Titanic and Other Ships By Charles Lightoller
Chapter 39 THOSE DAMNED "R" WORDS
Up to this time we had been patrolling the Straits singly and independently, but it became a distinctly losing game. So someone had a brainstorm and instituted the "R" words. Every two hours day and night, two words commencing with R were sent out on our wave length. There were also two executive words commencing with R and changed every twenty-four hours, and known only to the Captain. Just imagine how automatically one's reply became to the signalman's, "Rodosto Renoun, sir." "Repulse Retreat, sir," "Revenge Remand, sir," and so on, day in, day out and night after night. As often as not the words would be reported just when one's mind was more than fully occupied with something else.
If and when the executive words did come, all Destroyers rendezvoused at given places in the Straits and formed up into Divisions ready to tackle the wily Hun with something approaching his own weight in metal. The rendezvous of my particular Division was at a position called Y buoy over on the French side, a place I am not likely to forget in a hurry, for I left the best part of two perfectly good propellers there, but of that later.
The night I got into trouble with the "R" words, as luck would have it, Brother Bosche, of the ever fertile mind, had chosen for one of his star turns.
In the first place he was going to carry out one of his well advertised raids on the Straits, and when he had drawn us off after that herring, he proposed landing--or demonstrating a landing--on the sand dunes behind the left flank of our Army. Not only did "Intelligence" know of the raid, but they also knew that it was a bluff--but we poor skippers of Destroyers knew not.
The Hun, without a doubt knew his bluff had been called, when our submarine patrol, on the line of mined nets was cancelled for the night, and in the fading twilight there trickled out of Dunkirk Harbour one 15-inch monitor, two 13-inchers, a couple of 9-inchers, sweepers and destroyers. This lot soon formed up, with sweepers out ahead and the accompanying screen of destroyers hovering around endeavouring to keep station, zigzag and yet not lose sight of the big ship they were attached to. The Wolfe was our misfortune, and the skipper of her was a pretty bleak sort of being. Of course, it was my own fault; I should have been on the top line with those infernal words, but it had been no small job to avoid some sort of snotty signal from the Wolfe about something done or left undone.
Heaven knows, there were opportunities enough to give cause for those sort of signals, and this blighter never seemed to miss one. I can only suppose that it was during one of those cheering interludes, that the signalman must have come with his Remumbo Rejumbo, or whatever the executive words were that night, and I had or hadn't said, "All right, signalman." Anyhow, the next thing was, we got the shaded "M.K." from our friend of the torpid liver.
"M.K.", translated, means "Proceed in execution of previous orders," in other words "Shove off." Well, we shoved off, hard aport, full speed, whilst I tried to collect my scattered senses. It was pitch dark, and no sign of another destroyer who might have given me the tip. "Number one, what do you suppose the M.K.was made for?" Number one hadn't the remotest idea, nor had anyone else, for by this time I had taught them all to use their own individual think-boxes.
There was nothing for it but to ignominiously return and "Request further instructions," in other words, to ask for it. And we got it! "Take station astern," was the signal. Dirty dog! He wouldn't even give me a hint. With our tail tucked neatly between our legs, we crawled along astern. Suddenly, with a blast of intelligence, "Signalman," I yelled as loudly as I dared, "What were the last of those damned 'R' words you gave me," and sure enough they were the Executive words by all that was holy and I had slipped up on them. "Signalman, make the interrogative M.K.," meaning, "Request permission to proceed in execution of previous orders." Back came the reply, "Approved," and no rider, for a wonder. "Hard aport," once again, and "Every ounce of steam you can give her down below, there." Sandbanks on one side, and mine nets on the other. (Eight knots was a safe speed, we were making twenty-five.) No matter, we must make Y buoy in time. At all costs we must not let our Division down.
What added a certain amount of zest to our midnight blind was the fact that only a few days before the Gypsy, another of the Flotilla had been making a similar dash in daytime, and had made a collection of some of those nets with her prop. She was towed in, later on, and put in Graving dock. Shores had been placed, and the water was just leaving her when it was discovered, by the then scattering crowd of dockies, that she had a nice little bunch of grapes hanging, all entangled, from her props. The grapes, in this instance, being mines, still attached to bits of net.
