Gallipoli (61 page)

25 MAY 1915, OFF GABA TEPE, ‘
SEHROHR AUSFAHREN!
– UP PERISCOPE!'

In the German submarine
U21
, Kapitänleutnant Otto Hersing can barely believe his luck. Only just arrived off the Dardanelles, he has no sooner passed at a depth of 70 feet beneath the steady humming of the many patrol craft on the surface and put up his periscope than he catches sight of the old 12,000-ton British battleship
Triumph
, firing broadside after broadside on Turkish positions on Gaba Tepe. (In fact, it is trying to wipe out a gun known as ‘Beachy Bill', which has been playing hell with the troops lately. Entirely untroubled by the attention, Beachy Bill is in turn trying to lob shells onto the English battleship.)

Clearly, the Gunnery Officer in
Triumph
's tower is aided by an observation balloon floated from the deck of nearby HMS
Manica
, with two officers in the basket able to correct the fall of shot.

Ja
, there is a protective ring of destroyers around
Triumph
, but that is not an insurmountable problem. The most promising thing is that to improve its accuracy on the Turkish positions,
Triumph
is at anchor, presenting a stationary target.

Oh so carefully, Kapitänleutnant Hersing at his command station in the conning tower with his watch officer by his side – both of them tingling with anticipation – gives out order after order down the voice tube in his crisp, cool manner as he tries to manoeuvre the submarine into the perfect position. Down below in the submarine proper, no one else speaks apart from those relaying his orders forward.

‘We were groping,' as Hersing would later recount, ‘towards a deadly position – deadly for the magnificent giant of war on the surface above.'
⁸⁰

Finally, at 12.25 pm on this gorgeous day, he feels they are there.

‘
Sehrohr ausfahren!
– Up periscope!' he commands.
⁸¹

And there it is, only 300 yards away – easy prey.

‘Never had an undersea craft such a target.'

They have a clear line of sight to
Triumph
's midships, which means that – barring torpedo nets that may be in place – there is also a clear way through for at least two of the six torpedoes he is carrying. The key now will be speed of action, to get the torpedoes away before their periscope is spotted.

‘
Erster Torpedo fertig, zweiter Torpedo fertig –
First torpedo ready, second torpedo ready!'
⁸²

Time stands suspended. No one breathes. No one moves. All eyes, all ears are on Kapitänleutnant Hersing. The word comes back from the Torpedo Gunner's Mate that all is in readiness.

‘
Rohr eins – los!
' Hersing commands, his heart leaping to hear his own words. ‘Torpedo one – launch!'

An instant later, by the subsequent German account, ‘
das Boot wie ein nasser Hund
– the boat shakes itself like a wet dog'
⁸³
as the six-yard-long torpedo bursts forth with a sudden rush of expelled air and tears along at the rate of 35 knots. It is with great satisfaction that he sees ‘the tell-tale streak of white foam darting through the water',
⁸⁴
and he's so enthralled that he leaves the periscope up.

The torpedo continues to roar towards its target. On its front is a tiny brass screw that winds down as the torpedo passes through the water, arming it some 100 yards from the moment of expulsion – far enough away that it cannot detonate close to the submarine that has launched it.

Now Hersing consults his stopwatch. In 18 to 20 seconds, there will be an explosion or … nothing … in which case he will know the torpedo has hit one of the heavy steel mesh torpedo nets the Allies have been using to try to protect their ship, or missed entirely. Still no one speaks. All wait with him in the tight, closed atmosphere.

Nine seconds … eight seconds … three … two … one.

Suddenly, through the periscope he sees a huge cloud of smoke leap out of the sea amidships on
Triumph
, then the sub is hit with the sound and vibration of, first, a ‘dry, metallic concussion and then a terrible, reverberating explosion'
⁸⁵
– WHAM! – as if Neptune has hit the hull with a huge trident.

At this close range, at a speed of 35 knots, the torpedo has gone straight through the torpedo nets and hit
Triumph
's hull, igniting the switch on its activated tip and detonating the 350 pounds of TNT instantly.

As it happens, General Birdwood is right on the spot at the time, aboard the minesweeper
Newmarket
, and has his glass trained on
Triumph
at that very moment. To his horror, a huge column of water suddenly bursts up from her side.

‘By God, she's hit!' he calls to the skipper beside him.
⁸⁶

And badly at that …

On
U21
, there is the beginnings of a cheer, which Hersing instantly stifles, and then the entire crew clearly hears the sound of the
Triumph
's internal bulkhead collapsing: dreadful cracking and creaking noises as air and seawater fight for entry and escape through the same jagged hole.

The stricken
Triumph
begins to list heavily to starboard.

‘Down periscope!' Kapitänleutnant Hersing orders.
⁸⁷

Mission accomplished,
U21
immediately glides down to the depths while, topside, both the thrilled Turkish and horrified Anzac soldiers watch, mesmerised, as the list on
Triumph
becomes even more pronounced, going all the way to 45 degrees from horizontal after eight minutes. Crew members fall or jump into the sea, and small boats race to gather them in. The Turkish artillery, which had initially been shelling the stricken ship, now stops to allow the rescuers to do their best.

