THE BRITISH LANDING AT ZEEBRUGGE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 83, 2 January 1919, Page 6

THE BRITISH LANDING AT ZEEBRUGGE

FAMOUS "BLOCK" SHIPS AT CLOSE , . QUARTERS INCIDENTS AND SCENES A. correspondent of the London "Mail" ... describes:' a'.viait. to Zeebrugge after its evacuation byVthe Germans. He entered the harbour in. the early hours .of the morning. Along all the* length of the' ■ great mole, upon which tho men of the , Vindictive surged ashore from her plung-. : ing gangways, nothing moved; it stood - like a monument—a vast '• memorial to the dead. and the living who made it glorious/and unforgettable. ;i The, waters of-.tho harbour are a floor ■ - . of dim -silver ;{heV.proceeds), broken only ■where the'.'wrecks show their black and, ! .ruined hulls—Thetis at the entrance to 1 the canal; with her bows riot'a score of yards from the sand of the beach; In-, trepid and Iphigenia between tho burnt and yet smouldering piers; the Brussels, .. Captain Fryatt's ehip, torpedoed by our coastal motor-boats alongside the mole, ehowing Her two funnels at tho harbour . .mouth. Ashore, ruin after gaunt ruin— . the great Maritime building-with Its. ■- . /., tower and the rest, one or twOjStiil show- ■ » ing a red glow of persistent austere/and dumb. -It is desolation at : : : 'i • its climax—more desolate -and tragic than ... even the befouled _ fields of the Somme, for here the ruin is not of the self-heal- / , ing earth, but of the products and achievements of man's patient labour. The road hither from Ostend,' where ■ the now habit of freedom is being quickly acquired and a British officer is no longer a crowd-attracting wonder, lay i-along the Ostend-Bruges Caiial, to where the Oudekerk'. Bridge has been sufficientto pass .by; thence across :: .td ''KleniskerkeV and so by the - • i'tchaussee' jCoci,> whence the Ger-. .' v'iinahs 'boiiibarde'd.'.'the motor-launches off • H'Ost eViil -to .the.',last. : nioment of • their occur 'r:;patibh;^ : ;From\'there:-there jras a suit- ' 'i-uporblv-snrfaccd' coastwise • boulevard, run- : Wen- " Vv^d(^ne/-' , iratliLiXis T --T'illhs/to ,"BJ"ankenberghe, : j . v ihotels' aiid.' its . ruined; digue and VvVVr/junied pier—the, pier'which -'.the Gerl grains' destroyed in sight ;ofslhe inhabi--1 'tants and of which they, subsequently , published photographs entitled,',: "Slankenberghe Pier ; after it 'was; shelled , by; \ ■' ; the English.-"Prom Blarikenbergho to . Zeebrugge. is a matter of .three miles of .:. level tarred road. jr. ■''".'Throughout those lands, and in ,all thoso villages, there were evidences of a 1 : of life, long unpractised, being ten•:V : - ftativelv resumed, the stiffened joints of ' "a "whole civilisation returning to," their, use"- At Klemskerke, where the people f had lived! for years* upon bread supplied by the Belgian Belief Commission, upon turnips and potatoes, and where the Ger- •. mans, in retiring, had killed tho cattle ST : ''they could'not drive'away, there was already an organisation for pooling and disi-.!:■ retributing,the-supplies that- remained. Iri . : There was a great deal of German money OT- ''about, mainly in the .form,.of onerinark i. - notes, for the Germans had compelled all 1 able-bodied malfa to work and had paid them rather liberally in this paper'. They had, however, looted the district to the ', bone. At Le Coq shops were open, pitifnlly short of stock save, in the # case of .'.cigarettes,;-and flags. were; hanging-out, ; 5 • thoso copious .flags of which Belgium had ; , >;> and hid so 'amazing a quantity. 5 Germans' Fear of a Landing. £.l--.. ' Thence onward the boulevard was flanked,upon the left by the dunes, a sand barrier, tankly overgrown -with, . grass, ; which divides/the fields from the beach. O' It -was .the German front line, and ?., - from the rear, in all ,its lavish complete- '... iiess, the wonder grows- that even- four . yusrs of war, should "have sufficed to undo • »: ; -it.. It is;.not in any serious sense an >V exaggeration to 'say that along, the .whole const their batteries stood cheek to cheek,. .. . one gun position crowding another from ;beyond-Ostend -to the .Dutch ~frontier. - ■Where, ,'upon 'April -23,' Sirius arid .B_r£l-'. v v .liant went ashore to the-east of the' piers ■ .Ostend, in their--attempt to block the V I f harboiir, ■ the guns' are'; clustered above I:. -'Mtheml it - is- a, miracle that : they should |r-- ?: - ]iave reached 'evei• the ; point'-:at which 1 - they! were sunk. Many, of. course, were .rendered useless, ;b.ul theore must be many ' more which are yet intact. Below the - batteries are the: hutments of ithe - gunners,^shell, stores',Cdiimps.yet full of ain't i munition,' and all the miscellaneous ad- ■' juncts of the batteries,, fenced in with ;; ranks of rust-red barbed wire. :: • .:'The : Germans here had taken root deep-i-^-.1y... "But"—this is the statement of an J ' inhabitant of Le Coq—"for all that they ;. > were so sure, they lived in terror. The aoMpla'nea scaredjtheiri horribly; at the first alarm, they would go running t< r ? -the refuges; and they were in constant i: k fear of . a landing of British troops on the" V;.":'-coast. 'At- the time of the attack on Zeebrugge they .thought it had come, and ; there was'almost a' panic.; Ever since i'.'j then it was their nightmare!" i! - As* a niaxter of .fact, a landing tipon tho coast was' at no time attempted or ' intended bv ns; but it is possible now sl;- to ;reveal that when, upon September 28, '• the shelling of the coast batteries by'our * .-.j ships began, great lighters suitable for the, landing of troops were actually towed -out,, of -Dunkirk arid, exhibited ■■ to- tfie «nemy. It was.'a'part of the. Vice-Ad-■i? miral's plan to encourage the delusion : that-a landing-was. in contemplation. -/*!; For days, after the Germans suspected and feared that it would be accomplished, • •!and. retained; : uponithe,coast.forces which ' ! 5 iwer? bitterly neecled down upon the front. / - It was dusk at . Blankenberghe, and ■! upon the square thero was a crowd of 'Belgian soldiers and civilians, aiid what f --'•;' r -looked at- first like a fight proceeding in j:': V'the'.middle, of it. There were violent !-,: screaming 'of women and cheers 'and | . laughter. • Inquiry brought tile informat ' tipn that the people were cutting off the ; : C .. hair of some women who were notorious j ■■:.!■ : "-- for their -relations - .with the Germans, j . ' It: was, stated that the same thing had i, already, been done- at Bmges.,-. Here was '! . ! aVplace .whose last authentic news of, the p!, , -war. and'.of- world affairs in. general was months old. .Even German,, newspapers :■;!.' . "h^d.'not; lately-come to them. They had not heard of Germany's peace offer and rC' . President-"Wilson's '..-reply;, .nor,. -of Bul-garia's-surrender. -v. And-here a .Captain' j jMuller, who commanded ..the ,place,, had. i : i served his .country, by, breeding in-the, population not merely.-the disgust, an' 1 , ! : "! -'.distrust which is general 'throughout '"jFlanders.'but a living and burning hate , of Germany and everything German. He' flun^liis'fines and sentences of ipiprison- ! ; merit'around him at large; he carried a i ; ; .! whip and struck children with it in tho : j etreet; he spoke to no Belgian children !/■ 1 .: without an insult. ; Accurate Naval Bombardments. -.At Zeebrugge there is no population at '•all; the last civilians were evacuated in hs v" J ; une. i"when," Raid one of them, at V . - Blankenberghe, "it began to rairi bombs." •!■!, : The village stands a little apart and to j-;,-! ,' tlie east of the port, and is only super- . ■ ticiaily damaged. Such has been the i : ; accuracy and discrimination of our bom--4 ! "rKirdine'nts, both from the sea and ithe air, that all along the coast private pro- ' !: perty had received surprisingly little ■ injury, and many prominent and respon- . Bible Belgians have expressed to our , ; naval authorities their appreciation of the' fins skill and humanity with which I our firs, was limited to purely military targets. At places beyond the range of ! the naval guns, such as Bruges, the line f '-' of demarcation between private property 1 '• and:such 'military. targets as" the'docks : -ijas drawn! with remarkable precision; ! - tile Air Forces which carried out the ! ■ incessant night and dny bombing operations have" sedulously endeavoured to s' ' . nvoid, and wonderfully succeeded in sparf ing, the fine old city. Dunkirk,- bombed ! by the Germans during four years, t -. ' stands ill strong contrast to this evidence r~- of respect for the laws of civilised war; i there the damage to houses, to churches, j and so forth, and to life, is general all over the town. ! The last. Germans, doubtless thoso 1": charged with constructim; the "boobyI traps" of which the place is a tangle, ! Bcem to have left late on the riight, of ' Saturday, tho 19th. : They blew up the ! • temporary bridge which covered the gap ! |- '! in the jetty at the landward end of the j Mole, set adjacent buildings on fire, and I cycled towards Bruges. Our motorj ■ launohea are working at tha entrance to !' the hajbour, clearing, it of mines; the i - rattle of their machine-guns is incessant, ■ fitrl at intervals comes the great leap of [: water and smoke, ; followed by the stunh saing detonation, tho eignal tnat a mine -! : - feas been touched off.

