The Rainbow. A World War One on Canada's West Coast Timeline
- Thread starter YYJ
- Start date
If I'm not mistaken, it's SMS Galiano, the sister ship to CGS Malaspina. It's looking to be a sistership show down akin to the Battle of Gabon during WWII.
"On 9 November, Free French Westland Lysander aircraft operating out of Douala bombed Libreville aerodrome. The aerodrome was eventually captured, despite stiff resistance met by Koenig's force in its approach. Free French naval forces consisting of the minesweeper Commandant Dominé and the cargo vessel Casamance were led by Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu aboard the Bougainville-class aviso Savorgnan de Brazza in conducting coastal operations. De Brazza attacked and sank her sister ship, the Vichy French Bougainville. Libreville was captured on 10 November."
Still extremely early in the war before the notions of honour and glory were corrupted by the exigencies of modern total war.
And the fact that the Germans have comfortable naval superiority over any local forces. When you have the element of surprise (somewhat lost now but it still present) along complete dominance over the local area for the moment, you can afford to act honorable, courteous and respectful to your enemy. If the Germans were in a different situation, you’d see much more brutal smash and grab tactics, those just aren’t needed here at the moment.
Eh, actually it seems it was American and the 'obvious' meaning and phrasing changed from the initial quote:
my country, right or wrong - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
I can not say how much joy I've gotten out of putting the WHOLE quote out to certain people who only get it partially right :
“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
Randy
The Battle of Bamfield: The Cable Station.
Aug 21 0630 hours. Bamfield Cable Station, Barclay Sound.
The surviving German launch covered the distance to the northern branch of Bamfield Inlet, on the left side of Station Point, in just a couple of minutes. Above them, the stately and architecturally beautiful Cable Station had lost most of the glass in its upper story windows. The manager’s house on the tip of the point was on fire. As the boat drew into the northern branch of the Inlet, the rock and trees of Station Point masked the buildings from view. The boat came to a gentle stop against a rocky beach, emerald green with seaweed. Some of the German sailors jumped out, and pulled the boat up higher. One of the sailors with a leg wound remained in the boat to care for the badly wounded man, and the dead. The spare ammunition from the dead and incapacitated men was quickly distributed. The rest of the landing party, eleven including one sailor with a bandaged arm, gathered their weapons and the wooden crate holding the explosives, and climbed up the steep treed bank. At the top, they emerged into a level forest. Within a few dozen meters, the trees abruptly stopped, and beyond sat the back of the four-story Cable Station. A water tower on spindly legs stood to their left. Between the landing party and the station building was a 50 metre wide clearing full of stumps, shrubs, tall grass, and a few outbuildings. One Canadian militiaman lay dead in the grass a ways to their right. No others were visible.
“You,” Stabbootsman Lange said to his second petty officer. “Keep four men here and cover us. The rest of you, come with me. That will be our objective.” He pointed at his chosen entry point, a door on the nearest end of the station’s main floor. The German riflemen fixed bayonets. “Now, let us run like the wind. Go!”
Lange and five men sprinted across the open space. Muzzle flashes appeared in two second-story windows. One of the running sailors fell, then another. The covering section opened fire on the militia shooters, the petty officer rapid firing his Luger. Lange arrived at the building, ran up the short flight of steps, broke in the door with his shoulder, and disappeared inside. Three more German riflemen entered, right on his heels. Gunfire sounded from inside, including rapid fire from a Luger. Then the five men of the covering section charged the building. Two of the men ran in a pair, carrying the wooden crate between them. As they ran by, a fallen sailor got back to his feet and joined them. “I tripped,” he confessed. They passed a second fallen sailor, who was clearly dead. The noise of fighting continued from inside, fierce and involving bayonets, but was over quickly.
When the petty officer and his section arrived, Lange and his riflemen had already secured a large area on the western end of the ground floor. The first room they had entered was a dining room, paneled in dark wood. Framed pictures of the King and Prime Minister Borden hung on the wall. Three Canadian militiamen sat on the floor unhappily, two of them with bandaged wounds. Three more lay dead. Canadian rifles, empty brass cartridges, and broken window glass littered the floor.
