Winning a Cause Part 15

Deep and keen was the loss felt by his comrades and his officers. From their pockets many of the men drew forth verses written by the poet about some incident in the trenches or some comrade who had been lost.

One of the poems to a lost soldier was read over the poet's grave. A refrain, supposed to be sounded by the bugle, is repeated through the verses, and as these lines were read the sad notes of "taps" sounded faintly from the grove. On his little wooden cross were written the simple words: "Sergeant Joyce Kilmer," then his company and regiment, and "Killed in Action, July 30, 1918."

But Joyce Kilmer and his verses will long live in the minds and hearts, not only of his comrades in battle, but of all Americans.

Such a buoyant, happy life does not seem to have pa.s.sed away. Some beautiful tributes to him, written by other American poets, express this thought.

One friend at the news of Kilmer's death was reminded of his poem, "Main Street."

"G.o.d be thanked for the Milky Way that runs across the sky; That is the path my feet would tread whenever I have to die.

Some folks call it a Silver Sword, and some a Pearly Crown, But the only thing I think it is, is Main Street, Heaventown."

Then the friend touchingly added, "Perhaps Seeger and Kilmer are strolling down Main Street together tonight."

TREES

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at G.o.d all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me, But only G.o.d can make a tree.

JOYCE KILMER.

BLOCKING THE CHANNEL

Bruges is an important city of Belgium made familiar to American boys and girls by Longfellow's beautiful poem, "The Belfry of Bruges." He describes what "the belfry old and brown" has seen.

"Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dike of sand, 'I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land.'"

What a terrible story the historian or poet will have to tell who narrates what the belfry of Bruges has seen during the fifty-two months of the World War, a year, we may call it, in which each week had become a month.

The port of Bruges, called Zeebrugge or Bruges on the Sea, lies not far from the city, at the mouth of a maritime ca.n.a.l. The entrance to this ca.n.a.l was protected by a great crescent-shaped mole thirty feet high inclosing the harbor.

The Germans in the s.h.i.+pbuilding yards at Antwerp built small wars.h.i.+ps and submarines and sent them over the ca.n.a.ls across Belgium to Ostend and Zeebrugge, from where they went out to destroy Allied s.h.i.+pping.

The English determined to put an end to this and on the night of April 22, 1918, an expedition was sent to block the channel and to destroy as far as possible the mole which protected it. It has been said that it was "one of the most thrilling and picturesque of the naval operations of the war. To Americans it recalled Hobson's exploit with the Merrimack, at Santiago, while to Englishmen it brought back memories of Sir Francis Drake and his fire s.h.i.+ps in the harbor of Cadiz." The fight lasted only an hour but the British lost 588 men, for the channel and the mole were so fully guarded with searchlights, machine guns, and artillery that such an attempt was looked upon by the Germans as foolhardy and doomed to absolute failure.

A British cruiser, the _Vindictive_, in charge of Commander Alfred F.

B. Carpenter, with two ferryboats, the _Daffodil_ and the _Iris_, were to escort six obsolete British cruisers filled with concrete and sand to the harbor mouths at Ostend and Zeebrugge and to sink them there in the channels. The ferryboats carried sailors and marines who were to attack and destroy the mole. It was thought that this attack would divert the attention of the defenders and make it easier to sink the concrete laden cruisers in the channel. Two old and useless submarines, filled with explosives, were to be blown up against the viaduct joining the mole and the sh.o.r.e.

A heavy protective curtain of smoke was essential to the success of the plan. Commander Brock, who was killed during the action, planned the smoke screen and carried it out so successfully that the _Vindictive_ was able to get almost to the mole before being discovered. At Ostend the wind blew from such a direction that the smoke screen did not hide the boats and the attack there on that night was for that reason a failure. It succeeded better later, on May 9, when the battered _Vindictive_ was sunk in the channel.

The following is the story of the action at Zeebrugge taken from the official report of the British Admiralty:--

"The night was overcast and there was a drifting haze. Down the coast a great searchlight swung its beam to and fro in the small wind and short sea. From the _Vindictive's_ bridge, as she headed in toward the mole, with the faithful ferryboats at her heels, there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen sh.o.r.eward. Ahead, as she drove through the water, rolled the smoke screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about her by small craft. This was the device of Wing Commander Brock, without which, acknowledges the Admiral in command, the operation could not have been conducted.

"A northeast wind moved the volume of it sh.o.r.eward ahead of the s.h.i.+ps.

Beyond it, was the distant town, its defenders unsuspicious. It was not until the _Vindictive_, with blue-jackets and marines standing ready for landing, was close upon the mole that the wind lulled and came away again from the southeast, sweeping back the smoke screen and laying her bare to eyes that looked seaward.

"There was a moment immediately afterward when it seemed to those on the s.h.i.+ps as if the dim, coast-hidden harbor exploded into light. A star sh.e.l.l soared aloft, then a score of star sh.e.l.ls. The wavering beams of the searchlights swung around and settled into a glare. A wild fire of gun flashes leaped against the sky, strings of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank. The darkness of the night was supplemented by a nightmare daylight of battle-fired guns and machine guns along the mole. The batteries ash.o.r.e awoke to life.

