we found that they barely noticed our arrival, being too busy trying to lynch one of their own number, the unfortunate diving coxswain whom they clearly blamed for having dived the boat with a window left open, so to speak. Fortunately for him it is far from easy to beat up a man swimming in the sea—especially when his assailants are also treading water. So Nechledil and I laid about with our paddles at the wet heads around us, then took hold of the wretched man and dragged him aboard. It was not until we had placed him safely on the bows of the boat in front of the cockpit that we set about rescuing the others: twenty-three of them in all, the boat’s entire complement of two officers and twenty-two men.
Our most immediate concern was to prevent them from swamping us by clambering aboard all at once. Nechledil, whose French was excellent, explained the position to them and beseeched them to behave sensibly in the interests of us all. They did, and we took them aboard one by one, distributing them carefully around the flying-boat to spread the strain upon its flimsy hull and wings. Lohner flying-boats were sturdily built as aeroplanes went in those days; but getting on for a tonne of wet humanity was a load that they had never been designed to carry. In the end the best that we could do was to sit six on each of the lower wings inboard of the floats, huddled together for warmth like swallows on a telegraph wire. Six more perched around the cockpit where the hull was broadest, and four were seated on the hull aft of the wings. The space beneath the engine was used to lay out two engine-room ratings who had taken in too much chlorine and were not feeling very well at all. When the loading was finished the boat sat evenly in the water, though very low. It would do for the time being; but if even a moderate sea got up before help arrived the aeroplane would break up and we would all drown for sure.
I sent out a distress message in clear. The wireless was normally driven by a wind-powered dynamo. We had a small battery to allow us to transmit while standing still, but it was too small for more than three repetitions of the message “L149 ditched 44.27N by 13.55E with crew of French submarine aboard. Send help urgently.” It would be heard I knew. But by whom? And who would reach us first?
While we sat waiting to be picked up there was not much for us to do but exchange introductions with our dripping guests. The submarine, I learnt, had been the Laplace, based at Brindisi. The crew were as surly as one might have expected in the distressing circumstances, but at least the Captain did as courtesy demanded and shook hands with me to introduce himself. I would have expected no less: he was plainly a very aristocratic sort of Frenchman indeed and was not at all averse to letting me know it. His name was Lieutenant de Vaisseau the Chevalier Dagobert St Jurienne Greoux-Chasseloup d’Issigny: about the same age as myself or a bit younger and very aloof indeed. I sensed that he was not much liked by his crew, and that he had no great liking for them either. He sat with his legs dangling over the cockpit side and talked with me while wringing out his trousers with as much refinement as one can manage in such circumstances.
“Enfin, mon cher lieutenant,” he said, “while I must congratulate you on your rare chivalry and Christian spirit in landing to rescue me and my crew, I regret very much to tell you that you are now our prisoners. However, do not despair: I shall personally contact Admiral Boue de Lapeyrere at Brindisi to make sure that you are courteously treated, and I shall make every effort to see that you and your gallant companion are given parole. You will find I think that even in this frightful war, towns like Limoges are far from disagreeable places in which to be held captive. But tell me, are you also a nobleman? I understand that most Austrian officers are.”
“Only by recent creation. I am a Knight of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, but my father is only a Czech postal official I’m afraid.” He sniffed a little and looked down his nose at me. I continued though. “However, my dear Lieutenant d’Issigny, I am afraid that I have to inform you that you are in fact our prisoners rather than the other way around. An Austrian torpedo-boat was on its way even before we sighted you, so I imagine that we shall all be picked up shortly. I am grateful though for your concern for Fregattenleutnant Nechledil and myself, and I shall do my utmost to see that you and your men are treated with all the hospitality at our disposal. By the way though—I am afraid that I must set you right on one small point: we did not sink your vessel. We mistook you for one of our torpedo-boats and were trying to land. The bomb-splashes you saw were when I jettisoned our bombs before landing. I imagine that you sank because you dived with a hatch left open. I was once a submarine captain myself and I commiserate with you: these things happen. In fact I myself was very nearly drowned aboard one of your steam-driven boats in Toulon harbour back in 1910 in very similar circumstances. If you ask me it’s an idiotic system for driving a submarine and I feel sorry for you fellows having to sail aboard such vessels.”
