Let us take, almost at random, an episode in the life of H.M.
Submarine E9. It is true that she was commanded by Commander Max
Horton, but the utter impersonality of the tale makes it as though the
boat herself spoke. (Also, never having met or seen any of the
gentlemen concerned in the matter, the writer can be impersonal too.)
Some time ago, E9 was in the Baltic, in the deeps of winter, where
she used to be taken to her hunting grounds by an ice-breaker.
Obviously a submarine cannot use her sensitive nose to smash heavy ice
with, so the broad-beamed pushing chaperone comes along to see her
clear of the thick harbour and shore ice. In the open sea apparently
she is left to her own devices. In company of the ice-breaker, then,
E9 "proceeded" (neither in the Senior nor the Junior Service does any
one officially "go" anywhere) to a "certain position."
Here--it is not stated in the book, but the Trade knows every aching,
single detail of what is left out--she spent a certain time in testing
arrangements and apparatus, which may or may not work properly when
immersed in a mixture of block-ice and dirty ice-cream in a
temperature well towards zero. This is a pleasant job, made the more
delightful by the knowledge that if you slip off the superstructure
the deadly Baltic chill will stop your heart long before even your
heavy clothes can drown you. Hence (and this is not in the book
either) the remark of the highly trained sailor-man in these latitudes
who, on being told by his superior officer in the execution of his
duty to go to Hell, did insubordinately and enviously reply: "D'you
think I'd be here if I could?" Whereby he caused the entire personnel,
beginning with the Commander, to say "Amen," or words to that effect.
E9 evidently made things work.
Next day she reports: "As circumstances were favourable decided to
attempt to bag a destroyer." Her "certain position" must have been
near a well-used destroyer-run, for shortly afterwards she sees three
of them, but too far off to attack, and later, as the light is
failing, a fourth destroyer towards which she manoeuvres.
"Depth-keeping," she notes, "very difficult owing to heavy swell." An
observation balloon on a gusty day is almost as stable as a submarine
"pumping" in a heavy swell, and since the Baltic is shallow, the
submarine runs the chance of being let down with a whack on the
bottom. None the less, E9 works her way to within 600 yards of the
quarry; fires and waits just long enough to be sure that her torpedo
is running straight, and that the destroyer is holding her course.
Then she "dips to avoid detection." The rest is deadly simple: "At the
correct moment after firing, 45 to 50 seconds, heard the unmistakable
noise of torpedo detonating." Four minutes later she rose and "found
destroyer had disappeared." Then, for reasons probably connected with
other destroyers, who, too, may have heard that unmistakable sound,
she goes to bed below in the chill dark till it is time to turn
homewards. When she rose she met storm from the north and logged it
accordingly. "Spray froze as it struck, and bridge became a mass of
ice. Experienced considerable difficulty in keeping the conning-tower
hatch free from ice. Found it necessary to keep a man continuously
employed on this work. Bridge screen immovable, ice six inches thick
on it. Telegraphs frozen." In this state she forges ahead till
midnight, and any one who pleases can imagine the thoughts of the
continuous employee scraping and hammering round the hatch, as well as
the delight of his friends below when the ice-slush spattered down the
conning-tower. At last she considered it "advisable to free the boat
of ice, so went below."
"AS REQUISITE"
In the Senior Service the two words "as requisite" cover everything
that need not be talked about. E9 next day "proceeded as requisite"
through a series of snowstorms and recurring deposits of ice on the
bridge till she got in touch with her friend the ice-breaker; and in
her company ploughed and rooted her way back to the work we know.
There is nothing to show that it was a near thing for E9, but somehow
one has the idea that the ice-breaker did not arrive any too soon for
E9's comfort and progress. (But what happens in the Baltic when the
ice-breaker does not arrive?)
That was in winter. In summer quite the other way, E9 had to go to bed
by day very often under the long-lasting northern light when the
Baltic is as smooth as a carpet, and one cannot get within a mile and
a half of anything with eyes in its head without being put down. There
was one time when E9, evidently on information received, took up "a
certain position" and reported the sea "glassy." She had to suffer in
silence, while three heavily laden German ships went by; for an attack
would have given away her position. Her reward came next day, when she
sighted (the words run like Marryat's) "enemy squadron coming up fast
from eastward, proceeding inshore of us." They were two heavy
battleships with an escort of destroyers, and E9 turned to attack. She
does not say how she crept up in that smooth sea within a quarter of a
mile of the leading ship, "a three-funnel ship, of either the
Deutschland or Braunschweig class," but she managed it, and fired both
bow torpedoes at her.
"No. 1 torpedo was seen and heard to strike her just before foremost
funnel: smoke and _débris_ appeared to go as high as masthead." That
much E9 saw before one of the guardian destroyers ran at her. "So,"
says she, "observing her I took my periscope off the battleship." This
was excusable, as the destroyer was coming up with intent to kill and
E9 had to flood her tanks and get down quickly. Even so, the destroyer
only just missed her, and she struck bottom in 43 feet. "But," says
E9, who, if she could not see, kept her ears open, "at the correct
interval (the 45 or 50 seconds mentioned in the previous case) the
second torpedo was heard to explode, though not actually seen." E9
came up twenty minutes later to make sure. The destroyer was waiting
for her a couple of hundred yards away, and again E9 dipped for the
life, but "just had time to see one large vessel approximately four or
five miles away."
Putting courage aside, think for a moment of the mere drill of it
all--that last dive for that attack on the chosen battleship; the eye
at the periscope watching "No. 1 torpedo" get home; the rush of the
vengeful destroyer; the instant orders for flooding everything; the
swift descent which had to be arranged for with full knowledge of the
shallow sea-floors waiting below, and a guess at the course that might
be taken by the seeking bows above, for assuming a destroyer to draw
10 feet and a submarine on the bottom to stand 25 feet to the top of
her conning-tower, there is not much clearance in 43 feet salt water,
specially if the boat jumps when she touches bottom. And through all
these and half a hundred other simultaneous considerations, imagine
the trained minds below, counting, as only torpedo-men can count, the
run of the merciless seconds that should tell when that second shot
arrived. Then "at the correct interval" as laid down in the table of
distances, the boom and the jar of No. 2 torpedo, the relief, the
exhaled breath and untightened lips; the impatient waiting for a
second peep, and when that had been taken and the eye at the periscope
had reported _one_ little nigger-boy in place of two on the waters,
perhaps cigarettes, &c., while the destroyer sickled about at a
venture overhead.
Certainly they give men rewards for doing such things, but what reward
can there be in any gift of Kings or peoples to match the enduring
satisfaction of having done them, not alone, but with and through and
by trusty and proven companions?