We had no ambition to collect either nets or mines, and in point of fact didn't, but in due course, "made our numbers" to the Senior Officer of our Division.
Off we went hunting the hoary Hun; a job every man jack preferred to dancing attendance on the snotty old Wolfe.
He was out that night, all right, but we couldn't make contact with him. Blindman's buff is not an odds on game, with the coast of England and France for boundaries. Maybe he sensed we were after his hide, or perhaps he had been told to play a bluff. Anyhow he returned to his lair with an empty bag that good night.
Later on, the usual signal came through, "Resume normal conditions," which again translated means "get on with your various jobs." Ours was to get back to Dunkirk, and coil down, preparatory to the next jaunt up the coast.
Dunkirk itself was no health resort in these times. At night the Germans sent their bombers over, and by daylight, with all the impudence in the world, their tame photographers to take record of the wreckage.
Often and often, after a night of strafing, when bombs had been dropping everywhere, and great gouts of flame going up, accompanied by crash after crash, one would think, "Well there will be no Dunkirk when the day breaks after this little lot." But no such thing. A couple of lamp-posts down, and a few windows broken would be the sum total of damage. The inhabitants, in fact, made a well-earned boast that during the whole time, the tram service was never once held up on account of raids. Brother Hun tried very hard to get the Commodore's office, in return for his little efforts with the C.M.B.'s, but though time and again he had to have the windows replaced, then never managed to get a direct hit. Certainly they compelled him to give up using glass and resort to wood in the window frames, that did not stop the good work going on.
Sometimes to vary the nightly programme, the Air Force would place landing lights on the beach, and encourage the wily Hun to bomb them. He did, and then would take bearings from the landing lights and turn his attention to the town--as he thought; but owing to the misplaced lights, he put his bombs into the inner harbour where we lay, which was not so good. He caught the destroyer ahead of us one night with a bomb under his stern, which, though it sank him by the stern--by a stroke of luck--did not set off his depth charges. If they had gone off, we should all have gone up. Another target he tried hard for, was the ammunition ship tied to the inner dock. She was loaded with 15, 13 and 12-inch shells, and was a continued source of annoyance to the inhabitants of Dunkirk, for if they had hit the ship, the whole town would have shifted.
The Captain and crew of the ammunition ship took their risk in a curiously philosophical way. Briefly, their argument was, "What's the difference between sitting on one, or one hundred H.E. shells--be they five or fifteen inch, if either you or the ship is hit? The result is the same anyway." I suppose they were right, when you look at it that way.
Every day, one destroyer was told off for "Cross Channel Duty," with dispatches and so forth, for or from Dover. In fine weather, this was always the best job, as it let one out from the everlasting patrolling at comparatively slow speeds in company with the Monitors. Crossing Channel, there was always the chance of having a few shots at mines floating about or a possible strafe with a submarine. The Straits were strewn with the former, and it was good sport trying to hit them in a seaway. If they were British, then it was quite safe to go close up, despite orders to the contrary, and sink them at close range. I only knew one to ever explode. Even then, it only sent the ring of the cap whirling in the air. This so resembled a man throwing his own cap in the air, that the whole Watch, viewing the affair from our decks, just cheered to a man, on the impulse. If, on the other hand, it was a German mine, you opened fire and kept at a respectful distance, it was not advisable to take liberties with those chaps.
After the close shave I had up the Belgian coast, through messing up things through missing the "R" words, I took Number one and the Yeoman of Signals into my confidence, and shared the secret words. Orders or no orders about utter secrecy, I was taking no more risks, and I slept sounder in consequence. The result was that one night, some weeks later, after the endless repetition of two hourly "R" words, we suddenly got the Executive again.
