Free to Fight. “Piasecki’—The
Story of a Polish Seaman

a

By “Bartimeus’

PIASECKI, LEADING Torpedo-man of
the Polish destroyer attached to the striking
force of British destroyers, was aware of
an unfamiliar emotion. It was something
approaching happiness.

He stood on the break of the forecastle
smoking and contemplating the Atlantic
surges that travelled past them, foam-
crested, to the uneasy horizon. The ship
rolled heavily and waves swept over the
upper deck, deluging the torpedo-tubes with
swirling water. Far away on the beam he
could see one of their sister-destroyers as
she lifted on the slope of a grey-back, fling-
ing the spray over her forecastle and bridge.
Beyond her again there were other destroy-
ers, but they were hidden in the spume lifted
off the wave-crests by the rising gale.

It was Monday evening. For days they
had intercepted wireless messages giving
them glimpses of the running fight from the
Denmark Strait to the latitude of Land’s
End. The Captain had told them every-
thing that was happening: there was on
board a mutual trust and brotherliness so
cemented by a common hatred that it was
like a holy thing. They only existed to one
end, as if they were priests in an order
under irrevocable vows: except that they
had made no vows; such a thing was un-
necessary.

The aircraft carrier they had sighted on:

the horizon a little earlier had given them
the enemy’s position. Two battleships,
with the Commander-in-Chief in command
and shadowing cruisers, were close at her
heels: a battle cruiser and cruiser force were
coming up from the southward; the de-
stroyer on the wing of the line had sighted
one of their cruisers after supper and re-
ported them. The net cast by the British
Commander-in-Chief was closing inexorably
on the fugitive enemy battleship, crippled
by naval torpedo-bombing-aircraft, but still
dangerous and desperate.

Piasecki, in his oilskin and sea boots,
standing by the galley door smoking, was
reminded of the boar hunts of his youth in
the Carpathian forests. The hounds would
encircle the quarry, holding him at bay with
foam and slaver on his tusks, until the
hunters with their guns came up. And then
it was the end. Sometimes a dog would run
in and rashly try to grapple with the beast,
but their teeth were no match for tusks that
slashed and ripped.

He communicated this imagery to Floryan
the cook who was cleaning up the galley for
the night.

“We destroyers are the hounds, you
understand, and the German is the boar.
Presently we shall sight him, and it is our
task to hold him at bay for the hunters. If

Page Twenty-two

in the “Outpost”

we sight him before dark we shall all shadow
him and when it is dark we shall deliver
a torpedo attack. Then in the morning if
he is still afloat the battleships will come up
and finish him off.”

“The battleships are the hunters?” asked
Floryan. He had escaped from a German
concentration camp: apart from cookery, he
had to have things explained to him rather
carefully, because he had been tortured
quite a bit.

“That’s right,” confirmed Piasecki. “They
are the ones with the big guns.”

The alarm rattles sounded as he spoke,
followed by the pipe—“Stand fast torpedo-
tubes’ crew.”

Piasecki was free to climb up to the signal
bridge and see what was going on. Floryan
accompanied him. One of the English sig-
nalmen they carried, Jones by name, was
hauling at the halyards that carried a string
of bunting bellying and snapping in the
gale, to the masthead.

“Enemy in sight,” he shouted to them.
He took a turn with the halyards round a
cleat. “I've had that bent-on since dawn,
ready to hoist. There she is, Cookie, see?
Look at the big blighter, just lifting above
the horizon—wait till we lift on this wave:
there she is—take a look at that lot, Cookie
boy.”

The English signalman had adopted Flor-
yan as if he were a ship’s pet: a pigeon that
had struggled on board with a damaged
wing would have made much the same
appeal to their sympathy and affection.

Piasecki gripped the handrail and stared
in the direction the signalman was pointing.
He saw the monstrous bulk lift out of the
haze like a distant headland. Through the
engine-room uptakes he heard the gongs
clanging and the ship vibrated as she in-
creased speed. The flying spray deluged
them.

“Wounds of God,” he muttered, “we are
going to attack.” He looked aft under the
brim of his shrapnel helmet at the seas
sweeping over his torpedo tubes, at the con-
fused white tumult of the wake astern. In
this sea the tubes were out of action. The
flotilla meant to attack with its guns—four-
inch against fifteen-inch. The battleship spat
yellow flashes. The destroyer heeled over as
the Captain altered course. Dusk was gath-
ering. The salvo of fifteen-inch shells pitched
away on the port quarter tearing the ocean
into great spouts of foam. The destroyer
answered with a salvo that shook her like a
sob of rage. Piasecki, watching a signal-
lamp blinking out of the dusk far away to
starboard, heard the thud of the cylinders
and the clang of the breech mechanism as
they reloaded. He glanced up at the com-

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pass platform where the lamp was clattering
an acknowledgment. The funnels began to
vomit black smoke, under cover of which
they dropped back in the gathering dark
ness into their shadowing positions, waiting
for the night to loose the keys of death and
of hell.

Shortly after midnight the flotilla made
their torpedo attack, closing in the darknes
to three thousand yards’ range. In the wild:
est tumult of the gale the destroyers drove
their onslaught, finding their target by the
flashes from the guns.

As they swung away under cover of their
smoke screen they saw the battleship slowly
turn two complete circles and lie stopped,
belching flames, the waves breaking against
her towering sides as against a cliff.

Tuesday, in the dawn, they gathered to
the kill.

Battleships to the northward passing
through the veil of a rain squall opened fire
with their main armament and were ringed
by the water-spouts of an answering salvo.
An outpost cruiser, closing from the south,
punched an entire salvo into her armoured
vitals. Tons of high-explosive armour
piercing shells beat her into silence, and the
destroyer that had been hovering outside
the battle of giants, drew nearer to rescue
survivors.

Listing slightly, under a pall of smoke
and licking flames, with colours flying, she
still moved blindly through the waves,
yawing helplessly. What lives remained in
her trickled in streams of dazed humanity
over the stern into the sea. The battleships
ceased firing, and the cruiser closed to
deliver the final coup-de-grace, with her
torpedoes.

The German battleship rolled slowly over
on her beam ends: then turned turtle and
with a last ponderous upward heave of the
bows was engulfed by the Atlantic.

Jones lent Piasecki his telescope so that
he could watch the end, which he himself
had no particular wish to see; when it came
the Pole closed the glass with a snap and_
handed it back.

“T’ank you,” he said politely.

Jones glanced at his face and looked away
quickly, as if from something terrible.

Piasecki was smiling.

Hotel

Malaspina

THOMAS STEVENSON, Manager
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New Coffee Shop

An Impressively Good Hoiel
Reasonable Rates

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°

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THE SHOULDER STRAP

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