legs to port, the German officers to
starboard, while the ex-sailor and the "plain clothes" detective from
the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council disposed themselves authoritatively
in the wheel-house.
A few minutes' run between heavy stone jetties brought us to the
open sea, where the launch began threading a channel which seemed to
be marked mostly by buoys, but here and there by close-set rows of
saplings, now just beginning to show their scraggly tops above the
falling water. It was the sight of these latter marks--so characteristic
of these waters--that reminded me that we had at last come out into the
real hunting ground of the _Dulcibella_, where "Davies" and "Carruthers"
had puzzled out the solution of "The Riddle of the Sands." Norderney
and Juist and Borkum and the other of the "seven islands" strung their
attenuated lengths in a broken barrier to seaward, and between them
and the mainland we were leaving astern stretched the amazing mazes of
the sands, alternately bared and covered by the ebb and flow of the
tides. Two-thirds of the area, according to "Carruthers," were dry at
low water, when the "remaining third becomes a system of lagoons whose
distribution is controlled by the natural drift of the North Sea as it
forces its way through the intervals between the islands. Each of these
intervals resembles the bar of a river, and is obstructed by dangerous
banks over which the sea pours at every tide, scooping out a deep pool.
This fans out and ramifies to east and west as the pent-up current
frees itself, encircles the islands, and spreads over the intervening
flats. But the further it penetrates the less scouring force it has,
and as a result no island is girt completely by a low-water channel.
About midway at the back of each of them is a 'watershed,' only covered
for five or six hours out of the twelve. A boat, even of the lightest
draught, navigating behind the islands must choose its moment for
passing these."
"I trust we have 'chosen _our_ moment' carefully," I said to myself
after reading those lines and reflecting what a large part of their time
the _Dulcibella_, _Kormoran_, and all the other craft in the "Riddle"
had spent careened upon sand-spits. To reassure myself, I leaned back
and asked one of the German officers if boats didn't run aground pretty
often on that run. "Oh, yes, most often," was the reply, "but only at
low water or when the fog is very thick. With this much water, and when
we can see as far as we can now"--there was about a quarter of a mile of
visibility--"there is no danger. Our difficulty will come when we try to
return this evening on the low water."
It may have been my imagination, but I thought he put a shade more
accent on that _try_ than a real optimist would have done under similar
circumstances. But then, I told myself, it was hardly a time when one
could expect a German officer to be optimistic about anything.
Heading out through the well-marked channel of the _Buse Tief_, between
the sands of the _Itzendorf Plate_ to port and _Hohe Riff_ to starboard,
twenty minutes found the launch in the opener waters off the west end of
Norderney where, with its light draught, it had no longer to thread the
winding of the buoyed fairway. Standing on northward until the red roofs
and white walls of the town sharpened into ghostly relief on the curtain
of the mist, course was altered five or six points to starboard, and we
skirted a broad stretch of sandy beach, from the upper end of which the
even slopes of concreted "runs" were visible, leading back to where,
dimly outlined in their darker opacity, a long row of great hangars
loomed fantastically beyond the dunes. Doubling a sharp spit, the launch
nosed in and brought up alongside the landing of a slip notched out of
the side of the little natural harbour.
The Commander of the station--a small man, but wiry and exceedingly
well set up--met us as we stepped off the launch. Then, and throughout
the visit, his quiet dignity of manner and ready (but not too ready)
courtesy struck a welcome mean between the incongruous blends of
sullenness and subserviency we had encountered in meeting the officers
in the German warships. He saluted each member of the party as he
landed, but tactfully refrained from offering his hand to any but
the attached German officers. It was this attitude on the part of
the Commander, together with the uniformly courteous but uneffusive
demeanour of the other officers with whom we were thrown in contact,
that made the visit to Norderney perhaps the pleasantest of all the many
inspections carried out in Germany.
Walking inland along a brick-paved road, we passed a large canteen or
recreation club (with a crowd of curious but quite respectful men lined
up along the verandah railings to watch us go by) before turning in to
a fine new brick-and-tile building which appeared to be the officers'
Casino. Leaving our overcoats in the reception room, we joined the dozen
or more officers awaiting us at the entrance and fared on by what had
once been flower-bordered walks to the hangars. As we came out upon
the "tarmac"--here, as with all German seaplane and airship stations,
the runs for the machines in front of the hangars are paved with
concrete instead of the tarred macadam which is used so extensively in
England and France--the men of the station were seen to be drawn up by
companies, as for a review. Each company stood smartly to attention at
the order of its officers as the party came abreast of it, and we--both
Allied and German officers--saluted in return. As we passed on, each
company in turn broke rank and quietly dispersed to barracks, their
officers following on to join the party in the furtherest hangar, where
the inspection was to begin. The discipline appeared to be faultless,
and it was soon evident that the men and their officers had arrived at
some sort of a "working understanding" to tide them over the period of
inspection, if not longer.
The two representatives of the Workmen and Soldiers who had accompanied
our party from Wilhelmshaven were allowed to be present during the
inspection, and with them two other "white-banders" who appeared to have
been elected to represent the men of the station. All other men had been
cleared out of the sheds in conformity with the stipulations of the
armistice. Some unauthorized individual--apparently a mechanic--who,
halfway through the inspection, was noticed following the party, was
summarily ordered out by the Commander. He obeyed somewhat sullenly, but
though we subsequently saw him in gesticulative confab with some of his
mates on the outside, he did not venture again into any of the hangars.
That was the nearest approach to insubordination we saw in Norderney.
The officers of the station--now that we saw them, a score or more in
number, all together--were a fine, business-like looking lot. All of
them wore some kind of a decoration, most of them several, and among
these were two or three of the highly-prized Orders "_Pour le Mérite_."
As Norderney was the "star" seaplane station, that body of keen-eyed,
square-jawed young flying officers undoubtedly included the cleverest
naval pilots at Germany's disposal. What their many decorations had been
given for there was, of course, no way of learning; nor did we find out
whether the presence of so many of them at the inspection was voluntary
or by order. Though, like their Commander, quiet and reserved, they were
invariably courteous and willing in doing anything to facilitate the
tedious progress of inspection.
There was an amusing little incident which occurred during the course
of inspection in connection with a very smart young German officer,
who, from the moment I first saw him at the door of the Casino, I kept
telling myself I had encountered somewhere before. For half an hour
or more--while checking the names and numbers of the machines in my
notebook as inspection was completed--my mind was running back through
one German colony or foreign settlement after another, trying to find
the scene into which that florid face (with its warm, wide-set eyes and
its full, sensual mouth) fitted. Dar-es-Salaam, Windhoek, Tsingtau, Yap,
Apia, Herbertshöhe--I scurried back through them all without uncovering
a clue. Where else had I met Germans? The southern "panhandle" of
Brazil, the south of Chile, Bagdad-- That was the first name to awaken a
sense of "nearness." "Bagdad, Bagdad Railway, Assur, Mosul," I rambled
on, and just as I began to recall that I had encountered Germans
scattered all along the caravan route from the Tigris to Syria, the
object of my interest turned up those soulful eyes of his to look at
one of the American officers clambering into the "house" of the "Giant"
monoplane seaboat under inspection at the moment--and I had him.
