Grey Tide In The East Page 10

  “That’s about what I’m hearing from my sources,” Stilwell said. “The big Warsaw Offensive in the spring depleted the Krauts’ stockpiles of practically everything. They’re building up again, with an eye towards a push all along the front in April, a big one, even bigger than the October offensive.”

  “I wonder if they’ll have the new gas ready by then?” Swing asked.

  “I don’t know, but I will guarantee you this much: if they do have it, you can be sure that they’ll want to see what it can do right away,” Stilwell said. “Once again, Germany brings the benefits of modern science to the world,” he finished sourly.

  Swing nodded and said, “Better living through chemistry.”

  Chapter Eleven: OFF TOULON, FRANCE, FEBRUARY 8, 1915

  King-Hall was taken by surprise when, just after nine hundred hours, the ship’s bells calling the crew to action stations announced that the French were coming out of Toulon for a fight.

  The three light cruisers that comprised the 1st Light Cruiser Observation Squadron had been quietly watching Admiral Reinhard Scheer’s High Seas Battle Fleet since November. They had been given this assignment after the Triple Alliance Mediterranean Squadron under Admiral Wilhelm Souchon that they had been following was disbanded.

  Souchon’s fleet had completed its assignment of demolishing the harbour facilities of the last of the French North African ports and seizing or sinking all the French Navy vessels and merchantmen they found. The Austrian ships returned to winter in their home port of Pola, the Italians to Taranto on the heel of the Italian boot, and the Germans to join the blockade of the French Atlantic coast, back home to Wilhelmshaven or off to various colonial assignments.

  From almost the first day that Southampton and her companions Birmingham and Nottingham had taken up station off Toulon, southeast of the German fleet, rumours that the French were about to sortie from their base to challenge the Germans had been flying. King-Hall had heard them. Every officer and able seaman in the squadron had heard them. But after days, then weeks went by and nothing happened, he decided that the rumours were unfounded, and for a very good reason.

  On its face, the idea of the French staging a stand-up slugging match with the German High Seas Fleet was nonsensical. The main French battle-fleet, designated the 1st Armeé Navale, was based in Toulon and built around 4 dreadnought battleships, two of them so new they had not completed their sea trials when the war began. The dreadnoughts were of the 1911 Courbet class: Paris, Jean Bart, France and Courbet. They were said to be excellent ships of the most modern design, sporting 12 twelve-inch guns, protected by 10 1/2 inch armour belts and boasting top speeds in excess of 20 knots. They were justifiably the pride of the French Navy and probably the equal ship-for-ship of any vessels afloat.

  The rest of the 1st Armeé Navale’s battle line was not as impressive. In addition to the four dreadnoughts, there were six older battleships of the Danton class. The Dantons were considered semi-dreadnoughts, turbine-powered like the newer types, but still mounting the typical mixed main armament characteristic of pre-1905 capital ships, with four 12-inch guns, and twelve 9.6 inch guns. They were slower, less well armed, and had thinner armoured belts than their younger sisters, and would not fare well in a slugging match with real dreadnoughts.

  There were also nine pre-dreadnought battleships of various classes. The consensus among the officers on the Southampton was that these obsolete ships would be useful in action only to the extent that they drew enemy fire away from the other French ships.

  The French Toulon fleet also had available for action sixteen armoured cruisers of various types similar to the ones under the late Rear Admiral Emile DuPay that had been sent to the bottom of the sea off Tunis in September. Also available were several obsolete protected cruisers and a fairly large number of destroyers, of which perhaps fifty or so were in battle-worthy condition. Presiding over this not inconsiderable force was Admiral Augustin de Lapeyrère, a canny veteran who had been called out of retirement to take command in his country’s darkest hour.

