Guess whom I met yesterday! I’ll give you a thousand guesses. Blangy!
You have been asking yourself--as I have--what in the world had become
of the old rascal, who had never given us a sign of life. I ran into
him in the arcades and I started blackguarding him. He maintained that
you and I were the loafers because we had leisure, whereas he had
none. I soon saw that he hadn’t changed and was as lazy as ever about
writing. As he had a free evening we took our _apéritif_ together and
he invited Fourgues to join us at dinner. Blangy isn’t afraid of him
any more, now that he is in command of a trawler; indeed he treats
Fourgues quite as an equal. During dinner he told all his adventures
and there was material enough to fill a book. For six weeks he has
been in command of a half-rotten trawler as big as a piano, with a gun
as heavy as a pea-shooter, which wouldn’t be capable of going after
even a crippled submarine. There are not a few like that, says Blangy,
especially along the coasts of Africa and Tunis. Most of the time
there is something that won’t go--rudder, tiller-rope, steering-gear,
condenser, pistons, or boilers; one repairs as one can. For the rest,
there are storms for which the submarines don’t care a hang, but which
keep the poor old trawlers in port. So you can see just what our
anti-submarine service amounts to.
Fortunately the papers say that in three months not one German U-boat
will be left, we have sunk so many! Blangy is not of this opinion, nor
Fourgues either, nor I. I can write you this, dear old bean, for I have
a sort of an idea you think the same. We are not officials, we four!
Blangy says I’m to send you greeting, and he laughed when I told him
that on you, a navigating officer, they had played the same trick as
on him, putting you behind a gun instead of on the bridge. He hopes
that you will also get a trawler or anything else that will let you
navigate. He is satisfied in spite of his misadventures on his rotten
raft. He feels that he is living. His fever and rheumatism have left
him, and he asks for nothing but the opportunity to rake a submarine,
unless it’s the other way round!
Having bored you enough with Blangy, I will return to the adventures
of the _Pamir_ from Mudros as far as Algiers--that is to say, for the
last month and a half. You may be surprised to have me write so soon
and I’ll tell you why at once. We picked up at sea the crew of the
cargo-boat _Mer-Morte_, of the same company as ourselves, which had
been torpedoed the night before. In one of the boats was Villiers,
engineer of the _Mer-Morte_, and the owner allowed Fourgues to keep him
on board. That being the case, I passed half my work over to him--the
engine, that is--and I have a little more time. I can write you
more--at least, if it doesn’t bore you, in which case you have only to
say so.
You remember that I wrote of the _Pamir_ lying idle at Mudros with a
cargo for a lot of different military units. The shipment had not yet
reached its destination because we arrived in the midst of moving.
Everyone was breaking camp--everywhere, Gallipoli or Asia. Some were
returning to France, others going to Egypt, the majority bound for
Salonica, for the army of the East, and no one to tell us what to do
with our three thousand tons and our six cases of aeroplanes. Fourgues
went to see the French Admiral, then the English Admiral, then the
French Base Commandant, then the English Base Commandant, and all the
authorities. Everybody said, “The _Pamir_? The _Pamir_? Three thousand
tons? Munitions of war? Six aeroplanes? What to do with you? You are
asking for orders?”
“What good does it do,” said Fourgues, “to have Admirals and Base
Commandants in the countries where things are happening if they aren’t
capable of acting on their own responsibility and must ask for orders
from Paris for a poor little bark of three thousand tons?” Of course,
the orders didn’t come. They have other fish to fry in Paris and
London. We should still be there if one fine evening Fourgues hadn’t
said at dinner:
“Get up steam, sonny, and we’ll start at dawn with to-morrow’s convoy.
We’ll go to Salonica. They must be needing the stuff there, for it
seems that the army of the East is going into Bulgaria. After the
_Pamir_ has left Mudros they can’t catch us because they haven’t given
us any wireless and at Salonica we shall see what we shall see!”
He was as good as his word. The _Pamir_ set out the next day, getting
behind four big hookers that were leaving the barrage and nobody said a
word. Fourgues was chuckling on the bridge.
“You see, the French Admiral thinks that I have orders from the
military Base Commandant; the Commandant thinks that I have orders from
the Admiral; between the two of them they would have let my cargo rot,
whereas to-morrow General Sarrail will be dashed pleased to get it.”
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps, though, when they saw the _Pamir_ put
out, the Admiral and the Base Commandant were only too glad to be rid
of the old grouser and said to themselves that they hoped he would
go and hang himself somewhere else. Fourgues said that it would be a
lesson to him, and that henceforth when the authorities had no orders
to give him, he should give them to himself, because it was disgusting
to let the shareholders make a thousand or fifteen hundred francs a day
for doing nothing.
