the ship from bridge to keel. The machine-guns in the top broke into
a hysterical chatter, and all along the Mole bursts of flame belched
forth. The shrapnel was spattering about the upperworks like
hailstones, and as I got the bows round, heading for the Mole, I felt
the ship check and shudder as a heavy shell struck her. Another
burst aft and again another; they must have struck us in the battery
where all those men were waiting, and try as I would I could not shut
out of my consciousness the thought of the carnage that they must
have caused. The foremost howitzer gun's crew were lying in heaps
round the gun, and as they rolled over fresh men came running and
stumbling over the dead to take their places. The tide was flooding
strong, and the ground swell of yesterday's breeze broke ominously
against the stonework. The ship lifted her bows to it, and plunging
and scending, we grated alongside. I left the shelter of the hut
then and got out on to the bridge to superintend the placing of the
grappling anchors. Three of the brows were out, rising and falling
above the parapet of the Mole as the ship lurched in the swell; at
one moment they were six feet above the level of the stonework, the
next they were striking it with a shuddering jar. And as I watched I
saw Milsom and Mouldy go lurching out along them with their men at
their heels. A dazzling star shell lit the scene like day, and I saw
Milsom stoop and vault a clear drop of six feet, turn and catch a
burly Marine in his arms, and rush forward to help secure the
grappling anchor. They had got another brow out by now, and men were
pouring over it with scaling ladders. The din surpassed all
description. The almost ceaseless roar of guns, the grinding and
crash of the brows, the sob of the waves as they broke against the
pier, flinging the spray high, and ever and anon the explosion of
shrapnel overhead spattering their deadly hail broadcast. Our
monitors and aircraft were busy, too, and ashore the tall flames of a
score of great conflagrations leaped into the sky.
It must be explained that the outer pathway along the top of the Mole
was about six feet wide. Then came a drop of 30 feet on to the Mole
itself, and once they passed over into this abyss both storming and
demolition parties were lost to view. They took ladders for the
purposes of this descent, and the sight of those reeling brows
a-swarm with men, laden as they were with these ladders,
flamethrowers, machine-guns, bombs, cutlasses, and demolition
implements, will always haunt me. They dropped like flies, to lie
where they fell, dangling across the narrow gangways or clinging
piteously for a moment ere they let go and slipped into oblivion.
The forecastle was just a battered heap of dead and shattered
wreckage, and aft along the batteries I saw Jock Macrae's assistants
bending among the motionless heaps and rushing the wounded below.
The Pilot joined me after a while, and together we watched the
blockships pass through the entrance a few cables away, vomiting
flashes and spurts of heavy and machine-gun fire. How they got
across that harbour, lit like day by searchlights, whipped into a
sheet of foam by shrapnel and machine-gun fire, only God and their
Captains know. We saw Jimmy Thorogood in the _Dauntless_ go crashing
through the flimsy anti-submarine defences, and I believe we gave him
a crazy, cracked cheer. They were plastering him with gas shell, and
he was on fire aft and blazing like a hay-rick. But he held on and
made the entrance to the Canal, and was lost to view behind some
sheds. _Daring_ came next, and _Determination_, trailing in the rear
and almost hidden by waterspouts of falling shell. And then Selby
gripped my arm and pointed to the foremost brow. Our Padre was
lurching along it with splinters flying all round him, looking for
all the world like a tightrope walker learning his profession. He
reached the Mole intact, and stood looking about him. Then suddenly
bending down, he swung the unconscious form of a giant Marine over
his shoulder, and carrying him thus, turned and retraced his steps.
Other matters claimed my attention for the moment, but when I next
looked along the ship's side I saw him returning with another
precious human freight slung on his back.
It was impossible to tell what was going on along the causeway below
the parapet of the Mole. Twice with a deafening concussion a great
sheet of flame leaped into the air, and I came to the conclusion that
Mouldy's merry men had "touched off" something. It was afterwards,
when we came to piece together the breathless narratives of those who
returned, that we, whose business it was only to stand and wait,
learned something of that desperate hand-to-hand righting; of the
rushing and bombing of the machine-guns and a Destroyer alongside;
the destruction of the seaplane sheds; and the yelling bayonet charge
Milsom led against the angry reinforcements of the Huns.
From where I stood I could see the whole panorama of the harbour in
that unearthly light. I saw the blockships lying athwart in the
entrance to the Canal, blocking it effectually; I saw the Motor
Launches, led by old Armitage, dashing through that hellish barrage
of machine-gun fire and pom-poms, and run alongside to embark the
crews, turn and race blindly for the harbour mouth and safety; and
then, when the last was clear, our work was done.
