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.
CHAPTER FORTY
BLUNDERING THROUGH A MINEFIELD
Before our minefield was actually removed, we in the Falcon went through it.
It happened this way. Another Destroyer and ourselves had been doing Escort Duty for Troopships across to Boulogne and had finished for the day at Folkestone. Then we had to make the best of our way back to Dunkirk, ready for the next day’s duty.
It was pretty obvious that we were going to have fog, and a thick one; in fact, it was already shutting down as the last transport got into Folkestone. The question was, should we shove off and try making Dunkirk with the possibility of a night in, or take the safer course and ask permission to moor up in Dover. There was no doubt whatever of permission being readily granted, in view of the weather conditions. But I knew full well that if during the night it should clear up — and quite likely it would — we should get the pertly authoritative “M.K.” and have to shove off forthwith.