Am I sorry? No, I think I am glad. Life here at Bruges is one long painful episode. No one speaks to me in the Mess. I am left severely alone with my memories. The night before last I found a revolver in my room, and attached to it was a piece of paper bearing the words: "From a friend."
Perhaps at Wilhelmshafen it will be different, and yet, when I went down to the boat at noon and collected my personal affairs and stepped over her side for the last time, I could not check a feeling of great sadness. We had endured much together, my boat and I, and the parting was hard.
At Barracks.
As I suspected when I was appointed here, my job is deadly to a degree, and my main duty is to sign leave passes.
Our great effort in France has failed, and now the Allies react furiously. The great war machine is strained to its utmost capacity; can it endure the load?
Our proper move is to paralyse the Allied offensive by striking with all our naval weight at his cross-channel communications. The U-boat war is too slow, and time is not on our side, whilst a hammer blow down the Channel might do great things. But we have no naval imagination, and who am I, that I should advance an opinion?
A discredited Lieutenant in barracks--that's all.
Worse and worse--there are rumours of troubles in the Fleet taking place under certain conditions.
It is the beginning of the end!
Last night the High Seas Fleet were ordered to weigh at 8 a.m. this morning.