"Aleppo! 'Du Bist Wie Eine Blume!'" I chortled exultantly, my mind going
back to a night in June, 1912, when, the day after my arrival from the
desert, the American Consul had taken me to a party at the Austrian
Consulate in honour of some one or other who was about to depart for
home--wherever that was. Young Herr X---- (I even recalled the name now)
and his brother, both on the engineering staff of the Bagdad Railway,
were among the guests, the former very smitten with a sloe-eyed sylph
of a Greek Levantine, whose mother (so a friendly gossip told me)
had been a dancer in a café chantant in Beirut before she married the
Smyrna hairdresser who afterwards made a fortune buying licorice root
from the Arabs. The girl (there was no denying the lissome grace of
her serpentine slenderness) was sipping her pink rose-leaf sherbet in
a balcony above the open court when Herr X---- had been asked to sing
along towards midnight, and the fervid passion of his upturned glances
as he sung "Du Bist Wie Eine Blume" as an encore to "Ich Liebe Dich"
had made enough of an impression on my mind to need no more than the
reminder vouchsafed me to recall it.
Evidently (perhaps because I had not furnished him with a similar
reason) Herr Romeo did not trace any connection between my present
well-rounded, "sea-faring" figure and the sun-dried, fever-wrecked
anatomy I had dragged into Aleppo in 1912, for I noted that his eyes
had passed over me impersonally twice or thrice without a flicker of
recognition. The explosiveness of my exultant chortle, however, must
have assailed the ear of the German officer standing a couple of paces
in front of me, for he turned round quickly and asked if I had spoken to
him.
"No--er--not exactly," I stammered, adding, at the promptings of a
sudden reckless impulse, "but I would like to ask if you knew when
Lieutenant X---- over there left the Bagdad Railway for the flying
service?"
"He was at the head office in Frankfurt when the war began, and joined
shortly afterwards," the young officer replied promptly, stepping back
beside me. Then, as the somewhat surprising nature of the query burst
upon him, a look of astonishment flushed his face and a pucker of
suspicion drew his bushy brows together in a perturbed frown. "But may I
ask--" he began.
"And his brother who was with him in Aleppo--the one with the scar on
his cheek and the top of one ear sliced off," I pressed; "where is he?"
"Died of fever in Nishbin," again came the prompt answer. "But"
(blurting it out quickly) "how do you know about them?"
Being human, and therefore weak, it was not in me to enlighten him with
the truth, and to add that I was merely a second-class Yankee hack
writer, temporarily togged out in an R.N.V.R. uniform to regularize
my position of "Keeper of the Records" of the Allied Naval Armistice
Commission. No, I couldn't do that. Indeed, everything considered, I am
inclined to think that I rendered a better service to the Allied cause
when I squared my shoulders importantly and delivered myself oracularly
of, "It is our business to know" (impressive pause) "all."
My reward was worthy of the effort. "Ach, it is but true," sighed the
young officer resignedly. "The English Intelligence is wonderful, as we
have too often found out."
"It is not bad," I admitted modestly, as I strolled over to make a note
of the fact that the machine-gun mounting of one of the _Frederichafens_
had not been removed.
I could see that my young friend was bursting to impart to Lieutenant
X---- the fact that he was a "marked man," but it was just as well that
no opportunity offered in the course of the inspection. That the ominous
news had been broken at luncheon, however, I felt certain from the fact
that when, missing X---- from the group of officers who saluted us from
the doorway of the Casino on our departure, I cast a furtive glance at
the upper windows, it surprised him in the act of withdrawing behind
one of the lace curtains. I only hope he has nothing on his conscience
in the way of hospital bombings and the like. If he has, it can hardly
have failed to occur to him that his name is inscribed on the Allies'
"black-list," and that he will have to stand trial in due course.
It's a strange thing, this cropping up of half-remembered faces in new
surroundings. The very next day, in the course of the visit to the
Zeppelin station at Nordholz--but I will not anticipate.
Under the terms of the armistice the Germans agreed to render all naval
seaplanes unfit for use by removing their propellers, machine-guns, and
bomb-dropping equipment, and dismantling their wireless and ignition
systems. To see that this was carried out on a single machine was not
much of a task, but multiplied by the several scores in such a station
as Norderney, it became a formidable labour. To equalize the physical
work, the sub-commission for seaplane stations arranged that the British
and American officers included in it should take turn-and-turn about in
active inspection and checking the result of the latter with the lists
furnished in advance by the Germans. At Norderney the "active service"
side of the program fell to the lot of the two American officers to
carry out. The swift pace they set at the outset slowed down materially
toward the finish, and it was a pair of very weary officers that dropped
limply from the last two _Albatrosses_ and sat down upon a pontoon to
recover their breath. It was, I believe, Lieut.-Commander L---- who,
ruefully rubbing down a cramp which persisted in knotting his left
calf, declared that he had just computed that his combined clamberings
in the course of the inspection were equal to ascending and descending a
mountain half a mile high.
Practically all of the machines at Norderney were of the tried and
proven types--_Brandenburgs_, _Albatrosses_, _Frederichafens_, _Gothas_,
etc.--already well-known to the Allies. (It was not until the great
experimental station at Warnemünde, in the Baltic, was visited a
fortnight later that specimens of the latest types were revealed.) The
Allied experts of the party were greatly impressed with the excellence
of construction of all of the machines, none of them appearing to have
suffered in the least as a consequence of a shortage of materials. The
steel pontoons in particular--a branch of construction to which the
Germans had given much attention, and with notable success--came in for
especially favourable comment. (The Commander of the station, by the
way, showed us one of these pontoons which he had had fitted with an
engine and propeller and used in duck-shooting.) The general verdict
seemed to be that the Germans had little to learn from any one in the
building of seaplanes, and that this was principally due to the fact
that they had concentrated upon it for oversea work, where the British
had been going in more and more for swift "carrier" ships launching
aeroplanes. It was by aeroplanes launched from the "carrier" _Furious_
that the great Zeppelin station at Tondern was practically destroyed
last summer, and there is no doubt that this kind of a combination can
accomplish far more effective work--providing, of course, that the power
using it has command of the sea--than anything that can be done by
seaplanes. It was the fact that Germany did _not_ have control of the
sea, rather than any lack of ingenuity or initiative, that pinned her to
the seaplane, and, under the circumstances, it has to be admitted that
she made very creditable use of the latter.
The one new type of machine at Norderney (although the existence of it
had been known to the Allies for some time) was the "giant" monoplane
seaboat, quite the most remarkable machine of the kind in the world at
the present time. Though its span of something like 120 feet is less
than that of a number of great aeroplanes already in use, its huge
breadth of wing gave it a plane area of enormous size. The boat itself
was as large--and apparently as seaworthy--as a good-sized steam launch,
and so roomy that one could almost stand erect inside of it. It quite
dwarfed anything of the kind I had ever seen before. Nor was the boat,
spacious as it was, the only closed-in space. Twenty feet or more above
the deck of it, between the wings, was a large "box" containing, among
other things, a very elaborately equipped _sound-proof_ wireless room.