The _Pamir_ got into Salonica the next morning after kicking around
half the night in front of the harbour defences. None too soon the
French Admirals have begun to put nets at the entrances of harbours,
instead of leaving them as at the beginning of the war when the
submarines had only to come in. I tell you, old man, the Germans
discovered this before we ever thought of it, and the Austrians, too,
in their North Sea, Adriatic, and Baltic ports; and they will discover
many other things in which we shall be six months or a year behindhand.
The thing that takes my breath away is that I chatted with not a few
young sailors of your Navy and they all see it clearly. When I say
young, I mean fellows between thirty and forty-five, the kind the
English have already dubbed old fogies! In the French Navy these old
fogies haven’t the right to an opinion, but nevertheless they see.
It can’t be said that they are ignorant of their profession, having
followed it for eighteen or twenty years; nor can it be said that they
aren’t capable of commanding, because in England men of their age are
already commanding a squadron or a Naval Base, and any day one can see
an old French Naval lieutenant of forty-five with three stripes going
to ask for orders of a young English Admiral of forty-two with three
stars. The contrary never happens. Does that mean that the French are
not as clever as the English? Tell me if you agree, or if, after your
experience of the Navy, you think that the French Admirals are not
anxious to rejuvenate the higher ranks? I should like to tell you now
all I think about it and what Fourgues thinks too, but I see that my
letter has not dealt fully yet with the adventures of the _Pamir_ and
so I must wait for another time.
It happened that our stuff was jolly welcome at Salonica. The Army
people fell upon our necks as though we were their saviours. Guns,
gun-carriages, picks and shovels, and everything else that the _Pamir_
had--there was none too much of all this in Macedonia, it seems,
especially as all ships are dealt with in the same haphazard way as we
are. There are hundreds of thousands of tons to be moved from one point
to another and nobody dares act on their own responsibility because
all war-supplies come under the jurisdiction of G.H.Q. in France, and
the Quartermaster-General isn’t here and doesn’t give any orders, but
if anyone on the spot does give any he doesn’t like it and commands
the exact opposite, and there’s no getting along with a system like
that. So you can imagine how they admired Fourgues for having brought
his three thousand tons without anyone having to ask for them. They
unloaded us in a jiffy and the aeroplanes were especially welcome. No
one knew where the devil they could have vanished to. The other six,
which the _Pamir_ left at Marseilles, had been sent in a hurry back to
the French front, where there is so much breakage and where it seems
aeroplanes are needed more urgently than in the Army of the East, which
is only a side-show of the war. But the six we had hooked around--no
one at Salonica appeared to know what had become of them, yet they
were much needed, for the Fokkers and the Taubes came practically
every day and there were none too many chaser-planes. That’s what ours
were. We stayed at Salonica five days, and at the end of three those
chaser-planes had already gone up and peppered the Bulgarians. This
time Fourgues was satisfied and he said to me:
“See here, young feller, I begin to understand this war. There are two
kinds of people: the Form-fillers, administrative species, who have the
authority and who let the _poilus_ be killed administratively and the
boats sunk administratively. When the Forms have all been filled in and
their responsibility well covered up, they rub their hands and don’t
care a damn for anybody. And then there are the others: folks like you
and me and some millions of poor devils. We drudge and wear out our
skins without needing to fill up any Forms, but we are the ones that
keep the business going and who will win the war. No one thanks us, but
if France keeps her end up, it is because of us in the ships and the
trenches. On land they haven’t yet managed to get heavy artillery like
the Germans, so where the Boches send a shell of large calibre, we put
a _poilu_ and the blood of our _poilus_ compensates for the inferiority
of our artillery. At sea it’s the same thing, except that the submarine
takes the place of the heavy artillery, and the ships which go to the
bottom take the place of the _poilus_ who get dished. All that isn’t
good copy for the newspapers, but it’s the truth just the same. It will
go on and on, but in the end we shall be obliged to do as the Germans
do instead of scoffing at them.”
Fourgues is generally right, and the things he says come to pass six
or eight months later, so when you tell him he is a pessimist, he has
only to say, “Wait and see!” And when his predictions are realized,
the people who said they never would be have forgotten what he told
them in the first place, and they brag of how they had been predicting
this for a long time! Then he gets into a rage and announces some more
things which astonish them and they repeat that it can’t be so because
the newspapers are saying quite the opposite. Five or six months later,
behold Fourgues again in the right!