The exploration of the Mole has commenced. It will be a long task, and not alone because of the length of the structure and the great number of sheds and buildings and the great quantity of material with which it is covered. *° Experts tre required in that new science which German war methods have forced upon the world—the science of neutralising "booby-traps." There are wires everywhere ; they run in and.out of the debris which strews the place; they even snalie in and out of the strands of coiled' wiro hawsers. It is dangerous to tread anywhere or to touch anything. Some such traps were laid at' Blankenberghe, in tho abandoned huts by. the dunes, and children have killed by them. The Gutted "Block" Ships. The "block" ships Intrepid and Ihpigetiia, lie well .within the piers, the latter across the passage, the other nt a slight angle to the piers. Thetis is outside, but well' across. The German torpedo-boats could only be manoeuvred past them with greatest difficulty after extensive dredging operations had been carried out. All that remained in the old ships that could be unscrewed, unbolted, or cut away as been removed, j There remains not a scrap of brass or I copper. Hound Iphuemn's conningtower a bomb-proof shelter of reinforced concrete has been erected as a refuge for the men at work on the dredger during our air raids. . But thoso who gutted the old ship so thoroughly to obtain metal for their .munition factories were, -at the last, in such haste to leave that they abandoned guns ashore and on the Mole which had riddled the old Vindictive, as. veil as several antiaircraft cannon. On Wednesday, the 23rd, six months to the day since/she steamed into the harhfur in face, of the frantic fire, the White Ensign was hoisted aboard of the Thetis; it flies there yet. , Eastward of Zeebrugge lies Heyst, and then comes the Dutch frontier, with its triple wire fence and the neat huts of the guards. It is all ours, the spoil of the unresting Navy which for four years •has maintained its tireless war upon this vital'and dangerous front. The coast is clear. Already there are lights along it, where,none have shown since August of 1914.