The Beauty and the Sorrow (58 page)

Willy Coppens is now perilously close to becoming one of these statistics. The salvo from the German fighter rattles along his machine. A fragment of a bullet that struck a stay-wire hits the left side of his head with great force but without leaving a wound. The blow, however, knocks him to the right and the joystick—and consequently the plane—follows his involuntary movement. Which is a piece of pure luck, since it means that the rest of the salvo goes in at a slight angle, along the fuselage of the plane rather than broadside.

Coppens describes the experience as being “squirted all over with molten lead” and afterwards he willingly confesses “that being shot at is bad for the nervous system.”

In all the panic, however, he remembers the advice he was recently given by a French pilot. If a larger, two-seater machine like his is attacked by a smaller single-seater there is only one thing to do: keep turning, turn back and forth. The simple point being to give the fighter as little chance as possible of hitting its target.

So that is what Coppens does; he turns, pendulums, twists, swings and sways, all the time losing height in irregular spirals. His aircraft hardly remains in level flight for a second at a time. Coppens himself scarcely sees the enemy, now and then catching a glimpse of one plane or another with a big black cross painted on it diving at his aircraft or climbing up into position for a new attack. He can hear them, though,
and at regular intervals he can also hear his observer firing his machine gun at the enemy in short bursts.

Once Coppens has crossed back over his own lines the four German fighters break off the attack and fly away. It has taken four and a half minutes but it feels like “an eternity” to him. During the short battle he lost 1,200 metres of height.

After they land he and his observer inspect the damage. They count thirty-two bullet holes, twenty-nine of which are so close to the cockpit that Coppens can touch them without leaving his seat. One bullet went right between his knees and then passed very close to his right hand resting on the joystick. But apart from the fragment that he finds embedded in the leather of his helmet he has not been hit. He calls it “a miracle.” Invulnerable?

In Kastamonu, where Edward Mousley is sitting writing his journal, it is spring and green.

The band has made great strides. I’m now first violin and leader of the “Orchestra.” We have five violins, two cellos and a double bass, besides the drums, two clarionettes [
sic
], flute and banjo, and the Human Crotchet
^k
has made commendable progress in writing out our music from bits of anything we got through the post, piano solos, and many we have had to write from memory. We perform on Saturday evenings alternately at either house. Sometimes we sound almost like a seaside band at Home!!! I long for the old Queen’s Hall concerts again.

Mousley also spends his time writing for
Smoke
, a hand-written newspaper which is secretly passed around among the British prisoners of war in Kastamonu. He is also sketching out a project about international law and the possibility of starting a supranational organisation after the war, “a possible Society of Nations or International Body.” He longs to be home. He thinks about escaping.

MONDAY
, 21
MAY
1917
Harvey Cushing sees wreckage in the Atlantic

It is their tenth day at sea and for once the weather is good. The sun is shining and the sea is calm. The ship is called SS
Saxonia
and it is carrying Harvey Cushing and the rest of the staff of Base Hospital No. 5, one of the very first American units to be sent over to the war in Europe. It is just a month since the United States entered the war—to make the world “safe for democracy.” The intervention has, economically speaking, made things safe for the British, anyway. They have been fighting this war on credit, credit that appeared to be running out at the end of last year, and some members of the British government had been talking sombrely of the risk of economic collapse. Now, at the eleventh hour, Britain has been propped up with American money and, not least, with cheap American raw materials.

The voyage so far has been undramatic but anxious. SS
Saxonia
has been sailing alone
^l
and the ship has been zig-zagging constantly across the ocean, ever watchful for the periscope of a U-boat. All of them are wearing life jackets twenty-four hours a day and they practise taking to the lifeboats time after time. At evening time everything seems to be coloured various shades of blue-grey: the ship, the sea, the clouds.

Military formalities have begun to lay a heavy hand even on this essentially unmilitary unit. Armed guards can now be seen on different parts of the vessel, exercises are performed on deck, shoes are well polished, and when the officers do their daily gymnastic exercises they ensure that the other ranks cannot watch in case it undermines their respect for their superiors. Cushing has some difficulty getting used to it. He was more than a little surprised when he was given his spurs (purely a token of being an officer, since Base Hospital No. 5 has no horses) and a pistol (Model M 1911)—“a villainous-looking, greasy automatic,” which he rarely carries and has no intention of using.

It is not that Cushing has any doubts about the war. He has been convinced for a long time that the United States would be drawn in sooner or later—indeed, must become involved. And he has been working both long and hard to prepare his professional colleagues back in Boston for
it. The month he spent in France as a sort of medical observer in the spring of 1915 helped to increase his hatred of the war as a phenomenon but lessened his fear of it as an event. He was rarely afraid on the occasions he visited the front. As he wrote in his journal that spring: “the further away from home you get and the closer you actually get to the scene of the war, the less you hear about it and the less terrifying it seems.” As a neurologist he then became very interested in the phenomenon of “shell shock,” and this purely professional motivation still remains. But other, much more powerful factors have been added to that.

At that time he had been a neutral observer and he had treated the endless stories of German aggression with scepticism. That cool and distant stance has been eroded. The decisive moment came on 8 May 1915. He was off Ireland on his way back to the United States when his ship sailed into the wreckage of RMS
Lusitania
, which had been sunk by a German U-boat the day before with the loss of 1,198 men, women and children, 124 of them American citizens. They had ploughed their way through wreckage for a whole hour and Cushing, in a state of shock, had seen deckchairs, oars and boxes drifting past and, worst of all, the bodies of a woman and a child alongside a collapsible life raft. A trawler was circling in the distance, picking up bodies—for a bounty of one pound each.

