Exploits of "Kelly."

Levin Daily Chronicle, 17 January 1918, Page 4

Exploits of "Kelly."

GERMAN PRANKS AROUND IRELAND. An American scribe accompanying the American flotilla in British waters, recounts in a San Francisco newspaper some grim humour indulged in by a Teuton captain of a certain murdercraft.

It appears that there is a German submarine commander who is known throughout the American flotilla as "Kelly." His real name is something quite different, but the American sailors promptly dubbed him '' Kelly of the Emerald Isle," and the name will stick in the songs and stories of the American Navy as long as the great war is talked about.

"Kelly" earned his name by his display on several occasions of a rich vein of quite un-German humour. He has become the hero of numberless stoTies told in forecastle and on quarter-dcck. Not all of these stories are true, and probably most of them have grown in the telling. All that the American newsbabies! I've never seen sueh pink-and-paper man can vouch for is that "Kelly" is a real individual, and that there is some foundation for the remarkable tale of his exploits. '' Kelly'' commands a mine-laying U-boat which pays frequent visits to the district patrolled by the American destroyers. When he has finished his appointed task of distributing his mines where they will do the most harm, he generally devotes a few minutes to a prank of some kind. Sometimes he contents himself with leaving a note, flying from a buoy, scribbled in schoolboy English, and addressed to his American enemy. On other occasions he picks out a deserted bit of coast line at night, and goes ashore with a squad of his men for a saunter on tho beach, leaving behind a placard or a bit of German bunting as a reminder of his presence.

His most audacious exploit, however —if the legends of the forecastle arc to be believed —was a trip which he made to Dublin, where ho stayed two days at a leading hotel, afterwards joining his U-boat somewhere up the west coast. He is said to haye, informed the British of his exploit by leaving his receipted hotel bill attached to one the buoys. Still another of "Kelly's" more rec-

I ent stunts was to plant the German ' flag on a rising of the coast line. It J was the first time that the British and Americans knew just where he and his men had set foot, and they shared the excitement of the village folk who awoke one morning to find a new kind of flag flying from their native soil. At first they could not make out just what it was. But when they made sur c that it was the German colours they were furious, for it so happened, so the story goes, that the fishermen''along this particular strip of co&st had suffered much from submarine raids. U-boats had shelled their coast boats, Germans had stolen their fish—their only means of livelihood —and left them empty-handed after a week's hard catch of mackerel. These poor fisher-folk were in.no mood for this latest display of German humour, so they according to report, promptly burned the flag, and set a watch for "Kolly."