He looked more than a little concerned at this news and, after mumbling that it had not been like that at all, he set to work with a will on wringing out his clothes.
We soon gathered that the Laplace had not been a happy ship, too long at Brindisi and far too long without a refit. We learnt as much by talking with her Second Officer, a fellow called Handelsman. Handelsman had been the Laplace’s Second Officer since before the war and clearly felt that, being a Jew and a staunch republican, he had been unfairly passed over for command in favour of the aristocratic, Catholic and probably cryptoroyalist d’Issigny, even though the latter was a poor leader of men in small ships and had paid very little attention to training. I gathered that such things were far from uncommon in the French Navy, which was manned largely by Catholic Bretons and which had consequently been viewed with very little favour by the anti-clericals of the Third Republic.
“Our matelots, you understand, they are very devot,” Handelsman had confided in me. I replied that so far as I could see, with boats like the Laplace and captains like d’Issigny that was probably just as well. As for the matelots themselves, they seemed a thoroughly dispirited lot even after making allowance for their recent narrow escape from drowning and their present plight sitting dripping wet in the middle of the Adriatic with nothing to support them but the flimsy structure of an enemy flying-boat. They sat and glowered at us with their glum, heavy-moustached faces, and nothing seemed capable of cheering them up: not even Nechledil’s well-meaning attempts to generate a little animal warmth by getting them singing the “Marseillaise” and “Sambre et Meuse.” All that we could offer them by way of hospitality was a single boiled sweet each from the aeroplane’s emergency ration pack, and a capful of schnapps from my hipflask.
This merely seemed to increase their dejection—until Nechledil started to sing a song which he had learnt some years before at a Sokol summer youth camp among emigrant Czech miners in the Nord coalfield. It was called “Revenant de Nantes” and seemed to be a ditty peculiar to the French Army, which was perhaps why our devout Catholic matelots appeared never to have heard it before. It certainly did the trick of raising spirits, as he sang each verse and then taught it to them. There were about seventy-five of them I think, each of them more luminously bawdy than the last as the song wound its picaresque way among blond-haired farmers’ daughters, cuckolded station masters, rapacious widows and lascivious cures. It was all tremendous fun, and soon our sailors were steaming away nicely as they roared out each chorus with the utmost zest. When it was over Nechledil bowed modestly to a round of applause and sat down in the pilot’s seat. I wondered as he did so whether this was quite the sort of thing that the Sokol movement’s founders had in mind when they set out to improve the moral and spiritual tone of Czech youth.
It was about 3:00 p.m. that we saw the smoke on the horizon—to westward. That, we realised with sinking hearts, meant a French warship, and for Nechledil and me a spell of indefinite duration in a prison camp. True, it was better than being drowned, but I still felt a certain chagrin that rescuing these Frenchmen had landed us in that predicament. If we had come down on an empty expanse of sea we would have sent a distress signal in code instead of giving our position in clear and would have been picked up in due course by our own people. But there: the fortunes of war I supposed. With heavy heart I loaded a red flare into the rocket pistol and fired it into the air, almost hearing as I did so the sound of a key turning in a lock. I would probably survive the war now, but how long would it be before I saw my child?
Our rescuer hove into sight to a loud cheer from our guests. As I expected it was a French two-funnelled destroyer: Branlebas- class. As it approached I saw that d’Issigny and his maltreated diving coxswain were deep in a whispered consultation. Twenty minutes later a whaler from the destroyer had come alongside and the Laplace’s crew were being loaded on to it, one by one so as not to overbalance our aeroplane. Nechledil and I were the last to leave as the French prepared to take the machine in tow. I had my cigarette lighter ready to set her on fire and swim for it, but the French had thought of that possibility. Three men with rifles kept us covered, and when we boarded the whaler we had to do so with our hands on our heads.
I saluted the destroyer’s captain at the head of the gangway, and shook hands with him in as curt a fashion as I thought the occasion demanded. Then Nechledil and I were politely relieved of our pistols and escorted below to the wardroom. So this was it at last: prisoners of war. But I supposed that it could have been worse. At least we were prisoners of the French and not the Italians. I suspected that life as a prisoner in France might not be quite the gentlemanly eighteenth-century affair that Lieutenant the Chevalier d’Issigny had made it out to be; but at
