suspicious-looking superstructures (which one's passing acquaintance
with "Q" boats suggested as possibly masking guns), and a folded
seaplane housed on the poop, before the menacing apparition thinned and
melted into the fog as suddenly as it had appeared.
"I think that ship is the _Wolf_," volunteered the pilot, watching
with side-cast eyes the effects of the announcement. "You will perhaps
remember it as the great raider of the Indian Ocean."
The captain looked up quickly from the chart as though about to say
something; then thought better of it, and, with a wistful smile, turned
back to his study of the channel. I had seen him smile resignedly like
that a few days previously off the Elbe estuary when a speeding widgeon,
whose line of flight had promised to carry it right over the forecastle,
had sheered off without giving him a shot. What he had said on that
occasion was, "Hang the blighter; another chance missed!"
Going aft to breakfast, I was hailed by Korvettenkapitän M---- (the
officer commanding all Baltic air stations who was accompanying us to
Warnemünde and Rügen), warming himself at the engine-room hatchway, and
informed that the ship just sighted was "the famous raider, _Moewe_,
that has been so many times through the English blockade." It was he
that was correct, as it turned out. We found the _Moewe_ anchored three
or four cables' lengths on the port bow of the _Hercules_ when we
returned to Kiel the following evening.
They were two thoroughly typical specimens of their kind, the pilot and
the flight commander, so much so that either would have been pounced
on with delight by a cartoonist looking for a model for a figure of
"Hun Brutality." The former claimed to have served most of the war
in U-boats, and from the fact that he was only a "one-striper," one
reckoned that he was a promoted rating of some kind. He was tall, dark,
and powerful of build, with hard black eyes glowering from under bushy
brows. He talked of his submarine exploits with the greatest gusto,
among these being (according to his claim) the launching of the torpedo
which damaged the _Sussex_. It is possible that he was quite as useful a
U-boat officer as he said he was (for he looked fully capable of doing
a number of the things one had heard of U-boat officers doing); but he
turned out, as the sequel proved, only an indifferent pilot.
The flight officer is easiest described by saying that he was like what
one would imagine Hindenburg to have been at thirty-five or thereabouts.
The resemblance to the great Field-Marshal was physical only, for
the anti-type, far from having the "bluff, blunt fighter" air of the
former, was a subtle intriguer of the highest order. Just how "subtle"
he was may be judged from the fact that within ten minutes of coming
aboard that morning he had drawn one of the British officers aside to
warn him of the menace to England in Wilson's "fourteen points," and
that, a quarter of an hour after the snub this kindly advice won him,
he had cornered one of the American officers to bid him beware of the
inevitable attack his country must very soon expect from England and
Japan.
[Illustration: "HINDY" (LEFT) AND GERMAN PILOT WHO CLAIMED TO HAVE
LAUNCHED THE TORPEDO WHICH DAMAGED THE "SUSSEX"]
A half-hour more "by luck and lead" took us out of the fog, and an
almost normal visibility made it possible for the _Viceroy_ to increase
to her "economic" cruising speed of seventeen knots. The red roofs of
the summer hotels along Warnemünde's waterfront began pushing above the
horizon a little after noon, and by one we were heading in to where
the mouth of a broad canal opened up behind a long stone breakwater.
A large ferry steamer, flying the Danish flag, was just rounding the
end of the breakwater and turning off to the north-west, and from the
word "ARMISTICE" painted on her sides in huge white letters we
took it she was engaged in repatriating Allied prisoners by way of
Copenhagen. As we closed her, this impression was confirmed by the sight
of two men in the unmistakable uniforms of British officers pacing
the after-deck arm-in-arm. Surprised that they appeared to be taking
no notice of the _Viceroy_, with the White Ensign at her stern doing
its best to flap them a message of encouragement, I raised my glass
and scanned them closely. Then the dark glasses both were wearing, and
their slow uncertain steps, at once suggested the sad explanation of
their indifference. There was no doubt the sight of both was seriously
affected, and that they were probably hardly able more than to feel
their way around. As nothing less than "Rule Britannia" or "God Save the
King" on the syren would have given them any hint of how things stood,
we had to pass on unrecognized.
