CHAPTER III

Uneasy at the preparations the Allies were making in the Balkans, though affecting to mock at. Salonica as his "biggest internment camp," the enemy tried to perturb us and perhaps raise trouble through arousing the fears of the civilian population by carrying out night air-raids on our base at Salonica. Aeroplanes came once at dawn in March and turned to and fro over the centre of the town dropping bombs. But they lost three, if not four, machines on their way back. A Zeppelin also made a successful raid on February 1st and set a warehouse belonging to the Bank of Salonica on fire, besides killing several civilians.

But the second visit of the same Zeppelin to Salonica, after several unsuccessful attempts to return there, led to its destruction. In the small hours of May 6th the town was awakened by the crash of antiaircraft guns from the hills behind and from the ships in the harbour, and there, floating yellow in the glare of the searchlights over the heart of Salonica, was a Zeppelin, the first the townspeople had set eyes upon. A characteristically silly panic started, the people rushing out of their houses, and scurrying in contrary directions along the streets. The Zeppelin made for the harbour as if to bomb the warships there. At first it was too vertically above them for the naval gunners to fire, but a moment later the airship altered course, and a 12-pounder mounted on a high carriage on the forward bridge of H.M. S. "Agamemnon" brought it down in a long slant onto the marshes at the mouth of the Vardar, where, a moment after it had touched, the Zeppelin burst into flames. A startling, long-drawn-out cheer rang from the silent English and French warships at the sight and echoed through the darkness across the frightened town.

It was the Zeppelin's crew who had set fire to it when it stranded, and they tried afterwards to escape through the swamps around; they were rounded up though next morning by French cavalry as they were drying their drenched clothes in the sun. The prisoners' account of themselves was that the Zeppelin had come from Temesvar in Hungary; it had previously carried out raids on Riga, Dvinsk and Minsk in Russia. It was 200 yards long and had four 6-cylinder engines. It had been launched in the second half of 1915. I myself found a penciled inscription on the aluminum framework of the nose, reading, "Potsdam, August 11th, 1915," which must have been a date when it was under construction. The crew said that they were astonished at the way they had been picked up by our anti-aircraft batteries and followed all down the line to Salonica. By the time they got there they were so blinded by the glare of the searchlights converging on them that they could not see to drop their bombs.

Directly the Zeppelin came down a British torpedo boat patrolling on the boom landed a party to arrest the crew, if they could be found, and bring away anything of importance from the wreck. After an accidental encounter among the dense reeds between one detachment and another, in which each thought it had found the enemy and the first imperiously called "Hands up!" to which the second immediately rejoined, "Hands up yourselves, you blighters; we've been looking for you all morning," they reached the wreck and there found a German naval war-flag hanging from the stern, undamaged by the fire. This ensign of the Zeppelin which H.M.S. "Agamemnon" finally brought down,---whether it had been previously hit or not,---now finds a place in the War-Museum at the Invalides in Paris. But the "Agamemnon's" have, as a consolation, one of the propellers of the Zeppelin hanging on the wall of the Captain's quarters in memory of their exploit.

I went out to the wreck early next day. It was a strenuous journey. The shoalwater of the Vardar mouth is too shallow for even a rowing-boat to approach the shore, and when you have waded to the bank, you find that you must still go knee-deep in water for a mile or so with the reeds meeting above your head. A Canadian medical officer was even drowned trying to reach the wreck on horseback.

One would never have believed it possible that a single Zeppelin would carve up into so many souvenirs as that one did. Amid the harassed protests of its French guard, English officers, sailors, even nurses who had made the muddy and exhausting journey, would hack and twist at the broken framework for days afterwards, yet when later on it was officially cut up and removed, several barge-loads of fragments still remained.

Rumours, that are always more popular when they are grisly, alleged that two men of the crew had been pinned underneath the wreck and burned alive.

A midshipman, in fact, burrowing in the mud, even found what he proclaimed in triumph to be a "charred human hand." It certainly had that shape. Though blackened by fire and covered with ooze, the form of the clutching fingers could be clearly seen. Their crooked grasp seemed to have been straining in a last agony for something solid to seize upon amid the spongy slime. The grim trophy was bottled in spirits of wine and much admired, until one day its owner consented, at the entreaty of a friend, to cede him one finger of the blackened relic. The ship's surgeon was asked to perform the operation of severing the finger, but, to the surprise of every one, his knife sliced through it at one cut. It then transpired that the clutching hand of the burnt Boche was nothing more gruesome than an empty glove singed by the flames and tight-filled with caked mud.

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