After 12 minutes, the ship capsizes, ‘her green bottom upwards in the sunlight. The crews on the neighbouring ships stood to attention as she made her last plunge down to the bottom through clouds of smoke and steam.'
⁸⁸
Seventy-one men go to the bottom with her.

With
Triumph
's sinking, the complexities of keeping the soldiers on the Gallipoli Peninsula suddenly multiply. In an urgent crisis meeting held that afternoon on HMT
Arcadian
between General Hamilton and Admiral de Robeck, the thrust for the overall commander is obvious: ‘Our nicely worked out system for supplying the troops has in a moment been tangled up into a hundred knotty problems.'
⁸⁹

The major fear for the Allies, of course, is that the German submarine is still lurking in their waters, about to strike at any moment, and it is for this reason that
Arcadian
has two old merchantman ships lashed to each side as torpedo buffers.

After the meeting is over, Admiral de Robeck appears to take the view that discretion is the better part of valour and, aboard
Lord Nelson
, with three French battleships in close attendance, zigzags his way back to the safe port of Mudros.

26 MAY 1915, ANZAC COVE, FROM REVELATION TO REVOLUTION, ONCE MORE UNTO THE BEECH, DEAR FRIENDS, ONCE MORE

Major Blamey has moved quickly – so quickly that on this day the inventor of the periscope rifle, Lance-Corporal William Beech, leaves the trenches and comes down to the beach so he can convert a work-shop already producing periscopes into a veritable factory for producing periscope rifles en masse. (‘All the looking glasses have been taken off the ships,' Percival Fenwick notes in his diary, ‘and are being cut up into small squares to make periscopes.')
⁹⁰

And within days of starting the factory, Beech is promoted to the rank of Sergeant. It is all so successful that ‘Birdie' will soon write to the Governor-General of Australia, affirming:

Mind you, it does take some getting used to. On one occasion, a well-loved soldier by the name of Bill Blankson
⁹²
has his first go at using a periscope rifle after a notably hard fortnight of digging trenches without rest. In that time, he had neither washed nor shaved, so perhaps he is far from his best when he looks through the scope.

And what does he see? What does he see, our Bill, with his first look?

It would kill a brown dog …

His first vision is of a filthy big Turk staring back at him,
glaring
at him, right through the other end of the periscope!

With a cry, Bill leaps back, grabs his rifle and prepares to jump the parapet and fight the brute to the death.

The others grab him.

Settle, Bill,
settle
! You haven't been holding the periscope close enough to your eye, you silly coot, and instead of seeing the landscape ahead you have just seen your
own
ugly mug in the lower mirror!

(The problem with the upper mirror, as it turns out, is that it would ‘flash with the sunlight and they'd fire and smash the mirror …')
⁹³

Others, however, go better at it – and none better than an Australian from the Queensland Light Horse by the name of Billy Sing, a fellow with a Chinese father and an English mother. See, there's just something about Billy and his powers of concentration; his passion for killing Turks is extraordinary. Grabbing a steel plate with a small loophole in it from one of the ships, he builds it into the parapet of one of the high trenches. Now, with the bloke beside him acting as a spotter, they wait, for hours if necessary.

There! The spotter has seen movement at a weak point in the Turkish defences, where the hat of a tall Turk or the top of a bayonet can be seen moving along at a steady pace. He alerts Billy, who has his own periscope rifle aimed on the Turkish loophole that the soldier will pass in five seconds.

Five … four … three … two … one.

Billy squeezes the trigger and a crack rings out. From the enemy trenches, a cry, a death rattle, the sign of the rifle being flung into the air.

And that is another notch on Billy's rifle.

At other times, he sees a Turkish head bob up for a sneak peek, and he knows that a man who would do that once will inevitably do it again. Billy just waits and waits and waits … for
hours.
There!
Crack!

Another notch.

In response, of course, the Turks bring down furious artillery fire, but Billy and his mate just move on, going to another loophole, and do the same thing. Over time, they will claim to have killed no fewer than 100 enemy soldiers.

Not that everyone believes the claim, mind. One day, General Birdwood is doing his rounds and, after chatting with Sing, asks a man in another sniper's post, ‘How many Turks have you got so far?'

‘I have never even
seen
a Turk, far less shot one,' the soldier replies gruffly.
⁹⁴

‘And what do you think of the 63 currently claimed by Sing?'

‘Some fellows are better liars than others!'

General Birdwood agrees but adds, ‘If every man would really take the same interest as Sing and get even one-tenth of his successes, we should be in Constantinople next week!'
⁹⁵

So successful is the periscope-rifle factory that another factory producing jam-tin bombs is soon established beside it. Those Diggers too crook to take their place in the frontline sit in a circle and carefully pack the old jam tins, which are in plentiful supply, with as much explosive as they can fit, before jamming in every bit of hard metal they can find – old cartridge cases, bits of barbed wire, finely cut-up scrap metal and even pebbles. With a short fuse added and a ciggie in your mouth, or a ‘slow match' by your side – a sandbag rolled up and tied tightly with twine and lit at one end to smoulder, ready to flare when blown upon – those in the trenches have a new weapon for their arsenal to supplement the scanty and rather ineffective grenades with which they have been supplied.
⁹⁶
On average, you have four and a half seconds between lighting the fuse to explosion, and the skill is to be able to time your throw so it explodes as it lands.