Running a quarter of a mile up the canal, the _Viceroy_ went alongside
the wall a hundred yards above the railway station. The news of our
arrival had spread quickly in the town, and among a considerable crowd
which assembled along the waterfront were a number of British prisoners,
most of them in their khaki. Several German sailors--one or two of them
with white bands on their arms--to whom the Tommies had been talking,
kept discreetly in the background, but the latter, grinning with delight
and exchanging good-natured chaff with the bluejackets, caught our
mooring lines and helped make them fast. They looked in extremely good
condition and spirits, the consequence--as we learned presently--of
having had a considerable accumulation of prisoners' stores turned over
to them since the armistice. Beer, they said, was the only thing they
were short of, and this difficulty they seemed in a fair way to remedy
when I left with the "air" party for the seaplane station.
The great Warnemünde experiment station occupied the grounds of what
appeared to have been some kind of a pre-war industrial or agricultural
exposition. Crossing the canal in a launch, a few steps took us to and
through a somewhat pretentious entrance arch, from where it was several
hundred yards to the first of a long row of wood and steel hangars.
The Commander of the station had received us at the landing; the rest
of the officers met us in the roadway in front of the first shed to
be inspected. Evidences of the resentment they undoubtedly felt over
having to give way in the matter of the visit (it had been the German
contention that Warnemünde, not being a service station, was not liable
to inspection under the terms of the armistice) were not lacking, but
as these were mostly confined to scowling glances they did not interfere
seriously with the work in hand.
As the Allied Commission, in the conference of a couple of days
previously at Kiel, had insisted on the visit to Warnemünde on the
grounds of satisfying itself that what the Germans claimed was an
experiment station was not used for service work, inspection was limited
to the comparatively perfunctory checking over of the machines against
a list furnished in advance, seeing that they displayed no evidences
of having been used for anything more than experimental flights, and
ascertaining that they had been properly disarmed. This, as soon as
it became evident that the station was in fact quite what the Germans
had claimed it to be, was done very rapidly, the inspection of well
over a hundred machines, housed in eight or ten different sheds, being
completed within three hours.
The machines were, of course, an extremely interesting assortment,
for practically all of them were either new designs or else old ones
in process of development. There was the last word in steel pontoons,
with which the Germans have been so successful, and also a number of
the very striking all-metal _Junker_ machines, in the construction of
which wood, and even fabric, has been replaced by the light but tough
alloy called "duraluminum." One of the German officers volunteered the
information that the principal advantage of the latter over the ordinary
machine was the fact that more of it could be salved after a crash.
The fact that there was nothing to burn sometimes rendered it possible
to save an injured pilot entangled in the wreckage, where the wood
and fabric of an ordinary machine would have made him a funeral pyre.
Against these advantages, he added, stood the handicap of greater weight
and the fact that the metal wings occasionally deflected into the pilot
or petrol tank a bullet which would have passed harmlessly through wood
and fabric.
There were several of the late _Travemunde_ and _Sablatnig_ types,
medium-sized machines which, with their powerful engines and trim lines,
looked extremely useful. A large double-engined Gotha torpedo-launching
seaplane was viewed with a good deal of interest by the experts of the
party, because it was a type to the development of which it had been
expected that the Germans had given a great deal of attention. Down to
the very day of the armistice the Grand Fleet--whether at Rosyth or
Scapa--was never considered entirely free from the menace of an attack
by a flotilla of torpedo-carrying seaplanes, and it was a matter of
considerable surprise to the sub-commission for naval air stations when
it transpired in the course of their visits to the German North Sea
and Baltic bases to find a practically negligible strength in these
types. The almost prohibitive odds against getting a seaplane carrier
within striking distance of either of the Grand Fleet bases--handicap
imposed by the complete surface command of the North Sea by the
British--was undoubtedly responsible for Germany's failure to develop
a type of machine which there was little chance of finding an occasion
to use. Even this one at Warnemünde--representing as it did the latest
development of its type--was far from being equal to machines with which
the British were practising torpedo-launching a year before the end of
the war.
