Chapter 3 Naval Hunnism

Some Inside History from the Falkland and Cocos Island Battles

Perhaps there is nothing about which the German has been more contemptuous of the Briton than in the matter of the way the latter has of treating war as he does his sport, of fighting his battles in the same spirit with which he plays his games. Yet it has been this very desire of the latter to play the game at all stages that is responsible for the fact that the German, for a time at least, was given credit in the popular mind of even the neutral and Allied countries for a great deal that never should have been credited to him. This is especially true of two or three of the earlier naval actions of the war. The fact that a German captain fought his ship gallantly seemed to his British opponent of that period sufficient reason for forgetting, or at least forgiving, him for not fighting fairly, and so it was that the bravery of Von Spee at the Falkland, and the skill and pluck of Von Müller in the Emden at Cocos Island, had the effect of mitigating in the minds of the officers of the British ships, which emerged as victors from those battles, the impression of a number of things, ranging all the way from "not playing the game" to downright treachery. And so it chances that in the eyes of even the civilised world the Germans have been given a clean sheet for these earlier encounters, and one hears them spoken of to-day in London as though they stood apart in this respect from every battle the German has fought on sea-or on land for that matter-since then. It is regrettable to record that this popular belief has no more to base itself on than the sportsmanlike reticence of the British officer in refusing to broadcast the real facts. One had a sort of pleasure, as the record of the Hun grew blacker and blacker the more chance he had to give expression to his real self, in hugging that delusion that the sailors of the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and Emden were at worst only a dull grey in comparison with their infamous mates of the High Sea Fleet who were drawn upon to man the U-boats. But that they were all of a kind one has only to talk with any of the British officers and men who came in contact with them in and after battle to learn beyond dispute. I will cite a single instance from the Falklands before going on to the Emden, on which latter even more false sentiment has been wasted on the score of the supposed "sporting" behaviour of her officers than on any other of the German ships which were in the limelight of publicity during the opening months of the war.

After the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had been sunk off the Falklands by the Invincible and Inflexible, the latter ships made every possible effort to pick up all the Germans who had survived the fighting and were floating in the water. A considerable number of these were brought aboard Admiral Sturdee's Flagship, the Invincible. Among the few German shells which had struck the latter battle cruiser was an "eight-point-one" which had failed to explode. Knowing that Von Spee had been near the end of his munition, but wishing to gain indisputable evidence on that point by establishing beyond a doubt whether the shell in question contained an explosive charge or was only a practice projectile fired for want of anything better, Admiral Sturdee decided to have it taken to pieces. Thinking it might be useful to get the testimony of the prisoners on the matter first, the Admiral, after having the shell in question brought to his cabin, ordered that the captured Germans be sent in for interrogation. Without exception they all declared that the projectile before them was made only for practice, and that, as it carried no explosive charge, there would be no risks whatever in knocking it apart to prove that fact. Questioned specifically as to whether any special precautions need be taken in handling it, they replied with equal unanimity in the negative.

As the prisoners began to file out, however, one of them caught the Admiral's eye and shook his head slightly, as though to convey-without his mates observing it-a warning that the shell was dangerous. On calling this man back, the Admiral was informed that the projectile really contained a full charge of high explosive, and that tinkering with it before certain precautions were observed would inevitably result in detonating it. A keen student of human nature, Admiral Sturdee recognised at once the unparalleled opportunity to test German honour and study a phase of the then imperfectly understood German psychology. The prisoners were ordered to be brought in separately, and in such a manner that those who passed out after interrogation should have no chance to communicate with their mates who were waiting their turn. To each man as he appeared it was pointed out that he owed his life to the fact that the British had not followed (as they well might have) the precedent set by the Germans at Coronel of making no effort to pick up the survivors from the ships they had sunk. It was also pointed out to him that his failure to tell the truth would probably be attended with serious loss of life among those to whom he owed his own. Then the question respecting the nature of the shell was again put. Without a single exception (the man who had confessed was not, of course, examined again) they reiterated most emphatically their former statements that the shell contained no explosive and might therefore be disassembled with impunity.

