HOW IT FEELS TO BE TORPEDOED

Evening Star, Issue 16677, 8 March 1918, Page 8

HOW IT FEELS TO BE TORPEDOED

- BY THE HUN. The scone is the big saloon of a steamship serving as a transport from Salonika to a European port. The tables are set with snowy linen and gleaming glassware. A white-jacketed steward scurries aboutserving the two officers, who are the only occupants, for they have kept boat-watch during the night, and are the last at breakfast. It is a few minutes past 10 when the first torpedo strikes. One of the officers laughs, as much as to say “ Here she is.” Then they put on their cork belts, and hurry on deck. Surely n strange time for mirth, but Albert Kincross, the man who laughed, explains the psychology of it in an article in the ‘ Atlantic Monthly ’ for December. “ Crude and horrible as it- may sound, there was a large portion of my consciousness which was most vividly and delightfully enjoying itself,” he says! “ I will try to explain why.” Then ho writes ; “First, the torpedo had come, and with it an end to our suspense. A weight seemed lifted. I have crossed the Channel five times, the Mediterranean twice and a fraction—l call the last effort a fraction—during this war. and much of these 23 nights and 17 days one was waiting. The Channel crossing is nothing. You turn in. go to sleep, and wake in safe waters. .But from Salonika to port, or from Europe to Salonika, you are at the mercy of your digestion, your nerves, and. especially in my own case, an incorrigible imagination. lam a writer, and therefore have notspared that faculty. Well, the torpedo had come_ at last, and now farewell to fond imaginings.

“ Secondly and chiefly, the whole thinv was so terrible as to he quite unreal In that way it defeated itself. I, for one, simply could pot believe in it. ‘ Such things are done at the pictures or at Drury Lane; they nro not done in real life. I was arguing something like that, very swntly, no doubt, very suboon! scionsly. I am not aware that I argued, but I do know that at the outset the whole thing seemed like an exciting, wonderful adventure, and withal quite unreal. “Just picture us on a great liner cn«v f a grand hotel. Everythin;: was remote from war .-rod death, as J have seen (hem so constantly on land these hst three years. No mini, no dirt, no rontinuitv ■\nd we were all at- ease, and leading civilian lives, with bathrooms, linen sheets and even an American bar! T don't know wny hut I had imagined it ail quite diflerontlv.

