The Two-Headed Eagle поп-3

by Джон Биггинс

  I sent out a hurried SOS message giving our position and saying that we were being forced to ditch by engine failure. Then I remembered the bombs. I had leant overboard at the start of our foot’s chase to remove the nosecaps and set the fuses. The calcium fuses could not be made safe again once they had been armed. The smallest splash of salt water would deto­nate them, so they had to be dropped before we landed. I placed my hand on the bomb-release levers. Then I saw it, about a mile ahead: a low, shad­owy shape obscured by drizzle with a smoking funnel amidships, head­ing west. My heart jumped for joy: it must be the torpedo-boat. Nechledil turned towards it as I fired a signal rocket to attract their attention, then pulled the bomb releases and felt the aeroplane lift momentarily as the bombs fell away to throw up great mounds of spray astern. We certainly needed the lift: the engine was coughing and faltering now as boiling water spumed out of the radiator safety valve above us. We would try to come down in the water beyond them so that the slight wind would blow us towards and not away from them as they lowered their dinghy.

  It was not until we were almost above our would-be rescuer that I realised something was badly wrong: that it was not a torpedo-boat at all, let alone an Austrian one, and that what I had taken to be signal flares were in fact tracer rounds from a machine gun being fired up at us— fortunately with very little accuracy. A few bullets flicked through the wings as we skimmed over the mystery vessel to land on the sea about eight hundred metres beyond. As I turned to see who on earth they were I saw that it was in fact a steam-powered submarine which had now lowered its funnel and was in the act of submerging. Within ten seconds the thing had vanished like a ghost, leaving only a patch of foam to prove that it had ever existed. So that was it: the submarine we had set out to hunt had been a submarine after all, one of the large French steam-driven boats of the Ventose class which had been operating in the Adriatic now for two years with somewhat patchy results. Nechledil and I sat down and awaited developments. Would they leave the scene as quickly as they could, not bothering about us? Or would they realise that we had ditched and come back up to take us prisoner?

  In the event they did neither. The submarine had been submerged for only a minute or so when suddenly it reappeared in almost the same place, bows breaking surface in a tumult of spray, submerging and then bobbing back up again. We watched fascinated. Within a few seconds the entire forward section of the submarine was sticking out of the water at forty-five degrees. Soon it was almost vertical, like a sporting whale. It hung there for a good two minutes, pirouetting slowly, until the forward hatch burst open to cascade human figures scrambling into the water. They did so among an evil-looking yellowish cloud which I knew must be chlorine coming from the batteries as the seawater poured in. A minute later and it was all over: the bows had disappeared beneath the surface in a boiling heap of air bubbles, leaving only flotsam and the heads of swimmers to mark its final exit. Had we been the agents of its destruc­tion? Surely not: our bombs had fallen into the sea a good thousand metres short. No, all that I could imagine was that they had panicked as they saw us coming towards them and had dived with a hatch left open. It was an easy enough thing to do in any submarine, and doubly so in these steam-powered boats with their telescopic funnel and numerous ventila­tor trunks. I had good cause to know about these things, since I myself had narrowly escaped drowning aboard just such a vessel, the Reamur, during a visit to Toulon before the war, when a piece of driftwood had jammed beneath the funnel hatch during a demonstration dive. Apart from that, what I particularly remembered about these French boats was the nonchalant, hair-raising disregard for any sort of consistency in their design. Some valves, I recalled, opened anti-clockwise, others clockwise; some electrical switches worked down, others up; certain cocks closed with the handle parallel to the pipe, others across it, others still at an angle to it. Sailing these contraptions must have been hazardous enough in peacetime: what they were like to operate in a war zone hardly bore thinking about. But what would become of her crew, swimming now in the sea thirty-odd miles from land? We had inadvertently sunk them, but now we were their only hope of staying afloat long enough to be picked up. The breeze was drifting us gradually towards them. As we drew near I hoped that they would understand the situation and not simply slake their desire for vengeance upon us. Just in case, Nechledil and I drew our pistols.