After providing adequate safeguards, the shell was taken to pieces, and at once proved to be everything that all but one of the several score of rescued Huns had declared it was not, which meant, of course, that if it had been handled in the way these had insisted would be perfectly safe, all near it would have been killed. Since there is no punishment provided for this brand of treachery, no action was taken against the prisoners, and the incident was remembered principally for the illuminative sidelight it threw on the unexpected moral obliquity of the German sailor. It was something quite new in the annals of civilised naval warfare, and Sturdee's officers were scarcely less grieved than shocked that men who had fought so bravely could behave so despicably. Yet that (to the Germans) incomprehensible sporting code of the British, by which it reckoned as not "playing the game" to speak ill of a brave foe after he is beaten, has prevented the story from finding its way to the public, and it is only now, when four years more of war have established the fact that the action of the Huns on this occasion was characteristic rather than (as so many of Sturdee's officers tried so hard to persuade themselves at the time) exceptional, that I am given permission (by one who observed at first hand all that took place) to publish it.

Perhaps (doubtless on account of the greater spectacularity of the lone-hand game she played) the Emden and her able and resourceful Captain came in for more of this misplaced credit than any other of the German cruisers of similar career. In one instance this even went so far as to prompt the people of the sporting Australian city from which the ship which brought the Emden's career to a finish took her name to request that the doughty Von Müller and his surviving officers should be sent to Sydney that they might be tendered a public reception. This kindly but misdirected instance of sportsmanship on the part of a people who-at this stage of the war at least-saw nothing incongruous in treating an enemy who had put up a good fight in precisely similar a way to which they had been accustomed to treat a visiting cricket eleven, was occasioned largely by the fact that the officers of the Sydney, in their eagerness to do full justice to a beaten foe, laid stress in their accounts of the fight on his bravery and said little or nothing of anything else. Yet, when one comes to learn the real facts of this historic battle (as I have done recently, by talking at length with a number of the British officers and men who took part in it), he finds evidences of "Hunnisms" splashing with muddy spots a record which might have been golden bright on the score of physical courage and devotion to duty.

It is no pleasure to write what I have to set down here, for I am quite frank to confess that the story of the Emden, according to the first accounts that were published of it, in connexion with the classic exploit of Lieutenant Mucke in escaping from Cocos Island in a small sloop and ultimately reaching Constantinople by way of Arabia, stirred my imagination as few episodes of the war have done. The time is long past, however, when the German has a right to expect anything further in the way of chivalrous reticence in the recording of his deeds and misdeeds. What I am setting down here was told me by an officer of the Sydney who boarded the beached Emden, and was also entrusted with the task of rounding up and bringing off the men from the latter that had jumped overboard and made their way to the beach of North Keeling Island.

As regards the battle itself, no one in the Sydney has anything but admiration for the pluck and skill with which the Emden fought a losing battle against a faster and more heavily gunned ship. But perhaps the one thing which they do hold most heavily against Von Müller personally is for the characteristically Prussian way he tried to bluff them, after he had run his ship aground, into allowing him to leave his flag flying when the Emden had been put completely out of action and was out of the running for good and all. I have already written of this historic incident in considerable detail as it appeared to a signalman of the Sydney who had unusually favourable opportunity for observing just what transpired, so that it will suffice here merely to summarise it and record that this man's version is fully borne out by what was subsequently told me by officers.

When the Sydney returned to the grounded Emden after pursuing and sinking the latter's collier, it was seen that the German Naval ensign was still flying at her maintopmast. Nothing in the nature of a white flag was displayed anywhere upon her. After making three times the signal, "Do you surrender?" and each time receiving only an evasive reply, or none at all, the Captain of the Sydney had reluctantly to give the order to reopen fire. The three broadsides which were required to convince Von Müller that his bluff would not go down are estimated to have killed sixty men in the Emden and to have caused a number of others to jump over into the surf. These lives were nothing more or less than a sacrifice on the altar of Von Müller's Prussian pride, and under the circumstances he was just as blood-guilty for causing them to be snuffed out in a typically Hunnish attempt to "put one over" on the ship that had beaten him and make the report of his defeat read better in Potsdam as if he had ordered them to be mown down by the guns of the Emden.

Lieutenant X--'s account of the work he had charge of in the Emden shows Von Müller in a better light, but reveal a terrible callousness and negligence on the part of his medical officers. As he must always be the most weighty witness as to how things were on the stricken ship at this juncture, I shall set down his account of what he saw and did in some detail.