Have you noticed this, you on your _Auvergne_? Once in a while one has
a true, honest, real tip--as, for example, when Fourgues or I tell
things that we have seen with our eyes and heard with our ears on the
_Pamir_ in Archangel, or Norway, or England, or somewhere else. Not
jokes, but things like “two and two make four” and “two hands have ten
fingers.” Well, then, Fourgues and I spin our little yarns when we
are asked to, as though it might interest people and as though they
wanted to know the truth. God bless you, not a bit of it! The higher
placed they are, the less they want to know the truth. When you have
told them something they know is true, they answer, “Whatever you do,
do not repeat this! We must not make the public anxious!” One would ask
nothing better than to hold one’s tongue provided the people in high
places do whatever is necessary to remedy the evils they say must be
kept dark. But when you see that it’s not at all in order to put things
right quietly, that they order you to hold your tongue, but only that
they may sit with their arms folded doing nothing while those who are
not informed imagine that everything is being done--well, old fellow,
it’s pretty rank!
Or else these same official people don’t know that what you tell
them is true--don’t know it officially, that is. So there’s no point
trumpeting it into their ears. They listen to nothing, hear nothing,
do nothing. Fourgues told at Mudros, at Salonica, and at other places
the stories Flannigan told him in Trondhjem about the kind of submarine
warfare the Germans were preparing for us. As he has an unholy memory
for details, he repeated things from the German papers, with figures
and all particulars. Well! All the Naval chiefs made fun of him as
they did in the Fleet a year and a half ago. When he spoke of the
_Cressy_, the _Hogue_, the _Aboukir_, the _Lusitania_, the _Bouvet_,
the _Ocean_, the _Gambetta_, and all the others that have gone down,
they answered that it was pure accident; that the Germans couldn’t do
anything more because their submarines had been sunk--that all measures
had been taken, that in less than six weeks the war at sea would be
over, and that it was only necessary to read the papers! Whereupon
Fourgues, somewhat astonished, pointed to the papers where the heading
“Maritime News” is printed with one or two blank columns beneath. But
when he assumes that these columns hide something, he is told that he
is a coward and a panic-monger. Then he gets furious and holds his
tongue for fear of saying too much. But he confides to me that with
pudding-heads like that to look after things at sea, with those on the
ships too old and those in the Ministries indifferent, we can expect
anything of the Germans who won’t beat about the bush. He says it’s
lucky for those who direct the English and French Naval affairs that
the public understands nothing about it, otherwise they would get it in
the neck in Parliament as the Army blokes did and we should be taking
precautions instead of heading for catastrophes.
But I am wandering from the _Pamir_. When we had emptied out our stuff,
the military authorities found it necessary to send a lot of colonials
back to Algiers--Arabs and Soudanese who had been in the East almost a
year and were dying with the cold. At Salonica there was none but the
_Pamir_ ready for the voyage--all the other boats were waiting to be
unloaded. So we took on three hundred Africans. They didn’t give much
trouble, poor devils, what with their shivering and seasickness. They
asked only one thing--to be let alone. All we had to do was to give
them bread and water twice a day. They swallowed a little and sicked it
up the rest of the time.
From Salonica to Algiers we followed the secret route indicated by the
French and English Admiralties. Fourgues took it, not for security, but
for a joke.
“What will you bet, my boy?” he said when he had traced the track on
his chart. “Will you make a bet with me?”
“I should like to, Skipper, but about what?”
“Well, look here! The _Pamir_ is going to follow this highly secret
route from Salonica to Algiers. Therefore, the Boches aren’t acquainted
with it; therefore, it’s protected against submarines; therefore, we
are required to follow it--isn’t that so?”
“But I don’t see----”
“What will you bet that before we get in the _Pamir_ will either be
torpedoed on this route--which we are ordered to follow--or that we
pick up the lifeboats of some boat that has been torpedoed? Are you on?”
“Before making the bet, I want to know why. For, of course, it is not
for nothing that we are sent out on a safe, secret, and protected
course.”
Fourgues was fairly hugging himself. He wouldn’t explain, but he said:
“If I lose, I’ll stand you a box of cigars. If I win, you’ll take two
middle watches for me.”
“I will, indeed, but why?”
“I’ll tell you afterwards.”
He wouldn’t give in and there was no explanation, but the old fox was
right! Between Malta and Algiers we came upon the lifeboats of the
_Mer-Morte_ which had been torpedoed fifteen hours before.