I seized the lanyard of the syren and tugged it, and shrill above the
ceaseless uproar rose the hoot of the "Recall."
According to the arrangements we had made beforehand, the demolition
party retired first, while the Marines covered the retreat, and no
sooner had the first reluctant figures begun to struggle back across
the shattered brows than the enemy concentrated every gun he could
bring to bear upon the crowded scaling ladders and the gangways.
Fountains of flame and sparks flew skywards, through which the forms
of men came stumbling, each living figure that reached our deck, it
seemed to me, the embodiment of a miracle. The planking flew about
me as chips fly from a woodman's axe. My cap was torn from my head,
my monkey-jacket was ripped and scorched, but there wasn't a scratch
on my body that I was conscious of.
I saw my First Lieutenant forward busy about the slip of the cable; I
saw the top above me shattered by a shell, and after a silence heard
the pom-pom there break out again undismayed. The upper deck was a
reeking shambles, with men pouring down into it from the Mole,
exhausted, bloody, and triumphant. Nearly every man carried a
wounded mate slung across his back, and most of them had a chunk of
masonry or a fragment of shell gripped in his fist to bring back as a
"souvenir" of the night's work--as if their memories or those of
their children's children needed any such reminder.
The Marines fell back at length, and the last to embark was Milsom,
one arm hanging limp and bloody. He laughed as he saw me.
"Thank God you're all right," he panted.
"Ditto," I shouted.
"The Devil looks after his own," he said, and then the business of
getting clear claimed all my attention.
We got out of range of their batteries, and the last fire on board
extinguished before we stopped to transfer our wounded to some of the
Destroyers, to be rushed back to the Base. A battered Motor Launch
came alongside and I recognised the number painted on her bows. It
was Armitage's boat. I went to the gangway and hailed her. A
Volunteer Reserve Sub. with a bandage round his smoke-begrimed face,
standing by the wheel, raised his arm.
"Armitage?" I shouted. The boy shook his head and climbed inboard.
They were passing the wounded down to be transferred to one of the
Destroyers laying off.
"Where is he?" I asked. The youngster jerked his thumb towards the
launch's tiny cabin. "Aft," he said, in the dull tone of utter
exhaustion of body and emotions.
"Five times he was hit an' he wouldn't budge.... Kneeling in a pool
of blood for'ard givin' directions.... Got the last man from
_Determination_ aboard and he said 'Finish,' and rolled over in a
heap. Just that one word, 'Finish.'" The dead man's second in
command stood with his face working. "Oh, God!" he said; "he was a
man, he was a man!"
We resumed our voyage with four Destroyers to screen us, and the dawn
broke chill and wan; a mist closed down upon us like a pall as the
light strengthened.
Jervis was below having a wounded eye dressed and I was alone, but
for the Quartermaster, on the wreckage of the bridge; but presently I
saw Milsom, with a bandaged arm in splints and a cigar stuck
truculently in the corner of his mouth, climbing stiffly up the
ladder.
"Jakes is all right," he said, as he joined me beside the rail.
"Yes," I said. "Hasn't got a scratch. Only got a sniff of gas--but
he'll shake that off in a few hours. The Destroyers say that those
Motor Launches saved all the officers and most of the men from the
blockships. How's the arm?"
"Bit stiff. Broken in two places." Milsom leaned against the rail
and took a deep breath. "But I'm still alive." He repeated the
sentence and stared at the dim outline of one of our escort just
visible through the mist. His tone was like that of a man awakening
from sleep. "Oh, damn it!" he said. "No, no," ... and then he
turned abruptly and faced me. "Look here, Bill," he said, "I was
going to play the rottenest trick a man ever was tempted to stoop
to." He was talking as if he was in a desperate hurry, the words
coming in a rush. "This is a funny time to tell a love story, in all
conscience, but I--I--d'you remember that girl, Miss Mayne? I've
never looked at a woman in my life till I saw her. She wasn't in
love with me, but I made her say she'd marry me....
"Oh, I understand her, Bill, as no other man alive could.... I tell
you, I could read every thought that was in her head--and knowing
that, I was going to take her. I told myself I had every right to if
I could, and she was mine--just made for me, body and mind and soul.
I'm telling you this now--you've never heard me talk like this
before, Bill, and God knows you never will again.... Don't stare
like that, old thing. I'm not light-headed--I'm telling you all
this, because I--I know who the other man is. You've got to help him
find her again and patch up their silly squabble and make her
happy--happier than ever I could. And I understood her better five
minutes after I'd first set eyes on her than he will with her lying
in his arms----"
Somewhere at the back of my brain I heard a far-off drone like the
sound of a distant beehive.
