The sea raid, the land raid, the airship raid--this was the trio of
bugaboos under the menace of which Britain, uninvaded, almost
unthreatened, for a thousand years, stirred uneasily at the outbreak
of the war and turned anxious eyes toward the leaden mist curtain
which veiled the North Sea. Then the bulldog of the Navy after a
tentative snap or two, set its teeth in an ever-tightening
strangle-hold, and with the dying gasps of German sea-power the threat
of the sea and land raids disappeared for good. So far as England was
concerned, only the ways of the air were left open to Germany; only
the menace of the Zeppelin remained.
And when weeks had lengthened to months, and summer had given way to
autumn, and autumn to winter, without the threatened bombing from the
sky, the name of Zeppelin ceased to have interest for the stolid
Briton, now just awakening to the fact that he had a mighty task to
perform beyond the sea. Continued immunity bred contempt, and even the
fore-running aids of the spring of 1915 failed to stir London from
her impassive calm. By midsummer she was showing signs of being bored
with the whole subject, and the sky-searching antics of the comedians
in her packed music halls began to be greeted with yawns from the
stalls. She was becoming impatient of her darkened streets, and
captious “Pro Bono Publicos” wrote to the papers demanding more
illumination and a general return to “Business as Usual.”
The “authorities” still kept up a pretence of preparedness. The
so-called anti-aircraft guns--really a nondescript lot of ordnance,
left over after the fittest of the few available pieces had been
requisitioned for use in France, on the coast, or by the Navy--still
had their crews of half-trained amateurs, and the golden beams of the
searchlights continued to whirl and dip and curtsey in their nocturnal
minuets. Buckets of water and boxes of sand stood ready for emergency
use in the art galleries and museums, and on the hoardings conspicuous
posters gave with meticulous articularity instructions as to how one
should act if Zeppelin bombs began raining in his vicinity. At the
first sight of a hostile airship, we were told, we should repair at
once to the nearest cellar, and in case a smarting sensation in the
nostrils indicated the release of deleterious gas, the mouth and nose
should be covered with a moist double bandage containing a layer of
carbonate of soda. Some of the pharmacies displayed patent anti-gas
respirators in their windows, but none would admit ever having had an
inquiry for one.
“We’ve got a war to fight. Zepps ain’t war; fergit ’em.” So a London
bus conductor summed up the situation to me, and so seemed to feel the
majority of his fellow townsmen of all classes.
Such, as regards Zeppelins, was the spirit of “London and the Eastern
Counties”--to use the official phrase--as the summer of 1915 waxed and
began to wane. Something of how this spirit met the trying events of
the months which followed, I shall try to show by a few extracts from
my journal. In deference to the wishes of the British Censorship the
names of several points in London have been slightly altered.
I
On Board Yacht ----
_en voyage,_
Wroxham Broad to Hickling Broad.
_August--._
We sailed and poled along the river and canal yesterday, and in the
afternoon moored to the bank at this point, which is but a mile or two
from the North Sea. The morning papers, which we picked up as we
passed through the little village of Potter Heigham, contained an
official bulletin telling of a Zeppelin raid on the “Eastern Counties”
the previous night; and later in the day word was brought us that
Lowestoft, the great trawlers’ port about twenty miles to the
south-east, had been heavily bombed. A second raid in this vicinity
seemed, therefore, anything but likely.
The afternoon closed in one of those characteristic butterfly chases
of sunshine and showers so familiar to the August _voyageur_ on The
Broads, and, lounging at ease on deck after dinner, we had watched the
twilight aeroplane patrol, stencilled in black silhouette against the
glowing western clouds, pass north from Yarmouth to meet its fellow
from the Cromer hangars. A half-hour later the sharp staccato of its
engine, rather than its blurred image against the paling afterglow,
told us of its homeward flight.
It was a good two hours after the drumming of the aeroplane’s engine
had ceased to be heard that a strange new sound became audible, first
distantly, in the puffs of the quickening night breeze, soon more
imminent and with steady insistence. It was apparently the booming
explosions of powerful gas engines, and presently, blending with this,
could be distinguished a buzzing clackity-clack that suggested
whirring propellers.
“Another aeroplane,” suggested one. “A fleet of aeroplanes,” hazarded
another. “A dirigible threshing-machine,” opined a third. And, judging
by the now almost overpowering rush of sound, the latter was nearest
to the truth.
The whole universe seemed to have resolved itself into one mighty
roar, and I distinctly recall that the mainsail halyard by which I
steadied myself vibrated to the beat of the pulsating grind from
above. For a moment--sensing rather than seeing--I was aware of a
great black bulk blotting out the stars above the river, and then,
stabbing the darkness like a flaming sword, the yellow flash of a
search light leapt forth from the dusky void and ran in swift zigzags
back and forth across the marshes and canals beneath. Now a herd of
cows could be seen staggering dazedly to their feet, now the startled
bridge-players on the deck of the houseboat moored above were
revealed, and now our own eyes blinked blindly in the yellow glare
before the questing shaft darted on down the river to spot-light an
eel-fisher’s shanty on the dyke and the gaunt frame of a towering
Dutch windmill beyond.
Now it found the sharp right-angling bend of the river, quivered there
for a second or two and then flashed out, leaving a blanker blackness
behind. At almost the same instant the “Thing of Terror”--a hurtling
mass of roaring engines and clattering propellers--shot by overhead,
followed by a confused wake of conflicting air-currents. It passed
straight down above the middle of the river at a height of not over
300 feet, and beneath the dimly guessed bulk of it bright chinks and
squares of light, broken by the shadows of moving men, plotted the
lines of two under-slung cars. A Zeppelin had passed almost within a
stone’s throw.
The lights of the car leaped sharply upward almost as soon as the bend
of the river was reached, and at the end of a couple of minutes the
roar of the engines dwindled to a distant buzz and died away
completely. Ten minutes passed, during which the old eel-fisher went
on stringing his traps across the river and the house-boaters resumed
their interrupted bridge. Then a red signal light flashed out in the
heavens in the direction of Yarmouth, and at almost the same moment,
clear and sharp, came the sound of furious light-artillery fire. This
lasted for only a minute or two, and there was another eight- or
ten-minute interval before a still more distant sound of gun-fire
became faintly audible. Drowning the crack of these latest shots
suddenly came the roll of a heavy boom, quickly to be followed by
another, and another, and another, until a dozen or more had sounded.
Then the peaceful silence of the early evening resumed its sway.
The eel-fisher finished sinking his traps before paddling up the
gangway of the yacht and venturing a casual inquiry as to whether or
not we had “chanct to see the Zepp.” “’Er do this onct befoor,” he
chirruped. “’Er gets bearin’s from ’e’ riv’r an’ then ’eds off fu
No’ich o’ Ya’muth. I be thinkin’ if ’er knowed this grouse moor
b’longed tu Ser Edderd Grey, ’er’d a bombed it good as ’er goed by.”
This morning the London papers have the bulletin of still another raid
on the “Eastern Counties,” with a good many casualties; also an
account of how a Zeppelin was brought down in the North Sea and
destroyed by aeroplanes from Nieuport.