"It was the morning after the fight before we had cleaned up all the other incidental business and were free to give our attention to looking after what was left of, or rather who was left in, the Emden. Fortunately, her stern was lying out beyond where the surf broke, so that, with a line they threw us from the deck, it was possible to ride under one quarter, with the boat's bow to seaward. I had rather a hard time getting aboard, once nearly falling into the water through getting a hawser between my legs, but I finally managed it through a hand which one of the German officers standing aft reached down to me. I told Von Müller that the Captain of the Sydney was prepared to take the surviving officers and men to Colombo provided they would give their parole. At first he rather stuck over the word, as though he would like to make out that he did not understand it, a perfectly absurd bluff in the light of the fact that he was fluent in both English and French, and that the term is in common use by the Germans themselves. He quickly came round, however, when I hastened to explain exactly what the Captain would require of him. Ultimately he signed a paper agreeing that for such time as all officers and men of the Emden remained in the Sydney they would cause no interference with ship or fittings, and would be amenable to the ship's discipline. This parole was substantially observed.

"The surgeon of the Emden, though unwounded, was doing nothing at the time of our arrival, and, from the appearance of the wounded, it was evident that he had done very little during the twenty-four hours which had elapsed since the action. By way of excuse, he claimed that his staff were all killed and his dressings and instruments destroyed. Accepting this as the literal truth, we made a signal for more medical supplies to supplement those already brought, and Dr. Ollerhead, the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company's surgeon, who had come with us from Cocos Island, set to work to get the wounded ready to be transferred. Neither at that time, nor during the three days in which the surgeon of the Sydney worked without rest to save as many as possible of the Emden's eighty wounded, did the German surgeon render anything like the assistance that might have been expected from him under the circumstances.

"What disgusted us most, however, was to find before we left the Emden that there had been ample supplies of uninjured dressings all the time. The action station of Dr. L--, the surgeon in question, had been in the stokehold, which was quite undamaged. A bent and twisted ladder or two formed the only obstacles to reaching and utilising the considerable stores of dressings, lotions, etc., which were still available there. Although it was true that the assistant surgeon was missing (he had come on deck after his station in the tiller flat aft had been struck, and was blown overboard by an exploding shell), it was not true by a long way that there was not ample help, skilled and unskilled, available for at least first-aid dressing all around, and on this they had hardly made a beginning."

A brief quotation or two from the report of the surgeon of the Sydney may be interesting while on the question of the neglect of the Emden's wounded by their own surgeon. Referring to the wounded which had just been brought aboard, he says:

"In cases where large vessels of the leg or arm had been opened, we found torniquets of pieces of spun yarn, or a handkerchief, or piece of cloth bound around the limb above the injury. In some cases, I believe the majority, they had been put on by the patients themselves. One man told me he had put one on his arm himself. They were all in severe pain from the constriction, and in all cases where amputation was required, the presence of these torniquets made it necessary to amputate much higher than one would otherwise have done. There was little evidence of any skilled treatment before they arrived aboard."

Again he writes:

"Some of the men who were brought off to the Sydney presented horrible sights, and by this time the wounds were practically all foul and stinking, and maggots 1/4 inch long were crawling over them, only 24 to 30 hours after injury. Practically nothing had been done to the wounded sailors, and they were roughly attended to by our party and despatched to us as quickly as possible."

Professional etiquette evidently operated to restrain the surgeon of the Sydney from stating in his report what he thought of these very palpable evidences of neglect on the part of his "opposite number" in the Emden. When I met him in the Sydney last winter I heard him express himself in no uncertain language on the subject, but I do not feel at liberty to quote him without his permission, and he has recently returned to Australia. I take it that he reckoned that to his medical brethren, to whom his report was especially addressed, the plain statements of the facts were sufficient to speak for themselves.

Lieutenant X-- credits the German officers with doing the best they could in helping him transfer the wounded. "Shortly after I came over the side," he said, "I took the opportunity to tell Von Müller that we reckoned he had fought very well. To this he merely answered with a rather surly 'No,' and turned away as though to hide his chagrin. Presently, however, he came up to where I was standing, and, speaking in a rather apologetic tone, said: 'Thank you very much for saying that, but I was not satisfied. We should have done better. You were very lucky in shooting away all my voice-pipes at the beginning.' I do not remember whether or not I told him that this was hardly enough to balance his own luck in getting both our range-finders in the first five minutes.

"The best of the whole lot of officers, however-indeed, the only one who showed anything like the spirit one would expect a British officer to display under similar circumstances-was Lieutenant --, whom I encountered in connexion with my 'sweep' of North Keeling Island after the lot of Huns who landed there through the surf. I was a good deal puzzled to account for the sporting spirit of -- on this occasion-until he chanced to tell me that his mother was English! I had this little Keeling Island roundup all to myself, and, grim as some features of it were, it had also its amusing side, and you may be interested in hearing something of it.

