Letterstime - Ein Geleitzug: Homeward Bound? Part XXVI
(Confusion Ashore)
July 7, 1915
---- EXTRA! Philadelphia Inquirer
Germans Converted Liner to Floating
Prison
Prisoners At Supper (caption to
photograph)
“ ... Next the German invaders
discovered that they were running out of food ashore. French officials informed their captors that
available stores had been exhausted.
“ ‘But of course there is no
bread. One cannot bake when penned up
like animals outside in the Place,’ explained Mayor ....
“The Germans responded by evacuating
St. Pierre completely, transporting the French onto the liner Kronprinzessin
Cecilie. The Germans, according to the
officer in charge, Admiral Hanzik, chose the Kronprinzessin Cecilie because she
had the fewest passengers due, in part, to the many repairs made to her during
her stay in Boston in the days just before her departure on June 25. This reporter observed that many of the
staterooms had deadbolts on the outside of their doors and that several
passageways had metal doors at both ends.
When asked if those items were original construction or if they had been
added later, perhaps even while in Boston, Mr. Ballin declined comment. In any case, engineers familiar with
passenger ship design were unanimous in declaring that no such locks or doors
....”
---- Room 40
“And their fleet? Still no report on the High Seas Fleet?” How could the Germans have a dozen or so
dreadnought fleet out in the North Sea and not have been sighted yet, or so the
tone of the titled speaker’s question implied.
Ignoring the efforts in the center
of the room by others to reply, Sartore rubbed his face hard in an effort to
hold his exhaustion at bay.
“They said five turrets? There at the end?” He was referring to the latest and
northernmost reported attack.
Jan nodded. “They were getting shot to pieces,
though. First attacker was apparently a
light cruiser. That was clear
enough. In the last messages, the
wireless operator was making keying errors and even missing letters.” He grimaced at the inadvertent pun.
“Seydlitz,” Sartore said, pausing as
he failed to suppress a yawn.
Derfflinger, Lutzow, and von der Tann had only four main turrets. “Goeben’s in the Black Sea or the Med, and
Moltke’s on the other side of the Atlantic or maybe the Caribbean by now.” He yawned again, this time behind one
hand. “Hell, by now maybe the Pacific,
like the Japs are saying.”
One of the theories that had gained
ground in recent days was that the errant force’s goal all along had been to
replace von Spee’s with one that could run rampant in the Pacific and shut down
the Indian Ocean. This dramatically
ambitious possibility had been voiced first by Japanese officials, shortly
after word had gotten out that the Admiralty might be casting hungry eyes at
the IJN Kongos. With memories still
fresh of SMS Emden and Coronel, the Japanese hypothesis could not be dismissed
out of hand.
“Coal,” Jan replied. One of the greatest obstacles to any German
Pacific adventure was that the battlecruisers had a remarkably massive appetite
for coal and it had been that same hunger that had doomed von Spee at
Falklands. The force of that German
Admiral Hanzik needed much more coal than even von Spee’s had.
“The liners,” Sartore answered. The answer that had evolved was that the
passengers reportedly boarding the liners had been an elaborate misdirection,
with the relatively few that might actually have been aboard at the last to be
put off elsewhere later with some coin for their trouble. The liners themselves had been turned into
massive colliers and supply ships and ones uniquely able to keep up with
warships.
They’d all been over and over this
ground so many times these last many days and nights that the tired officers
could reargue the matter with a single word or two. This had become particularly useful as their
debates had to be covert and, now, between yawns.
“Occam’s Razor,” Sartore added.
(NOTE 1) Seydlitz was already known to
be somewhere up there.
“Cuts both ways,” Jan
countered. Moltke was known to have left
Miquelon a week ago.
“Mmph,” Sartore acknowledged, amidst
another yawn.
---- Wilhelmshaven
Kapitan Jeff Lantz had come in
before dawn, having heroically risen from a sound sleep in the still-dark and
then bidden his wife with her blonde and ever-so-fetchingly tousled hair
good-bye. The first hour had been a
review of the traffic over-night. Save
for a flurry following a brief and chance encounter between scouts, the
messages had otherwise followed routine.
Dawn had opened floodgates in the ether and the intercepts were still
piling up on his desk far faster than he or anyone else could possibly read
them, let alone make sense of it all.
Jeff had sorted them into separate
stacks. The one on the far left had the
overnights. Over on the right side of
his desk were three smallish sets that all had the same characteristics. In each case, some transmitter, most likely a
ship, had reported something within the first hour of decent light. The first report had been promptly
acknowledged by what presumably was one British Admiralty station or
another. The initial transmitter then
sent in several follow-up wireless messages, sometimes even before the
Admiralty had acknowledged the previous one.
Then, just as the Admiralty messages began to get longer, the initial
source stopped sending messages. The
Admiralty source would repeat their signals, then send shorter ones, presumably
trying to regain contact, before going quiet also. Lastly, a group of messages would go out and
be acknowledged by multiple parties.
The obvious conclusion was that
British units had sighted German ones and had reported the sighting until
forced to stop. The sources could have
been merchants who happened to have wireless sets, but Lantz doubted they would
use the frequency of the RN. Still, this
could not be ruled out entirely. Jeff
judged it much more likely, however, that the reports had been from patrol
craft, possibly submarines. Then, the
reporting vessel was rendered unable to continue to transmit, either by being
sunk or captured, or perhaps just by submerging. After that, the RN would send out summary
messages to other commands.
