The Lion at Sea

by Max Hennessy

  Several terrified rats began to bound across the square, like symbols of doom, and as the second shell kicked up the centre of the square in flying earth and stones, they were flung through the air by the blast like scraps of torn rag. The explosion came like the flash of a crimson flag, and yellow smoke curled as if it were the flirt of a dancer’s skirt. Somewhere out of sight a woman began to scream in a harsh monotonous howl, then there was another bang and the clatter of flying tiles and the screaming stopped abruptly. This third explosion was so close they could feel the force of it against the walls of the warehouse. A fountain of smoke and rubble rose from the corner of the square, and a shower of stones and dirt came down along the wall. A house fell outwards, leaning over the street, unbroken, and seemed to stay like that for the whole of a second before it crumpled and dropped in the road in a confusion of tiles and broken bricks. From the centre, a cloud of dust rose, spreading like a curtain, and the window frames rattled. Unexpectedly, because they had believed the little houses around them were all empty, a door opened and a woman with a child began to run across the square.

  Kelly began to shout. ‘Come back! Come back!’

  But a fourth shell landed a few yards from the third and, though it didn’t do much good, the shrapnel whipping across the square accounted immediately for the running figures. When they reached them, there appeared to be no bodily harm that they could see but the two lay silent, so close together, face to face, their fingers were touching.

  As they carried the two bodies into one of the houses and laid them neatly on a bed alongside each other, the need to do something about the exhausted men under their charge became urgent.

  ‘We’ve got to dig up some sort of boat and bring it round here,’ Kelly said. ‘Then we might get ’em to struggle into it. Let’s see what we can find.’

  There was a building on fire beyond the other corner of the square and, as they watched, the smoke grew thicker, dirty flecks of carbon drifting in the air beyond a ruby glow of flame. A little scorched breeze came, puffing up dust into the quivering air. A cardboard notice in the window of a house that said, ironically, ‘Welcome to the British, our saviours,’ flapped, then drooped again in the heat. From a long way off, to the east, a rumble came, less like artillery than the constant fall of heavy cases.

  A few more Belgian stragglers appeared and they said that the German army was already in the city in large numbers. Kelly could still see Belgian tricolours about, however, and was inclined to disbelieve them. Then suddenly they heard the clatter of hooves and they slipped hurriedly into an empty house alongside and slammed the door behind them. Through a dusty window, they saw horsemen with lances and strange flat-topped headgear passing the end of the street into the next square.

  ‘Uhlans!’

  The German cavalry, about fifty strong, clattered past, the pennants on their lances fluttering. Behind them came a squadron of hussars, strangely old-fashioned-looking in their frogged tunics and wide furred busbies. Behind the hussars was a long column of Belgian prisoners, many of them wounded, followed by German wagons and two or three field guns. As the column clattered across the cobbles, a Belgian who, judging by the scarf of office he wore, was an official of some sort, appeared and one of the Germans dismounted and handed him a sheet of paper which seemed to be a proclamation. Almost at once a drooping Belgian flag was hauled down and the German black eagle hoisted in its place. Companies of infantry began to file into the square, a monotony of field grey except for the red regimental numbers painted on the front of their helmet covers. They were so close they could hear their new leather boots and the harness of the officers’ horses creaking.

  Then a car with trunks strapped on behind honked its way through, carrying two monocled staff officers, and orderlies holding drawn pistols. More Germans followed, in good order and at an odd slow pace, marching up the street, staring at the closed shutters and the wreckage their own guns had caused.

  They were singing – ‘Lieb Vaterland magst ruhig sein, Fest steht und teu die Wacht am Rhein–’ and the voices came steadily to the beat of their feet in the hoarse confident words that Kelly had last heard in Kiel. By this time the square was becoming choked with vehicles and soldiers. As fast as it emptied on one side it was refilled from the other, and an orderly stood by a statue, holding four horses, his mouth open, bored and apathetic, and it occurred to Kelly that only a man sure of victory could look like that. A group of cyclists were erecting telephone wires across the end of the road and more men were tossing sandbags from the windows of a hotel, where they’d been jammed in the hope of a last stand. They were plumping into the street in clouds of dust, and nearby a soldier was setting up tables outside a café and German officers were already taking seats and calling for someone to bring them coffee.