"When we fired those last three broadsides into the Emden a good many men either jumped or were blown into the water, and of these a score or more were carried to the beach by the surf. Most of these, as I found later, were wounded in one way or another, and having no food or water, their sufferings during the day and a half before help reached them were unspeakable.

"From the Emden the bodies of men-some of which appeared to have life in them-were visible on the beach above high-water mark, and just before we left the wreck for good I noticed a party setting off along the shore to the right. If I had only failed to notice this move, my rescue party would have reached the poor wretches eight or ten hours earlier than it did, and probably have saved several more lives than we saved. The unfortunate delay was also largely due to my ignorance of the fact that North Keeling Island was a coral atoll.

"When we got back to the Sydney with the last of the wounded from the Emden I learned that our galley had already been sent away to take food and water to the men on the beach, but that, for some reason, it had gone in no further than the line of the outer reef where the surf began to break. I volunteered to go in the whaler to find what the trouble was, and if possible, make a landing with both boats. Just as I was about to go over the side, a young Australian lad-some kind of a Boy rating-came and asked to be taken along. I refused him rather shortly, as I thought it would be of more hindrance than help in the kind of job we had on hand. He disappeared quickly, and I did not see him again until we had taken the galley in through the surf and were pulling it up on the beach. Then he was discovered, curled up under the thwarts, where he had managed to stow himself away before we pulled off from the Sydney. It was a lucky thing he came along, for, as it turned out, he was the only one of the lot of us who knew how to climb a coconut palm in true native fashion.

"It was impossible to take a boat through the surf anywhere near the point where the Emden had grounded, but some miles up the beach there appeared to be an opening in the reef through which a landing might be made. Watching our chances, we managed to shoot the whaler in without an upset, incidentally showing the way to the galley, which had been on the point of giving up the job after staving a hole in its bottom in attempting a passage at a less favourable point. Mustering my men, I set out to find the Huns. It was here that I went wrong.

"Knowing that the island was but a small one, and having seen a number of the Emden's men making off to the right from the point where she was grounded, I figured that I would be likely to intercept them more quickly if I circled round to the left and met them face to face than by trying to overtake them. As it was late, I was anxious to lose no time in getting them together and into the boats while there was still daylight to see to getting the latter through the surf. If the island had been anything but a coral atoll my reckoning would have worked out all right; as it was it upset things completely.

"The island was covered with coco palms, under which there was a thick growth of pandanus and some sort of salt grass, the latter forming a tangle which made walking extremely difficult, and ultimately forced me to take to the beach to get opener going. Even here progress was slow on account of the sand and coral clinkers, and it was already getting dark when we suddenly found our way barred by a swift-flowing tidal passage connecting the open sea and what I now saw for the first time-the lagoon in the heart of the coral atoll. The island, like all others of its kind, was in the shape of a rough letter 'C,' with water between the two tips, and therefore quite impossible to walk around.

"As it was out of the question trying to swim what was probably a shark-infested passage in the dark, especially as there was no certainty of finding our men on the other side, there was nothing to do but turn back. Here again I made the mistake of trying to take a short cut by striking straight across the island instead of sticking to the beach. I never saw the place in daylight which we stumbled into, and so can't say just what it was; it seemed, however, to be a sort of wilderness of reeds peopled with a million seabirds, many of them nesting. The roar of our guns in the battle was as nothing to the bedlam of screams which arose when I went slithering through a lot of eggs and flopped full length into a rising mass of beating wings. They came batting against us in the darkness throughout the several minutes we were groping our way back to the open of the beach.

"It was well after midnight when we got back to where the boats were, and so quite out of the question trying to do anything further in the way of searching for the Huns till daylight. Several of the latter had struggled in and given themselves up, and they told us that the rest were all at the point where they had first come ashore from the Emden, and suffering greatly from hunger and thirst. As we had expected to be putting back to the Sydney within an hour or two of the time we landed, we had little food and water save that in the boats, and this wouldn't have gone very far with the lot of us if it had not been supplemented by the coconuts our young stowaway brought down for us.