The technical instruments of control and navigation--especially the very
compact "Gyro" compasses--stirred the Allied experts to an admiration
they found difficult to restrain.
One of the German officers who had accompanied us from Wilhelmshaven
told me something of the history of this greatest of monoplanes.
"This flying boat," he said, while we waited for the somewhat lengthy
inspection to be completed, "was the last great gift that Count
Zeppelin" (he spoke the name with an awe that was almost adoration)
"gave to his country before he died. He was terribly disappointed by
the failure of the Zeppelin airship as an instrument for bombing,
and the last months of his life were spent in designing something to
take its place. He realized that the size of the mark the airship
offered to the constantly improving anti-aircraft artillery, together
with the invention of the explosive bullet and the increasing speed
and climbing power of aeroplanes, put an end for ever to the use of
Zeppelins where they would be exposed to attack. He set about to design
a heavier-than-air machine that would be powerful enough to carry a
really great weight of bombs, and the 'Giant' you see here is the result.
"As Count Zeppelin did not believe that it would ever be possible to
land a machine of this weight and size on the earth, he made it a flying
boat. But it was not intended for flights over water at all in the
first place--that was to be simply for rising from and landing in. It
was to be kept at one of our seaplane stations on the Belgian coast, as
near as possible to the Front, and from here it was to go for bombing
flights behind the enemy lines. But before it was completed experience
had proved that it was quite practicable to land big machines on the
earth, and so the 'Giant' found itself superseded as a bomber. It was
then that it was brought to the attention of the Naval Flying Service,
and we, recognizing in it the possibilities of an ideal machine for
long-distance reconnaissance, took it over and completed it. Now,
although a few changes have been made in the direction of making it more
of a 'sea' machine, it does not differ greatly from the original designs
of Count Zeppelin."
As to how the machine had turned out in practice he was, naturally,
rather non-committal. The monoplane, he thought, had the advantage over
a biplane for sea use that its wings were much higher above the water,
and therefore much less likely to get smashed up by heavy waves. He
admitted that this machine had proved extremely difficult to fly--or
rather to land--and that it had been employed exclusively for "school"
purposes, for the training of pilots to fly the others of the same type
that had been building. Now that the war was over, he had some doubts as
to whether these would ever be completed. "We are having to modify so
many of our plans, you see," he remarked naïvely.
On the fuselage of several of the machines there were evidences that
signs or marks had been scratched out and painted over, and I took it
that the words or pictures so recently obliterated had probably been of
a character calculated to be offensive to the visiting Allied officers.
One little thing had been overlooked, however, or else left because it
was in a corner somewhat removed from the ebb and flow of the tide of
inspection. I discovered it while passing along to the machine shops in
the rear of one of the hangars, and later contrived to manoeuvre myself
back to it for a confirmatory survey. It was nothing more or less than a
map of the United States which some angry pilot had thoroughly _strafed_
by stabbing with a penknife blade. I was not able to study it long
enough to be sure just what the method of the madness was, but--from the
fact that the environs of New York, Pittsburg, Philadelphia and Detroit
had been literally pecked to pieces--it seemed possible that it might
have been an attack on the industrial centres--perhaps because they were
turning out so much munitions for the Allies.
There were two other maps tacked up on the same wall. One was of Africa,
with the ex-German colonies coloured red, with lighter shaded areas
overflowing from them on to British, Belgian, French, and Portuguese
possessions. This may have been (I have since thought) a copy of the
famous map of "Africa in 1920," issued in Germany early in the war,
but I had no time to puzzle out the considerable amount of explanatory
lettering on it. So far as I could see, this map was unmarked, not even
a black mourning border having been added.
The third map was of Asia, and a long, winding and apparently rather
carefully made cut running from the north-west corner toward the centre
completely defeated me to account for. The fact that it ran through Asia
Minor, Northern Syria, and down into Mesopotamia seemed to point to some
connection with the Bagdad Railway--perhaps a _strafe_ at an enterprise
which, first and last, had deflected uselessly so huge an amount of
German money and material.
The inspection over and the terms of the armistice having been found
most explicitly carried out, we returned to the reception room of the
Casino for lunch. Although the Commander protested that all arrangements
had been made for serving us with _mittagessen_, our senior officer,
acting under orders, replied that we had brought our own food and that
this, with a pitcher of water, would be quite sufficient. The water
was sent, and with it two beautiful long, slender bottles of _Hock_
which--as they were never opened--only served to accentuate the flatness
of the former.
We heard the officers of the station trooping up the stairs as we
unrolled our sandwiches, and just as we were pulling up around the table
some one threw open a piano in the room above our heads and struck
three ringing chords. "Bang!"--interval--"Bang!"--interval--"Bang!"
they crashed one after the other, and the throb of them set the windows
rattling and the pictures (paintings of the station's fallen pilots)
swaying on the wall.
"Prelude in G flat," breathed Major N---- tensely, as he waited with eye
alight and ear acock for the next notes. "My word, the chap's a master!"
But the next chord was never struck. Instead, there was a gruff order,
the scrape of feet on the floor, and the slam of a closed piano,
followed by the confused rumble of several angry voices speaking at the
same time. Then silence.
"Looks like the majority of our hosts don't think 'Inspection Day's'
quite the proper occasion for tinkling Rachmaninoff on the ivories,"
observed Lieutenant-Commander L----, U.S.N., after which he and Major
N---- began discussing plans for educating the popular taste for "good
music" and the rest of us fell to on our sandwiches.
The fog--that all-pervading East Frisian fog--which had been thickening
steadily during the inspection, settled down in a solid bank while we
sat at lunch. With a scant dozen yards of visibility, the Commander
rated the prospects of crossing to the mainland so unfavourable that he
suggested our remaining for the night at one of the Norderney hotels
still open, and going over to Borkum (which we were planning to reach by
destroyer) the next morning by launch. It was the difficulty in securing
a prompt confirmation of what would have been a time-saving change of
schedule which led Captain H---- to reject the plan and decide in favour
of making an attempt to reach Norddeich in, and in spite of, the fog.
The Commander shook his head dubiously. "My men who know the passage
best have left the station," he said; "but I will do the best I can for
you, and perhaps you will have luck." He saw us off at the landing with
the same quiet courtesy with which he had received us. He was a very
likable chap, that Commander; perhaps the one individual with whom we
were thrown into intimate contact in the course of the whole visit to
whom one would have thought of applying that term.
Noticing that the launch in which we were backing away from the landing
was at least double the size of the one in which we had crossed, I asked
one of the German officers if the greater draught of it was not likely
to increase our chances of running aground.
"Of course," he replied; "but the larger cabin will also be much more
comfortable if we have to wait for the next tide to get off."
As the launch swung slowly round in the mud-and-sand stained welter of
reversed screws, I bethought me of the "Riddle" again, and fished it
forth from my pocket. It was disappointing to leave without having had
a glimpse of the town where "Dollmann" and his "rose-brown-cheeked"
daughter Clara had lived, but the fog closed us round in a grey-walled
cylinder scarcely more in diameter than the launch was long. But we were
right on the course, I reflected, of the dinghy which "Davies" piloted
with such consummate skill through just such a fog ("five yards or
so was the radius of our vision," wrote "Carruthers") to Memmert to
spy on the conference at the salvage plant on that desolate sand-spit.