Lange reloaded, waved his men forward silently, and together they began to systematically clear the ground floor. As it turned out, there were no more militiamen on the ground floor, only some angry and disgruntled telegraph technicians and operators. The German clearing squad shrank, as Lange detached a man to guard the prisoners here, and to watch the approaches to the building there.
A small group of Canadian militiamen attempted to storm down the main stairs from the second floor. A firefight erupted in the entry hallway, and once again the fire of the semi-automatic pistols had a decisive effect. The sally ended with one militiaman dead on the stairs, boots still on the top landing and head lolling down, and the assault repulsed with the rest of the militiamen retreating back upstairs.
The Germans heard gunfire close at hand, and bullets emerged through the tongue-and-groove fir ceiling, as the Canadians fired their rifles blindly through the hallway floor above. The Germans responded by firing up into the ceiling. Lange grabbed a copy of the Victoria Daily Colonist from an entryway side table, and lit it on fire, then blew out the flames and let the smoke from the smoldering paper rise into two story tall entryway hall. Gradually the smell of burning paper mixed with and then replaced the smell of burnt cordite. The building grew silent.
“Surrender!” yelled Lange in English, “or we will burn down the building! With you inside!”
Murmuring sounded from the floor above.
“Surrender now! Throw down your weapons.”
More murmuring ensued, then “Alright!” called out a voice in English. “We surrender. We’re coming down! Don’t shoot!” The Germans heard the sound of rifle bolts being cycled, and hard objects falling on the fir floor above.
The butt of a rifle appeared around the corner at the top of the stairs and was given a push. The gun slid down the stairs, bumping on every step. Another followed, and another, until a pile of a dozen Canadian rifles lay on the hallway carpet runner like pick-up-sticks. A white bed sheet was waved. “We are coming down now!” called the voice. “We have some wounded we will need to carry.”
Four militiamen trudged down the stairs single file, their hands held high, the first still holding the white bedsheet. Then a pair of ambulatory wounded men in uniform were helped by other other men in civilian clothes. Six wounded militiamen and one wounded man in civilian clothes were carried by a civilian on each end, then a few more civilians brought up the rear, all holding their hands in the air.
“Obermatt,” Lange said to the petty officer. “Search the upstairs and the basement.” The petty officer took two men and headed up the stairs, weapons at the ready. “This way,” Lange said to the Canadians, and he led the prisoners back to the first room the Germans had stormed, the station dining room. Out of the corner of his eye, Lange saw a body pass by the window, as if jumping from the floor above.
“Ow!” yelled an English voice with a Canadian accent from outside, followed by a stream of cursing.
“Collect that man as well,” he ordered one of his sentries.
Soon, in the ground floor dining room Lange had assembled 15 militia prisoners, five unharmed and 10 with varying degrees of non-life threatening injuries, including one man with a broken leg. Their shoulder patches identified them as members of the 50th Gordon Highlanders. The highest ranking militiaman was a sergeant. Lange also had 22 civilian captives, including the station manager, his wife, and teenaged son. The manager was particularly irate, having just watched his house on the point burn to the ground.
The German petty officer returned and reported the entire building cleared. He noticed six dead bodies of militiamen were scattered about the upstairs, including a lieutenant. His men had covered the bodies with blankets or fallen curtains. They had also extinguished several trash can fires, presumably fed with code books and secret documents, and made a cursory effort to destroy the telegraph transmitting and receiving equipment with a fire axe.
Lange’s men were stretched impossibly thin. He posted a man at a window or door on each corner of the ground floor as sentries, and a pair of men to guard the wounded. He pulled the two demolition men aside. “Place dynamite charges on the place where the cable enters the building,” he ordered. “We want to destroy this station quickly, and return to Galiano, before more soldiers arrive.” Lange surveyed the area around the station. A wooden ramp supporting a tramway led down to the station wharf. Various outbuildings ringed the station building to its east, further down the peninsula, and beside the wharf.
Across the inlet an open motorized boat obviously designed for very rough weather, was waving a flag of truce as it approached the listing, drifting fish boat that was still embedded in the wreckage of Lange’s former boat. As he watched, the rescuers boarded and carried the dead and wounded across to their boat, then took the fish boat in tow. The Galiano, still hovering off at the mouth of the inlet, did not interfere. On the opposite shore, the red painted buildings of the Bamfield Lifeboat station sat beside the harbour, civilians gathered around the ramp leading up to its boathouse.
