The U-boat hunters Part 3

My job being to tell what I saw and heard, I want to say here that throughout the entire melee I never saw one periscope! And there were thousands like me who never saw a periscope. But there were hundreds of others--cool, sensible people--who are ready to make affidavits that they did see periscopes.

Why did not more of us see any? Well, a submarine commander needs to turn up his periscope for only four, five, six, or seven seconds to have a look. If you do not happen to be gazing directly at the spot, you do not see it or the white bone which it makes going through the water.

On my ship the ranking officer was a regular army colonel who had seen active and dangerous service in the Philippines and elsewhere. He is given rather to understatement than overstatement of facts--a cool, level-headed observer. He saw a periscope. We had another officer who had been in the service in the Spanish War, had got out and was now back. He was probably the best lookout of all the army officers in the ship--a solid, substantial man with a keen eye. He could see what anybody else could see, but further than that you had to show him.

Several of us had already christened him "Show me." He reported two periscopes. Now he had never seen a submarine operating in his life. I asked him to describe the action of the periscope. He described it perfectly as I had noticed it in trial trips of submarines off Cape Cod, which is where the Electric Boat Company used to try theirs out before turning them over to purchasers.

My own notion of it is that the U-boats have many of us bluffed. They must be capable men who go in submarines; of good nerve, quick wit, and the power to withstand long nervous strain. Such men in a submarine are going to throw great scares into people of less capacity on surface ships. Put such men somewhere else than in a submarine and they will outwit men not so well equipped for the war game.

But these men, no men, can make the submarine do impossible things.

Before firing a torpedo the submarine must come near enough to the surface to stick out her periscope, to have a look around to locate her target. In sticking out the periscope, lookouts on ships are likely to see it. On merchant ships they do not keep a lookout which combs the sea thoroughly; they do not carry men enough for that. The strain of such a lookout is great. Men cannot stand to it as to an ordinary watch; they have to be relieved frequently; and so submarines may have an advantage over merchant ships, especially if the merchant ships are slow-moving freighters. But a war-ship, or a troop-ship in convoy is something else.

Troop-ships carry an immense number of lookouts, not overworked men who are liable to go to sleep on watch, but keen-eyed young fellows of high vitality, surrounded by other young fellows of high vitality, and all competing to see who can see something first.

They will spot a periscope, under normal conditions, at a pretty good distance; which does not mean that that periscope is at once going to be blown out of the water. Hitting a piece of 4-inch pipe at any distance is not easy; the pipe moving and the ship moving does not make it any easier.

But the submarine has shown herself. To get her torpedo home she will have to move nearer. With a thousand eyes looking for her and five, six, a dozen ships with four guns or more apiece waiting to have a crack at her, she is not going to have a pleasant time after she moves nearer.

She must show her periscope again to locate her target. To show her periscope she must get her hull somewhere near the surface; it takes a little time--not so much, but a little time to get her hull safely below again; and while she is doing that who can say that not one of our five, six, or a dozen ships will be handy to the spot? And if one of our ships should happen to be handy enough, what can save the submarine from being rammed? And if she is rammed there is no hope for her--she is gone.

I am pretty much of one mind with our first officer in this submarine matter. In the middle of the combat off the French coast he was making the rounds, cutting away the lashings which held the life-boats to the davits--this in case we had to leave the ship. He had a squint at the banging guns, the charging troop-ships, the flying destroyers; and then he looked up long enough to say: "A fat chance a U-boat would have if she so much as stuck her nose out. In four seconds she'd be like a rabbit among a pack of hunting-dogs. She might get away, but I bet you no bookmaker would take her end of it."

This argument does not apply to a slow-steaming freighter going it alone; it is for the matter of troop-ships moving at a fairly good speed. For myself that time the fleet steamed in direct column ahead, one ship jam up behind another, in a rough sea and on a black night, at high speed without lights of any kind, they did a more difficult thing than to evade or stand off half a dozen U-boat attacks. No fleet of ships can be put beyond all danger of submarine attack, but the danger to the subs can be made so great that it won't be worth the price the attacking force will pay.

I do not know how many U-boats were in that attack. The official figures will no doubt be given out in time. Our moderate estimators here put it down as three, with one transport ramming and sinking one U-boat. Two honest lads of one of our own forward gun crews say that our ship b.u.mped over another. They felt the b.u.mp. Perhaps they did, but bluejackets at twenty years of age are apt to be optimistic, as witness:

The day after that U-boat fight the skipper, first officer, chief engineer, and myself were trying our French on a waiter in a cafe ash.o.r.e, but not quite putting it over; we had to resort to a little English to get action for one important item of our meal. A party of American bluejackets--gun crews--were at another table. They heard us speak English, whereat one of them called over: "Say, you guys comp.r.o.ng English? Wee, wee? Then you oughter been where we were yesterday. Yuh'd seen something. Fighting U-boats we were. Comp.r.o.ng? U-boats--wee, wee, U-boats. Thirty-six of 'em came after us an' we sunk twelve. Whaddyer know about that?" We did not know, so we opened up a bottle of the ordinary red wine of the country, price deux francs, and drank to their enthusiastic health.