  The German fleet that waited off the coast was so powerful that a French sortie against it would be an act of recklessness only a little short of madness. Admiral Scheer commanded a force of sixteen(!) dreadnought battleships, of the Nassau, Helgoland, Kaiser and Konig classes respectively, equipped with Krupp guns, varying from twelve 11.5 inch rifles on the oldest ships, the 1908 Nassaus, to ten 12-inchers on the newest, the 1913 Konig class.

  All the German dreadnoughts had armour belts of at least 12 inches, and all were designed to be practically unsinkable, with extensive watertight compartmentation and double hulls running nearly the entire length of the ships. Each of them was as formidable as the French Courbets, and there were four times as many of the Germans.

  In the unlikely event that Scheer was worried that a fourfold superiority in modern battleships would not be sufficient, he was no doubt soothed by the presence of six of the newest type of capital ship, the battle-cruisers. These had been used to bombard the French Atlantic ports at the war’s outset, and later did blockade duty in the North Sea until early in the new year. In January, they were released from blockade duty, replaced by destroyers and light cruisers, and sent to join the Scheer in the Mediterranean.

  These ships were armed with 11 1/2 or 12-inch main batteries like the battleships, but were faster. The Von der Tann, for example, was designed to cruise at 24 knots, and was rumoured to have a flank speed of nearly 30 knots, faster even than the far smaller and more lightly armed Southampton. This astonishing speed was gained at the cost of protection. The Von der Tann’s main armour belt was only four inches thick over most of the hull, and the other five German battle cruisers had even less protection. They were designed to be able to outrun and out-gun any armoured cruiser in existence, and there was no doubt that they could. It was the development of this class of ship that had made the French armoured cruisers, indeed the whole class of armoured cruiser, obsolete.

  Scheer also had plenty of escorts for the big ships in the form of armoured cruisers, light cruisers and swarms of destroyers. In sum, the German fleet that waited off Toulon was present in overwhelming strength. In King-Hall’s view, if Lapeyrère offered battle, there would ensue another massacre like the Battle of Tunis, but on a far larger and bloodier scale.

  That was why King-Hall tended to dismiss the rumours of a sortie. If he, a lowly sub-lieutenant, could see how forlorn the French hope for victory in a straight-up battle would be, certainly the experienced and intelligent Admiral Lapeyrère could see it as well. Every week that passed with no battle occurring simply went to confirm his conclusion that there was not going to be one.

  But now it seemed that there would be a fight after all. When King-Hall arrived on the bridge panting a little after racing up two ladders to the bridge, Commodore Tyrwhitt was already present with Lieutenant Commander Summers at the helm. (Captain Goodenough had come down with some kind of galloping awfuls in his bowels, and had been put ashore at Malta to recover.)

  “Set course at one-three-zero, if you please, Mr. Summers. Engines at three-quarters full,” the Commodore said as calmly as if he was ordering toast with marmalade for breakfast. “Kindly signal Captain Duff and Captain Miller…” (the skippers of the Birmingham and Nottingham, respectively) “…to conform their ships to our movements.”

  King-Hall realised that the Commodore was taking the squadron directly away from the impending battle! Something of his dismay must have been showing on his face when Tyrwhitt turned and saw him take up his post on the bridge.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. King-Hall,” he said. “We aren’t going very far away from the action. But I should like to reduce as much as possible the likelihood of having one of our ships being hit by a poorly aimed 12-inch shell. My orders from the Admiralty are very clear on that point: they do not want any of our ships sunk by either French or German fire. It might cause a diplomatic incident.”

  The other bridge officers laughed nervously at
this remark, and the Commodore allowed himself a thin smile. “The squadron will cruise to 15 miles south-east of Cape Cepet, and then take up positions from which we may observe the coming battle. I do not expect it to last more than a few hours.”

  * * * * *

  It was difficult to make sense out of what was happening back to the northeast, where the fighting was going on. King-Hall had been able to see through his high-powered field glasses the opening phase of the battle clearly enough, as the rival destroyer and cruiser squadrons clashed, each attempting to press home torpedo attacks on the opponent’s big ships. He saw the German main battle line form up and steam in the direction of the more distant French. Thereafter, although the orange muzzle flashes of the battleships’ main batteries, the fountaining water of misses and the violent explosions of the hits were plain to see, it was impossible to get a real picture of how this, the first naval battle in history to pit dreadnought against dreadnought, was progressing.