I turned up the chapter headed "Blindfold to Memmert," and read how,
sounding with a notched boathook in the shallows that masterly young
sailor had felt his way across the _Buse Tief_ to the eastern outlet of
the _Memmert Balje_, the only channel deep enough to carry the dinghy
through the half-bared sandbanks between Juist and the mainland. Our
own problem, it seemed to me, was a very similar one to that which
confronted "Davies," only, in our case, it was the entrance of the
channel where the _Buse Tief_ narrowed between the _Hohes Riff_ and the
_Itzendorf Plate_ that had to be located. Failing that, we were destined
to roost till the next tide on a sandbank, and that meant we were out
for all night, as there would be no chance of keeping to a channel,
however well marked, in both fog and darkness.
Ten minutes went by--fifteen--twenty--with no sign of the buoy which
marked the opening we were trying to strike. Now the engines were eased
down to quarter-speed, and she lost way just in time to back off from
a shining _glacis_ of steel-grey sand that came creeping out of the
fog. For the next ten minutes, with bare steerage way on, she nosed
cautiously this way and that, like a man groping for a doorway in the
dark. Then a hail from the lookout on the bow was echoed by exclamations
of relief from the German officers. "Here is the outer buoy," one of
them called across to us reassuringly; "the rest of the way is well
marked and easy to follow. We will soon be at Norddeich."
Presently a fresh buoy appeared as we nosed on shoreward, then a
second, and then a third, continuing the line of the first two. Speed
was increased to "half," and the intervals of picking up the marks
correspondingly cut down. Confident that there was nothing more to worry
about, I pulled out "The Riddle" again, for I had just recalled that it
was about halfway to Norddeich, in the _Buse Tief_, that "Carruthers"
had brought off his crowning exploit, the running aground of the tug
and "invasion" lighter--with Von Brunning, Boehme, and the mysterious
"cloaked passenger"--as they neared the end of the successful night
trial trip in the North Sea. Substituting himself for the man at the
wheel by a ruse, he had edged the tug over to starboard and was just
thinking "What the Dickens'll happen to her?" when the end came; "a
_euthanasia_ so mild and gradual (for the sands are fringed with mud)
that the disaster was on us before I was aware of it. There was just
the tiniest premonitory shuddering as our keel clove the buttery medium,
a cascade of ripples from either beam, and the wheel jammed to rigidity
in my hands as the tug nestled up to her final resting-place."
And very like that it was with us. It was a guttural oath from somewhere
forward rather than any perceptible jar that told me the launch had
struck, and it was not till after the screw had been churning sand
for half a minute that there was any perceptible heel. It had come
about through one of the buoys being missing and the next in line out
of place, one of the Germans reckoned; but whatever the cause, there
we were--stuck fast. Or, at least, we would have been with any less
resourceful and energetic a crew. If their very lives had depended on
it, those four or five German seamen could not have worked harder, nor
to better purpose, to get that launch free. At the end of a quarter of
an hour their indefatigable efforts were rewarded, and a half hour later
we were settling ourselves in the warm compartment of our waiting train.
The Hun has no proper sense of humour. Reverse the _rôles_, and any
British bluejackets I have ever known would have run a German Armistice
Commission on to the first sandbank that hove in sight, and damned the
consequences.
V
NORDHOLZ, THE DEN OF THE ZEPPELINS
I have written in a previous chapter of the great contrast observed
between the _morale_ of the men at Norderney, and the other seaplane
stations visited by parties from the Allied Naval Commission, and that
of those in the remaining German warships, accounting for the difference
by the fact that the former had been kept busier than the latter, and
that they had not suffered the shame of the "Great Surrender" which has
cast a black, unlifting shadow upon the dregs of the High Sea Fleet.
Whether the airships were kept as busy as the seaplanes right up to the
end it would be difficult to say, but, whatever may be the reason for
it, we found the _morale_ of the great Zeppelin stations suffered very
little if at all in comparison with that of the working bases of the
naval heavier-than-air machines.
For all the barbarity of many of their raids, there was splendid stuff
in the officers and crews of the Zeppelins which engaged in the campaign
of "frightfulness" against England, and it is idle to deny it. In a
better cause, or even in worthier work for an indifferent cause, the
skill and courage repeatedly displayed would have been epic. Considering
what these airships faced on every one of their later raids--what their
commanders and crews must have known were the odds against them after
the night when the destruction of the first Zeppelin over Cuffley, in
September, 1916, proved that the British had effectually solved the
problem of igniting the hydrogen of the inner ballonettes--one cannot
but conclude that the _morale_ of the whole personnel must have been
very high during even this trying period. If it had not been high, there
would undoubtedly have been mutinies at the airship stations, such as
are known to have occurred on so many occasions among the submarine
crews. Even in the light of present knowledge, there is nothing to
indicate that there had ever been serious trouble in getting Zeppelin
crews for the most hazardous of raids. So far as could be gathered from
our visits to the great airship stations of the North Sea littoral,
this very excellent _morale_ prevailed to the last; indeed, practically
everything seen indicated that it still prevails.
Of the several German naval airship stations visited by parties from
the Allied Commission, the most important were Althorn, Nordholz, and
Tondern. The interest in the latter was largely sentimental, due to
the fact that it was practically wiped out last summer as the result of
a bombing raid by aeroplanes launched from the _Furious_. It was known
that little had been done to rehabilitate it as a service station since
that time, and the Commission's airship experts' desire to visit what
was left of the sheds was actuated by a wish to see what damage had been
done rather than by any feeling that the station really counted any
longer as a base of Germany's naval air service. Our visit to the ruins
of Tondern, and what we learned there of the way it was destroyed, is a
story by itself, and I will tell it in a separate chapter.
Germany had very ambitious plans for the development of the Althorn
station, and it is probable at one time that it was intended that it
should supersede even the mighty Nordholz as the premier home of naval
Zeppelins. If such were really the intention, however, there is no doubt
that it was effectually put an end to by a great fire and explosion
which occurred there about the middle of last year, the material
destruction from which--in sheds and Zeppelins--was vastly greater even
than that from the British raid on Tondern. The Germans speak of this
disaster with a good deal of bitterness, usually alluding to the cause
as "mysterious," but rather giving the impression that they believe it
to have been the work of "Allied agents." If this is true, the job will
stand as a fair offset against any single piece of work of the same
character that German agents perpetrated in France, Britain, or America.
Only the blowing up of the great Russian national arsenal in the second
year of the war is comparable to it for the amount of material damage
wrought. Althorn remained a station of some importance down to the end
of the war, however, and that the Germans still expected to do important
work from there was indicated by the fact that one of its new sheds
housed the great "L-71," the largest airship in the world at the present
time.