"There was not much chance to rest that night on account of the small land-crabs which kept crawling over you the moment you dropped off to sleep, and it was not pleasant to think of how those more or less helpless Huns were faring a few miles farther down the beach. We started off at the first streak of dawn, and reached them by sun-up. The most of them were in even worse condition than I had feared, for it seemed inconceivable to me that they should not have contrived in some way or other to get hold of some coconuts to eat and drink. It turned out that they had not done so, however, and that, as a consequence, a number of them had died of thirst. The worst case, perhaps, was that of the assistant surgeon, whom I told you of as having been wounded and blown overboard by a shell. Delirious from thirst, he had managed to induce a sailor to fetch him a drink of salt water, and had died shortly afterwards as a result of drinking it. All the open wounds, since they had gone from twelve to eighteen hours longer without attention, were in even more terrible condition than those of the men we had found on the Emden the previous day.

"The only one of the lot who seemed to have any hold on himself was the Lieutenant -- I have mentioned. Luckily, he was not injured, and he appeared to have been doing everything he could to help those that were. It must have kept the plucky chap's hands full, for several of them were crazy, and a number of the wounded were too helpless to keep the crabs away. He and one or two of the least knocked out of the seamen had managed to keep these vermin pretty well away from the bodies of the living, but with the dead down along the water's edge they were already having their way.

"Finally, we got all the helpless of the wounded on to stretchers and started on their way to the boats. -- was the greatest help throughout, but I can't say as much for many of the others of the unwounded, who were very grudging in the way they lent a hand. -- put up a stiff protest against going off without burying the dead, declaring that he was not going to leave them there for the crabs to eat up. When I pointed out that we had no implements for digging, and that I needed his help in getting the living off, he saw the reason of it and said he would come along. We did the best we could for the dead by covering them with palm leaves and coral clinkers.

"I made a wide circle around before we left, trying to be sure that none of the living was left behind. The Huns were not quite sure of their numbers, so there was no checking up the thing that way. I am quite positive that no living man was left in that immediate vicinity, and ---- felt equally certain that none had strayed away. This must have been just what did happen, however, for, many weeks later, we had word from the Telegraph people to the effect that, when they landed on North Keeling Island to bury the dead, one of the crab-picked skeletons they found was in a sitting position against the bole of a palm tree. I've never tried to reconstruct the story of what happened, but it must have been rather awful at the best.

"It was rather a problem, calculating how to get every one off in two small boats, one of which had a hole in the bottom. The whaler would still float right side up, however, and we finally managed it by putting the badly wounded, with a pulling crew, in the Sydney's cutter, which was sent to aid us in the morning, and the rest piling into the whaler and sitting in the water. Then a long tow-line was passed to the cutter (long enough to let her get out beyond the breakers before a strain came on it) and she pulled away with the whole procession. --, in spite of all I could do to induce him to get into the whaler, insisted on swimming out through the breakers and boarding her outside. If he hadn't been starving and thirsting for forty-eight hours I would have put it down as pure swank; as it was, however, I can't believe he was actuated by anything else than a wish to ease off the load on the damaged boat while it was going through the breakers. He was a thoroughly good sport, that --, and, as I told you, I was a good deal puzzled to account for it until I learned about his being half English.

"We reached the Sydney all right, and the whaler was just being hoisted in when I heard the Captain's voice from the bridge asking where Lieutenant X-- was. I looked up just in time to catch him staring down at me with open-eyed amazement. 'Oh, there he is!' he exclaimed, turning away with a grin on his face. That led me, for the first time in twenty-four hours, to take a look at what I could see of myself without a glass. It was my turn to grin-and to blush. Absolutely the sum total of my wardrobe was my shirt and a seaman's straw hat! Nothing else. To ease my feet from boots after standing on the scorching iron decks of the Emden, I had shifted to an old pair of dancing pumps when I returned to the Sydney and these, in the rush of departure, I had worn ashore. These, and my socks, must have been scoured off among the coral clinkers, and my cap probably went when we stumbled into the sea-birds' roost in the darkness. But where I lost my trousers, and what sailor gave me his hat, I have never been able to make out."

I asked Lieutenant X-- if it was true, as I had heard, that the officers of the victor and vanquished took advantage of the several days they spent together in the Sydney before the Germans were disembarked at Colombo to foregather and talk the battle over.

"Except for the two Captains, who were necessarily thrown together a good deal and who drew a chart of the battle between them, emphatically no," he replied. "The wardroom officers held practically no conversation at all with those from the Emden. On their part there was shown no inclination to talk, and on our part that fact alone would have been enough to prevent any interchanges of a personal nature. It would have seemed rather like 'rubbing it in' if we had tried to draw them out on a subject that couldn't but be a painful one to them. Some of the men yarned together a bit, I believe, but you may be quite assured that (save for the exception I have mentioned) there was nothing of the kind between the officers. There wasn't a lot in common between us at the best."

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