The most imposing exhibit at Warnemünde was a "giant" seaplane rivalling
in size the great monoplane flying boat we had seen at Norderney. The
two were so different in type that it was difficult to compare them,
though it is probable that in engine power--both of them had four
engines of from 250 to 300 horse-power each--and in wing area they were
about equal. The Warnemünde machine--which was a biplane, with two
pontoons instead of a "boat"--had a somewhat greater spread of wing,
but this must have been compensated for by the vastly greater breadth of
those of the monoplane. Superior seaworthiness had been claimed for the
latter on account of the greater height of its wings from the water when
afloat; but that was _ex parte_ evidence, and we had no chance to hear
what Warnemünde had to say in favour of _its_ pet.
An incident which occurred in connection with the inspection of the
"giant" furnished a very graphic idea of the really colossal size of it.
In order to get over it the more quickly, all of the several members
of the Allied party climbed up and took a hand in the work. Whether
the German officers thought some of the gear might be carried off by
the visitors, whether they were afraid the secrets of some of their
technical instruments might be discovered, or whether they were simply
"doing the honours of the occasion," we were never quite sure. At any
rate, up swarmed at least a dozen of them, scrambling like a crowd at
a ticket turnstile to get inside. In a jiffy they had disappeared,
swallowed completely by the capacious fuselage. Not even a head was in
sight. Only the clatter of many tongues and the clang of boots tramping
on steel plates told that close to a score of men were jostling each
other in the cavernous maw of the mighty "amphibian."
Only the Commander of the station--a somewhat porcine-looking
individual, whose rotund figure furnished ample explanation why _he_ had
not joined the scramble--and myself were left on _terra firma_. Plainly
disturbed by the thought that Germany's supreme achievement in aerial
science was passing under the eye of the enemy, he paced up and down
moodily for a minute or two and then, with clearing brow, came over and
asked me what was the horse-power of the largest "Inglisch Zeeblane."
"I really can't tell you," I replied, half angry, half amused at the
supreme cheek of the man.
"Ach, but vy will you not tell me?" he urged wheedlingly. "Der war iss
over; ve vill now have no more zeecrets. Today you see all ve haf.
Preddy soon ve come und see all you haf. There iss much ve can learn
from you, und much you can learn from us. Ve vill haf no more zeecrets."
There were several things that I wanted to say to that Hun optimist,
and it required no little restraint to pass them over and confine
myself to suggesting that he should take up the matter of the exchange
of "zeecrets" with Commander C----, the Senior Officer of-the party.
He looked at the latter (who was just descending) irresolutely once or
twice, and then, doubtless seeing nothing encouraging in the set of
Commander C---- 's lean Yankee jaw, shrugged his fat shoulders and
resumed his moody pacings. We encountered a number of eager "searchers
for knowledge" in the course of the visit, but no other that I heard of
who employed quite such a "Prussian mass tactics" style of attack as
this one.
Going from shed to shed as the inspection progressed, one noticed
at once the much greater extent to which wood had figured in their
construction than in that of those of the North Sea stations. Only
the frames were of steel, and even the fireproof asbestos sheeting
which figured so extensively in the great Zeppelin sheds had been very
sparingly employed. As this also proved to be the practice in the two
large stations we visited the next day on the island of Rügen, it
was assumed that the comparative cheapness of wood in the Baltic had
been responsible for the freedom with which it had been employed to
save steel and concrete. The inevitable penalty of this inflammable
construction had been paid at Warnemünde, where the tangled masses of
wreckage in the ruins of a burned hangar indicated that all the machines
it had contained were destroyed with the building.