“ As -»ic rushed upstairs one thou edit of i things one had valued yesterday—two : ornml-new pairs of boots, one's ficld-gl-ip-'es 1 some money—they seemed now sn"'nP terly of no account. Providence must . have been with me. for. arrived on deck, i i stood flush before mv bont, Xo 15 I stood there and took charge. To’the‘left : right people were busy with * our 66 Peters. These ladies -v.-v part of . the stall lor a new hospital unit Safc'v they were put- into their boats mfel-'jow ■ ' a , n 4, safel -v rowed away from ,'iL Wo cheered them as thev l e f{ an( i : : Sfe-W Ihr: ' *W ill deck, struck up a song. H e always docs m moments of emotion ” ' | the writer’« boat - a- filled v ifb ' 50 men, unhiding some members of the crew. Sue or eight lv, lts ind minieroii ; W.s were already o„ the water. Thev - rowed a-war from the ship none too soon 1 for tharo was- a flash and an explosion as a second torpedo struck her. And then: he proceeds "There followed next the I moft dramatic period of that w-c-tm-1- I b° bar the great ship had stood (h-m. i? i anchored. We noticed now that she had I a defbl , Uß hst to Ptarbc-arcl. The angle I grew steeper, and then suddenly her bow i dropper her stern lifted, and* next she I slid to the bottom like a Jivor. It was as though a hving thing had difanprared be- I lt l , t^ le wa ;' c , s , V ‘ ;o watched her open- i mouthed, a tightness at our hearts \y P I missed the comfort of her presence, we t . ra P p<3 -Y. of her surrender. In her I death end onguliment there was something ! more than human. So might a citv bmlt by countless hands and quick with life j pass suddenly away. . , . W p tlinw] now a more searching eye noon the strange shores that lay some five miles distant and ' upon the strange city whose central menu- : ments fixed our attention. What kind of : people lived there, and would they send ns : j lo ‘ s t o!nc< i t( > But already the ia-i-ter question was answered. l < fi earner, apparently a tug, was evidently 1 the forerunner of rescue. You mast pic- 1 tuie us now on an empty pea, for with tho go-mg of our ship, although some thou- 1 sands of us were floating, struggling, and ! alas. drowning, we made no great irapre*- 1 sion on that immensity. We felt very small, and we felt very much -alone and ’ neglected. < . The >‘ discovered that the boat- was Hak- 1 mg badly, and that thev had no mfd-m to * keen her head up to the heavy seas that ' dashed over them. The water* rose above their waists. Tho bailor had been lost 1 ot erhoard, but another was improvised b\knocking in tho head of a water cask During tms critical period the writer made a closer study of his comjianions, of whom he writes: I nad never seen any of them before, so I did not know their names or anything about them. Mentally I described the more marked characters to myself,’ and e\ en went the length of inventing nicknames. There was the Pop-Ey© Man. for instance. He was a sailor, or, rather, a member of tho crew. He was ro terrified that he shouted v. ikl things at us, and his eyes seemed to pop out of his head. What ho yelled I neither know nor cared. He made me realise that there are such things as cowards, and once or twice I caught myself wondering what it was that made him so afraid _ of death, so tenacious of life. Was it wife, children, nr beer that so unmanned him? Ho had a been- look and rather a- brutal, bullying manner. Ho is saved, and is now probably lying hard about his confounded heroism. That type usually does. Then there was the Coco-nnt-Shy _Man. At village and other English festivals there are men who keep up a continual shouting in a hoarse and blatant voice. They must have lungs of brass, and as often as not they are attached to a coconut-shy outfit. I had one such man on board. Ho was probably shouting to keep his own courage up as much as ours. Three more strokes to the shore, | boys!’ he yelled. ‘Three more strokes! j Now, all together.’ And so on and so on. He had a voice like a bull, ami made the ! welkin ring with encouragement and cx- I hortation. Of course, not three nor three thousand strokes would have taken ns to I the shore. The sea, the wind, and our I own dead weight were all against us. But ! still the Cocoanut-shy Man, whether it was rowing or bailing, worked like a man and encouraged others to work, and was a good fellow. • ' ; “ There was the Man Who Nodded. He ' , was a sailor in the stern. I faced him. and whenever I ordered the boat’s head to bo kept on to the waves he nodded i approval and seemed satisfied. I “Beside me all the time was a bov of I 18, fresh from home, a private in” the Royal Army Medical Corps. He nestled beside me with large, trustful eyes, like j a little dog, and whatever I asked him to do he did quickly and implicitly. If I | have any touch of vanity, -it mhst have I been tickled by that dear lad’s faith in j me. | "A fair young fellow, probably a shop 1 assistant before the war, and, I believe, i a corporal or sergeant in the Army Service ' Corps, worked well and. always with in- j tam»ence and coolness. And there was i a plucky middle-aged -man in the stern i who simply oozed calmness and confidence, ; though he once had me puzzled by telling me that the rudder was there and working os it should do. He admitted later that ho said this to cheer no the waverers. “ Now, as to the waverers. Thev were mostly boys, and I think all of them were seasick. One or two whom I urged to row or bail replied; ‘l’m done, sir.’ And done they were, I suppose, poor beggars. ’ ° “ I, too, though smiling in the face of events, had a lengthy period of. doubt, and even went so -far as to loosen tr.y soaked boots as a precaution. It was when the water threatened to sink or overlu rn u US ' 1 rem6Tn ber a few of the thoughts that criss-crossed with more proctacal reflections. Chief and foremost was the recognition that I had had 47 years of hie -and a good -time, all things considered. Friendship, love, books, pictures, musio I had had. and I had seen

