Grey Tide In The East

by Andrew J. Heller

  Southampton and her two sister light cruisers had been shadowing the Allied German-Austrian-Italian squadron around the western Mediterranean for the better part of a month. The Allied fleet, under the command of German Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, was led by Souchon’s flagship, the battle cruiser Goeben, reputedly able to sink anything in the French Navy all by herself. Goeben was armed with a main battery of ten 11-inch Krupp naval rifles, and was rumoured to be capable of an astonishing 28-knot top speed. Keeping Goeben company were three Austrian dreadnoughts of the Tegettoff class: Prinz Eugen, Viribus Unitis and Tegettoff herself, all with 12-inch main batteries, and flank speeds greater than twenty knots, and three Cavour class dreadnoughts contributed by the Italian Regia Marina, each with thirteen 12-inch guns and protected by 10-inch armour belts.

  This powerful force was escorted by numerous cruisers, destroyers, torpedo boats and other auxiliaries. Souchon’s fleet had cruised along the coast of French North Africa as if it had taken a mortgage on the place, sailing from one French colonial port to another. Another, even more powerful fleet, composed entirely of German ships of the High Seas Fleet, under the command of Admiral Reinhard Scheer, cruised on the northern side of the Mediterranean, keeping the main French battle fleet penned up in their home port of Toulon.

  These Triple Alliance fleets were free to go wherever they wished in the Mediterranean and elsewhere without the slightest concern for what the Royal Navy might do. A neutral Great Britain had allowed Germany and her allies to dominate the much smaller French Navy both here and along France’s Atlantic ports. The latter, from Dunkirk on the English Channel all the way to Bayonne on the Bay of Biscay, were already cut off from the outside world by blockading German battle cruisers, just as the southern ports were interdicted by the massive squadrons under Scheer and Souchon.

  At each North African port visited by the Souchon’s fleet, events had followed an unvarying pattern. First, the German Admiral would send a torpedo boat under a flag of truce into the harbour. All ships in the port were ordered to come out within a short time limit, usually six hours. When the ships emerged under the guns of the Allied battleships, they were boarded by sailors from Souchon’s destroyers and cruisers. Neutral vessels were sent on their ways, while the French merchantmen were seized and taken by Allied prize crews to Italian, Austrian or German ports and the original crews were put ashore. After the harbour had been cleared of shipping, the Allied ships would bombard the defenceless port, destroying warehouses, wharves, dry docks and any other facilities that might be used for commerce, leaving behind burning ruins. The few French warships that had been trapped in the ports had not offered to challenge the Allied fleet’s overwhelming firepower but had been scuttled by their skippers to keep them from falling into the hands of the Germans.

  King-Hall was uncomfortable with his assignment on the Southampton, although he gave no outward sign of it. His unease was not caused by the weather, the ship or his fellow officers. The warm, calm Mediterranean Sea was certainly a pleasant change from the gales and icy winds of the Atlantic and the Channel. The Southampton was a fine ship, one of the most modern in the Royal Navy, well designed and maintained. His superior officers were amazingly easy to get on with (at least compared to the instructors at the Royal Naval Academy!), and impressively knowledgeable, competent and efficient. He considered himself very lucky to be able to serve on the same ship as Commodore Tyrwhitt, who was widely considered to be one of the most brilliant officers in the R.N., certain to be called up to the Admiralty soon. He could not even honestly say that the assignment itself was uninteresting.

  What bothered King-Hall was the feeling that the Royal Navy and England should be doing more than watching Souchon and his fleet dismantle the French North African ports. He felt that they should be helping the French, not just standing by and watching them get pummelled into submission.

  In any case, here in Tunis it seemed that the pattern was about to be broken. Here, the French commander was not going to give up without challenging the powerful Allied fleet.

  “What sort of information do we have on the French naval forces based in Tunis, Mr. King-Hall?” asked Commodore Tyrwhitt.

