Authors: Jon E. Lewis
Having read about the vortex a sinking vessel will make, I was ruminating on my chances as a survivor. The suspense, fortunately, was brief. For a moment or two the
Arcadian
partly righted on her keel and then with much hissing of escaping steam and explosions from the boiler rooms, she slid for ever out of sight of human eyes, carrying with her hundreds of troops and her own crew caught like rats on the lower decks.
Within three minutes (official Admiralty time) from the time that she was struck an that remained of the ship was bits of floating wreckage.
It is difficult to describe my sensations during the minute or so following. Down and still further down, I was dragged by the suction till it seemed that I must soon touch bottom. I was spun round with great rapidity and swirled about in an alarming manner. I held my breath and closed tightly both eyes and mouth, until forced by bursting lungs to take in air, I opened my mouth, getting a large helping of Aegean Sea.
My mind was functioning normally. I can recollect that I had quite decided that H.M. Army was about to lose one live cavalryman. And though I cannot justly claim to being more courageous than my neighbour, it is curious that having made up my mind that my name would shortly appear in the casualty lists, I was not the least bit afraid. I can give no reason. I was young, eighteen at that time, having declared a false age on enlistment, and naturally I had no overwhelming desire to provide provender for the denizens of the deep.
At last, however, I came with a rush to the surface, and was violently ill for some time. Glancing at my wristlet watch, I found it had stopped. The time was 5.45 p.m.
Large numbers of drowned, the survivors, and a quantity of wreckage were close by me. After desperate efforts to propel myself through the water, I gave up in despair, finding that no headway was being made. That fact, however, was of no importance, as only miles of ocean waste stretched around. The sun now was lowered on the horizon: the sea became chilly and turbulent. The heads of the survivors by this time were dotted about with great distances between, they having drifted with the wind and the currents.
After some hours, I was brought by the same means within reach of a small raft, which was clutched with considerable gusto, and found myself in the excellent company of five officers, three Navy and two Army. Only an occasional word was spoken. Darkness descended quickly, and the sea was bitterly cold.
Wafted across the waters, our ears received the words of the hymn ‘Nearer my God to Thee.’ Apparently every poor devil – more than three-quarters drowned – was doing his level best to swell the chorus on that awful night. The incident has imprinted itself indelibly on my memory.
The combined weight of our six bodies completely submerged the slender support, but, nevertheless, by arrangement we each of us managed in turn to scramble on to the raft’s surface, and to get for a short spell as much of our numbed bodies above sea-level as was possible in the circumstances. This we continued to do, helping each other as best we could.
Towards midnight a small white light was plainly visible in the far distance, and later another, and some time after, another. Through the ingenuity of one of the Navy officers we were shortly located. In his possession was an electric torch – quite unaffected, apparently, by its prolonged immersion – and with the instrument he proceeded to signal in the Morse code. We watched intently. The beam of a searchlight shot into the sky from the rescuing ships. It swung from side to side, missing our little group again and again. Eventually, however, it found its mark.
Then quickly the lantern shut down to allow of a message to be flashed out. Slowly this was read to us by our friend with the torch. ‘Will pick you up soon as possible with other survivors.’
Utter blackness again and another long waiting; this time, however, with a hope. At last there came stealing upon us the tall black bows of a ship. The ‘Q’ ship
Redbreast
she was. Voices hailed us from the deck. She drew swiftly alongside, and dropped a rope ladder. Down this came a couple of men, who heaved us up. A basin of piping hot grog, a belabouring with rough towels, a berth with an abundant supply of blankets and to bed.
Trooper Reginald C. Huggins enlisted in March 1915 in the City of London (Rough-riders) Yeomanry. Underwent period of cavalry training in Ireland (Curragh and Dublin) and drafted the East Riding of Yorkshire Imperial Yeomanry for service on the Palestine Front. From there in early part of 1918 to France in the 102nd Machine Gun Corps. Wounded in the fighting before Valenciennes on October 28th, 1918, and discharged from hospital in May 1921
.