This time our luck was in and we caught our wily friend, and gave him a good trouncing. His report was that he had suffered no damage, whereas on the other hand, he had sunk two British Destroyers. This was not exactly correct, though we did get two badly damaged. Still, not by any means sunk, they both got back into the harbour. One was torpedoed in the stern and with the other the best part of her bows gone. The former was the Zulu, and the latter the Nubian. With unlooked for economy, the Dockyard cut each in two, and as they were sister ships, joined the forward end of one to the after end of the other and with unexpected humour, called the result H.M.S. Zubian.
Dover harbour, after Dunkirk, was Peacehaven, even though there were few moonless nights when the place was not raided and bombed. One of the worst occasions started in broad daylight, at Folkestone, where the Canadian troops were in camp. It was the afternoon of a very fine day, and we were out on the Channel Patrol, which included Dover and Folkestone. I had taken over the bridge in the afternoon, and sent the Officer of the Watch down for a smoke, when there was a big splash thrown up, right close alongside. I naturally thought I must be fouling some big-gun range, but I had no notification of anything of the kind and therefore it was their fault if they hit us. Another splash. Then, being quite close in shore, I could see huge columns of earth being thrown up in the air, very close around where the Canadian Camp should be. The next minute our look-out reported, "Enemy aeroplanes overhead," and sure enough they were. A dozen or more Gothas had come overland and tackled the Canadian Camp. Seeing us they thought they would have a go at us as well. Then one of our Blimps came sailing placidly along, having been recalled to her hangar. She couldn't see the Gothas above her and, as her Commander told me later, he couldn't understand what on earth I was trying to do, blazing away, as he thought, at him. Actually I was trying to beat off the Huns who, by now, had turned their attention to the Blimp.
Next they paid a visit to Dover, and then I did spend an anxious half an hour or so for my wife and kiddies were there, almost exactly under where the damned Huns were dropping the last of their bombs, spotting and dropping at their leisure. Our anti-aircraft defences were not what they might have been.
I found out later that my wife had been sitting on the verandah when the fun started, and there she remained, quite unperturbed, with a pencil and a bit of paper, spotting the shots from our batteries. To their everlasting credit, let it be said, that they did bring down two of the blighters.
Summer time in the Dover Patrol was not bad tack, as the war went. For one thing we could pretty well be sure of supplementing our larder now and then with fish. The Admiral had two trawlers working for the Staff, and we used to keep a bright lookout for them coming in with their catch. We were always sure of twenty or thirty pounds of fish in exchange for a bit of tobacco. Sometimes we would get a few of on our own by putting down a small charge, one day with amazing luck. It was just alongside the Varne Shoal, we fired a sixteen and a quarter pound charge of guncotton and raised well over two tons of cod. When we saw them coming up stunned it was "Away all boats." Actually we got on board a ton and a quarter, and we must have missed twice that amount through them coming to and swimming off. Naturally we thought we had happened on the home of all cod, and in consequence, I "fell in" the hands and swore them to secrecy. But what was the use. We distributed the fish to the whole of the flotillas and, of course, everyone wanted to know where we had got the catch. The secret, naturally, leaked out, as everyone had a special chum on some ship, who in turn imparted the information to his Skipper, the consequence was that everyone was seeing a "submarine off the Varne Shoal," so that between us we nearly blew the blame shoal away.
There were submarines in plenty so everyone had good excuse. Now and again someone succeeded in nailing one, but it was fairly rare. One night a chap had the audacity to come up and shell Dover. Another time they bagged one of our own submarines, set to watch the Gate in the line of nets stretching across the Straits; which just shows their knowledge of what was going on. They were not even supposed to know of the Gate in the nets, let alone the submarine set to watch. They did though, and came down, as I have said and torpedoed the poor devil. We tried mining some of the routes they fancied. One of these was around the Gravelines buoy a little west of Dunkirk. Our Layers put down a triangular minefield with the Gravelines buoy at the apex and the Haut Frond (sic) buoy in the center. The Germans with their warped idea of humour, came in and laid another exactly alongside it, and thereby trumped our trick. In the end we actually had to remove ours altogether as in the end it became more harmful to us than the enemy.
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