When we returned to the _Viceroy_ after the inspection was over, we
found a number of British prisoners aboard as the guests of the
bluejackets. Several of them had asked for "rashers, or anything
greasy," but for tobacco and "home comforts" they appeared to be rather
better off than their hosts. The captain said that he had offered
passages back to the _Hercules_ to any that cared to go, but they had
all declined with thanks, saying that they were helping to distribute
food for other prisoners passing through Warnemünde on their way home
_viâ_ Denmark, and that they would not return home until this work was
finished. We left them without any misgivings save, perhaps, on the
score that they seemed rather too tolerant of the presence among them of
a number of white-banded German sailors.
During our absence the German harbour master had come aboard to warn
the captain that, as it was _verboten_ to use the turning basin after
five o'clock, it would be necessary for him to proceed there before
that hour. When the captain thanked him and replied that he hoped to be
able to carry on without resorting to the turning basin, the astonished
official warned him that it was highly dangerous to go out backwards,
that even the German T.B.D.'s never thought of doing so mad a thing.
The sight of the _Viceroy_ going astern at a good ten or twelve knots
straight down the middle of that half a mile or more of canal must have
been something of an eye-opener to that _Kaiserliche_ harbour master.
Passing close to the railway station on the way out we had a brief
glimpse of the sorry spectacle of a huge mass of Russian prisoners, who
appeared to have been dumped there from one train to wait for another,
going heaven knows where. A thousand or more in number, they had
overflowed the narrow strip of platform under the train-shed, and as we
passed some hundreds of them, huddling together like sheep for warmth
and with no protection save the square of red blankets thrown over their
hunched shoulders, were soaking up the rain which came drizzling down
through the early winter twilight.
"Russian prisoners that we now send back to their homes," explained
Korvettenkapitän M---- as I passed his perch in the hot-air stream from
the engine-room hatchway. "They do not like to leave Germany, but we
have not now the food for them."
"Out of the frying-pan into the fire," commented the chief. "A return to
Russia is the one thing left worse than what they've been through here.
Poor devils--but listen to that! Talk about your bird singing in the
rain----"
Deep, reverberant, pulsing like the throb of a mighty organ, the strains
of what might have been either a hymn or a marching song were wafted to
our ears on the wings of the deepening dusk. For two or three minutes
the strangely moving sound, rising and falling like the roll of a surf
on a distant shore, followed us down the canal before it was quenched in
the roar of the accelerating fans as the bridge rang down for increased
speed. The German was the first to break the silence in which we had
listened.
"The Russians are a strange people," he said, with a note of sincerity
in his voice I had never remarked before. "There is always sadness in
their happiness, and always hope in their despair. I think they can
never be broken."
For the first and last time I was inclined to agree with him.
A three-hour run at a speed of fifteen knots brought us to the island
of Rügen, where we anchored in shallow water three or four miles off
the station of Büg, which we were scheduled to inspect in the morning.
It was only a fair-weather anchorage, however, and the lee shore,
together with a falling barometer and a rising wind, caused the pilot
to advise running round to the somewhat better protection of Tromper
Bay, on the opposite side of the island. This shift, which there was
no real necessity for making, involved an alteration of plan, for the
shores of Tromper Bay (where we now had to attempt a landing) were
four or five miles from Wiek, the second station to be inspected, and
entirely cut off from communication with Büg by a long lagoon. Under the
circumstances, the only practicable plan seemed to be to walk to Wiek
across the island, go from there to Büg by launch, and then endeavour
to rejoin the destroyer at her first anchorage of the night before,
to which she would return in the interim. This intricate itinerary we
finally succeeded in following, but it almost killed poor "Hindenburg,"
the fat German flying officer escorting the party, who had confidently
counted on doing all of his travelling by launch.
