The Day We Went to War (42 page)

Hitler, in the presence of Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, decorates Lieutenant Guenther Prien with the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross for the sinking of HMS
Royal Oak
at Scapa Flow, 14 October 1939.

Some of the twenty-seven survivors of HMS
Rawalpindi
captured by the Germans under escort to a prisoner-of-war camp. The
Rawalpindi
had been sunk in an action with the two German battlecruisers,
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau,
23 November 1939.

Their commander Commodore Henry Harwood decided to split his forces and engage in battle. The eight-inch-gun
Exeter
was to draw the
Graf Spee
’s fire while the other two cruisers were to get in close enough to attack the German with torpedoes. Langsdorff, thinking that the British ships were just destroyers, ignored his instructions not to engage enemy warships, and went on the attack. On board the
Graf Spee
were twenty-three captains and officers of the merchant ships that she had sunk. Captain Charles Dove of the
Africa Shell
heard the order to man action stations sounded then: ‘I and my colleagues were locked up on the mess deck. The
Graf Spee
opened fire and the
Exeter
immediately replied. According to our reckoning the
Graf Spee
was hit at least sixteen times. We played cards, including bridge, throughout the battle. One shell exploded near us, and we kept splinters of it as souvenirs.’

During the course of the battle
Exeter
was badly damaged, receiving over forty hits by shells three times the weight of those with which she could reply. Her forward gun turrets were put out of action, and her one remaining gun could only be fired by hand; sixty-four of the cruiser’s complement were killed and over twenty seriously injured; second-in-command Commander Robert R. Graham had fifteen pieces of shell splinter in his body. The dead were committed to the deep by the ship’s padre, the Reverend ‘Bish’ Grove, but there were insufficient Union Jacks to go round and some of the men were shrouded in blankets. In a bizarre contrast to the death and destruction all around, at the height of the battle the ship’s canary laid an egg. When it hatched out, the chick was raffled for sixpenny (3p) tickets, which raised £8 for the relatives
of those killed in action. It was inevitably named ‘Graf Spee’. And
Exeter
’s cat Splinters survived the battle unscathed.

Eighteen-year-old Seaman Tom Surkitt from Cambridge was the youngest sailor on board: ‘For two hours I sat behind my gun handing out cordite for all I was worth. Altogether we fired ninety-four rounds. We doubled our “action ration” of biscuits and bully beef as we piled into the
Graf Spee
. After what seemed an age we got the “Cease Fire” signal. I climbed out of the turret into the sun-shine, and I saw the havoc that had been done to our dear old ship. I saw the bodies of pals who hadn’t been as lucky as me laid in rows on the deck. I recognised two special pals lying there among them. That was a bad moment. Then I began to realise the magnificent victory we had gained. I felt proud of
Exeter
and everybody in it.’

The
Ajax
was badly hit, too. Only two of her eight guns were able to fire and she had lost her radio aerials when the topmast was hit. But morale remained high. Nineteen-year-old Able Seaman Lancelot Jacques said that he and his gun crew ‘didn’t bother at all’, when told that their opponent was the
Graf Spee
, and another gun crew kept their spirits up by singing ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ and other songs during lulls in the battle. Able Seaman Robert Macey gained the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM) for his action in charge of a shell room. He ‘set a fine example of cheerful and good hard work’, ensuring that there were no delays in supplying ammunition to the turret which was able to fire the greatest number of rounds at the
Graf Spee
.

Early in the action in the New Zealand-manned
Achilles
, shell splinters struck the gun-director tower, killing three men and wounding two others. Another DSM was awarded to Boy Seaman Allan Dorset for behaving ‘with exemplary coolness despite the carnage around him’. During the action, Petty Officers William Headon and Alfred Maycock, together with Able Seaman Henry Gould, managed to keep up an accurate output of over 200 broadsides. They achieved this despite being faced with large alterations of course as the cruiser
manoeuvred at full speed. For this they too all received the DSM. So too did Chief Stoker Job Wain, for acting as ‘an inspiration and a help to all’ and keeping things in the boiler room going with ‘the highest efficiency’ throughout the battle.

On the burning and badly listing
Exeter
, Harwood weighed up whether or not to break off the action. ‘We might just as well be bombarding her with bloody snowballs,’ one of his officers heard him say in frustration. But almost at that very moment, to the Commodore’s great surprise, the British ships saw the
Graf Spee
put up a smokescreen and head westwards, making for the port of Montevideo in neutral Uruguay. The British ships shadowed her until late that evening when, at about 10.30pm, the
Graf Spee
anchored off the Uruguayan capital. The British captives were now released. A German officer remarked to Captain Dove, ‘You fellows have been prisoners here for quite a while. Now it looks as if it’s our turn.’ Before leaving the
Graf Spee
, Dove was called to the bridge. There, Langsdorff told him, ‘Your cruisers made a very gallant fight. When people fight like that, all personal enmity is lost. Those British are hard.’