But it was in the great Nordholz station that the airship sub-commission
was principally interested, not only for what it was at the
moment--incomparably the greatest and most modern of German Zeppelin
aerodromes--but also for what had been accomplished from there in the
past, and even for what might conceivably be done from there in the
future. Nordholz is a name that would have been burned deep into the
memories of South and East Coast Britons had it been known three years
ago, as it is now, that practically all of the Zeppelin raids over
England were launched from there. The popular idea at the time--which
even appears to have persisted with most Londoners down to the
present--was that airship stations had been constructed in Belgium,
and that these alternated with those of Germany in dispatching raiders
across the North Sea to England. A single glimpse of such a station as
Nordholz is enough to show that the huge amount of labour and expense
involved in building even a comparatively temporary aerodrome fit for
regular Zeppelin work would have been fatal to the idea of establishing
such installations in Belgium, or anywhere else where Germany did not
feel certain of remaining in fairly permanent control. The station at
Jamboli, in Bulgaria, for instance, is known to have been able only to
dispose of one or two Zeppelins, and considerable intervals between
flights were imperative for keeping them in trim. It would never have
been equal to the strain of steady raiding.
There were other German airship stations within cruising distance of
England, but Nordholz was so much the best equipped, especially in
the first years of the war when Zeppelin raiding was the most active,
that the most of the work, and by long odds the most effective of it,
was done from there. There were grim tales to be told by that band of
hard-eyed, straight-mouthed, bull-necked pilots--all that survived
some scores of raids over England and some hundreds of reconnaissance
flights over the North Sea--who received and conducted round the
Naval Commission party, though, unfortunately, we did not meet upon a
footing that made it possible more than to listen to the account of an
occasional incident suggested by something we were seeing at the moment.
The route which our party traversed from Wilhelmshaven to the Nordholz
airship station--the latter lies six or eight miles south of the Elbe
estuary in the vicinity of Cuxhaven--was a different one from any
followed on our previous visits, all of which had taken us more to the
south or east. It was through the same low-lying, dyked-in country,
however, where the water difficulty, unlike most other parts of the
world, was one of drainage rather than of irrigation. Great Dutch
windmills turned ponderously under the impulse of the light sea-breeze,
as they pumped the water off the flooded land. Cultivation, as in the
region traversed to the south, was at a standstill, but overflowing
barns--great capacious structures they were, with brick walls and lofty
thatched roofs--proved that the harvest had been a generous one.
Instead of routing our two-car special over the all-rail route _viâ_
Bremen, distance and time were saved by leaving it at a small terminus
opposite Bremerhaven, crossing to the latter by tug, and proceeding
north in more or less direct line to our destination. Little time was
lost in getting from one train to the other. The tug, which had been
held in readiness for our arrival, cast off as soon as the last of
the party had clambered over its side, and the short run across the
grey-green tide of the estuary was made in less than a quarter of an
hour. Four powerful army cars--far better machines, these, than the
dirigible junk heaps we had been compelled to use at Wilhelmshaven--were
waiting beside the slip, and another ten minutes of what struck me as
very fast and reckless driving, considering it was through the main
streets of a good-sized city, brought us to the station and another
two-car special. Both going and returning, it was the best "clicking"
lot of connections any of the parties made in the course of the whole
visit, showing illuminatingly what our "hosts" could do in that line
when they were minded to.
Swift as was our passage through the streets of Bremerhaven, there was
still opportunity to observe many evidences of the vigorous growth it
had made the decade preceding the outbreak of the war, and of the plans
that had been made in expectation of a continuation of that growth.
Blocks and blocks of imposing new buildings--now but half-tenanted--and
the nuclei of what had been budding suburbs were more suggestive of
the appearance of a Western American mushroom metropolis after the
collapse of a boom than a town of Europe. The railway station--a fine
example of Germany's so-called "New Art" architecture--in its spacious
waiting-rooms, broad subways, and commodious train sheds looked capable
of serving the city of half a million or so which it had confidently
been expected the empire's second port would become at the end of
another few years. As things have turned out, Bremerhaven will at least
have the consolation of knowing that it is not likely to be troubled
with "station crushes" for some decades to come.
The astonishingly well-dressed and orderly crowd of a thousand or more
waiting outside the portal of the station in expectation of the arrival
of a train-load of returning soldiers made no unfriendly demonstration
of any character. On the contrary, indeed, as at Wilhelmshaven, a number
of children waved their hands as our cars drove up, and a goodly number
of men solemnly bared their heads as we filed past. The special which
awaited us at a platform reached after walking through a long vaulted
subway running beneath the tracks consisted, like the one we had left
on the other side of the river, of an engine and two cars. The rolling
stock of this one was in better shape than that of the other, however,
and with a better maintained road-bed to run over, the last leg of our
journey was covered at an average speed of over thirty miles an hour,
quite the fastest we travelled by train anywhere in Germany.
For the most of the way the line continued running through mile after
mile of water-logged, sea-level areas crossed by innumerable drainage
canals and bricked roadways gridironing possible inundation areas with
their raised embankments. At the end of an hour, however, the patches
of standing water disappeared, and presently the bulk of the great
sheds of Nordholz began to notch the northern skyline, where they stood
crowning the crest of the first rising ground in the littoral between
the Dutch frontier and the Elbe. With only a minute or two of delay in
the Nordholz yards, the train was switched to the airship station's own
spur, and at the end of another mile had pulled up on a siding directly
opposite the main entrance.
The commander of the station, with two or three other officers, was
waiting to receive us as we stepped out on the ground. Ranged up
alongside this row of heel-clicking, frock-coated, be-medalled and
be-sworded Zeppelin officers was an ancient individual of a type
which seemed to recall the fatherly old Jehus of the piping days
of Oberammergau. Every time the officers saluted, he raised his
hat, bowed low from the waist, and exclaimed, "Good morning to you,
gentlemen." When the last of us had been thus greeted, he called out a
comprehensive, "This way to the carriages, gentlemen," and trotted off
ahead, bell-wether fashion, through the gate.
Here we found waiting four small brakes and a diminutive automobile, the
sum total of the station's resources in rapid transit, according to the
commander. Getting into the motor to precede us as pilot, he asked the
party to dispose itself as best it could in the horse-drawn vehicles.
Then, with old "Jehu" holding the reins of the first vehicle and men in
air-service uniform--utter strangers to horses they were, too--tooling
the other three, we started off along a well-paved road.
A long row of very attractive red brick-and-tile houses of agreeably
varied design were apparently the homes of married officers. Our way led
past only the first five or six of them, but a stirring of lace curtains
in every one of these told that we were running the gauntlet of hostile
glances all the way. One glowering Frau--though in the semi-negligée
of a "Made-in-Germany" _kimono_ of pale mauve, her Brunhildian brow
was crowned with a "permanently Marcelled" _coiffure_ of the kind one
sees in hairdressers' windows--disdained all cover, and so stepped out
upon her veranda just in time to see the elder of her blonde-braided
offspring in the act of waving a Teddy Bear--or it may have been a
woolly lamb or a dachshund--at the tail of the procession of invading
_Engländers_. She was swooping--a mauve-tailed comet with a Gorgon
head--on the luckless "fraternisatress" as my brake turned a corner and
the loom of a block of barracks shut "The Row" from sight, but a series
of shrill squeals, piercing through the raucous grind of steel tyres
on asphalt pavement, told that punishment swift and terrible was being
meted out.