  King-Hall saw something, a big ship, a battleship of some kind, take a direct hit and explode violently, sending a pillar of flame hundreds of feet into the pale blue sky, followed by a mushrooming cloud of black smoke. The ship split in two pieces and vanished beneath the waves in less than a minute. There was no way to identify the unlucky ship, or even to know which navy it had belonged to.

  “Direct hit on the main powder magazine, I should think,” commented Lieutenant Commander Summers, who had relinquished the helm and was observing the battle alongside King-Hall. “Wouldn’t be surprised if the entire crew went to the bottom with her.”

  King-Hall shivered to think that the lives of the entire crew of the unfortunate ship, perhaps as many as a thousand men, had just disappeared in the blink of an eye. He was sharply reminded that he was not a spectator at a tennis match; the game being played out before him was in deadly earnest.

  By thirteen hundred hours, the distant booms of the guns were becoming less frequent. They ceased altogether by fourteen-thirty, and the ships remaining that were not burning wrecks all flew flags bearing the black cross on white ground with an eagle at the centre, a black cross over red, white and black stripes in the upper left quadrant, the battle ensign of the Imperial German Navy. German cruisers and destroyers moved among the wrecks, picking up survivors and finishing off the floating hulks with torpedoes. The remaining French vessels had evidently withdrawn back to port behind the minefields that guarded the approaches to Toulon.

  At fifteen hundred hours, Commodore Tyrwhitt sent a wireless message to Admiral Scheer requesting permission for the British cruisers to approach and aid in the rescue work. The request was promptly granted, and the three Royal Navy ships quickly went to work. Aided by searchlights, the rescue effort continued well into the night. By the time Commodore Tyrwhitt finally called off the search at 0:30 hours, the British cruisers had pulled more than a hundred French sailors from the sea.

  By the third day after the battle, which was being called the Battle of Cape Cepet in the German dispatches, it was clear that the French Navy had suffered a major defeat. The French sailors pulled from the sea by the Observation Squadron were questioned to discover the names of their ships and what they personally witnessed of the battle. When this information was combined with reports from observers from all three Royal Navy cruisers, Commodore Tyrwhitt was able to prepare what he felt was a reasonably accurate picture of the French losses in the action for the Admiralty in London. One thing they had determined was that the French battleship that had blown up so spectacularly was the semi-dreadnought Danton, which had apparently taken practically her entire crew of 681 officers and men to the bottom with her.

  They also found a few German sailors that Scheer’s ships had overlooked. At least one German capital ship had been lost, the Posen, one of the1907 Nassau class, the oldest German dreadnought types. Evidently she had either been torpedoed by a French submarine or had struck a mine. In any case, the ship had been holed below the waterline and sunk quickly with heavy loss of life.

  King-Hall’s private forebodings about the future of the British Empire were renewed. Without a fleet, how was France to defend her colonial possessions in the Far East and in the Western Hemisphere? And if she could not defend them, would they then fall into the hands of the German Empire? There was a nightmare to be reckoned with: a powerful German fleet with bases all over the world, able to endanger every part of the British Empire, a more dangerous rival than any it had faced since Napoleon.

  Chapter Twelve: HANOI, INDOCHINA, FEBRUARY 17, 1915

  Joost van Vollenhoven stared out the window of his office in the Governor General’s Palace. Framed in the big window looking down on the street was a column of brown-clad Japanese infantry marching along the palm-lined boulevard below. Although he appeared to be looking at the soldiers, Vollenhoven in fact saw nothing. He was preoccupied with trying to recall the architectural details of his official residence and the centre of French administration of the colony of Indochina. This was the Italian Renaissance style Governor’s Palace, the very building in which he now stood.