a good deal of the world and its adventures. And as I thought of these it dcounred to m 6 that I had done pretty well everything except die, and that, after all, Barrie was right. In ‘ Peter Pan,’ you will remember, he makes hia hero eay that death is the greatest adventure of the lot. I probably misquote him, but thati is the gist of it. Now, I had alwaysthought that sentiment unreal and a piece: of claptrap. And so it was in a way.' When *T heard it I was fresh from the Russian revolution of 1905-1906. The audience who applauded struck me as about .the last people in the world who wanted i to die; in fact, London, after Russia, seemed a place. where peoplewanted to go offices, make money, and' live forever, and Barrie’s audience more so than any of them. But as I stood in the boat and contemplated the possibility and, even probability of this last great adventure it occurred to me that Peter Pan was right—exactly right;.” But he was not to experience the great adventure yet, for at last all were takenaboard a Japanese destroyer, which then, cruised about picking up the flotsam and jetsam struggling on the water in lifepreservers or on rafts, and the writer thus describes the scenes : “ Every now and again we passed the floating bodice of the drowned, their faces hid in the lifebelts that made them boh so pathetically—ns if they, too, were made of oork. Cold, seasickness, exhaustion had made them give way; a man under those circumstances is as strong ns his vitality.” And when they were finally landed in t port in Italy — 11 Every available motor-car from far and near was there to fetch onr wounded and our dead. There were men who had been'hurt in the two explosions, and men who had jumped from ship to destroyer and broken a leg. On our destroyer’s deck I now saw the body of Major B . I had learned that ho was lost, but I had yet to hoar that he had reached a safe place on a raft, which, trusting to his powers as a swimmer, he had yielded to two men less able than himself. They were saved, but the cold nf a long immersion had proved too much for Major B .He was n partner in the famous hank that hears his name, a bravo man who had died as unselfishly as he had lived. “On Sunday ? gave the first 20 nf our shin's company. who had died, or whr.se bodies had been washed ashore, a public funeral. It was the most impressive funeral I have ever seen. In a nrocession fully a mile long we streamed, 1 away to the C-mipo Santo. The whole town and countryside were there to watch ns. on side-walks, crowded balconies, even on the bonse-tops. Many of ihe women were weeping as they stood there, thinking of their own men-folk away on the two fronts. “To the, Italians the most interest mg members of the stream of mourners '.vine “ be Donned’ as they termed our brave sisters. In. scarlet and gray, those who had saved I heir uniforms inarched gallantly down the long mad that led to the cemetery. The whole £6 were pro,cut, ir.anv dressed in hats, skirts, and blouses provided by the ladies of S . We were proud of onr women—bat that is an old stow.

‘‘With tho Italian and Rriri-h troops mas-abed the sailor* of Japan, smart and workmanlike. I had -.sever -men them in a body before, and I observed them e!ose!v. I may be mistaken, but to me Uiev svemorl ns formidable ;ss any seamen in (Tic world. Physically and morally, they impressed mo deeply. One little thing won my particular regard : Instead of machine-turned decorations, they wore real jewels, the "ork of a, crab- ra ■ ■r- It :s a small matter, but a people that will do this will do much else. Tho Japanese officers were obviously men of breeding, and on more than one face T seemed to rend a supreme disdain (which many of us share' for a civilisation which expresses itself in mechanics and explosive?. “‘You Westerners have forced ns to take a hand in this.' they seemed to sav : ‘very well. then, we will'take a hand. tip. sooner or Inter, you reach our level of civilisation, and then we can scrap all these toys and devilments, and so go on with the realities that lend to (rod. “ Perhaps I imagined this, yet without those quiet- figures whose pride it was to stand there as though carven, and from another world, I could not have imagined anything of the kind " The ever-present German spy was encountered during tine writer’s* ’ seven-day stay in Italy. _ But in his eagerness he over-renched himself, for—- “ He spoiled his game by being far too eager, and so he is now in a place where his German friends cannot even pav him the thin rewards of his disgusting trade. We had met on the quayside. There he was very conspicuously free with Red Cross cigarettes and comestibles—a generous lad and a charitable. Eater on he invited me to his ‘house.’ He was a, great, though wholly transparent liar and braggart. His ‘ house ’ turned out to be a mean room in a back street. When we arrived there lie put tho usual questions, and I rewarded his confidence by giving him full particulars as to how many men -wo had lost, nur destination, and the names of the various units that had embarked. In exchange I received two pocket handkerchiefs, and n. much-darned pair of socks—both of which I needed badly. I am afraid that this young man now regards me as less of a fool than I appeared.”