  ‘I suspect it’s time we weren’t here,’ Kelly muttered, and they moved through the shabby little house, looking for a way out.

  Forcing open a back door into a small yard containing a mangle and a tin bath, they climbed the wall into a set of allotments, and, reaching the road, began to run: Back at the warehouse, they found the sound of the Germans arriving had wakened sleeping men who were sitting up in ones and twos and reaching for rifles. Kelly gestured to them to remain where they were and the Marine sergeant went round them, pressing the over-eager back to the floor.

  All night they remained hidden in the warehouse. From time to time groups of refugees struggled across the square, all heading west, and the rumble of artillery went on all next day. Occasionally it grew louder in a deep drub-drub of guns, an incessant wavering tumult of steel and explosive, on the outskirts of the city. Occasionally, they saw Germans, one group of whom halted at the far side of the square, pulling up with a whine of limber joints and axles and the shudder of wheels on the road. As the jostling of the trucks ceased, it left a curious silence, in which the distant rumble seemed louder than the men and the stamping horses and the creak and jingle of harness. Field kitchens arrived to cook a meal, the smell drifting into the warehouse to set the hungry Britons licking their lips.

  ‘I could eat a mangy pup,’ Rumbelo said wistfully.

  As dusk came once more, Rumbelo and Kelly set off again to the waterside. A last sword-cut of yellow light silhouetted the buildings and the columns of smoke climbing up over the stricken city. There was no sign of resistance now but also no sign of the Germans in great strength. It was clear time was running short, however, because eventually German naval forces would arrive to take over the port. Together they climbed on to several deserted ships, but it was all too obvious that the naval officer the Marine sergeant had told them about had been aboard, with his engineers and his Boy Scout, and their cylinders hung in split and shining wreckage.

  ‘Can’t we rig a sail or something, sir?’ Rumbelo asked. ‘Or pinch a ship’s boat?’

  ‘As a last resort. But I’m responsible for about a hundred and fifty men now and I want something bigger than that.’

  They decided to separate and meet back at the warehouse. The streets were dark when Kelly returned and, as the eyes all swung to him as he slipped through the door, he shook his head silently.

  Rumbelo hadn’t returned and Kelly waited impatiently, wondering what had happened to him. Nobody had any cigarettes left now and they were all hungry, dirty and tired. By the time Rumbelo had been gone for an hour, Kelly began to wonder if he’d lost his way, and when another hour passed he began to worry that he’d been caught by a splinter from one of the shells the Germans were dropping into the city and was lying wounded in a doorway somewhere. He was just about to set off to find him when Rumbelo appeared, his eyes excited.

  ‘Sir, I’ve found a fishing boat! One of them wooden jobs! Like a Lowestoft trawler, only much bigger with an engine. She was full of soldiers but they’ve gone into the town. There’s only a couple of sailors and perhaps a couple of soldiers left with her. We ought to be able to t
ake her over. She’s only a few streets away.’

  Kelly nodded. ‘Right, Rumbelo Let’s see what we can do. Let’s have that stoker off the pinnace.’ He turned to the Marine sergeant. ‘I want half a dozen men you can rely on. And, for God’s sake, see that everybody’s kept awake so that as soon as you hear from us you can get ’em moving. Quick!’

  ‘Right, sir. Think we’re going to make it home?’

  ‘We’re going to have a bloody good try,’ Kelly said. ‘Being taken prisoner’s a rotten way to start a war.’

  Followed by Rumbelo with his half-dozen men armed with rifles, they crept out close to the walls. The streets were silent with the silence of death, though they could still hear the cracking of shells in the distance.

  Occasionally, they came across the bodies of Belgian soldiers lying in the road covered with greatcoats, capes or groundsheets, their limbs decently composed, their great boots sticking up in ungainly fashion, and once two men sitting by a wall, killed by blast, a startled look on their darkening faces.

  Rumbelo pointed, ‘Down the next alley, sir.’