  As it turned out we need not have worried about being lynched. In fact when we finally drifted among them we found that they barely noticed our arrival, being too busy trying to lynch one of their own number, the unfortunate diving coxswain whom they clearly blamed for having dived the boat with a window left open, so to speak. Fortunately for him it is far from easy to beat up a man swimming in the sea—especially when his assailants are also treading water. So Nechledil and I laid about with our paddles at the wet heads around us, then took hold of the wretched man and dragged him aboard. It was not until we had placed him safely on the bows of the boat in front of the cockpit that we set about rescuing the others: twenty-three of them in all, the boat’s entire complement of two officers and twenty-two men.

  Our most immediate concern was to prevent them from swamping us by clambering aboard all at once. Nechledil, whose French was excellent, explained the position to them and beseeched them to behave sensibly in the interests of us all. They did, and we took them aboard one by one, distributing them carefully around the flying-boat to spread the strain upon its flimsy hull and wings. Lohner flying-boats were sturdily built as aeroplanes went in those days; but getting on for a tonne of wet human­ity was a load that they had never been designed to carry. In the end the best that we could do was to sit six on each of the lower wings inboard of the floats, huddled together for warmth like swallows on a telegraph wire. Six more perched around the cockpit where the hull was broadest, and four were seated on the hull aft of the wings. The space beneath the engine was used to lay out two engine-room ratings who had taken in too much chlorine and were not feeling very well at all. When the loading was finished the boat sat evenly in the water, though very low. It would do for the time being; but if even a moderate sea got up before help arrived the aeroplane would break up and we would all drown for sure.

  I sent out a distress message in clear. The wireless was normally driven by a wind-powered dynamo. We had a small battery to allow us to transmit while standing still, but it was too small for more than three repetitions of the message “L149 ditched 44.27N by 13.55E with crew of French submarine aboard. Send help urgently.” It would be heard I knew. But by whom? And who would reach us first?

  While we sat waiting to be picked up there was not much for us to do but exchange introductions with our dripping guests. The submarine, I learnt, had been the Laplace, based at Brindisi. The crew were as surly as one might have expected in the distressing circumstances, but at least the Captain did as courtesy demanded and shook hands with me to in­troduce himself. I would have expected no less: he was plainly a very aristocratic sort of Frenchman indeed and was not at all averse to letting me know it. His name was Lieutenant de Vaisseau the Chevalier Dagobert St Jurienne Greoux-Chasseloup d’Issigny: about the same age as myself or a bit younger and very aloof indeed. I sensed that he was not much liked by his crew, and that he had no great liking for them either. He sat with his legs dangling over the cockpit side and talked with me while wring­ing out his trousers with as much refinement as one can manage in such circumstances.

  “Enfin, mon cher lieutenant,” he said, “while I must congratulate you on your rare chivalry and Christian spirit in landing to rescue me and my crew, I regret very much to tell you that you are now our prison­ers. However, do not despair: I shall personally contact Admiral Boue de Lapeyrere at Brindisi to make sure that you are courteously treated, and I shall make every effort to see that you and your gallant companion are given parole. You will find I think that even in this frightful war, towns like Limoges are far from disagreeable places in which to be held captive. But tell me, are you also a noblema
n? I understand that most Austrian officers are.”

  “Only by recent creation. I am a Knight of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, but my father is only a Czech postal official I’m afraid.” He sniffed a little and looked down his nose at me. I continued though. “However, my dear Lieutenant d’Issigny, I am afraid that I have to inform you that you are in fact our prisoners rather than the other way around. An Austrian torpedo-boat was on its way even before we sighted you, so I imagine that we shall all be picked up shortly. I am grateful though for your concern for Fregattenleutnant Nechledil and myself, and I shall do my utmost to see that you and your men are treated with all the hospitality at our disposal. By the way though—I am afraid that I must set you right on one small point: we did not sink your vessel. We mistook you for one of our torpedo-boats and were trying to land. The bomb-splashes you saw were when I jettisoned our bombs before landing. I imagine that you sank because you dived with a hatch left open. I was once a submarine captain myself and I commiserate with you: these things happen. In fact I myself was very nearly drowned aboard one of your steam-driven boats in Toulon harbour back in 1910 in very similar circumstances. If you ask me it’s an idiotic system for driving a submarine and I feel sorry for you fellows having to sail aboard such vessels.”

