Part 26

"The lower deck was a shambles as the commander made the rounds of the ship, yet those wounded and dying raised themselves to cheer as he made his tour. . . .

"The Iris had troubles of her own. Her first attempts to make fast to the mole ahead of the Vindictive failed, as her grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet. Two officers, Lieutenant Commander Bradford and Lieutenant Hawkins, climbed ashore and sat astride the parapet trying to make the grapnels fast till each was killed and fell down between the ship and the wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both legs shot away and died next morning. Lieutenant Spencer though wounded, took command and refused to be relieved.

"The Iris was obliged at last to change her position and fall in astern of the Vindictive, and suffered very heavily from fire. A single big shell plunged through the upper deck and burst below at a point where fifty-six marines were waiting for the order to go to the gangways. Forty-nine were killed. The remaining seven were wounded. Another shell in the wardroom, which was serving as a sick bay, killed four officers and twenty-six men. Her total casualties were eight officers and sixty-nine men killed, and three officers and 103 men wounded.

"Storming and demolition parties upon the mole met with no resistance from the Germans other than intense and unremitting fire. One after another buildings burst into flame or split and crumbled as dynamite went off. A bombing party working up toward the mole extension in search of the enemy destroyed several machine-gun emplacements, but not a single prisoner rewarded them. It appears that upon the approach of the ships and with the opening of fire the enemy simply retired and contented themselves with bringing machine guns to the short end of the mole."

The story of the three block ships that were to be sunk in the channel at Zeebrugge, also from the report of the British Admiralty, is as follows:--

"The Thetis came first, steaming into a tornado of shells from great batteries ashore. All her crew, save a remnant who remained to steam her in and sink her, already had been taken off her by a ubiquitous motor launch, but the remnant spared hands enough to keep her four guns going. It was hers to show the road to the Intrepid and the Iphigenia, which followed. She cleared a string of armed barges which defends the channel from the tip of the mole, but had the ill fortune to foul one of her propellers upon a net defense which flanks it on the shore side.

"The propeller gathered in the net, and it rendered her practically unmanageable. Shore batteries found her and pounded her unremittingly. She bumped into the bank, edged off, and found herself in the channel again still some hundreds of yards from the mouth of the canal in practically a sinking condition. As she lay she signaled invaluable directions to others, and her commander, R. S. Sneyed, also accordingly blew charges and sank her. Motor launches under Lieutenant Littleton raced alongside and took off her crew. Her losses were five killed and five wounded.

"The Intrepid, smoking like a volcano and with all her guns blazing, followed. Her motor launch failed to get alongside outside the harbor, and she had men enough for anything. Straight into the canal she steered, her smoke blowing back from her into the Iphigenia's eyes, so that the latter was blinded, and, going a little wild, rammed a dredger, with her barge moored beside it, which lay at the western arm of the canal. She was not clear, though, and entered the canal pushing the barge before her. It was then that a shell hit the steam connections of her whistle, and the escape of the steam which followed drove off some of the smoke and let her see what she was doing.

"Lieutenant Stuart Bonham Carter, commanding the Intrepid, placed the nose of his ship neatly on the mud of the western bank, ordered his crew away, and blew up his ship by switches in the chart room. Four dull bumps were all that could be heard, and immediately afterward there arrived on deck the engineer, who had been in the engine room during the explosion, and reported that all was as it should be.

"Lieutenant E. W. Bullyard Leake, commanding the Iphigenia, beached her according to arrangements on the eastern side, blew her up, saw her drop nicely across the canal, and left her with her engines still going, to hold her in position till she should have bedded well down on the bottom. According to the latest reports from air observation, two old ships, with their holds full of concrete, are lying across the canal in a V position, and it is probable that the work they set out to do has been accomplished and that the canal is effectively blocked. A motor launch, under Lieutenant P. T. Deane, had followed them in to bring away the crews and waited further up the canal toward the mouth against the western bank.

"Lieutenant Bonham Carter, having sent away his boats, was reduced to a Carley float, an apparatus like an exaggerated life-buoy, with the floor of a grating. Upon contact with the water it ignited a calcium flare and he was adrift in the uncanny illumination with a German machine gun a few hundred yards away giving him its undivided attention. What saved him was possibly the fact that the defunct Intrepid still was emitting huge clouds of smoke which it had been worth nobody's while to turn. He managed to catch a rope, as the motor launch started, and was towed for a while till he was observed and taken on board."

A short time after the attack, the Kaiser visited Zeebrugge and gave out the statement that practically no damage had been done and that the channel was still clear. But then an Allied airplane flew over the channel and the mole and secured photographs showing two cruisers sunk in the channel just as had been planned, and effectively blocking it, and also a break in the viaduct sixty to one hundred feet in length. "Only another German lie, this time indorsed by the Kaiser," declared the British papers. A leading German daily said, however, "It would be only foolishness to deny that the British naval forces scored a great success. By a stroke, crazy in its audacity, they penetrated one of the most important strongholds over which the German flag floats."