"Well," I said. "What's his name?"
Milsom stood staring past me into the mist that lowered over us.
"I'll tell you," he said, "because I----"
The events of the next few seconds will always remain a blur in my
memory; the bark of a high-angle gun from one of the Destroyers
astern cut short his words. The drone above us seemed suddenly to
become a rushing roar of sound, and a blast of machine-gun fire swept
the deck and bridge as a flight of seaplanes whizzed overhead flying
low, so that I could see the goggled faces of the pilots behind the
spurts of flame from their guns. The next instant they were gone
again in the mist. It was the last sting from the hornets' nest we
had been burning out, and Milsom was at my feet leaning on his one
arm and staring stupidly at the thin dark stream trickling across the
planking. The Destroyers on our beam were firing fruitlessly into
the mist.
I bent and put my arms about him and he turned his face towards me.
Twice he tried to speak, and an attempt at a smile, a ghost of the
old jaunty smile, flitted across his grey face. He made one more
supreme effort, and with my ear to the bloody lips I just caught the
last whispered breath that took his soul with it.
13
We passed up harbour to our berth alongside the following afternoon,
and every craft in harbour manned ship and gave us a cheer while the
tugs and ferry craft hooted, and the folk ashore lined the beach and
waved flags and handkerchiefs. I am not ashamed to own that I saw it
all through a blur; and as the off-shore wind carried the thin sound
of women's voices, I couldn't help thinking of the lads below the
shattered upper deck, who had fallen asleep that England on the
morrow might wake to a fuller realisation of her glory.
We dined together that night in the coffee room of the big hotel that
had been converted into the Naval Headquarters of the Base. We had
counted on having a tremendous jamboree--those of us who returned.
But somehow the feeling that predominated was a sort of dazed
astonishment that we were still alive. And our heads ached "fit to
split" as housemaids say.
Mouldy was in bed, recovering from a slight gassing, but Thorogood
sat next to me, squeezing my arm at intervals as if to reassure
himself that he wasn't dreaming; and on the other a big subaltern of
Marines who seemed to regard his recent experiences with less emotion
that the last Army _v._ Navy rugger match, in which I saw him play.
Glegg was there with a bandage over one eye, but Brakespear was in
hospital with a piece of shrapnel somewhere in his anatomy.
Jervis had shorn his beard, and in the process seemed to have parted
with something of his effervescent vivacity, and when I remembered
him as I had last seen him, as we shoved off from the blazing Mole,
stumbling amid the dead and bawling through his megaphone.... No, we
weren't feeling gay.
It was after dinner that we got really talking. There must have been
a dozen of us altogether, because Shorty had gone home to his wife,
and Selby had gone Home too: a longer journey, but perhaps an even
happier meeting at the end of it.... Anyhow, there were about a
dozen of us that lit cigars and cigarettes and put our elbows on the
table, and the scene, as I remember it, was just like some big family
happily reunited, with the shadow of the Angel's wing still hovering
over all.
Messengers were coming and going all the while with signals and
telegrams, and presently the orderly murmured, "The Director of
Offensives, sir, wants to talk to you on the telephone."
I went up to the room I used as an office when ashore, and as I
picked up the receiver of the Admiralty line, heard the Director's
voice faintly, speaking not to me but to someone in his room.
"Tell them I'll be at the War Office at 3 P.M. for that meeting ...
that's all for to-night, Miss Mayne," I heard him say. Then clearer
and louder, "Hallo, that you, Hornby?"
"Yes, sir," I said.
"Well, I'm damned glad to hear it." Then he said a lot of nice
things about what we'd done and being proud of us, and finished off:
"Well, I'd like to see you at 3.30 P.M. to-morrow if you can get to
town by then."
"Aye, aye, sir," and as I answered a thought flashed through my
brain: it was one of those brilliant inspirations that come once in a
lifetime, and in the course of a sleepless night (none of us slept
that night) I perfected it into a piece of strategy for which I
claim, in all modesty, a place in this already unduly prolonged
narrative.
Mouldy occupied a spare room at my diggings where most of us were
billeted for the night, and when I turned out the following morning,
I visited him. I found him drinking tea and reading the morning,
paper.
"How d'you feel?" I asked.
He pointed to a tin of cigarettes with a wry face.
"Dead off baccy," he said lugubriously.
"Well," I replied, "that'll do you no harm. All right otherwise?"
He nodded. "All right last night. Lord knows why I should have been
rammed into bed while all you pirates lapped up bubbly and made a
night of it."