  He looked more than a little concerned at this news and, after mum­bling that it had not been like that at all, he set to work with a will on wringing out his clothes.

  We soon gathered that the Laplace had not been a happy ship, too long at Brindisi and far too long without a refit. We learnt as much by talking with her Second Officer, a fellow called Handelsman. Handelsman had been the Laplace’s Second Officer since before the war and clearly felt that, being a Jew and a staunch republican, he had been unfairly passed over for command in favour of the aristocratic, Catholic and probably cryptoroyalist d’Issigny, even though the latter was a poor leader of men in small ships and had paid very little attention to training. I gathered that such things were far from uncommon in the French Navy, which was manned largely by Catholic Bretons and which had consequently been viewed with very little favour by the anti-clericals of the Third Republic.

  “Our matelots, you understand, they are very devot,” Handelsman had confided in me. I replied that so far as I could see, with boats like the Laplace and captains like d’Issigny that was probably just as well. As for the matelots themselves, they seemed a thoroughly dispirited lot even af­ter making allowance for their recent narrow escape from drowning and their present plight sitting dripping wet in the middle of the Adriatic with nothing to support them but the flimsy structure of an enemy flying-boat. They sat and glowered at us with their glum, heavy-moustached faces, and nothing seemed capable of cheering them up: not even Nechledil’s well-meaning attempts to generate a little animal warmth by getting them singing the “Marseillaise” and “Sambre et Meuse.” All that we could offer them by way of hospitality was a single boiled sweet each from the aeroplane’s emergency ration pack, and a capful of schnapps from my hipflask.

  This merely seemed to increase their dejection—until Nechledil started to sing a song which he had learnt some years before at a Sokol summer youth camp among emigrant Czech miners in the Nord coalfield. It was called “Revenant de Nantes” and seemed to be a ditty peculiar to the French Army, which was perhaps why our devout Catholic matelots appeared never to have heard it before. It certainly did the trick of raising spirits, as he sang each verse and then taught it to them. There were about seventy-five of them I think, each of them more luminously bawdy than the last as the song wound its picaresque way among blond-haired farmers’ daughters, cuckolded station masters, rapacious widows and lascivious cures. It was all tremendous fun, and soon our sailors were steaming away nicely as they roared out each chorus with the utmost zest. When it was over Nechledil bowed modestly to a round of applause and sat down in the pilot’s seat. I wondered as he did so whether this was quite the sort of thing that the Sokol movement’s founders had in mind when they set out to improve the moral and spiritual tone of Czech youth.

  It was about 3:00 p.m. that we saw the smoke on the horizon—to westward. That, we realised with sinking hearts, meant a French warship, and for Nechledil and me a spell of indefinite duration in a prison camp. True, it was better than being drowned, but I still felt a certain chagrin that rescuing these Frenchmen had landed us in that predicament. If we had come down on an empty expanse of sea we would have sent a distress signal in code instead of giving our position in clear and would have been picked up in due course by our own people. But there: the fortunes of war I supposed. With heavy heart I loaded a red flare into the rocket pistol and fired it into the air, almost hearing as I did so the sound of a key turning in a lock. I would probably survive the war now, but how long would it be before I saw my child?