  The young officer pulled a notebook from a chart rack attached to the bulkhead. This book contained Naval Intelligence information on the naval strengths of the various Mediterranean Sea powers, from Spain in the west to Russia in the northeast.

  King-Hall paged through the book until he came to the entry for Tunis.

  “They have a squadron stationed here under Rear Admiral Emile DuPay. There are two armoured cruisers of the Edgar Quinet class: the Waldeck-Rousseau and the Edgar Quinet herself, with fourteen 7 ½ inch guns, rated at 23 knots…”

  “When were the Quinets put in service, around 1910 or1911?” interrupted Lieutenant-Commander Summers.

  “That’s right, sir,” responded King-Hall, still scanning the report, “1911 to be exact.”

  “Obsolete design, out of date before they were launched,” was Tyrwhitt’s comment. “What else have they got?”

  “Just a destroyer squadron, sir” the Sub-Lieutenant answered. “Five of them, Spahi class, launched between 1908 and 1911, with six…” he hesitated: “can this be right? It says they have six-gun, 6.5 centimetre main batteries? That’s only two and a half inches. Can they mean to send their men out to fight the German battleships with those popguns, sir?” King-Hall asked, appalled at the thought.

  “Evidently,” replied the Commodore. He fished a pipe from his pocket, stuffed it with a wad of shag from a leather pouch, then struck a match and lit up. “Keep in mind that our destroyers have four inch guns, which would not be a significant improvement in this kind of battle. A destroyer’s principal weapons against larger ships are its torpedoes, not its guns. The difficulty for the destroyer, of course, is getting within effective range to use the torpedoes before being sunk by gunfire.”

  Summers was still peering at the harbour entrance through his field glasses. “They’re coming out,” he announced.

  In another moment they could all see black clouds of smoke rising into the blue Mediterranean sky over the entrance to the harbour, as the coal-burning French squadron left Tunis and gallantly steamed out to attack the Allied fleet. Both the French and the Triple Alliance still used coal fuel for their ships; only Britain had switched to cleaner-burning and more efficient petroleum oil in their newer warships, such as Southampton.

  Through his binoculars, King-Hall could see the French ships emerging in single file, with the destroyers in the van, followed by the armoured cruisers. The Rear Admiral’s flag flew from the first cruiser to clear the harbour. Evidently, Admiral DuPay intended to conduct this battle in person.

  “Brave chap, there,” commented Tyrwhitt.

  It was a bit of hard luck for his men though, King-Hall thought. And what would it prove if DuPay’s bravery ended by losing all his ships and men in this suicidal attack? It certainly would not help his country win the war.

  As the last French ship cleared the harbour entrance, King-Hall saw the orange winks of the muzzle flashes from the Allied big guns and seconds later heard the booms of the eleven- and twelve-inch main batteries. The Allied ships were still far out of the maximum range of the armoured cruisers’ main batteries when great fountaining splashes thrown up by misses from the big shells began to straddle the doomed French squadron.

  King-Hall was not especially impressed by the accuracy of the Allied fire, in spite of its overwhelming volume. The first salvo did not score any hits, but the Frenchmen’s good fortune did not continue for very long. He saw two of the low, narrow destroyers hit by large-calibre shells. The first destroyer was struck amidships, at the base of the bridge. The bridge was enveloped in a fireball, then the ship careened out of formation and drifted to a dead stop, burning from stem to stern.

  The end of the second destroyer was more spectacular. There was an immense blast and a huge, hellish ball of smoke and flame rose from the sea. When the black
cloud drifted away, the ship was gone, vanished. Only a few bits of flotsam drifted on the water where there had been a live ship seconds earlier.

  King-Hall saw the muzzle flashes from the guns of the French armoured cruisers trying to strike back at their tormentors. They were still hopelessly out of range: the splashes of their shells were at least a thousand yards short of the nearest Allied ships.