"Doctor's orders. Anyhow, he says you can go to town to-day."
Mouldy sat up. "Damn good of him, 'cos I was goin', anyhow. I'm
going to have a hell of a jamboree." He blinked at me defiantly from
under a lank lock of black hair.
"You've got to come with me to the Admiralty at three o'clock," I
said as sternly as I could. Mouldy groaned.
"Have I got to keep sober till three--an' pubs closing at half-past
two?"
"Yes," I said. "You won't have a drink till the evening--and then
you can have as many as you want."
He acquiesced reluctantly, and we caught a train to town that landed
us at the terminus shortly before three; thence we taxied to
Whitehall.
"This place gives me the holy pip," said Mouldy, as we threaded our
way through the stuffy-smelling corridors of the Admiralty. "Looks
as if the Navy was run by women from what I can see of the place.
Phew! Shockin' frowst!" We reached the Director's room.
"Never mind that," I said, and opened the door. I breathed a sigh of
relief to find the room was empty, and glanced at my watch. It was
ten minutes past three. Well, if Mouldy couldn't fix things in
twenty minutes.... He walked to the open window and stood staring
out on the Horse Guards Parade.
"Humph!" he observed moodily. "I reckon the bounding blue's good
enough for me.... I wouldn't come and work here for a thousand a
year. What the blazes does the Director want to see me for, anyway?
He's all adrift too."
I was hunting about on the paper-strewn desk for the bell press I
knew was there if I could find it. There were three: one marked
"Secretary," another "Messenger," and a third "Stenographer." I took
a long breath and pressed the third.
"Mouldy," I said, "don't get into mischief. Wait here till I come
back. I shan't be a minute." Then I made tracks for the door.
In the semi-gloom of the passage outside a tall girl brushed past me
and entered the room, pencil and notebook in hand. It was Miss
Mayne, and I waited till the door closed before I looked at my watch.
"I'll give them two minutes," I thought. "And if she doesn't come
back----"
I gave them ten minutes, as a matter of fact, then I knocked at the
door and went in.
"Mouldy," I said, "you needn't wait. It's all right. I mean, the
Director doesn't want to see you after all."
They had not apparently heard my knock, because Miss Mayne's head was
resting on Mouldy's shoulder, and he was stroking her hair with his
damaged hand. She was crying softly, with her cheek against his coat.
Mouldy raised his head and glared at me over Miss Mayne's shoulder.
She neither moved nor turned her head.
"Here," he said, "you _'op_ it!"
I went out into the corridor, closing the door softly behind me.
Then for the Erst time since we landed I felt tired--more tired than
I had ever felt in my life before.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
_For purposes of fiction, only the broad outlines of a great
achievement have been sketched into this story; and no attempt has
been made to reproduce faithfully the strategy or events of St.
George's Day, _1918_. Indeed, only such ships find their replicas
here as the turning-circle of the tale allows, and if the Author has
anywhere endeavoured to be true to facts, it is in the portrayal of
those fearsome and bloody conditions under which the Navy added so
fair a page to History._
II
BEHIND THE VEIL:
THE STORY OF THE Q BOATS
(1918)
1
FIRST BLOOD
There was a day, now happily past, when the submarine scourge was
broadcast upon the seas; then the country turned for its salvation to
the Navy, upon which, under the good providence of God, it had grown
accustomed to rely in most of the crises of its history. Scientific
and mechanical appliances, on a scale adequate to meet and checkmate
the outrage of unrestricted submarine warfare, could not be produced
by pressing a button. With workshops and laboratories yielding their
output at highest pressure, the German submarine building yards were
gaining in the race. Every day brought its sickening tale of sinking
and burning and murder on the high seas, and in Whitehall offices men
studied statistics and columns of figures with faces ever growing
graver.
The irritable tension of those days is best forgotten now. Prices
rose, ships sank, and the Navy said not a word. It was "doing its
damnedest" in silence, according to its wont. And not even in
forecastle or Wardroom did men so much as whisper what was afoot.
To-day* the submarine remains merely as a stern corrective, curbing
waste and extravagance, bracing the nation's nerve. The ingenuity of
man is boundless, and science has not yet said her last word; human
courage and devoted valour alone seem to have reached a point there
is no transcending. It was these two factors which stemmed the flood
at the moment of supreme crisis; on these the veil is at last lifted,
and the tale now told in all simplicity and truth.
* Written in August, 1918.
The methods of the German submarine in its war against unarmed
shipping gradually settled down to a routine which varied but little
in the early phases of the conflict. It was the custom to attempt to
torpedo at sight, on the principle of the least said the soonest
mended. If the torpedo missed, as was not infrequently the case, the
submarine broke surface a mile or so away from the ship and fired a
shot across her bows. The merchantman had then two alternatives: to
take to his heels and try to escape, or to heave to and abandon ship.