It was at a time when in England the blackthorn begins to break into beauty, when fairies flit over the hedges, leaving traces of gleaming whiteness; it was at a time when the pale-scented cowslip shows the joy of life… It was the first day of spring.
The much-discussed possibility of a great enemy offensive had become a reality. Overnight we had been moved up to the supports on that sector of the line facing the little village of La Fontaine, south-east of Arras.
It had rained heavily during the night and the trenches were filled with water. Dawn broke with a dense mist, which did not lift until noon. The enemy barrage started in earnest between two and three in the morning and continued with hardly a moment’s lull for many hours. Mixed with the deluge of shrapnel and high explosive were irregular spasms of gas shells. The barrages were mostly of the creeping variety, returning again and again in deadly waves.
Although the enemy had surrounded us early in the day, it was not until the evening that we had any inkling of our real position. We discovered then that we were being enfiladed from behind by machine guns, as well as from above by enemy planes. Acting as a regimental stretcher bearer – the only one alive with what was left of our company – my work was not very easy, especially as a gas mask had to be worn most of the time. The mud and water were above our knees, and so many dead and dying lay around me that I was bewildered.
Without boasting, I can say that I led a charmed life. I would attend to an urgent case at a machine-gun post and deal with it just before the post was blown up…and from that post to another and so on. Being a big fellow, I carried some of the smaller ones on my back to a dug-out. The dug-out soon got full up…and I got so exhausted that I carried on in a mechanical sort of way. In the end my headquarters was a narrow bit of trench containing the captain of my company, my platoon officer, a sergeant, another private and myself. We seemed to be the only people left capable of standing up.
I remember my captain saying, ‘Stay here, we shall need you soon.’ It was not long before he partly collapsed against the parapet with a good sniff of gas. I broke half a dozen of those small anti-gas containers under his nose and in his mouth, which brought him round.
Friends credit me with iron nerves, but by this time I was nearing the end of my tether. I moved like one in a trance. My stock of field and shell dressings had long since given out and I was tearing up puttees, shirts, socks, anything that would make a bandage. I was hungry, worn rout, wet through to the skin, and covered in mud and blood. I had had nothing to eat since tea-time the day before. The few biscuits I did have I gave to my platoon officer in exchange for his last cigarette and a drop of rum. A few minutes after, he was dead with a lump of shrapnel in his brain.
At the moment of my capture, I was working on a fellow with his ribs smashed, kneeling down and bending over him, trying to stem the rush of blood. I happened to glance up, looking for someone who could assist me, when I found the fair face of a Saxon looking down intently at me. Pre-occupied with my work, I had not noticed him before. With his rifle slung across his back, he pushed a long-nosed field revolver almost down my throat. His sudden appearance completely surprised me. Glancing round quickly, I found myself surrounded. The trench and parapets swarmed with German infantrymen.
I got up slowly from my kneeling position, the revolver still pointing at me, and put up my hands. My captor stripped my pockets, but gave me back some photographs and, smiling, pointed up the trench. Moving up it was a string of wounded, guarded by the enemy.
I followed them. We threaded our way across No Man’s Land in batches of about six, two or three guards watching each group. The artillery reply to the enemy’s fire was not very heavy and it fell short, else some of us might have been spared the journey across. We had been deprived of our gas masks, hence it was no joke trying to avoid the gas-infected areas. In and out of the smashed wires, shell-holes, and dead we filed, the guards stopping now and again to examine the bodies of the dead. Some of us had to pick up German wounded. A series of long marches from station to station followed, until finally we arrived at a field hospital. This was a three-walled store tent, open to the inclemency of the weather. Inside, the dead and dying were heaped one upon another, the dying shivering with cold. We thought to find food here, but none was forthcoming.
It was quite dark by now, and the inside of the tent could be seen only when a shell burst near enough to light up the interior with its flashes. Walking through the wires with a mud-soaked greatcoat was well-nigh an impossibility, so I had discarded it. At nightfall, however, it got very cold and I began to shiver. Seeing a dead man at my feet wrapped up in a cloak, I quietly robbed him.