"More activity there than I saw in all of Bremerhaven," laconically
observed the Yankee Ensign sitting next me. "Who said the German woman
was lacking in temperament?"
Driving through the barracks area--where all the men in sight invariably
saluted or stood at attention as we passed--and down an avenue between
small but thickly set pines, the road debouched into the open, and
for the first time we saw all the sheds of the great station at
comparatively close range. Then we were in a position to understand with
what care the site had been chosen and laid out. Occupying the only
rising ground near the coast south of the Kiel Canal, it is quite free
from the constant inundations which threaten the alluvial plain along
the sea. The sheds are visible from a great distance, but it is only
when one draws near them that their truly gigantic size becomes evident.
Of modern buildings of utility, such as factories and exhibition
structures, I do not recall one that is so impressive as these in sheer
immensity. Yet the proportions of the sheds are so good that constant
comparison with some familiar object of known size, such as a man, alone
puts them in their proper perspective.
The sheds are built in pairs, standing side by side, and on a plan which
has brought each pair on the circumference of a circle two kilometres
in diameter. The chord of the arc drawn from one pair of sheds to the
next in sequence is a kilometre in length, while the same distance
separates each pair on the circumference from the huge revolving shed
in the centre of the circle. The whole plan has something of the mystic
symmetry of an ancient temple of the sun. Of the half-dozen pairs of
sheds necessary to complete the circle, four had been constructed and
were in use. Each shed was built to house two airships, or four for the
pair. This gave a capacity of sixteen Zeppelins for the four pairs of
sheds, while the two housed in the revolving shed in the centre brought
the total capacity of the station up to eighteen--a larger number, I
believe, than were ever over England at one time.
Scarcely less impressive than the immensity of the sheds and the broad
conception of the general plan of the station was the solidity of
construction. Everything, from the quarters of the men and the officers
to the hangars themselves, seemed built for all time, and to play its
part in the fulfilment of some far-reaching plan. Costly and scarce as
asphalt must have been in Germany, the many miles of roads connecting
the various sheds were laid deep with it, and, as I had a chance to see
where repairs were going on, on a heavy base of concrete. The sheds
were steel-framed, concrete-floored, and with pressed asbestos sheet
figuring extensively in their sides. All the daylight admitted (as we
saw presently) filtered through great panes of yellow glass in the roof,
shutting out the ultra-violet rays of the sun, which had been found to
cause airship fabric to deteriorate rapidly.
The barracks of the men were of brick and concrete, and were built with
no less regard for appearance than utility. So, too, the officers'
quarters and the Casino, and the large and comfortable-looking houses
for married officers I have already mentioned. All had been built very
recently, many in the by no means uneffective "New Art" style, to the
simple solidity of which the Germans seemed to have turned in reaction
from the Gothic. Beyond all doubt Germany was planning years ahead with
Nordholz, both as to war and peace service. They were quite frank in
speaking of the ambitions they still have in respect of the latter, and
(from casual remarks dropped once or twice by officers) I should be very
much surprised if their plans for developing the Zeppelin as a super-war
machine have been entirely shelved.
The road along which we drove to reach the first pair of sheds to be
visited ran through extensive plantations of scraggly screw-pine,
which appear to have been set--before the site was chosen for an
air station--for the purpose of binding together the loose soil and
preventing its shifting in the heavy winds. Wherever the trees had
encroached too closely upon the hangars, the plantations had been
burned off. Over one considerable area the accumulations of ash in the
depressions showed the destruction to have been comparatively recent,
and this I learned had been burned over, in the panic which followed the
blowing up of the Tondern sheds by British bombing machines last summer,
in order to minimize the risk from the raid which Nordholz itself never
ceased to expect right down to the day of the armistice.
The staggering size of the great sheds became more and more impressive
as we drew nearer, and when the procession finally turned and went
clattering down the roadway between one of the pairs, the towering walls
to left and right blotted out the sky like the cliffs of a rocky cañon.
Halfway through this great defile the officers of the station were
waiting to receive and conduct us round. A hard, fit, capable-looking
lot of chaps they were. Every one of them had at least one decoration,
most of them many, and among these were two or three Orders _Pour de
Mérite_, the German V.C. One at least of them--the great long-distance
pilot, Von Butlar--was famous internationally, and few among the senior
of them (as I was assured shortly) but had been over England more than
once. They were the best of Germany's surviving Zeppelin pilots, and
one was interested to compare the type with that of the pick of her
sea-pilots as we had seen them at Norderney.
Running my eye round their faces as the mingled parties began moving
slowly toward the side door of the first shed to be inspected, I
recognized at once in these Zeppelin officers the same hard, cold,
steady eyes, the same aggressive jaw, and the same wide, thin-lipped
mouth that had predominated right through the officers we had met at
Norderney. These, I should say, are characteristic of the great majority
of the outstanding men of both of Germany's air services. The steady
eye and the firm jaw are, indeed, characteristic of most successful
flying men, but it is the "hardness," not to say cruelty, of the mouth
which differentiates the German from the high-spirited, devil-may-care
air-warrior of England and America.
These Zeppelin pilots seemed to me to run nearer to the German naval
officer type than did the seaplane officers. The latter were nearly
always slender of body, wiry and light of foot, where (though there were
several exceptions, including the great Von Butlar) the former were
mainly of generous girth, with the typical German bull neck corrugating
into rolls of fat above the backs of their collars. A Major of the
R.A.F., who had been walking at my side and doing a bit of "sizing up"
on his own account, put the difference rather well when he said, as we
waited our turn to pass in through the small side door of the great
grey wall of the shed: "If I was taking temporary refuge in a hospital,
convent, or orphan asylum during a German air raid, I'd feel a lot
better about it if I knew that it was some of those seaplane chaps
flying overhead rather than some of this batch. That thick-set one
there, with the cast in his eye and the corded neck, has a face that
wouldn't need much make-up for the Hun villain in a Lyceum melodrama.
Yes, I'm sure these Zepp. drivers will average a jolly lot 'Hunnier'
than the run of their seaplane men."
Up to that moment my experience of German airships had been limited to
the view of them as slender silver pencils of light gliding swiftly
across the searchlight-slashed skies of London, and three or four
inspections of the tangled masses of aluminium and charred wood which
remained when ill-starred raiders had paid the supreme penalty. I was
indebted to the Zeppelins for a number of thrills, but only two or
three of them (and one was in the form of a bomb which gave me a shower
bath of plate glass in Kingsway) were comparable to the sheer wave of
amazement which swept over me when, having passed from the cold grey
light of the winter morning into the warm golden glow of the interior of
the big shed to which we had come, I looked up and beheld the towering
loom of the starboard side of "L-68," with the sweeping lines of her,
fining to points at both ends, exaggerating monstrously a length which
was sufficiently startling even when expressed in figures. The secret of
the hold which the Zeppelin had for so long on the imagination of the
German people was not hard for me to understand after that. It was easy
to see how they could have been led to believe that it could lay Paris
and London in ruins, and that the very sight of it would in time cause
the enemies of their country to sue for peace. One saw, too, how hard it
must have been for them finally to believe that the Zeppelin had been
mastered by the aeroplane, and that the high hopes they had built upon
it had really crashed with the fallen raiders.