The men returned from rigging the basement with explosives. “Sir, we discovered a large amount of rifle ammunition downstairs, in a bowling alley.”
“That will burn up with the rest of the building when we leave,” said Lange. “Prepare some bonfires out of furniture and what have you, one on each end of the building. It is soon time to retire.” His watch read 0700 hours.
“Alright sergeant,” Lange said to the ranking Canadian militiaman, “it is time for us to move on. We are going to release you before we burn down this station. Gather up your wounded, and head out the front door. I suggest you hold this flag of truce high, in case you have any comrades still itching for a fight.” He passed the white bed sheet to the sergeant. The unwounded men began to rise to their feet.
“This station,” exclaimed the manager in horror, “was designed by Canada’s leading architect!”
“Well,” said Lange, “more work for him when it is built back again. Along with you now.” The Canadian sergeant opened the main entrance, waved the white flag in the opening, and then walked out onto the front verandah, his arms held high. The rest of the Canadians followed single file, with the healthy carrying the wounded, down the front stairs and then along the tramway ramp towards the harbour. As the last Canadian departed, Lange closed the door behind them.
“Alright,” ordered Lange. “Let’s light those fuses, and make haste. We have been here on Canadian soil too long already. I will bring up the rear. The petty officer lead the first handful of sailors out the dining room back door, retracing the landing party’s original approach to the building. Lange awaited the return of the men setting the fuses.
When the petty officer was ten steps away from the building, he fell dead from a single rifle shot. A fusillade opened up on the back of the cable station. The German sailors already outside dropped to the ground, and began to return fire at their unseen attackers. Lang saw muzzle flashes coming from outbuildings to his right, from the base of the water tower ahead, and from the forest on the path down to their waiting boat. The Canadian militia had infiltrated along the reverse slope of the bank to cut their escape route.
“Put out those fuses!” he yelled back at the demolition crew still inside the station building. “We might be here for a while yet!”
At the mouth of the inlet the Galiano turned and steamed out into Trevor Channel, producing a large cloud of coal smoke from her funnel. Before she disappeared from sight, he heard the shot of a naval gun, sounding not unlike Galiano’s own deck gun, and he saw a waterspout from a near miss rise out of the water just behind the Galiano.
The surviving German launch covered the distance to the northern branch of Bamfield Inlet, on the left side of Station Point, in just a couple of minutes. Above them, the stately and architecturally beautiful Cable Station had lost most of the glass in its upper story windows. The manager’s house on the tip of the point was on fire. As the boat drew into the northern branch of the Inlet, the rock and trees of Station Point masked the buildings from view. The boat came to a gentle stop against a rocky beach, emerald green with seaweed. Some of the German sailors jumped out, and pulled the boat up higher. One of the sailors with a leg wound remained in the boat to care for the badly wounded man, and the dead. The spare ammunition from the dead and incapacitated men was quickly distributed. The rest of the landing party, eleven including one sailor with a bandaged arm, gathered their weapons and the wooden crate holding the explosives, and climbed up the steep treed bank. At the top, they emerged into a level forest. Within a few dozen meters, the trees abruptly stopped, and beyond sat the back of the four-story Cable Station. A water tower on spindly legs stood to their left. Between the landing party and the station building was a 50 metre wide clearing full of stumps, shrubs, tall grass, and a few outbuildings. One Canadian militiaman lay dead in the grass a ways to their right. No others were visible.
“You,” Stabbootsman Lange said to his second petty officer. “Keep four men here and cover us. The rest of you, come with me. That will be our objective.” He pointed at his chosen entry point, a door on the nearest end of the station’s main floor. The German riflemen fixed bayonets. “Now, let us run like the wind. Go!”
Lange and five men sprinted across the open space. Muzzle flashes appeared in two second-story windows. One of the running sailors fell, then another. The covering section opened fire on the militia shooters, the petty officer rapid firing his Luger. Lange arrived at the building, ran up the short flight of steps, broke in the door with his shoulder, and disappeared inside. Three more German riflemen entered, right on his heels. Gunfire sounded from inside, including rapid fire from a Luger. Then the five men of the covering section charged the building. Two of the men ran in a pair, carrying the wooden crate between them. As they ran by, a fallen sailor got back to his feet and joined them. “I tripped,” he confessed. They passed a second fallen sailor, who was clearly dead. The noise of fighting continued from inside, fierce and involving bayonets, but was over quickly.