[Illustration: BRITISH PRISONERS AND GERMAN SAILORS AT WARNEMÜNDE]
The motor launch refusing to start in the morning, the whaler was used
to land the inspection party. As there appeared to be nothing in the
way of a quay or landing-stage, the most likely place to get ashore
seemed to be a dismantled pier, the piles of which were visible from
the deck of the destroyer. "Hindy" (the name had already begun to stick
to him), however, promptly appointing himself as pilot, in spite of the
fact that he knew no more of that particular stretch of coast than any
one else in the party, ruled in favour of landing directly upon the
beach. Pulling straight in on the course he indicated, the heavily laden
whaler grounded a couple of hundred yards from the shore, and was
only worried off by all hands going aft and raising the stranded bow.
Commander C---- took over the direction of affairs at this juncture,
and the incidence of events was such that "Hindy" did not essay the
leadership _rôle_ again for some hours, and even then but transiently.
The old pier, to the end of which the whaler was now pulled, had
evidently been wrecked in a storm of many years before and never
repaired. Its planking was gone entirely, but two strings of timbers
running along the tops of the tottering piles offered a possible, though
precarious, means of reaching the two-hundred-yard-distant beach. When
two of the American officers clambered up, however, they found the
timbers so slippery with moss that it was a sheer physical impossibility
to stand erect and walk along them. The only alternative was to sit
astride one of them and slither along shoreward, a few inches at a time.
This they did, pushing along a thick roll of filthy slime in front of
them as they went, and stopping every now and then to disengage the
end of a projecting spike that was holding their trousers. Following
behind one of them, I found the progress both vile and painful, even
after his wiggle-waggle advance had swabbed up the worst of the slime
and uncovered the longest of the spikes lurking to ambush the seat of
my trousers. It must have been unspeakable for the two self-sacrificing
pioneers.
Halfway in, the timbers, less exposed to the splashing spray, offered a
better footing, and from there, following the lead of Commander C----,
we managed to stand up and walk. Not until we reached the end and jumped
off on to the firm sand and began to count noses before striking off
inland did any one notice that "Hindy" was missing. The account of that
worthy's doings in the meantime I had that evening after our return to
the _Viceroy_ from the coxswain of the whaler.
For the first time "Hindy" had neglected to insist on the precedence
due to his rank as a "three-striper" and push out in the lead at a
landing. On the contrary, it appears, he had lingered in the stern
sheets of the whaler until the last of the Allied officers had slid
along out of hearing, and then coolly ordered two of the crew to wade
ashore carrying him between them. He would show them, he said, how the
German sailors joined hands to make a chair for their officers on such
an occasion. Failing in this manoeuvre, he had suggested that two of the
oars be lashed together with the strip of bunting in the stern sheets
and laid along across the tops of the piles to give him a firm footing.
Two of the bluejackets, he explained, could go with him and "relay"
this improvised gangway along ahead. It was only when the coxswain, in
English probably too idiomatic to convey its full meaning to a German,
expressed his lack of sympathy with this ingenious proposal that he
screwed up his nerve to tackling the "wiggle-waggle" mode of progression.
Given a leg up by the whaler's crew, he wriggled astride the nearest
longitudinal strip of timber and began his snail-like, shoreward crawl.
At the end of a quarter of an hour he had barely reached the less
slippery timbering halfway in, but here, instead of getting up on his
hind legs, as the rest of us had done, and ambling along on his feet,
the shivering wretch still persisted in embracing the slimy beam with
his fat thighs and continuing to worry on "wiggle-waggle."
Finally Commander C----, whose eyes for the last fifteen minutes had
been turning back and forth between the ludicrously swaying figure on
the pier and the hands of his watch, uttered an impatient exclamation
and squared his shoulders with the air of a man who has come to a great
decision.
"We're already two hours behind time," he said, buttoning his waterproof
and pulling on his gloves, "and it's touch and go whether we can finish
in time to return tonight to Kiel per schedule. It's a cert we won't
make it if we have to wait any longer for our tortoise-shaped and
tortoise-gaited friend out there. There's a disagreeable duty to be
performed, and since it is not of a nature that I can conscientiously
order one of my subordinate officers to do, I guess it's up to me to
pull it off myself. Kindly note that I'm wearing gloves."