"It was in a gale of sh.e.l.ling that the _Vindictive_ laid her nose against the thirty-foot high concrete side of the mole, let go her anchor and signaled to the _Daffodil_ to shove her stern in.

"The _Iris_ went ahead and endeavored to get alongside likewise. The fire was intense, while the s.h.i.+ps plunged and rolled beside the mole in the seas, the _Vindictive_ with her greater draught jarring against the foundations of the mole with every lunge. They were swept diagonally by machine-gun fire from both ends of the mole and by the heavy batteries on sh.o.r.e.

"Commander (now Captain) Carpenter commanded the _Vindictive_ from the open bridge until her stern was laid in, when he took up his position in the flame thrower hut on the port side. It is marvelous that any occupant should have survived a minute in this hut, so riddled and shattered is it.

"The officers of the _Iris_, which was in trouble ahead of the _Vindictive_, describe Captain Carpenter as handling her like a picket boat. The _Vindictive_ was fitted along her port side with a high false deck, from which ran eighteen brows or gangways by which the storming and demolition parties were to land.

"The men gathered in readiness on the main lower decks, while Colonel Elliott, who was to lead the marines waited on the false deck just abaft of the bridge. Captain Halahan, who commanded the blue-jackets, was amids.h.i.+ps. The gangways were lowered, and they sc.r.a.ped and rebounded upon the high parapet of the mole as the _Vindictive_ rolled in the seaway.

"The word for the a.s.sault had not yet been given when both leaders were killed, Colonel Elliott by a sh.e.l.l and Captain Halahan by machine-gun fire which swept the decks. The same sh.e.l.l that killed Colonel Elliott also did fearful execution in the forward Stokes mortar battery. The men were magnificent; every officer bears the same testimony.

"The mere landing on the mole was a perilous business. It involved a pa.s.sage across the cras.h.i.+ng and splintering gangways, a drop over the parapet into the field of fire of the German machine guns which swept its length, and a further drop of some sixteen feet to the surface of the mole itself. Many were killed and more wounded as they crowded up the gangways, but nothing hindered the orderly and speedy landing by every gangway.

"Lieutenant H. T. C. Walker had his arm shot away by sh.e.l.l on the upper deck, and lay in darkness while the storming parties trod him under.

He was recognized and dragged aside by the commander. He raised his remaining arm in greetings. 'Good luck to you,' he called as the rest of the stormers hastened by. 'Good luck.'

"The lower deck was a shambles as the commander made the rounds of the s.h.i.+p, yet those wounded and dying raised themselves to cheer as he made his tour. . . .

"The _Iris_ had troubles of her own. Her first attempts to make fast to the mole ahead of the _Vindictive_ failed, as her grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet. Two officers, Lieutenant Commander Bradford and Lieutenant Hawkins, climbed ash.o.r.e and sat astride the parapet trying to make the grapnels fast till each was killed and fell down between the s.h.i.+p and the wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both legs shot away and died next morning. Lieutenant Spencer though wounded, took command and refused to be relieved.

"The _Iris_ was obliged at last to change her position and fall in astern of the _Vindictive_, and suffered very heavily from fire. A single big sh.e.l.l plunged through the upper deck and burst below at a point where fifty-six marines were waiting for the order to go to the gangways. Forty-nine were killed. The remaining seven were wounded.

Another sh.e.l.l in the wardroom, which was serving as a sick bay, killed four officers and twenty-six men. Her total casualties were eight officers and sixty-nine men killed, and three officers and 103 men wounded.

"Storming and demolition parties upon the mole met with no resistance from the Germans other than intense and unremitting fire. One after another buildings burst into flame or split and crumbled as dynamite went off. A bombing party working up toward the mole extension in search of the enemy destroyed several machine-gun emplacements, but not a single prisoner rewarded them. It appears that upon the approach of the s.h.i.+ps and with the opening of fire the enemy simply retired and contented themselves with bringing machine guns to the short end of the mole."

[Ill.u.s.tration: One of the camouflaged guns of the German sh.o.r.e batteries which raked with fire the _Vindictive_, the _Daffodil_, and the _Iris_ when they grappled with the mole, during the night raid.

The outer end of this mole, where a viaduct joins the mole to the sh.o.r.e, was destroyed for a distance of sixty to one hundred feet by an old British submarine, loaded with high explosives, running into the channel and blowing itself up at the entrance.]

The story of the three block s.h.i.+ps that were to be sunk in the channel at Zeebrugge, also from the report of the British Admiralty, is as follows:--

"The _Thetis_ came first, steaming into a tornado of sh.e.l.ls from great batteries ash.o.r.e. All her crew, save a remnant who remained to steam her in and sink her, already had been taken off her by a ubiquitous motor launch, but the remnant spared hands enough to keep her four guns going. It was hers to show the road to the _Intrepid_ and the _Iphigenia_, which followed. She cleared a string of armed barges which defends the channel from the tip of the mole, but had the ill fortune to foul one of her propellers upon a net defense which flanks it on the sh.o.r.e side.

"The propeller gathered in the net, and it rendered her practically unmanageable. Sh.o.r.e batteries found her and pounded her unremittingly.