The
Graf Spee
, Harwood’s frustrated remark notwithstanding, had received serious damage too: thirty-six of her crew were dead and over sixty badly wounded. Langsdorff was not sure that his ship could make it back to Germany without having essential repairs done immediately. But under international law, his ship would only be allowed to remain in the neutral port for a fixed time limit. Harwood was determined to try and prevent her from leaving before British reinforcements could be brought up. Guile, deception and diplomatic persuasion by the resourceful and energetic British Minister Eugen Millington-Drake were all brought into play. Naval attaché Captain Henry McCall arranged that a bogus order for fuel oil was leaked to the Germans, and Langsdorff was fooled into thinking that the oil was intended for strong reinforcements that had joined Harwood.

On 17 December, with the time limit nearing expiry and reports that the
Graf Spee
was about to sail, the sea front at Montevideo was packed with expectant crowds. That evening, just before 6.20pm, the
Graf Spee
steamed from the harbour, and many now expected to witness a spectacular naval battle. But just three miles out, the pocket battleship stopped, and tugs and small boats were seen to be taking off crew members. Then suddenly at 7.50pm, smoke began to pour from the ship and ‘with a blaze of light and ear-splitting boom’, it blew up. An eyewitness noted how, ‘At that moment the sun was just sinking below the horizon, flooding the sky in which small grey clouds floated lazily, a brilliant blood red. It was a perfect Wagnerian setting for this amazing Hitlerian drama.’ And Captain Henry Daniel, the
Daily Telegraph
’s special correspondent, saw how ‘sheets of flame spread over the tranquil sea as the oil from the bunkers of the riven ship came to the surface and caught fire. Dense clouds of smoke rose in the air, and soon the wreck was a blazing inferno from stem to stern. It was the end of the tragedy.’

Rather than risk the British getting hold of the
Graf Spee
and its equipment, including an early form of radar, Langsdorff had scuttled his ship. Torpedoes had been primed to explode in the ammunition magazines after the skeleton crew had been taken off. Three days later Langsdorff, whom his British prisoners all acknowledged as ‘a real gentleman’, shot himself in his Buenos Aires hotel room. He was wrapped, it was rumoured, in the old Imperial flag and ‘not the Swastika of Hitler’. In his letter of farewell he wrote, ‘I am quite happy to pay with my life for any possible reflection on the honour of the flag.’ He was buried the next day with full naval honours. His funeral was attended by Captain Charles Pottinger of the SS
Ashlea
, as the representative of the
Graf Spee
’s captives, whom Langsdorff had treated so chivalrously. Captain Pottinger recalled that Langsdorff had once told him, ‘he was proud to say that not a single British life had been lost by his exploits’.

In Britain, Langsdorff’s suicide featured prominently in the diaries and reports sent to Mass Observation. On hearing of the Captain’s death, a Tyneside housewife wrote, ‘5pm – Oh! I could weep, feel that I have lost a friend – Captain of the “Graf Spee”. The world has lost another brave man, and Hitler and Co. live . . . that Captain of the “Graf Spee”! – I cannot forget him . . . Queer there are people in this world I feel are my special pals tho’ I know them not.’ But comments recorded in an Ipswich workshop were much more mixed:

‘Can’t see how he died for the Fatherland.’

‘It shows that there are some decent men in the German Navy.’

‘He was a good chap. Treated his prisoners well.’

‘Lot of tripe sharing the fate of his ship.’

‘He was bloody well told to do it.’

In Germany, the loss of the
Graf Spee
plunged the Nazi leadership into gloom. Goering was outraged by the scuttling of the ship, while Goebbels wrote in his diary that the ship’s loss ‘tears at the heart’. The morale of the German Navy was further eroded by a ‘deeply saddened’ Hitler. He changed the name of
Graf Spee
’s sister ship from
Deutschland
to
Luetzow
, for fear that a ship bearing the name ‘Germany’ might share the same fate.

The Battle of the River Plate was hailed as a triumph both in Britain and throughout the world by Britain’s friends. To Washington, Churchill dispatched details of the ‘brilliant sea fight’ to an appreciative and approving President Roosevelt. And in a special edition on the battle,
Picture Post
waxed both eloquent and prophetic:

‘Violent, insolent, intolerant in success. Bitter and sullen in defeat. Such is the ideal the Nazis have tried to force upon the world. To Nazi Germany the destruction of the
Graf Spee
is more than a naval disaster. It is a symbol, foreshadowing the collapse of a whole regime – a regime founded upon hatred and the denial of every human right.’

Photograph showing the scuttling of the
Admiral Graf Spee.
In Churchill’s words, ‘thus ended the first surface challenge to British trade on the oceans’.