CROSSING THE CHANNEL

To get out of France after getting in, a man has to go to Paris, see the prefect of police, various consuls, and so on. It was all interesting--the life in Paris--but it had nothing to do with U-boats. I had to go to England, and to make England, I had to go to Havre.

And I was in Havre. Looking out the window at a roof across the narrow street was a sign which read Hotel of the Six Allies. The Six looked as though it had been painted over. The head waiter told me later that it had. It had begun at three, then it became four--five--now six. But there were more than six now--did not the great United States count? Oh, yes, truly yes--but the paint and painters! They were growing more scarce. The war--yes. Everything was the war.

The head waiter was a little old fellow with a round back, a quizzical eye, and the hair of a first violin. After I beat my way by main strength through three table-d'hote meals with him he let me know that he could talk English. Why hadn't he told me so before? Oh! Did I not wish to practise my French? So many did, and if they made him understand, the tips were sometimes more inspiring.

The steamer for England had been scheduled to leave the night of the day our train arrived, but she did not leave. We did not learn whether it was the full moon or the U-boats shifting their hunting-grounds or the late air-raids on the south coast of England. Whatever the cause, no one growled much. The steamship people and the government were doing their best with a difficult service. The delay gave us another day to look the port over. I had been there years before. Then it was all French; now it seemed to be mostly British. The streets, the shops, the cafes, were crowded with English, Canadian, and Australian soldiers. British soldiers were running the tram-cars. In the country outside was a large British camp. The French owners of the ships and of the cafes in the narrow streets near the jetties catered especially to the British soldier and sailor. English tobacco, English rosbif--they advertised these in quaintly worded signs.

Ships lay between the jetties and the breakwater, coasting and deep-water steamers, and the little fishing-cutters with the tanned sails. There was a fleet (or a flock) of seaplanes all ready to take to either the water or the air. They took to both while we looked, hurdling the breakwater from the basin to get more quickly to some smoke on the horizon. They were brand-new planes all, with the most beautiful polished maple pontoons and bright varnish over paint that still smelled fresh.

Soldiers not so worn and weary as those on the hospital veranda came down to the jetty promenade. Priests, nursing sisters, other soldiers and sailors came also. What interested them most was the sun shining on the bright new wood of the planes flying out to see what the smoke meant. It was a ship from across the ocean somewhere, and the planes circled it into the basin--one more ship which had beat the U-boat game and brought home something needed. There was some noise along the jetty and yet more noise in the wide and narrow streets of the town--clanging trams, whip-cracking fiacres, yelling newsboys, honking taxis, and soldiers and sailors tramping the pavements. Noise enough, and of the kind befitting a Channel port in war time; but for a time at least we heard the noise let down, and the bustle softened.

In a wide street of shops appeared a white-haired priest with a white crucifix held high before him. Behind him was another priest reading from a book of prayer. Two laymen came next, bearing a little white-painted table with a little white coffin--a cheap board coffin--resting on it. There was a canopy of plain white boards over the little coffin. There were a few white blossoms on the canopy and beside the coffin a few lilies of the valley--only a few.

Two other laymen followed the coffin bearers. All the men were bareheaded. Three women--young women and young mothers to look at--followed the two men. One of the young women was in deep black. A group of little girls followed the young woman. Two very old women came last. No more than that, walking through a crowded street at two o'clock of a bright day!

It was on us almost before we saw it. Men took off their hats as it pa.s.sed; women blessed themselves. Sometimes men's lips murmured a short prayer; always the women did. The soldiers and sailors, when they were French, saluted nearly always; the British sometimes. The officers, if anything, saluted more profoundly than the enlisted men, and, when they did not stop dead, held a hand to their caps for eight or ten paces in pa.s.sing.

Two soldiers were talking with two girls of the streets. One of the soldiers took off his cap. One of the girls stopped talking to say a little word of prayer. Both soldiers faced about, and all four gazed in silence for long after the little cortege had pa.s.sed on. Then the first soldier put on his cap, all faced about, and resumed their talk, but more slowly and not quite so loudly as before.

An English Tommy was driving a tram--a swearing Tommy that you could hear a block away. He came on the mourners from behind. He was in a hurry, and by clanging his bell he could have crowded by. But he held the tram in check, nursing it so as not to frighten the two old women in the rear--until they came to a wide square. Here there was room. He clanged his bell, not too loudly, turned on the juice, and hurried to make up for lost time. Men are being killed by the million over here, and other men who have been there--these very men on these streets--will tell you that they hardly turn their heads to see one more killed. But a little child is different.