There were two Zeppelins in the shed we had entered--"L-68" and
another monster of practically the same size. The former, with great
irregularly shaped strips of fabric dangling all along its under side,
suggested a gigantic shark in process of being ripped up the belly for
skinning. Being deflated, the weight of its frame was supported by
a number of heavy wooden props evenly distributed along either side
from end to end. Its mate, on the other hand, being full of hydrogen
and practically ready for flight, had to be prevented from rising and
bumping against the yellow skylights by a series of light cables, the
upper ends of which were attached at regular intervals along both
sides of the framework, while below they were made fast to heavy steel
shoes which ran in grooves set in the concrete floor. The latter
contrivance--especially an arrangement for the instant slipping of
the cable--was very cleverly devised and greatly interested the Allied
experts.
There were two or three things the popular mind had credited the modern
Zeppelin with embodying which we did not find in these latest examples
of German airship development. One of these was an "anti-bomb protector"
on the top, something after the style of the steel nets erected over
London banks and theatres for the purpose of detonating dropped
explosives before they penetrated the roof. The fact that attempts to
destroy Zeppelins by bomb had invariably--with the exception of the
one brought down by Warneford in Belgium in 1915--resulted in failure,
was doubtless largely responsible for this belief in the existence of
a protecting net, whereas the reason for those failures is probably to
be found in the fact that only about one bomb in a hundred will find
enough resistance in striking an airship to detonate. At any rate,
there were no indications that either the earlier or later Zeppelins we
saw had ever been protected in this way. Indeed, we did not even see a
single one of the machine-guns, which every one had taken for granted
were mounted on top of all Zeppelins to resist aeroplane attack, though
these, of course, with their platforms, may well have been removed in
the course of the disarmament imposed by the armistice terms.
Nor had these late airships the bright golden colour of those that one
saw over London in the earlier raids. That the refulgent tawniness of
them was not due entirely to the reflected beams of the searchlights was
proved by the uncharred fragments of fabric one had picked up at Cuffley
and Potters' Bar. But the German designers had been giving a good deal
of study to invisibility, since that time, with the result that these
new airships were coloured over all their exposed surfaces a dull slaty
black that would hardly reflect a beam of bright sunshine.
The cars, which were both smaller and lighter than those from the
airships brought down in England, were all underslung, and none of them
was enclosed in the framework, as had often been stated. Even these were
not built entirely of metal, heavy fabric being used to close up all
spaces where strength was not required. The bomb-dropping devices had
been removed, but the numbered "switchboard" in the rearmost car, from
which they could be released, still remained. The cars, free from every
kind of protuberance that could meet the resistance of the air, were
effectively and gracefully "stream-lined." The framework and bodies of
the cars were made of the light but strong "duraluminum" alloy, which
the Germans have spent many years in perfecting for this purpose. A
small fragment of strut which I picked up under "L-68" has proved, on
comparison, considerably lighter in specific gravity than similar pieces
from three of the Zeppelins brought down early in the war. Indeed, in
spite of its admixture of heavier metals for "stiffening," the latest
alloy seems scarcely heavier than aluminum itself.
The inspection of an airship to see that it had been disarmed according
to the provisions of the armistice was, as may be imagined, rather
more of a job than a similar inspection of even a "giant" seaplane. In
a Zeppelin that is more or less the same size as the _Mauretania_ the
distances are magnificent, and while most of the inspection was confined
to the cars, that of the wireless, with a search for possible concealed
machine-gun mountings, involved not a little climbing and clambering.
One's first sight of the interior of a deflated Zeppelin--in an inflated
one the bulging ballonettes obstruct the view considerably--is quite as
impressive in its way as the premier survey of it from the outside. No
'tween decks prospect in the largest ship afloat, cut down as it is by
bulkheads, offers a fifth of the unbroken sweep of vision that one finds
opened before him as he climbs up inside the tail of a modern airship.
Although airy ladders and soaring lengths of framework intervene, they
are no more than lace-work fretting the vast space, and the eye roams
free to where the side-braces of the narrow "walk" seem to run together
in the nose. Only, so consummate the illusion wrought on the eye and
brain by the strange perspective, that "meeting point" seems more like
six hundred miles away than six hundred feet. The effect is more like
looking to the end of the universe than to the end of a Zeppelin.
No illusion ever devised on the stage to give "distance" to a scene
could be half so convincing. All that was "cosmic" in you vibrated in
sympathy, and it took but a shake of the reins of the imagination to
fancy yourself tripping off down that unending "Road to Anywhere" to the
music of the Spheres. You--
"Gee, but ain't that a peach of a little 'Gyro'?" filtering up through
the fabric beneath my feet awakened me to the fact that the inspection
of "L-68" having reached the rearmost car, was near its finish.
Clambering back to earth, I found the party just reassembling to go to
the carriages for the drive to the great revolving shed, which was the
next to be visited.
Its central revolving shed is perhaps the most arresting feature of
the Nordholz station. It is built on the lines of a "twin" engine
turntable, with each track housed over, and with every dimension
multiplied twenty-five or thirty-fold. The turning track is laid in a
bowl-shaped depression about ten feet deep and seven hundred feet in
diameter. The floors of both sheds (which stand side by side, with only
a few feet between) are flush with the level of the ground, so that the
airships they house may be run out and in without a jolt. The turning
mechanism, which is in the rear of the sheds and revolves with them, is
entirely driven by electricity. The shifting of a lever sets the whole
great mass in motion, and stops it to a millimetre of the point desired,
the latter being indicated on a dial by a needle showing the direction
of the wind.
The Germans assured us--and on this point the British and American
airship experts were in full agreement with them--that the revolving
shed is absolutely the ideal installation, as it makes it possible to
launch or house a ship directly _into_ the wind, and so allows them to
be used on days when it would be out of the question to launch them
from, or return them to, an ordinary hangar. The one point against it
seems to be its almost prohibitive cost. This central shed at Nordholz
was designed some time before the war, and was completed a year or so
after its outbreak. The Germans did not tell what it had cost, but
they did say that the latter was so great--both in money and in steel
deflected from other uses--that they had not contemplated the building
of another during the continuance of the war.
Another interesting admission of a Zeppelin officer at Nordholz was to
the effect that one of their greatest difficulties had arisen through
the fact that it had been found practicable and desirable to increase
the size of airships far more rapidly than had been contemplated when
most of the existing sheds were designed. Thus many hangars--even at
Nordholz, where practice was most advanced--had become almost useless
for housing the latest Zeppelins. The proof of this was seen at one
of the older sheds which we visited, where both of the airships it
contained had been cut off fore and aft to reduce their lengths
sufficiently to allow them inside. Thirty or forty feet of the framework
of the bows and sterns of each, stripped of their covering fabric, were
standing in the corners. They assured us that while an airship thus
"bobbed" at both ends was not necessarily considered out of commission,
it would take several days of rush work to get it ready for flight,
and that during most of this time sixty to eighty feet of it--the
combined length of the nose and tail which had to be cut off to bring it
inside--would have to remain sticking out, exposed to the weather.
