A composite flotilla of French, British and Italian gunboats and
submarines attacked an Austrian flotilla which had sneaked out from the
Bocche di Cattaro, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic and shelled the
port of Durazzo. The engagement resulted in the sinking of an Austrian
destroyer. The following day the French picked up some sailors from
another Austrian destroyer, the _Llka_, which had struck a mine and
sunk. These sailors told them that in attacking the Austrian fleet the
Allied boats had narrowly escaped killing the survivors of a French
submarine that had been sunk and the crew of which had been rescued by
Austrian gunboats.
What submarine it was they were at a loss to know, but as time passed
and nothing was heard from the _Monge_, they became convinced that it
must have been she. This conviction was strengthened two months later,
when Mme. Roland Morillot, wife of Lieut. Morillot, commander of that
boat, received a letter signed "Crew of the _Monge_," mailed from the
concentration camp for prisoners at Deutsch Gabel, Bohemia, of which
the following is a translation of a part:
"Notwithstanding the distance, we unite our grief with yours in
weeping over the memory of him who in spite of all will ever remain
our captain. Stricken by a blow of fate just when victory smiled
most brightly, Commandant Morillot died like a hero, after having
accomplished the almost impossible to save his vessel and his crew."
More months elapsed; then Chief Master Electrician Joffry and
Quartermaster Mahe, both of the _Monge_, were returned to France from
Austria in an exchange of prisoners. And they told the story.