Those were the ones he thought he
understood.
The formidable pile directly in
front of him was from something much different and it seemed without
precedent. It had taken him the better
part of an hour to spot what might be the critical element, but it still did
not explain matters. At least, not
well. He frowned and absently ran a
fingertip back and forth across one of the eight points of the “Blue Max”
ViceAdmiral Letters had insisted he wear always within the walls of
headquarters. (NOTE 2)
“Kapitan?”
“Sir!” Lantz jumped to attention as best he could
with his cast. GrossAdmiral Tirpitz!
“At ease, Kapitan. Please,” he added insistently, even waving
him back into his chair. The Pour le Mérite
was no small thing to even the highest of the high, and Tirpitz knew quite well
how this one had been earned. (NOTE
3) “I understand there is an anomaly?”
How in the hell had he ...?
“Yes, sir.” Lantz gave a brief overview before he offered
more. ”The difference, sir, was
that this one seems to have been the
originating wireless message. Then this
one, and this.”
An observant outsider might have
noticed that the GrossAdmiral frowned and fingered his beard much as Lantz had
his medal.
“I’m not sure who they are or even
where they are, sir. But what I DO know,
sir, is that they’re not ships, sir.
None of them.”
Tirpitz blinked but said nothing.
“The first ship-originated wireless
that seems to be related to it is this one, and it looks to be a simple
acknowledgement in response to this one here.”
“Who is that?” Tirpitz’ head gesture was directed at the
ship-based wireless.
“I cannot be certain, sir.” Lantz’ intonation suggested that he had more
to offer.
“Your guess, then?”
“Commodore Tyrwhitt, sir. Harwich Force. The same originator next sent out two other
messages, presumably to subordinates of his own. While I cannot be sure, of course, the
recipients look to be flotillas.”
“Very well. But, Kapitan, if all is as you suggest, what
is the underlying cause?”
“I don’t know, sir. I just don’t.
I have gone back and re-read the sortie orders and there is nothing in
them that could cause this.”
“Whose orders took them closest to
the British shore?”
“Oh!
Ah, that would be Commander Borys, sir.
He was to lay a minefield offshore somewhere between here and .... It could be, sir! Perhaps some mines came ashore, or a ship
struck one and those ashore reported it first.
Or, the initial report was on some civilian frequency and then the
Britishers relayed .... No.”
“No?”
“Too many reports, sir. Mines would have come ashore before and any
mine-loss would have been treated in a more straight-forward manner. This seems ... just ... different. I get the sense that the Britishers are
making up whatever they’re doing as they go along.”
“Very well.”
The two German officers stared at
the messages, one fingering his beard, the other his medal.
---- EXTRA! New York Times
French Gendarme Tried to Fight Off
Invasion
Corporal Pierre Soissons (caption to
photograph)
“ ... Armed resistance was limited
to the efforts of Corporal Pierre Soissons who had been alerted moments before
the attack to the possibility of invaders by a group of young boys (See “Paladins
of St. Pierre, page A-12). Soissons
heroically exchanged fire with the assaulting Germans before being
overwhelmed. For a photographic essay
depicting the attack on the Gendarmerie, see Section B, pages B-5-8. Fortunately, Corporal Soissons’ wounds were
not serious and he was expected to make a full recovery.
More seriously injured was Private
Grisbrun Terriun, who somehow fell down two flights of stairs within the
Gendarmerie before the Germans had even gained entry. The full extent of Terriun’s injuries were
not known, but his right leg was confirmed to have been broken in two
places. There were also plenteous coccyx
contusions ....”
---- Room 40
A very odd map had been put up on
one wall. Actually, the map was normal
enough; it was the area covered that was so unusual. Instead of the North Sea, it portrayed the
port of Withernsea and its land environs.
On it were several markers.
“At least the number is now coming
down,” Jan remarked to a fading Sartore.
Just an hour ago there’d been fully twice as many on the map.
“I think they’re long gone, if they
were ever there to begin with,” Sartore muttered. “No, no,” he added, forestalling Jan’s next
comment. “Germans of some sort or
another were probably there around dawn, I admit it.” After all SOMEone had attacked the
redoubtable Constable Hawthorne. “Wherever
they came from, though, I think they were long gone by the time we even learned
they’d been there.”
“... two more sighted ....”
Jan sighed as another marker went
up. Sartore emitted a tired groan. It was a shambles. All they’d managed so far was to pounce on
poachers, tackle townsmen, and spook sheep uncounted. In two separate instances, obviously fit
young men had succeeded in giving their pursuers the slip, likely returning
from lifting slips of an entirely different sort themselves. The markers from those two escapes were among
those still up there and Rich wondered just how many faces would be red over
them before the day was done. What they
had NOT discovered were any Germans but, until this was settled, hastily set up
machine gun emplacements manned by men with white hair and even whiter knuckles
remained on three bridges and two rail crossings around Withernsea. What made it worse was that Members and
Mayors from surrounding districts and towns were on the phone with HMG
screaming for the army and the navy. The
number of these Worthies kept growing as the word kept spreading.
The papers were simply going to have
a bloody field day unless they did something.
Already, there was talk of invoking the Official Secrets Act, but no one
had yet figured out a proper pretext.
Jan turned to Sartore to ask if he’d come up with any ideas on the
matter only to see that the other had apparently nodded off again.
Jan shrugged, and decided to leave
him to his nap. Best he could tell, it
was the most useful activity in progress just then.