Our steamer was to sail next night--at what hour no one could say, but it was well to be there in good time, we were told, so we went with the hotel bus. A little porter woman was there with my 70-pound bag before I even knew "things were ready"; and she said she did not roll it down the five flights from my room. She carried it every stair step of the way.

Her husband was in the war, and she had five children and it required more than a few sous in the week for five children, the eldest fourteen.

I agreed that it did.

Swinging on to the jetty, we had to take notice of a shop advertising to rent life-saving apparatus for the trip across the Channel. It was fine--a one-piece suit which came from the toes to the ears and a hood which you could turn in over your head! There was a painting of a torpedoed pa.s.senger ship going up in flames, topside and the hull settling down into the rolling billows. Men and women were jumping into the sea and drowning in agony. They had no life-saving, one-piece suits.

But all were not so thoughtless. There were others floating along high out of water with the most beatific expressions on their faces. They had been thoughtful enough to buy one of the patent one-piece suits. The painting was in colors, red and black mostly.

The afternoon had closed in showers, and when we made the steamer landing we stood in pools of water in the hollows of the worn stone flags. We were in good time, but a hundred or more who had been in better time were already inside the shed. The hold-overs from three days were there, military people mostly. We waited--and waited--and waited.

It was the eternal pa.s.sport matter. One at a time they had to pa.s.s the tribunal inside. A pleasant-mannered young English soldier stood guard at the shed door. Every half-hour or so, at command of a voice from the inside, he would let another dozen or twenty slide by. When he did so, those of us in the rear would hurry to fill the void, picking up our baggage from our feet as we pushed on. I had hired a porter, an old man, to look after my 70-pound bag. He stood by patiently for two hours or so. Then, without warning, he ran off and did not come back. I had not paid him, so he must have grown very tired. After that, whenever I moved forward, I had to pick up my two bags myself--the other weighed 40 pounds. Sometimes I put the bags into a pool of water--sometimes I put my feet.

Not every one had to wait. An officer would be pa.s.sed through immediately, which did not please two enlisted men near me, just back from what they called rough work at the front. The little one, called Scotty, had a fear that the boat might leave before he could get there.

He wanted to "mak' a train oot o' Lunnon" at two of the next afternoon, "mak' a nicht train oot o' Glesgie" (Glasgow) and surprise his folk by walking in on 'em "afore brekkist." They would be glad to see him, be sure.

"Almost as glad to see you come as they was goin'?" asked the soldier with him, and then urged Scotty to stop over in London for a bit o' fun.

"I'll not," said Scotty. "I'll mak' the trains as I said an' surprise 'em afore brekkist. Besides, there's a football match on for the arternoon arter to-morrer, and an old pal o' mine is playin' for'ard for oor team. But let 'em allow all these officers aboord first--'ere's anither ane--listen tae 'im!"

But it was not an officer this time. It was a voice asking if any privileges were accorded a King's messenger. The guard at the door said certainly, but where was he? Everybody made way for the voice. He turned out to be a little man with a scraggy beard and large round spectacles.

The guard eyed him doubtfully. The King's messenger stood on his toes and whispered up into the guard's ear.

The guard looked down on him. "King's messenger! Go on with yer!" He shoved him back.

"Yes, garn with yer!" said Scotty, "but he's gained a guid half oor wi'

his King's-messenger talk. I think I'll hae tae be something important masel' sune."

The soldier with Scotty could speak French. He spoke it to a pretty young French girl and her mother who had been pressed up against them.

The mother had a new hat in a big paper box. Whenever the rush threatened to crush the hat-box, she would hold it high over her head till she could hold it no longer, when she let it get crushed.

Whenever the girl spoke to the other soldier Scotty would want to know what she said. "She's sairtainly pretty. What did she say that time, Tid?"

Tid kept to himself what she said. "It's a cut above the likes of you we're discussin'," said Tid.

"She'll be goin' to England to marry an English officer," said Scotty.

The girl whirled on him. "No. No Engleesh officier--a French officier!"

"I had a notion you'd spoil it," said Tid.

"Ma Gud," groaned Scotty. "I wonder, Tid, did she hear a' I said this nicht o' her, and ma lips no two feet frae her ear!"

The night was growing cooler. The girl's fur neck-piece slipped down from her shoulders. The mother had pa.s.sed her the hat-box, and the girl had no hand free for the neck-piece. Scotty put it back for her. She thanked him sweetly.

"You're no mad noo?" said Scotty. "I'll tak' a steady billet tae put it back." He took to slyly stroking the fur piece when he thought she could not see him.

A woman lost her pa.s.sport, but did not know it until she was about to be pa.s.sed through the door. Then she shrieked. She came back in the crowd to look for it. She had been standing in one spot for an hour--it must be there. She rushed to the spot, lit a match, and began to look under her feet. A man lit a match and began to look under his feet. Another man lit a match and began to look under his feet. We all lit matches and began to look under our feet.