CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX - Part One
With the opening of hostilities of the new war, the majority of combat operations were conducted in Poland and Yugoslavia, with the air raids conducted by the RAF into northern Germany only relieving the embattled Poles and Yugoslavs from additional air attacks as the Luftwaffe recalled fighter squadrons back to Germany. In the north, the Swedes and Norwegians scrambled to clear their harbours in order to transport their troops over to Denmark to begin a campaign into northern Germany. In the west, the British army began marching toward the English coastal harbours to load up in transports for embarkation to the Continent while the French army continued to reinforce the Maginot Line, the French High Command refusing to listen to the reports coming from the east of the speed and ferocity of the Wehrmacht attacks and the inability of fixed fortifications to blunt the attack.
While the British armed services were in the throws of combat with the Empire’s adversaries, the Diplomatic Corps and the Secret Service were engaged in their own battles.
To this day many of the actions taken by the Secret Service in the opening days of the war are still classified Ultra Top Secret, but rumors and stories abound of commando style raids in the rear areas directly behind the battle front in Poland and Yugoslavia in attempts to stymie the Wehrmacht juggernaut. While no official word has yet been allowed to be disclosed, the reduction in the speed and intensity of the Wehrmacht attacks following the entrance of the Empire into the war provide ample evidence to support the rumors of Secret Service and S.O.E. operations in the East, even the most fantastic sounding ones.
As it had for centuries, the Foreign Office conducted its battles against the Empire’s foes by sending out diplomats to every allied or neutral capital to assist the Empire’s allies into remaining allied to the British Crown and to entice the neutrals into the Crown’s camp. As the battle lines of the war were clearly defined prior to hostilities, the number of neutral capitals visited by British diplomats was limited to Rome, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia and Athens in the East, and Madrid and the west. Despite the best efforts of some of Foreign Secretary Eden’s best diplomats, the Allies lost Prince Regent Horthy to the German Alliance on September 4, and before the British Ambassador’s aircraft had even left the ground on the flight to Athens, Hungarian troops began rushing into northeast Yugoslavia in coordination with the German Wehrmacht.
War came to the West in a series of sharp battles between the Kriegsmarine and both the Royal Navy and the French Navy in the Heligoland Bight between September 6 and 9, 1939, now known as the First Battle of the Heligoland Bight 1939.
Excerpt from The Death of Nations
By Edgar Bryce Fellows
Paris University Press, 1960
**
Come cheer up my Lads, 'tis to glory we steer,
To add something more to this wonderful year.
To honour we call you, as freemen, not slaves,
For who are so free as the sons of the waves?
Heart of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men,
We always are ready, Steady, boys, steady,
We'll fight and we'll conquer again and again!
Heart of Oak
The Heligoland Bight
25 miles from Wilhelmshaven, Germany
September 5, 1939
7:36 p.m.
Jerking his head back from the periscope eye piece, the captain of HMS
Parthian could not believe the vision that he had been briefly awarded coasting along the waves above his submarine. Lt. Cdr. Valentine Ira Lenin quickly took a second look and secretly chuckled. It appeared that the Good Lord was finally making it up to the young naval officer for having been cursed with parents that had more of a sense of humor than common sense when it came to naming a child. Stepping away from the periscope, he gestured to the officer standing slightly to the left.
“Come take a look, Jimmy,” Lenin said with a sly grin, using the Royal Navy’s slang for calling upon his First Officer.
Crouching slightly to take his look the
Parthian’s First Officer, Lt. Vann Selby, felt his stomach tighten just before his adrenaline started pumping and the hunter’s drive that the Admiralty sought when picking submariners. Approaching the submerged
Parthian at a leisurely pace was a large
Kriegsmarine battle-group consisting of several cruisers, at least a dozen destroyers and a larger ship. While a submarine’s number one target was merchantmen, there was not a single submariner in the Royal Navy or any other navy for that matter that would pass up an opportunity to lay a torpedo into the hull of an enemy man-o-war.
“Did you i.d. any of them, Skipper,” Selby asked without taking his eyes from the periscope and stroking his flaming red goatee that had become his trademark within the Royal Navy’s Silent Service and earned him the nickname of Vann the Red.
“Aye, that big brute in the center is the Panzerschiffe* Admiral Graf Spee,” Lenin replied with a wolfish grin and a sparkle in his eye.
“I’d have to take a look at our copy of Jane’s,* about the others,” Selby said as he relinquished the periscope and motioned for the quartermaster who was standing on the far side of the ‘scope to lower it,
“but I know that the other heavy up there is the Schwere Kreuzer* Blücher.”
Taking the three steps to the bulkhead that contained the
Parthian’s shelf of reference manuals, the two officers started looking while discussing their options. After a few seconds of searching they had identified the other ships sailing in the sea swells above their submarine as the
Leicht Kreuzers*
Konigsberg, Nurnberg, Koln, Leipzig and
Emden. In the several seconds of pregnant silence that followed, both young officers minds raced from their desires to their orders to their responsibilities as King’s officers and then to the place where all of those met. Knowing in his own mind what he wanted done, Lenin followed the traditions of his service and with a hungry grin asked his friend and First Officer,
“So, Jimmy, what are your recommendations?”
Matching is captain’s grin with a look of grave caution, a look that was hard to believe when one saw the keen sparkle in his eyes, Selby answered,
“We of course must signal the Admiralty of this sortie, but we can’t do it so close to the beach or Jerry will just turn tale and hide in his harbours like he did in the last war. And as much as I’d like to lay a few torps into any one of those lads up there, I’m not desiring a permanent visit to the bottom of the North Sea, which is what would happen if we tried that.”
“Where’s your faith in the ability of our crew and the workman ship of England’s best shipwrights, Vann,” Parthian’s captain replied.
“Come now, Skipper,” Selby countered,
“it has nothing to do with that, it’s simple mathematics. There’s a dozen destroyers up there who not only institutionally detest us for being submariners but detest us for being British submariners.”
“Aye, there is that,” Lenin chuckled a tad ruefully, thankful that his First Officer was doing his job of reigning in his Captain’s overzealousness.
“So are you recommending that we shadow them for at least several hours, make the signal and then wait for the Channel Fleet to arrive?”
“Yes sir.”
“Right then. Prepare the signal. We’ll set a course to run parallel to them.” Turning to the members of the crew that were at their stations on
Parthian’s bridge, Lenin announced,
“Conn?”
“Aye, sir?”
“Bosun, come left full rudder to heading 062 and make our depth 100 feet.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” the
Parthian’s bosun and oldest crewman replied crisply. Turning to the helmsman and dive-plane operators he barked,
“Reynolds, come left full rudder to 062, Freddie, take us to 100 feet.”
“Sonar,” Lenin called looking over his shoulder at the aft end of the conning tower while the bosun had his primary orders carried out,
“keep a track of those Jerry’s, I don’t want any sneaking off until the Fleet can come to blows with them.”
“Aye-aye, skipper!”
“Lads, let us stalk some Jerry.”
*
Panzerschiffe - literally tank ship, better known as pocket battleship
* -
Schwere Kreuzer - Heavy Cruiser
* -
Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships – military information publication that began publication in 1898 by John F. T. Jane (a must have for any navy buff!
)
*-
Leicht Kreuzers - Light Crusier
Up next: Wait and see!