  Now the Allied dreadnoughts began to find the range of the French armoured cruisers. The lead cruiser, flying the Admiral’s flag, was hit three times in rapid succession. The third shell knocked off the French flagship’s bow and she slowed to a dead stop. At that point, the stationary armoured cruiser became a floating target for an avalanche of shellfire. After she was hit at least four more times, her stern lifted high in the air and she sank by the bow in less than a minute.

  All the remaining French ships were now on fire, with the exception of one destroyer that seemed to enjoy a charmed life. Huge waterspouts of near misses repeatedly straddled the little ship, but somehow she continued on undamaged. Moreover, Admiral Souchon had been careless in the deployment of his overwhelming force, and the French destroyer had somehow cleared the Allied picket line and appeared to be escaping to the west. The destroyer, still dodging for all she was worth, laid down smoke and made off in the direction of Malta at her best speed.

  “Good luck and Godspeed,” murmured Tyrwhitt to the fleeing destroyer.

  The remaining French ships were now burning wrecks. Allied destroyers came in close to fish survivors out of the water and administer the coup de grace by sinking the flaming hulks with torpedoes.

  The entire battle had taken less than an hour. Now the victors completed their task, as the big guns quickly reduced the port facilities of Tunis to rubble and ashes. King-Hall hoped that everyone had had time to leave the area before the bombardment.

  Dinner that night in the officer’s mess was quieter than usual. King-Hall was lost in his thoughts and did not say a word during the meal. After the meal, over brandy, Commodore Tyrwhitt said, “This was your first experience observing combat, Mr. King-Hall. Do you care to share your thoughts with us?”

  “Yes, sir, if you wish to hear them,” replied the Sub-Lieutenant. “At first I was wondering what I would have done had I been in that French admiral’s place today. Was anything to be gained that could justify the sacrifice of his men by what was, after all, nothing but suicide?”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t his decision,” speculated the Executive Officer, who was listening closely. “The French Admiralty may have been under pressure from Paris to end the string of surrenders, and fight it out. In which case, poor old… DePay, was it?... may have been under orders from his Admiralty to sacrifice his force to show that France was still fighting, or some such thing.”

  “That did occur to me, after a while,” King-Hall agreed. “I wonder if that was the true explanation. I suppose we’ll never know.” He fell silent for a moment, and then he went on.

  “After that, I began thinking about what will happen down here in the Mediterranean after the war.” He turned to Commodore Tyrwhitt. “Sir, no matter what happens, when the war ends this Sea is going to be under the control of the Triple Alliance. We’ll still have our squadron in Alexandria and our base in Malta, but the Germans, Italians and Austrians together will have a much bigger force than any the Royal Navy can commit here. The French Navy will be out of the game; it practically is now. So if the Kaiser and his chums decide to push us out of the Mediterranean…”

  “You left out the Turks,” added Lieutenant-Commander Summers. “You will recall that they have two shiny new dreadnoughts we built for them and just delivered to Constantinople last month.”

  The Exec was referring to the Reshadieh and Sultan Osman, modern dreadnoughts built in Britain for the Ottoman Empire, with thirteen and a half inch main batteries, and top speeds of twenty-one knots. Since the Turks were much more likely to be found at the side of Germany and her allies than with Great Britain in the near future, Summers was suggesting that these two ships should also be included in King-Hall’s calculations of Britain’s future enemies.