To any one who, like myself, was not an airship expert, but had been
"among those present" at a number of the earlier raids on London, the
last shed visited was the most interesting of all, for it contained
what is in many respects Germany's most historic Zeppelin, the famous
"L-14." Twenty-four bombing flights over England were claimed for this
remarkable veteran, besides many scores of reconnaissance voyages.
All of the surviving pilots appeared to have an abiding belief in
her invulnerability--a not unnatural attitude of the fatalist toward
an instrument which has succeeded in defying fate. This is the way
one of them expressed it, who came and stood by my side during the
quarter-hour in which the inspecting officers were climbing about inside
the glistening yellow shell of the historic raider in an endeavour to
satisfy themselves, that she was, temporarily at least, incapable of
further activities:--
"It will sound strange to you to hear me say it," he said, "but it is a
fact that all of the officers and men at Nordholz firmly believed that
L-14 could not be destroyed. Always we gave her the place of honour in
starting first away for England, and most times she was the last to
come back--of those that did come back. After a while, no matter how
long she was late, we always said, 'Oh, but it is old L-14; no use to
worry about her; she will come home at her own time.' And come home
she always did. All of our greatest pilots flew in her at one time or
another and came back safe. Then they were given newer and faster ships,
and sometimes they came home, and sometimes they did not. ----, who was
experimenting with one of the smaller swift types of half-rigids when
it was brought down north of London--the first to be destroyed over
England--had flown L-14 many times, and come home safe, and so had,
----, our greatest pilot, who was also lost north of London, very near
where the other was brought down, and where we think you had some kind
of trap. L-14 saw these and many other Zeppelins fall in flames and the
more times she came home the more was our belief in her strength. The
pilot who flew her was supposed to take more chances (because she really
ran no risks, you see), and if you have ever read of how one Zeppelin
in each raid always swooped low to drop her bombs, you now know that
she was that one. Because we had this superstitious feeling about her
we were very careful that, in rebuilding and repairing her, much of her
original material should be left, so that whatever gave her her charmed
life should not be removed. Although our duraluminum of the present is
much lighter and stronger than the first we made, L-14 still has most
of her original framework; and, although improved technical instruments
have been installed, all her cars are much as when she was built. You
will see how much clumsier and heavier they are than those of the newer
types. And now, for some months, we have used L-14 as a 'school' ship,
in which to train our young pilots. You see, her great traditions must
prove a wonderful inspiration to them."
A few minutes later I had a hint of one type of this "inspiration,"
when a pilot (who had fallen into step with me as we took a turn across
the fields on foot to see the hangars of the "protecting flight" of
aeroplanes) mentioned that he had taken part in a number of the 1916
raids over the Midland industrial centres. Knowing the Stygian blackness
in which this region was wrapped during all of the Zeppelin raiding
time, I asked him if he had not found it difficult to locate his
objectives in a country which was plunged in complete darkness.
"Not so difficult as you might think," was the reply. "There were always
the rivers and canals, which we knew perfectly from careful study.
Besides, a town is a very large mark, and you seem to 'sense' the
nearness of great masses of people, anyhow. Perhaps the great anxiety
they are in establishes a sort of mental contact with you, whose brain
is very tense and receptive. Effective bombing is very largely a matter
of psychology, you see."
I saw. Indeed, I think I saw rather more than he intended to convey.
The inspection over and everything having been found as stipulated in
the armistice, we were conducted to the Officers' Casino for lunch.
Each member of the party, as had been the practice from the outset,
having brought a package of sandwiches from the ship in his pocket, it
was intimated to the Commander of the station that we would not need to
trouble him to have the luncheon served, which he said had been prepared
for us. The same situation had arisen at Norderney and several other
of the stations previously visited, and in each of these instances
our "hosts" of the day had acquiesced in the plainly expressed desire
of the senior officer of the party that we should confine our menu
to what we carried in our own "nose-bags." Nordholz, however--quite
possibly with no more than an enlarged idea of what were its duties
under the circumstances--was not to be denied. A couple of plates of
very appetizing German red-cabbage _sauerkraut_, with slices of ham and
blood sausage, were waiting upon a large sidetable as we entered the
reception-room, and to these, as fast as a very nervous waiter could
bring them in, were added the following: a large loaf of _pumpernickel_,
a pitcher of chicken _consommé_, a huge beefsteak, with a fried egg
sitting in the middle of it, for each member of the party, two dishes
of apple sauce, and eight bottles of wine--four of white and four of
red. The steaks--an inch thick, six inches in diameter, and grilled to a
turn--were quite the largest pieces of meat I had seen served outside of
Ireland since the war. The _hock_ bore the label "_Dürkheimer_," and the
other bottles, which were of non-German origin, "_Ungarischer Rotwein_."
"Although I'd hate to hurt their feelings," said the senior officer of
the party, surveying the Gargantuan repast with a perplexed smile, "I
should like to confine myself to my sandwiches and leave a note asking
them to forward this to some of our starving prisoners. Since we've
been feeding their pilots and commissioners in the _Hercules_, however,
I suppose there's no valid reason why we should hesitate to partake of
this banquet. I'll leave you free to decide for yourselves what you want
to do on that score." We did. It was the American Ensign who, smacking
his lips over the last of his steak, pronounced it the best "hunk of
cow" he had had since he was at a Mexican _barbecue_ at Coronado; but
it was the General who had a second helping of apple sauce, and wondered
how they made it so "smooth and free from lumps," and what it was they
put in it to give that "very delicate flavour."
Hung around all four walls of the room were perhaps a dozen oil
paintings of flying officers in uniform, and although they bore no
names, we knew (from what had been told us of a similar display in the
reception-room at Norderney) that they were portraits of pilots who had
lost their lives in active service. One--a three-quarters length of a
small wiry man, with gimlet eyes and a jaw that would have made that of
a wolf-trap look soft and flexible in comparison--I recognized at once
as having been reproduced in the German papers as the portrait of the
great Schramm, who had been killed when his Zeppelin was brought down
at Potters' Bar. Another--the bust of a man of rather a bulkier figure
than the first, but with a face a shade less brutal--was also strangely
familiar. I felt sure I had seen before that terribly determined jaw,
that broad nose with its wide nostrils, that receding brow, with the
bony lumps above the eyes, and the tentacles of my memory went groping
for when and where, while I went on sipping my glass of _Rotwein_ and
listening to Major P----[1] and Ensign E---- comparing sensations on
dropping from airplanes with parachutes.
[1] Major Pritchard, who subsequently distinguished himself
by landing from R-34, after its transatlantic flight,
with a parachute.
"If the Huns," the former was saying, "had had proper parachutes most of
the crews of the Zepps brought down in England could have landed safely
instead of being burned in the air. Of the remains of the crew of the
one brought down at Cuffley, hardly a fragment was recognizable as that
of a man. But if--"
Like a flash it came to me. The warm, comfortable room, with its solid
"New Art" furniture and the table stacked with plates of food and wine
bottles, fade
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