  Our rescuer hove into sight to a loud cheer from our guests. As I expected it was a French two-funnelled destroyer: Branlebas- class. As it approached I saw that d’Issigny and his maltreated diving coxswain were deep in a whispered consultation. Twenty minutes later a whaler from the destroyer had come alongside and the Laplace’s crew were being loaded on to it, one by one so as not to overbalance our aeroplane. Nechledil and I were the last to leave as the French prepared to take the machine in tow. I had my cigarette lighter ready to set her on fire and swim for it, but the French had thought of that possibility. Three men with rifles kept us covered, and when we boarded the whaler we had to do so with our hands on our heads.

  I saluted the destroyer’s captain at the head of the gangway, and shook hands with him in as curt a fashion as I thought the occasion demanded. Then Nechledil and I were politely relieved of our pistols and escorted below to the wardroom. So this was it at last: prisoners of war. But I supposed that it could have been worse. At least we were prisoners of the French and not the Italians. I suspected that life as a prisoner in France might not be quite the gentlemanly eighteenth-century affair that Lieutenant the Chevalier d’Issigny had made it out to be; but at worst a prison camp could hardly be more lacking in amenities than Lussin Piccolo, while as to the food, I was sure that it would be a good deal better. But would we be prisoners of the French? That thought preoccupied me as I sat there in the wardroom under armed guard, gratefully drinking the coffee laced with brandy which a steward had brought me. Imprisonment on parole in Bizerta or Toulouse might be quite agreeable, I thought. But suppose that they handed us over to the Italians after all? My old U-Boat comrade Hugo Falkhausen had been taken prisoner with his entire crew earlier in 1916 when his boat had been caught in nets by British armed trawlers in the Otranto Straits. The British had handed him over to the Italians and since then his accommodation and diet had been so poor that he had been bombarding the Red Cross and the Swiss government—even the Vatican—with letters of complaint. I wondered also whether and how soon I would be able to get a telegram off to tell Elisabeth that I was safe. The alarm would have been raised by now at Lussin and if we were not found by nightfall tomorrow we would be posted missing. In her present condition I was anxious to spare her any upset.

  These thoughts were interrupted as an orderly entered: I was cor­dially requested to attend an interview with the commanding officer. The Captain of the destroyer Bombardier was a portly little man in his fif­ties called Kermadec-Ploufragan: a Breton like most French seamen. He invited me to sit down and offered me a cigar, which I gladly accepted. For some reason he insisted on speaking with me in English, though my French was reasonably good. It was only as the conversation progressed that I realised that this might have something to do with the presence of a fusilier marin standing sentry on the other side of the door.

  “My most dear Lieutenant,” he began, “Lieutenant d’Issigny has just related to me of your quite incredible chivalry: that you sink his subma­rine after long and bitter struggles, then you land on the water to rescue him and his equipage even though you yourselves will become prison­ers.” I was about to point out that we had not sunk the Lap
lace after long and bitter struggles, that on the contrary, so far as I could make out the Laplace had sunk herself through incompetence. But he went on before I could speak. “Yes, my dearest Lieutenant, it is indeed a most sad and piti­able thing that yourself and your pilot should have become captive solely because of your honourable and gentle behaviour.”

  “Captain, think nothing of it. These are the fortunes of war I am afraid. If our torpedo-boat had found us before you did then Lieutenant d’Issigny and his crew would now be our prisoners. Lieutenant Nechledil and I can at least console ourselves that we managed to rescue twenty-four of our enemies from drowning once they could no longer wage war on us. We are both seafarers like yourself and regard ourselves as waging war on the French government, not on the human race.”

  Kermadec almost wiped away a tear at these words. “Ah, my dear Lieutenant, your noble words, they move me so deeply. Such distinguished sentiments. We French have always considered you Austrians to be a civilised people like ourselves, not beast-brutes and savages like les sales Boches. Your actions today confirm me only in this. But . . .” his face brightened, “but courage; it must not that we despair ourselves of the situation. There may yet be a solution.”

  “A solution, Captain? I’m afraid that I don’t understand. Lieutenant Nechledil and I are your prisoners and that’s all there is to be said on the matter.”