  At the end of the alley, there was a wharf made of sleepers and alongside it a wooden trawler. It carried German markings and had obviously been sailed round from the Ems. There were two German soldiers in spiked helmets covered with canvas on the quayside, their backs to the town.

  ‘I can get one, sir,’ Rumbelo said, ‘if you can get the other.’ He unshipped the bayonet on the rifle he carried and signed to Kelly to do the same. ‘One ’and over his mouth, sir, and in with it. Think you can do it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope to God you can, sir.’

  Kelly didn’t understand what he meant but, as Rumbelo gave the word and they ran out quietly, he clapped a hand over the German’s mouth and lifted the bayonet – only to find he couldn’t use it.

  ‘In with it, sir!’ Rumbelo hissed and Kelly saw that Rumbelo’s victim was already stretched on the floor, writhing.

  Swallowing, he thrust the bayonet home between the German’s ribs and felt the resistance as it penetrated flesh, then the German stopped struggling and slid through his hands to the ground. In the light of the flames, Kelly saw he was only a boy, no more than eighteen or so, with staring blue eyes and a mouth that opened and shut like a goldfish out of water.

  Sickened, he turned aside to vomit, and Rumbelo’s hand came down on his shoulder like a swinging girder. ‘Better him than you, sir,’ he said.

  As Kelly pulled himself together, Rumbelo watched with approval. He’d been brought up in a much harder school than Dartmouth but he could recognise courage when he saw it. In his time, he’d met plenty of officers and the best of them were invariably those with the tradition of service in their blood. They were often bastards, but they knew where their duty lay.

  ‘Better get a move on, sir,’ he murmured.

  ‘Yes.’ With streaming eyes, his stomach still heaving, Kelly waved to the other men and indicated the trawler. ‘Spread out. No shooting. We don’t want to raise an alarm. And let’s have the stoker closed up.’

  Jumping aboard, almost at once they came face to face with a German sailor who appeared abruptly through a hatch. He was grinning, as though someone had been talking to him, and the smile was wiped off his face at once as he saw the British sailors. Then Kelly’s rifle came round and, as the butt cracked against his head, he slid back down the ladder.

  ‘After him, quick,’ Kelly snapped, jumping through the hatch. At the bottom of the ladder, he saw another German sailor snatching something from a bunk and, as he saw a gleaming knife, he decided that it was his turn to feel what cold steel was like. But Rumbelo’s rifle roared through the hatch and the German fell back, his chest covered with blood.

  ‘Sorry about that, sir,’ Rumbelo apologised. ‘Didn’t have time for nothing else. Nobody would probably hear it in here, though.’

  ‘That’s all right, Rumbelo,’ Kelly said. ‘I think you’ve just saved my life.’

  ‘Makes us all square, sir.’

  A third German was found in the galley and, with the unconscious man Kelly had hit with his rifle, he was pushed into the hold, and three British sailors crammed the German caps with their fluttering ribbons on to their heads.

  ‘Send a man to those chaps on the quay,’ Kelly said. ‘Cut off their shoulder tags and collar numerals and search ’em for papers. They’ll probably help Intelligence. And let’s have someone off to the sergeant to bring down his men.’

  Watching in the tension, listening to the stoker below deck cursing the unfamiliar engines and the crack of shells dropping two or three streets away, Kelly tried hard to remain calm. Rumbelo appeared, carrying a spiked pickelhaube, a fistful of shoulder tags and papers, and two German tunics, He was wearing another spiked helmet on his bullet head.

  ‘Looks like a tit on a mountain,’ Kelly said.

  Rumbelo handed him the second helmet. ‘Better put that on, sir,’ he suggested. ‘As we’re going out, we might meet some more coming in.’

  A few minutes later, the straggling column of exhausted men appeared round the corner, moving in little limping rushes, the man with the union jack at their head. Then the stoker appeared from the shadows. ‘She’s got a head of steam up, sir,’ he reported. ‘I’ll be waiting for the telegraphs.’

  They crammed the exhausted soldiers and sailors aboard. They didn’t want to go below, preferring to meet danger with their heads above the deck, but Kelly insisted and they got them all into the hold in the end, except for a few whom he made lie down on the deck. ‘If anybody sticks his head up until I tell him,’ he said, ‘I’ll hit him with a marlin spike.’