We discovered them early, at about half-past six in the morning. I had
the watch. Fourgues said to me when he knocked off at four:
“Don’t leave the secret route, eh, my boy? At exactly five o’clock turn
to the west--you’ll see--at the point I have marked on the chart with
a pencil. At that point the secret routes from north, south, east, and
west cross each other. It’s a most interesting spot. All boats pass
there. We’ll go that way.”
I made it just as close as I could. There was a nice little following
breeze from the east rolling us about a bit, as we were in ballast. The
Africans were vomiting desperately in the corners and we couldn’t see a
hundred yards.
I had been going due west for almost an hour and a quarter and had just
lit a cigarette to keep myself awake, when the lookout at the masthead
shouted:
“Wreckage two points to starboard!”
I looked and could see nothing, but nevertheless I put the helm over
and steered as the lookout had said, when he began to sing out again:
“More wreckage right ahead at three hundred yards!”
There was no need to call Fourgues. He leaped from his cabin to the
bridge with his field-glasses and made out two lifeboats before you
could wink.
“That’s all right, my boy! There are two boats, quite full. We’ll get
them. I take the watch and you go aft to pick the poor fellows up. Have
wine and coffee and blankets heated. They must have been there ever
since last night and are probably soaked with a choppy sea like this.”
Fourgues handled the ship beautifully, and in five minutes we got the
men aboard, although the two lifeboats had drifted five hundred yards
apart. He put her to windward of them so well that they were in calm
water, and as there were only sailors and not a lubber in the lot, they
came up the ladder at once. They were drenched. I sent them to dry in
the boiler-room, and after they had drunk their coffee and hot wine
they slept the whole day and were as fresh as paint by night.
There was only one officer, the engineer Villiers of whom I have
already spoken. We put him to bed at once in Muriac’s cabin and were
a bit scared about him as he was delirious all the way to Algiers. A
shell had burst in the engines of the _Mer-Morte_, smashing a cylinder
and killing two men, and he doesn’t yet know how he ever came out of
it. However, he got better a couple of days ago, and here is the story
he told us:
The _Mer-Morte_ left Toulon with a cargo of shells, gun cartridges,
explosives, and all that sort of thing for the Army of the East. As
usual, no wireless, no guns, nothing--just like ourselves. The Company
won’t pay and the Navy thinks it a joke. She took the secret route
from Toulon to Salonica, the same as the _Pamir_, only in the opposite
direction. They were told that the route was guarded from one end to
the other. “That story is all right for civilians!” said Villiers. “It
would take at least a thousand boats to guard the route from Toulon
to Salonica and there aren’t a hundred on the whole Mediterranean.”
I ought to add that the _Mer-Morte_ has been knocking about almost
as much as the _Pamir_ since the beginning of the war, particularly
in the Mediterranean, and that Villiers thinks about things much the
same as Fourgues and I, and says that his skipper, who went down with
the ship, poor fellow, thought the same way, too. All the same it’s a
joke that the people who do the real work of the sea think alike on
the subject of the German submarine and say it isn’t a bluff, while
the land-lubbers and the papers and the Ministers all tell us not to
worry because it’s going to be over in two weeks. Which two weeks?
Villiers thinks it’s a pretty bad joke, having just been through it,
and although he is only an engineer and not a navigating officer, he
said things which Fourgues considered quite true.
To return to Villiers’ story. The _Mer-Morte_, with her five thousand
tons of projectiles and other munitions, followed the secret route to
the spot where they were to head east for the Malta channel. She had
not met a single patrol or guard. This was no surprise to Villiers, for
he knows that patrolling is impossible. He asked us if the _Pamir_ had
met any patrols from Salonica to Algiers, and Fourgues drew down his
lower eyelid: a good answer! That did not surprise Villiers either.
He told us all this in port, and you know that when a fellow has just
escaped death, has lost his skipper, his first officer, ten men, his
ship, five thousand tons of shells and barely missed going with them,
you really do listen to what he says a little more carefully than to
the rot the land-lubbers talk.
So the _Mer-Morte_ came that evening to the turning-point in the route.
There, a submarine emerged five or six hundred yards behind her and
fired a blank shot to stop her. The commander of the _Mer-Morte_ was
A1, copper-bottomed. As he had five thousand tons of munitions on
board, he thought he must not let himself be sunk, because they were
needed by the Army of the East; so he sent an order to Villiers in the
engine-room to fire up for all he was worth and keep her at top speed
for half an hour, when, as night was falling, he would be able to shed
the submarine. Villiers did all he could and the _Mer-Morte_ got up to
eleven knots and a half. But the U-boat was faster than that and gained
on the _Mer-Morte_ and sent some shots into her. The _Mer-Morte_ was no
more armed than the _Pamir_ and couldn’t reply. The skipper, seeing
that he would be sunk, thought he would try to sink the submarine, so
he came about and headed for it. You know what that was like--like
an infantryman against a machine-gun. The submarine waited a little,
then sent two shells on to the bridge, killing the skipper, his first
officer and the others, and two more right into her hull near the
water-line, which shattered the engine and boilers, and nearly killed
Villiers.