THE FLEET THAT LOST ITS SOUL

Sailors and especially fighters on the sea have in all ages possessed the noblest and bravest of souls and the finest morale. This is why the British sailors have felt so bitter about the atrocities committed by the German U-boats. In case a ship is sinking, the members of the crew do not expect to leave her until all the passengers are in the lifeboats, and the captain is always the last man to leave. Sometimes he prefers to go down with his ship so that it may never be said that his soul failed him. For sea fighters in U-boats to disregard this traditional chivalry of the sea and to sink merchant ships without warning and without assuring the passengers of their safety seemed to the sailors of other lands like giving up the high ideals that had grown out of their dangerous calling--like poisoning their souls with deceit and violence.

Most naval officers would rather die than surrender. Captain Lawrence, fighting for America in the war of 1812, wounded and dying, cried to his men, "Don't give up the ship." To fight rather than to surrender even in the face of the greatest odds has been for centuries the idea of sea fighters.

Admiral Cervera at Santiago in 1898 knew he was outmatched by the American fleet waiting for him off the harbor; but he brought his ships out and made a brave fight in trying to escape. Lieutenant Hobson knew there were terrible odds against him when he and his little company went in under the guns of the forts and attempted to block the channel. In the Russo-Japanese War, the Russians in the Sea of Japan with their ships foul and barnacled after a voyage of thousands of miles were not afraid to face certain defeat. Brave men do not lose their souls in the face of tremendous odds or even in the face of sure death.

Did the soul of Private George Dilboy of Somerville, Massachusetts, faint in him when he charged alone the German machine gun? He had come with his platoon up a little rise to a railroad track at the top, when suddenly an enemy machine gun opened fire upon them at about one hundred yards distance. Dilboy did not throw himself on the ground to escape the bullets. No, he raised his rifle to his shoulder and standing in plain sight of the German gunners, began to fire at them. As they were partially hidden he was not sure of his aim. So he ran down the embankment and across a wheat field towards them. The machine gun was immediately turned upon him and before he reached it, he fell with one leg nearly severed above the knee by the rain of lead and with several bullets through his body. Half crouched on the only knee left him, he aimed at the gunners one after another until he had killed or dispersed them all, and then fainted and died. He had advanced in the face of certain death, but had saved the lives of many of his comrades, for the gun had to be captured to gain their objective.

The brute is usually a coward at heart. The sinking of unarmed merchant ships and of hospital ships by the German U-boats, the bombing of undefended towns and hospitals, and the firing upon Red Cross workers were acts of brutes and cowards. So it is not strange that the great German fleet which all through the war, except at the battle of Jutland, had hidden in security behind the guns of Heligoland and the defenses of the Kiel Canal lost its soul when, as a last hope, it was ordered out to fight the Allied fleet. The German sailors knew the battle would really be a gigantic sacrifice and refused to fight it for the Fatherland.

There is always a very slight chance that through accident or some peculiar combination of unusual circumstances, a battle even against very great odds may be won. The German fleet had this chance--a very, very slight one, to be sure; and did not take it. The fleet had lost its soul.

Two weeks later, after the signing of the armistice, the German fleet surrendered to the Allies. It was the greatest, the most amazing, and some add, the most shameful surrender in the naval history of the world. It was also the greatest concentration of sea power and the most magnificent spectacle old ocean has ever witnessed.

The surrender was demanded by the terms of the armistice and was made on November 21, according to the program laid down by the commander of the British fleet. It was not the surrender of a foe beaten in a fair battle and yet recognized by his enemies as worthy of his steel. It was the surrender of a foe who declined to fight with the strong and the armed, but who had taken every opportunity to kill the weak and the defenseless. The British sailors could not forget, and they say they never will, the barbarous treatment of their brothers in the merchant marine by the German U-boats. There was therefore none of the sympathy and the fraternization that usually has accompanied a great surrender at sea.

On the afternoon of the day before the surrender the following notice was posted on all the Allied ships:--

"Let it be impressed on all--officers and men--that a state of war exists during the armistice. Their relations with officers and men of the German navy with whom they may now be brought in contact are to be strictly of a formal character in dealing with the late enemy, while courteous.

"It is obligatory that the methods by which they waged war must not be forgotten. No international compliments are to be paid, and all conversation is forbidden except in regard to the immediate business to be transacted.

"If it should be necessary to provide food for the German officers and men, they should not be entertained, but it should be served to them in a place specifically set. If it should be necessary to accept food from the Germans, the request is made that it be similarly served."

Later, notices were posted giving the hour when they were to meet the Germans and requiring every precaution to be taken against treachery.

"At 9:40 the Battle Fleet will meet the German fleet. Immediate readiness for action is to be assumed."

They would not trust the people to whom solemn treaties were but scraps of paper, and whose necessity made any act however treacherous appear to them to be a right one.