In the latter case the submarine closed the derelict to within a few
hundred yards and summoned the boats alongside. At the muzzle of a
revolver the Captain was ordered into the submarine with his papers,
and the crew of his boat directed to row a party of German sailors,
bearing bombs, back to the ship. These worthies, having placed the
bombs in the ship's vitals and looted the officers' quarters,
returned to the submarine, propelled by the men they had robbed and
whose ship they were engaged in sinking. In due course the bombs
exploded and the ship disappeared. It was an economical method,
since bombs cost less than torpedoes, and the formality of looting
the ship helped to preserve its popularity.
For a while the Navy noted these methods and the little human
failings of the enemy in silence. Then it drew a deep breath and
made its plans accordingly. It argued that a man-of-war could be
disguised as a tramp steamer and carry concealed armament. Such a
vessel, by plying on the trade routes, must inevitably meet a
submarine in time, and in her character of peaceful merchantman be
ordered to abandon ship. The ship might be abandoned to all outward
appearances, but still retain sufficient men concealed on board to
fight the hidden guns when the moment came for her to cast disguise
to the winds and hoist the White Ensign. Certain risks had to be
taken for granted, of course; the almost inevitable torpedo sooner or
later, the probability of a little indiscriminate shelling while the
submarine approached, the possibility of being ultimately sunk before
assistance could arrive. Yet the odds were on the submarine being
sunk first, and the rest was on the knees of the gods.
An old collier of some 2,000 tons was selected from among the
shipping at the disposal of the Admiralty and taken to a Dockyard
port, where she unostentatiously underwent certain structural
alterations. These included disappearing mountings for guns
concealed beneath hatchway covers, and masked by deck-houses which
collapsed like cards at a jerk of a lever. From the host of
volunteers, among whom were retired Admirals, Captains, Commanders,
and Lieutenants of the Royal Navy, a young Lieutenant-Commander was
selected and appointed in command. His officers were volunteers from
the Royal Naval Reserve, ex-merchant seamen, familiar enough with the
rôle they were required to play, and in some cases with little mental
scores of their own which required adjustment when the time came.
The crew was mostly from the West Country, men of Devon with one or
two traditions to uphold in the matter of brave adventure. It also
included Welshmen and Irish with a pretty taste for a fight, and a
few Scots, of the dour type, hard to frighten. They were picked from
the Royal Navy, Fleet and Royal Reserves--merchant seamen and
fishermen the last, many of whom had formed a nodding acquaintance
with Death long before they received this invitation to a closer
intimacy. Their ages ranged between 17 and 52.
They sailed from Queenstown under the Red Ensign; but before they
left some of the crew trudged, as pilgrims to a shrine, and stood
awhile among the mounds in that pathetic God's acre where the women
and children of the _Lusitania_ rest. They were then but freshly
turned, those mounds, in their eloquent diversity of lengths, and men
had not begun to forget....
For five weary months they endured the winter gales of the Atlantic,
wallowing to and fro along the trade routes, outwardly a scallywag
tramp, but behind her untidy bulwarks observing, with certain
necessary modifications, the discipline and customs of his Majesty's
Navy. With paint-pot and sail-cloth they improved the ship's
disguise from time to time, and wiled away the heart-breaking
monotony of the days by inventing fresh devices to conceal their
character.
The ship's steward's assistant, when not engaged upon his office as
"dusty boy," was ordered to don female attire over his uniform and
recline in a prominent position on the poop in a deck-chair. This
allurement was calculated to prove an irresistible bait. The
Navigator, whose action station was the abandonment of the ship in
the rôle of distracted Master, fashioned the effigy of a stuffed
parrot and fastened it inside a cage which he proposed to take away
with him in the boat, thus heightening the pathos of the scene and
whetting the blood-lust of the enemy....
From time to time watchful patrols swooped down upon them, exchanged
a few curt signals in the commercial code, and bade them pass on
their imaginary occasions. Once a Cruiser, less easily satisfied
than the remainder, bade the rusty-sided collier heave to, and sent
an officer to board her; he climbed inboard at the head of armed men
to find himself confronted, in the person of the "Master," with a
term-mate of Britannia days and a grin he is not likely to forget.
Then, early one spring morning, when the daylight was stealing out of
grey skies across the Atlantic waste, the track of a torpedo bubbled
across the bows and passed ahead of the ship. The moment for which
they had waited five weary months had come.