After standing about for a while, we filed off again. The guards leading us were in a hurry. They rushed away, but I was too tired to hurry and keep pace with them. I had a slight surface wound on my right heel. I could not help lagging behind until at last I was alone, lost in the dark. Early the next morning some German transport men found me wandering about and took me to an officer. He sent me to a barbed-wire enclosure.
In this cage I found many others, perhaps about 500 prisoners. We stopped there, exposed to the weather, all that day and the following night, and with nothing whatever to eat or drink. Here we were searched by an interpreter who tried to frighten us. He warned us we should be shot at sight if we attempted to escape. We were not to communicate with the inhabitants of the occupied area, or to receive food from them.
Next morning a weary crowd stumbled out of the cage headed by two Uhlans mounted with all their gorgeous martial trappings. This display made the procession dramatic and spectacular. The night had been cold and had left a heavy dew on the grass. In the morning the sun rose, and its warmth put more heart into me and a little more strength into my legs. As we passed through the billets of soldiers, resting or waiting to be moved up in an emergency, they came out in crowds and lined the route. Some ran from great distances to see us. They eyed us with stolid, unemotional faces. Their minds seemed to have been ground down to a soulless state by their circumstances. Once we passed a transport-driver who had half a black loaf in his hand – that is to say, a piece of coarse bread measuring about 5 inches by 4 inches by 4 inches. He offered it to a fellow prisoner in front of me in exchange for a leather jerkin. The exchange made, the prisoner tore the bread into pieces and gulped it down. Such an incident cannot easily be forgotten; it is stamped into the memory.
A week of tramping about behind the lines followed. We moved like a herd of cattle about to be slaughtered, from one barbed-wire cage to another. Sometimes we were nearly bombed by our own airmen. We seemed to be on exhibition, and forced to march in fours and keep in step. In our weak condition, marching was a necessary agony, but to keep in step was more; it was an imposition. To suffer under restraint is deadly. It is like chaining a man to the scaffold on which he is to be hanged. The clothes I stood in and my tin helmet were all I possessed.
Day by day, I became weaker until at last it got difficult for me to walk any distance. My feet began to blister; my socks were dirty and began to rot. In time the blisters became open sores and my socks fell off my feet. My slight wound complicated matters. I just dragged myself from place to place. The guards paid no attention to my painful state. They just pushed me along or hit me with the butt-end of their rifles when my legs began to give way or the pain of walking became too great.
There were many other prisoners like me. Sometimes, even my ‘tin-hat’ became heavy and sat on me like that great burden which Bunyan’s famous Pilgrim carried in his illustrious Progress. I did not throw it away, however, because it was the only kind of hat I possessed. I thought it might become useful later on.
About the end of March we reached Marchiennes.
Here, I first tasted
sauerkraut
. We were supposed to line up for this, but the fellows were in such a state that the sight and smell of anything like food sent them mad. The first taste made me sick. With this delicacy we were given a morsel of bread about three inches cubic once a day.
Unfortunately, our prison was placed next to a field bakehouse. Hour after hour, fascinated, we would watch groups of Russian prisoners stack hundreds of freshly-baked loaves on wagons to be sent away. In our eagerness to smell the bread, our faces were pressed right up to the barbed wire. It was a horrible torture to which we helplessly submitted ourselves. The temptation was irresistible. In this case pain itself became a pleasure. Every few minutes, a guard came along and slashed with his bayonet to keep us away from the wires. French children native to the place watched the guard, and when the way was clear, approached the wire and threw in pieces of bread, lumps of swede, sugar-beet, and carrot. These were given to us at first out of merciful good-nature, but some of the prisoners, eager to get more, began to barter with anything of value that they were still fortunate enough to possess, such as money, gold rings, and boots. The original good intentions of the children were corrupted and the only extra source of life then available cut off from all but a very small minority. In course of time even this minority undercut itself, because in the circumstances the most opulent of prisoners could not go on producing money or gold rings or whatever was necessary to carry on their self-inflated and self-imposed system of trafficking. When one of these fellows got a little bit of food, he gulped it down before his comrades had had time to snatch at it. My chief amusement consisted in watching the children playing about and in wondering when I should have the joy of being free again. Every act of their freedom was followed with hungry, envious eyes.