  Going to the tiny wheelhouse, he set one of Norseman’s seamen on the wheel and leaned from the window.

  ‘Let go aft.’

  ‘All gone aft, sir.’

  ‘Right. Slow ahead.’

  As the little wooden trawler began to move forward, they saw half a dozen more small vessels of the same type heading towards them. Kelly saw the helmsman’s face grow taut.

  ‘Here come their pals, Rumbelo,’ he said. ‘Keep well away from ’em, helmsman. Make those helmets and caps conspicuous, Rumbelo.’

  But Rumbelo had already seen the trawlers and was struggling into a German tunic dragged off one of the dead men. A moment later he handed the second through the wheelhouse window to Kelly.

  ‘If anybody lifts his head, don’t hesitate.’

  ‘God ’elp ’em if they try, sir.’

  As the approaching trawlers drew nearer, a man on the first one shouted across the water.

  ‘Hoch der Kaiser!’ Kelly yelled back the only German he had ever picked up in Kiel. ‘Guten abend, meine fräulein. Auf Wiedersehen.’

  Rumbelo shouted a few ‘hochs’ and the Germans in the two trawlers waved as they passed, heading for the wharf.

  ‘Right, Rumbelo,’ Kelly said. ‘Here we go! Full speed ahead! Slip down and see if everything’s all right with the engine room.’

  Rumbelo came back a little later, grinning. ‘Everything’s fine aft, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve also found some food and fags. I think these chaps were bringing rations for their advanced elements. I’ve got some of the lads opening tins of sausages. When can they come up on deck?’

  ‘When we’ve cleared Antwerp and not before. And pass the word for that union jack. Let’s have it at the masthead in case one of our own ships decides to try a pot shot at us.’

  Two hours later they were at the mouth of the Scheldt. The compass didn’t seem to be working and Kelly eyed the sun and set a course west. He ought to strike England somewhere, he decided.

  Almost immediately they went aground on a sandbank.

  Despite all their efforts, they remained wedged on the mud for all of six hours. They were lifted off by the tide in the early hours of the
next morning and, starting the engine, chugged off into the North Sea.

  ‘God help us if there’s a minefield around here, sir,’ Rumbelo said. He eyed the horizon. ‘We did all right, I think, sir. How about getting me in your next ship?’

  ‘Not a chance, Rumbelo. I’m for submarines.’

  Rumbelo grinned. ‘I’m due for submarines myself, sir.’

  As they chugged on, they could see the glow of the flames of Antwerp growing dimmer, and by late afternoon they were off the English coast in a thinning mist.

  A lightship they saw turned out to be the Sunk so that they realised they were off the Orwell and turned the bows south, chugging towards the river mouth, the exhausted men below still sleeping. As they entered the river, a cruiser carrying a commodore’s pennant crossed their bows heading for Harwich.

  ‘Arethusa, sir. Tyrwhitt’s flagship.’

  ‘Acknowledge them, Rumbelo.’

  As the flag Rumbelo had borrowed from the Marines dipped at the masthead, they saw officers on the cruiser’s bridge studying them intently. through glasses. There was a flurry of movement as one of them moved to the after end of the bridge, then below him another man ran along the upper deck, and finally the cruiser’s flag was dipped in response as she disappeared ahead of them.

  Eventually they saw destroyers lying in trots, sleek black shapes in the growing dusk.

  ‘We’ll go alongside the outside chap,’ Kelly said.

  As they approached the outer destroyer, the officer of the watch appeared and waved them away.

  ‘Ignore him, helmsman,’ Kelly said. ‘A spot of Nelson’s blind eye never did the Navy any harm. Starboard side to. Have the fenders ready, Rumbelo. Let’s do the job in style.’

  The trawler passed the destroyer, turned and came back up-tide. Again the officer of the watch waved them away furiously but Kelly continued to ignore him. The destroyer’s deck was filling up now with men and everybody’s eyes were fixed on the fishing vessel with its German markings. From a buoy further upstream, the cruiser which had passed them was just swinging with the tide and he could see officers on the bridge still watching them with glasses.