  Every element of the building, from the broken pediments with their Ionic pilasters in the façade, to the grand staircase sweeping up to the formal piano nobile for official receptions, to the little Roman shrines over the elaborate doorways (he had been told that they were called “aedicules”), was there to contribute to a statement. The statement was: “As this building was built by white men, so this colony is ruled by white men, and so it shall ever be, for the white man is naturally superior and born to rule over the yellow, brown and black races. You, fortunate subjects of the Republic of France, whether you are Khymer from the south, Bahner from the central highlands, Katu from Laos or whatever backward tribe and culture you come from, all will be granted the gifts of French civilisation and culture: white schools, white roads and trains, white medicine, white literature, philosophy and art, so that someday you may reach the greatest achievement possible for the yellow races: to become second-rate white men.”

  This pretty well summed up the attitude of the French Colonial Administration for as long as he had been associated with it. Vollenhoven was proud of his adopted country, and he had never for a single day regretted the fifteen years he had spent in her colonial service, but he found the (alleged) thought processes of most Colonial Office civil servants to be idiotically bigoted, incredibly hidebound and remarkably chauvinistic. They shared a peculiar ability to reject any facts that failed to fit into their world picture. Here in Indochina, for example, he had subordinates who had managed to spend years in the colony without ever acknowledging that civilisation in Southeast Asia dated back to 2800 B.C., when their own ancestors were primitive, skin-clad wanderers in the gloomy forests of Northern Europe.

  When he was 22, Vollenhoven had taken French citizenship, and entered the Ecole Coloniale to train as a colonial administrator. He had been a starry-eyed idealist back then, who truly believed that the advanced European nations had a duty to those parts of the world that were less fortunate than they.

  “Take up the White Man’s burden--

  Send forth the best ye breed--

  Go bind your sons to exile

  To serve your captives’ need;

  To wait in heavy harness,

  On fluttered folk and wild--

  Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

  Half-devil and half-child.

  “Take up the White Man’s burden--

  The savage wars of peace--

  Fill full the mouth of Famine

  And bid the sickness cease;

  And when your goal is nearest

  The end for others sought,

  Watch sloth and heathen Folly

  Bring all your hopes to nought.”

  He had read Kipling’s famous poem just after he received his law degree and was still wondering what to do with his life. The exhortation in the verses struck a chord in Vollenhoven; he did want to help bring an end to famine and epidemic, to break the age-old cycle
of poverty and misery that trapped these unfortunate peoples. After he had finished a stint in the Army (a useful experience for anyone who wished to rise in the Colonial Service), he took a position with the Colonial Ministry bureaucracy in Paris, his goal always to obtain an appointment overseas, to work with and for the people who had come involuntarily under the rule of France. It was not until 1905 that the opportunity came: a posting as Secretary-General to the Governor of French Equatorial Africa. He was still a bureaucrat perhaps, but at least he was working in the colonies. In 1907, he was made acting Governor of two French West African colonies, first Senegal and then Guinea.

  In his African posts he had tried to give the natives some measure of self-government, acting as much as possible through local tribal leaders chosen by the people themselves. He had also tried to soften the harshest effects of economic exploitation by the mother country.

  Then, just a little more than a year ago, he had been appointed Governor-General of Indochina. The colony had a long history of unrest and dissatisfaction with French rule. The most recent sign of it had been in the late 1880’s, when the Can Vuong rebellion broke out. It was only put down after four years of fighting and heavy loss of life. Ever since, although there had been no major outbreaks, under a surface calm the colony seethed with nationalist and revolutionary ferment. Reports from lower level colonial agents and unofficial native sources led him to expect another revolutionary outbreak in the very near future. Vollenhoven had hoped to discover the roots causes of the unrest and act to ameliorate them before another wave of violence began, but in the short time he had been in the office he had only begun to understand the basic problems and as yet had no solutions to offer.