The Two-Headed Eagle

These thoughts were interrupted as an orderly entered: I was cor­dially requested to attend an interview with the commanding officer. The Captain of the destroyer Bombardier was a portly little man in his fif­ties called Kermadec-Ploufragan: a Breton like most French seamen. He invited me to sit down and offered me a cigar, which I gladly accepted. For some reason he insisted on speaking with me in English, though my French was reasonably good. It was only as the conversation progressed that I realised that this might have something to do with the presence of a fusilier marin standing sentry on the other side of the door.

“My most dear Lieutenant,” he began, “Lieutenant d’Issigny has just related to me of your quite incredible chivalry: that you sink his subma­rine after long and bitter struggles, then you land on the water to rescue him and his equipage even though you yourselves will become prison­ers.” I was about to point out that we had not sunk the Laplace after long and bitter struggles, that on the contrary, so far as I could make out the Laplace had sunk herself through incompetence. But he went on before I could speak. “Yes, my dearest Lieutenant, it is indeed a most sad and piti­able thing that yourself and your pilot should have become captive solely because of your honourable and gentle behaviour.”

“Captain, think nothing of it. These are the fortunes of war I am afraid. If our torpedo-boat had found us before you did then Lieutenant d’Issigny and his crew would now be our prisoners. Lieutenant Nechledil and I can at least console ourselves that we managed to rescue twenty-four of our enemies from drowning once they could no longer wage war on us. We are both seafarers like yourself and regard ourselves as waging war on the French government, not on the human race.”

Kermadec almost wiped away a tear at these words. “Ah, my dear Lieutenant, your noble words, they move me so deeply. Such distinguished sentiments. We French have always considered you Austrians to be a civilised people like ourselves, not beast-brutes and savages like les sales Boches. Your actions today confirm me only in this. But . . .” his face brightened, “but courage; it must not that we despair ourselves of the situation. There may yet be a solution.”

“A solution, Captain? I’m afraid that I don’t understand. Lieutenant Nechledil and I are your prisoners and that’s all there is to be said on the matter.”

“Please, please to wait a little moment. I have spoken with Lieutenant d’Issigny and we are agreed that perhaps it may be possible to de-capture you, if you understand my meaning.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you . . .”

“It is almost dark. Your aeroplane, it is towed astern. You may still get into it and we will cut you loose. Voila—you have escaped. No one will say anything or know anything. But you must first promise me two things.” “And what are they, if I might ask?”

“The first, that you will not start your motor and take off until we are out of hearing; the second, that you will give me your paroles as officers never again in this war to fly against France. Against the Italians—pah! they are crapule: it signifies nothing. But not against France.”

It certainly looked an attractive offer. I sensed now that both d’Issigny and the Captain of the destroyer were intensely anxious to have us both out of the way. Of course—d’Issigny himself must have been in the co

The only question now was, what was in it for us? Our engine was defunct, so we would be set adrift and left to our fate. It would be a long, cold night and perhaps by morning a bora would be blowing. In the end we might merely have exchanged a prison camp for a watery grave.

“Captain,” I asked, “if we were to be landed by you, whose prisoners would we be?”

“Ah, that is simple. We would have to hand you over to the Italians. The Marine Nationale are guests at Brindisi and we have no faculties for holding prisoners. There is an agreement for this.”

That settled it: five minutes later Nechledil and I were seated once more in the cockpit of the flying-boat L149 as it drifted away astern into the Adriatic night. A few minutes more, and the noise of the Bombardier’s engines had been swallowed up by the darkness. We were on our own once more.

Many years later, about 1955, I happened to see a recently published book entitled A Sailor Remembers, by none other than Rear-Admiral Dagobert St Jurie

Yet even in the darkest moments of war some sparks of humanity may be found in the adversary, and as we swam among the wreck­age an Austro-Hungarian hydroplane alighted on the waves beside us and supported me and my brave fellows in the water until suc­cour arrived. These very chivalrous and gentle Austrians, by name the Chevalier von Parchatzky and the Vicomte de Nec-Ledil, would have supported us longer even at the cost of themselves becom­ing prisoners, but I bade them leave with a cry of “Save yourselves while there is still time, my braves!” So they started their motor and climbed into the air, waving to us as they did so in farewell. Alas, we later heard that these noble fellows were both lost soon afterwards, and that the sea had swallowed them up forever.

I was unable to resist sending a postcard to the Admiral’s publisher say­ing that while sadly the Vicomte de Nec-Ledil was no more, the noble Austrian Chevalier von Parchatzky was very much alive and would in fact be glad to meet him if he were ever in London. I read a few weeks later in The Times that he had died suddenly of a stroke. I hope that there was no co

For the time being though, Lieutenant d’Issigny’s surmise about our being engloutis par la mer came uncomfortably close to being fulfilled. A north-west wind got up during the night and soon raised a sea that would have been uncomfortable in any small boat, let alone one like ours with a great venetian-blind structure of wings and tailplane on top of it. By dawn we were wet through, frozen and exhausted by lack of sleep and continu­ous bailing. Nor had we the slightest idea where we were. The hazy sun came up to reveal a heaving grey disc of water with our flying-boat tossing and lurching in the middle of it as its flat bottom slithered down into each wave-trough. We were being drifted along at about six or seven knots by the wind, I thought. But at least drifting was better than staying still. In an almost land-locked sea like the Adriatic drifting with the wind would bring us eventually to one shore or another. I decided to aid this process. I took out my clasp-knife and clambered out on to the lower wings. I slit open the fabric on the under-surface of the wings above and pulled this down in flaps, which I fastened to the lower wings to make crude sails.