Those are the memories that come to the surface now, on this day in May 1917, when he sees wreckage. This time, no more than a plank, some pieces of rubbish and a life jacket. That afternoon they are joined by an escort vessel, a small and aged destroyer with the number 29 painted on its bows. The destroyer takes up station 500 yards behind them and they cheer and wave, considerably relieved. Cushing thinks that more people will risk sleeping below deck tonight.

They practise stretcher-bearing on the upper deck later that afternoon—their inexperience shows. The training is done with the help of an instruction manual. All of their new army suitcases are stacked in the bow and if everything goes according to plan they will dock in Falmouth at six o’clock tomorrow morning.

TUESDAY
, 29
MAY
1917
Angus Buchanan is put ashore on a white sandy beach in Lindi

There are times when three months can pass quickly. That is how long Buchanan’s unit has been down in Cape Town, that is how long their visit to “a beautiful, peaceful land”—pure heaven—has lasted. This period of rest was utterly essential and it is doubtful whether the 25th Royal Fusiliers could have continued without it. The mood of both officers and men during the latter part of their time in East Africa was one of depression and apathy.

There is, anyway, little that can be done during the wet season and battalions of black troops from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and the West Indies were left to hold the fort in the pouring rain.

The rested units are now on their way back to East Africa by boat, refreshed and ready, as the word has it, to finish the business off. Von Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces may have been pushed back into the south-eastern corner of the colony, but they are still undefeated. The new South African Allied commander Major General Sir Louis “Japie” van Deventer, is intent on more direct combat and fewer of the ingenious but usually fruitless pincer movements. (“Hard hitting” is his chosen method.) All of those tortuous marches through bush and jungle were aimed at reducing combat losses while outmanoeuvring the enemy, but time after time they led to lines of communication being stretched to breaking point. The general feeling is that the lives saved on the battlefield by the tactics of Smuts—the previous commander—were lost several times over in the hospitals.
^m
And many of those who, like Buchanan, were evacuated to South Africa to recover were in such a miserable and emaciated condition that it caused widespread concern. Most people had not seen white men in that condition before: blacks, yes; whites, never.

The convoy loaded with troops for the coming offensive is made up of five vessels. They have dropped anchor just over a mile from a beach of white sand, which is where the troops are to disembark. Just a short distance away is the town of Lindi, which is already in British hands. Buchanan writes:

We viewed the shore with mixed feelings; adventure still held an attraction to us, but the country had, in its latent possibilities, the power to appal the searchings of imagination, and it was with feelings more sober than otherwise that we contemplated the land before us. For there lay the bush-land, as it had always lain before us, an over-dark picture which no man could surely read.

A small steamer comes up alongside the cruiser and the men pick up their packs, their equipment and their rifles and climb down into it. The steamer transports them to a waiting longboat, which takes them the final, shallow stretch. Then they are carried, dry-shod, on the backs of the black oarsmen, up onto the white sand.

THURSDAY
, 31
MAY
1917
Richard Stumpf sees twenty Iron Crosses awarded on SMS
Helgoland

When there are no new victories you have to make as much as you can of the old ones. The first anniversary of the Battle of Jutland is marked by great celebrations throughout the High Seas Fleet. The captain of SMS
Helgoland
gives a speech “with fiery eyes.” The further he gets into his highly charged oration, the more polemical and shrill he becomes:

“Our enemies are working with a special purpose in mind, which is to break the bond between our Supreme Commander and his navy and his army. Once the House of Hohenzollern has been overthrown they will compel us to accept a parliamentary form of government similar to that in England and in France. Which means that, just like them, we shall be ruled by merchants, lawyers and journalists. In those countries, whenever they grow tired of a general or a military leader they simply dismiss him. But when this war is over we shall need an even stronger army and an even stronger navy. You must oppose all those who want to introduce parliamentary government into Germany, and you must never forget that the greatness of Germany stands and falls with her imperial dynasty, with her army and with her young navy.
Remember one thing: the social democrats in all the countries we are at war with desire to destroy us.”

The finale is three cheers for “His Majesty, Our Supreme Commander in War,” after which twenty Iron Crosses are awarded on a more or less random basis to men who took part in the battle.

Stumpf, as usual, feels divided, concerned and angry. The energy of the speaker and the power of the words take hold of him and he feels more than thinks that some of what has been said might possibly be true. But if his emotions pull him in one direction, his reason pulls him in another. He understands very well why the captain holds these views, and perhaps he would think the same way if he was an officer. But he is nothing but an ordinary seaman, a “propertyless proletarian,” as he puts it himself, and, as such, it is impossible for him to support “any increase in the autocratic power of the Kaiser, the army and the navy.” Indeed, “it is easy to talk about such a thing if you don’t have to pay for it yourself.” Stumpf has no fear of a parliamentary system and he thinks there are many good men among the leaders of Germany’s enemies. Just now, he would “rather be an English slave than a German seaman.”

The restlessness, irritation and disappointment that have built up in Stumpf during the years since the outbreak of war are only partly a result of the frustration he feels at the rigid discipline and the monumental tedium caused by the inactivity of the fleet. He is also filled with anger, an anger directed at Germany in its current form, particularly at what Stumpf regards as the fundamental principle that lies at the heart of the country—the class system. That, ultimately, is what has caused the ultra-patriot of 1914 to become the confused but angry radical of 1917.

The war has developed into something that few people foresaw and even fewer desired, and the class system is one of the things that has been unmasked: where decades of socialist and anarchist propaganda failed to lay bare the lies, hypocrisy and paradoxes of the old order, a couple of years of war have succeeded in doing so. And there are few places in which the absurdities of Europe have been so thoroughly exposed as in the German High Seas Fleet.