  “I agree with you, Mr. Summers, that we should expect to see the Turks added into the scales against us,” said the Commodore Tyrwhitt. “Mr. King-Hall, I am pleased when I see a young officer who takes the time to think about the larger world outside his immediate duties and the ship to which he is assigned. You are not the first person to have pondered the dangers of the situation that you have so succinctly outlined for us. A number of our colleagues who can see further than the view from the bridge of a warship have given thought to these very matters. My own view is that no alliance lasts forever, so that the present dominance of the German coalition in the Mediterranean is unlikely to become a permanent reality. Italy and Austria, yes and Turkey too, have all had their little and not so little disagreements in the past, and they undoubtedly will again in the future. I do not expect the current alliance system to outlast the war by very many years. In any case, Mr. King-Hall, you may take my word for it when I tell you that in the Admiralty and the Foreign Office, better minds than any of ours have been considering a post-war world in which the Teutonic powers are victorious. I daresay that they are considering it at Number 10 Downing Street as well. The dangers are not, perhaps so very hard to imagine, but guarding against them, ah, that is more difficult. If this war goes on as it has begun, I fear that our nation and our Empire will be in grave danger at its end. We will need all our wisdom and all our courage to survive the perilous time that I believe will follow. Thank you, gentlemen, for an interesting evening.” He rose from the table and his officers all came to their feet as well. “Gentlemen, to the King,” he said, downing the remaining brandy in his glass. All the officers echoed, “To the King!” and emptied their glasses in honour of King George V.

  That night, King-Hall had difficulty falling asleep for the first time since he had come aboard the Southampton. He lay on his back in his bunk in the darkness, his fingers laced behind his head.

  The entire situation was just wrong, he decided. The Royal Navy should be blockading the German ports, keeping the High Seas fleet cowering in Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven, carrying out its traditional duty for the Empire, not sitting at anchor in Scapa Flow while Germany and her friends blithely won control of the seas. King-Hall had been so taken by the words of the great American naval historian, Alfred Thayer Mahan, that he had committed them to memory. Sea power was “the possession of that overbearing power on the sea which drives the enemy’s flag from it, or allows it to appear only as a fugitive by controlling the great common…”

  At the price of hundreds of ships and thousands of men, in great sea battles from Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar onward, the Royal Navy had won dominance of the sea, defeating every rival that had arisen to challenge it. Was all that sacrifice, courage and tradition to be thrown away so that Germany, a nation without the slightest naval tradition, could displace the greatest navy in history?

  The British Empire was, when you came down to it, not much more than an idea, and an odd idea at that: a collection of disparate lands around the globe containing a hundred or more races and cultures, speaking God only knew how many languages, ruled for the benefit of all by the monarch of small island in Northern Europe. Only two things gave that idea substance, one symbolic and one very real.

  The King was the symbol, the living embodiment of the Empire. The substantial one was the Royal Navy, whose control of the world’s oceans linked together far-flung territories from the Hudson Bay, Canada to Port Stanley in the Falklands, from Delhi, India to Kingston, Jamaica. The Empire’s very existence was dependent on the Royal Navy’s unchallenged supremacy of the sea. The British Empire should be in this war, not to save France and Russia but because to sit it out was to allow the German challenger to believe that the Royal Navy was no longer to be feared, that Germany was a match for Great Britain on the sea. And that was more dangerous than the temporary weakness in the
Mediterranean Sea they had debated over dinner. It might very well prove to be fatal to the British Empire.

  Chapter Eight: EAST OF WARSAW, POLAND, OCTOBER 19, 1914

  The List Regiment, along with the rest of the 6th Bavarian Division, had been transferred from the Sixth Army in Alsace to a new assignment with Hausen’s Third Army in Poland. After four days in transit, the 6th Company ended billeted in a village so tiny and impoverished that it did not seem to have a name. It consisted mainly of a few filthy, thatch-roofed log cabins straggling along either side of the main street - a dirt, or rather mud, road. There was also a larger, although equally ramshackle, two-story building that seemed to combine the functions of store, post office and city hall. This was taken over as the company Headquarters.

  The only other habitable structures were stone barns behind three of the (comparatively) more substantial houses. The barns were quickly occupied by the German soldiers, as they were more solidly built than the houses and smelled better. The inhabitants had fled before the rumour of the approaching invaders, taking with them their miserable possessions, their skinny goats and scrawny chickens, leaving the village a ghost town by the time the 6th Company entered.