So the _Mer-Morte_ had to stop--no captain, no steam--a wreck. The
submarine stood by and sent over an officer in a dinghy, who came
aboard her. Villiers had gone on deck with all the crew who had not
been killed. He was not yet delirious. The submarine officer knew
French well and was very polite.
“You are to launch your lifeboats and put the crew into them. You,
sir, will please accompany me to the bridge. Oh, we saw! We killed the
commander and a watch-keeping officer. Our gunner is very good. But
there’s something on the bridge that I must see.”
Villiers followed him. The officer was accompanied by two sailors armed
with revolvers and the submarine stood close by with her gun trained
on them. He went to the chart-house and looked at the chart of the
Mediterranean, upon which the skipper of the _Mer-Morte_ had traced the
secret route from Toulon to Salonica. He compared this with a chart
which he had brought with him from the submarine. When he saw that they
matched, he said to Villiers:
“That’s all right. We know where all the boats go; our spies have not
misinformed us. With secret routes like this we are sure of not losing
time because you all go the same way. The patrol-boats are not very
numerous, as you may have noticed; when there are any we stay out of
range and come up again when they are gone. That simplifies our job.”
Villiers was astounded, but the other was very polite and smiled.
“Oh, it wasn’t by chance! Our boat was waiting for the _Mer-Morte_,
which left Toulon the day before yesterday, at night-fall, with five
thousand tons of munitions for the Army of the East. The same day the
_Saint-Artémise_ left with coal for Bizerta, the _Jeanne-Marguerite_
with coal for Navarin, and the battleship _Lyon_ for Malta. They
all passed this way during the day. We saw them and let them go. We
don’t work except when there’s no risk and when it’s worth while. Five
thousand tons of munitions! We are very well informed, and then these
secret routes make things so much more convenient!”
When he had finished carefully consulting the charts of the
_Mer-Morte_, the Boche handed Villiers an account-book with
counterfoils and asked him to sign it:
“It’s for our accounts and our part of the prize-money,” he said. “Of
course, we should be believed if we said we had sunk a vessel, but
it is better to have the signature of one of the officers. It’s more
certain. In Germany, it’s not the same as it is with you. The more we
destroy at sea, the more they pay us. We don’t make war for fun. So
this little affair of the _Mer-Morte_, with her five thousand tons of
munitions, is worth ten thousand marks to my commander, five thousand
to me, and a thousand to each of the men of the crew of my boat. Nice,
eh? Ah! I advise you to get into your lifeboats at once and row hard.
I’m going to put bombs in the forward hold, and by gum, within a
quarter of an hour there will be some first-class fireworks!”
Villiers said he supposed he would at least allow the crew to take some
provisions and wine and clothing, as the lifeboats might be long at sea.
“What’s the use of that? We are not savages,” answered the Boche;
“all the boats pass this way. There are some carrying nothing of
importance passing within twenty-four hours--the _Creuse_, the _City of
Birmingham_, the _Pamir_, the _Santa Trinita_. We shan’t do anything to
them--there are others more interesting. We are well informed! Among
those four there will surely be one to pick you up!”
Villiers got off in the lifeboat and they rowed as hard as they could
against the wind. The _Mer-Morte_ blew up twenty minutes later. He had
time to embark all the fellows that had been killed and we buried them
in Algiers. But he had held up as long as he could. Toward midnight
the cold, the wet, thirst, and all that he had been through, made him
delirious, and when we arrived he had to have a rope under his arms and
be hoisted aboard--he had collapsed.
He is almost well now. We reached Algiers the day before yesterday and
put ashore the Arabs of the Army of the East, who will tell this story
in their huts. Fourgues and I are going with Villiers to-morrow to see
the military authorities and leave a written report and make a verbal
one of the affair of the _Pamir_ and the _Mer-Morte_. I will write you
later. The mail-boat for France leaves soon and we don’t know what the
_Pamir_ is going to do. Good-bye, old man. I hope Villiers is going to
stay on the _Pamir_. Then I can write you more often.
SALONICA,
_March 13, 1916_.