"Les Vagabonds de la Guerre"
Told by René Milan
Translated from the admirably written papers published under the title "Les Vagabonds de la Guerre" in Le Revue de Paris for Current History. Especially interesting is M. Milan's account of the part played by wireless telegraphy in the war.
I—STORY OF WAR ON THE ADRIATIC SEA
At last, on the curve of the waves, is marked the outline of the enemy! Alas! They are only torpedo-boat destroyers! Swift and powerful destroyers, I admit, but Austria might very well have offered us an adversary of our own class. But let us be satisfied with the windfall. Too many days have been thrown away against invisible adversaries. These at least are real, living and full of ardour. They gallop toward us, torpedoes pointed; we point toward them our big guns, which cannot yet reach them; the game is equal. Like us, they have run up the battle-flag, and the Waldeck-Rousseau, driving over the waters like a thoroughbred, drags with her her cruisers and her two squadrons of torpedo boats to the adventure in which some one must die.
A few minutes pass, packed with anxious silence. The men shut up in the hidden vitals of the ship strain their ears to catch the muffled sound of the first salvo; they may be killed in a moment, if some well-pointed torpedo should touch the cruiser, but they give their whole souls of bronze to their apparatus and their machines, so that nothing may go wrong in this marvelous crisis. Through their range-finders, the gun-pointers watch the distance vanishing by a kind of miracle. Twenty thousand yards—eighteen thousand yards—fifteen thousand—fourteen thousand. Two thousand yards more, and the storm of our artillery will break over our adversary. In three parallel lines the Austrian destroyers pour forth torrents of smoke; they are in solid formation; each line glides over the blue water like a gleaming boa constrictor. Alongside of us our torpedo-boat destroyers have drawn together and are plowing up clouds of foam that sparkle like silver in the sun.
But what do we see over there? The Austrian lines open out, bend upon themselves, and their heads describe a wide curve. Is it possible? They are going away! They refuse to fight! With a raging anguish we all try to persuade ourselves that our eyes are deceiving us. It is a trick of the sunshine, a puff of wind that bends their smoke. * * * Not at all. They have completed their turning movement and show us their heels, looking like three railroad trains speeding away on rails of foam.
Oh! to have our eyes on our revenge for so many useless weeks, and to see it escape just at the limit beyond the reach of our guns! To feel that under our feet our gigantic machines, which, nevertheless, are not weakening, can no longer catch up with the prey whose legs are too long for us! To measure the distance, and to feel it growing greater, a little more each second, like an elastic that is being stretched! Fourteen thousand yards!
Fourteen thousand one hundred. Fourteen thousand two hundred. * * * Ah! we would fain command the waves, hurl a sudden hurricane into the air, churn the sea into foam and billows. Our potent keels would not slow down, but the destroyers would crash against each billow, would go slower, would exhaust their force, and our triumphant dash would overmatch their cowardice.
They flee toward the labyrinth of the Dalmatian Islands, which grow larger before us like a family of ocean monsters rising from the sea. We continue to pursue. Sixteen thousand—seventeen thousand yards. Perhaps the poltroons will be seized with remorse or indecision. But it is not so; their flight is a premeditated ruse. High up in the sky, slipping and gliding among the transparent clouds, a war plane swoops over the French warships, passes along them, and drops bombs that only our skillful dodging makes harmless; they burst opposite our ships. On the surface of the water one of the cruisers perceives the furrow of a periscope! Some lurking submarine has launched its torpedoes, perhaps; our speed has deceived it; no one is touched; we take a flying shot at the streak of foam, which instantly disappears. The submarine plunges into the depths, the aeroplane is already out of sight, and the destroyers are close to the channel of the archipelago. Eighteen thousand yards—nineteen thousand.