When the petty officer and his section arrived, Lange and his riflemen had already secured a large area on the western end of the ground floor. The first room they had entered was a dining room, paneled in dark wood. Framed pictures of the King and Prime Minister Borden hung on the wall. Three Canadian militiamen sat on the floor unhappily, two of them with bandaged wounds. Three more lay dead. Canadian rifles, empty brass cartridges, and broken window glass littered the floor.
Lange reloaded, waved his men forward silently, and together they began to systematically clear the ground floor. As it turned out, there were no more militiamen on the ground floor, only some angry and disgruntled telegraph technicians and operators. The German clearing squad shrank, as Lange detached a man to guard the prisoners here, and to watch the approaches to the building there.
A small group of Canadian militiamen attempted to storm down the main stairs from the second floor. A firefight erupted in the entry hallway, and once again the fire of the semi-automatic pistols had a decisive effect. The sally ended with one militiaman dead on the stairs, boots still on the top landing and head lolling down, and the assault repulsed with the rest of the militiamen retreating back upstairs.
The Germans heard gunfire close at hand, and bullets emerged through the tongue-and-groove fir ceiling, as the Canadians fired their rifles blindly through the hallway floor above. The Germans responded by firing up into the ceiling. Lange grabbed a copy of the Victoria Daily Colonist from an entryway side table, and lit it on fire, then blew out the flames and let the smoke from the smoldering paper rise into two story tall entryway hall. Gradually the smell of burning paper mixed with and then replaced the smell of burnt cordite. The building grew silent.
“Surrender!” yelled Lange in English, “or we will burn down the building! With you inside!”
Murmuring sounded from the floor above.
“Surrender now! Throw down your weapons.”
More murmuring ensued, then “Alright!” called out a voice in English. “We surrender. We’re coming down! Don’t shoot!” The Germans heard the sound of rifle bolts being cycled, and hard objects falling on the fir floor above.
The butt of a rifle appeared around the corner at the top of the stairs and was given a push. The gun slid down the stairs, bumping on every step. Another followed, and another, until a pile of a dozen Canadian rifles lay on the hallway carpet runner like pick-up-sticks. A white bed sheet was waved. “We are coming down now!” called the voice. “We have some wounded we will need to carry.”
Four militiamen trudged down the stairs single file, their hands held high, the first still holding the white bedsheet. Then a pair of ambulatory wounded men in uniform were helped by other other men in civilian clothes. Six wounded militiamen and one wounded man in civilian clothes were carried by a civilian on each end, then a few more civilians brought up the rear, all holding their hands in the air.
“Obermatt,” Lange said to the petty officer. “Search the upstairs and the basement.” The petty officer took two men and headed up the stairs, weapons at the ready. “This way,” Lange said to the Canadians, and he led the prisoners back to the first room the Germans had stormed, the station dining room. Out of the corner of his eye, Lange saw a body pass by the window, as if jumping from the floor above.
“Ow!” yelled an English voice with a Canadian accent from outside, followed by a stream of cursing.
“Collect that man as well,” he ordered one of his sentries.
Soon, in the ground floor dining room Lange had assembled 15 militia prisoners, five unharmed and 10 with varying degrees of non-life threatening injuries, including one man with a broken leg. Their shoulder patches identified them as members of the 50th Gordon Highlanders. The highest ranking militiaman was a sergeant. Lange also had 22 civilian captives, including the station manager, his wife, and teenaged son. The manager was particularly irate, having just watched his house on the point burn to the ground.
The German petty officer returned and reported the entire building cleared. He noticed six dead bodies of militiamen were scattered about the upstairs, including a lieutenant. His men had covered the bodies with blankets or fallen curtains. They had also extinguished several trash can fires, presumably fed with code books and secret documents, and made a cursory effort to destroy the telegraph transmitting and receiving equipment with a fire axe.
Lange’s men were stretched impossibly thin. He posted a man at a window or door on each corner of the ground floor as sentries, and a pair of men to guard the wounded. He pulled the two demolition men aside. “Place dynamite charges on the place where the cable enters the building,” he ordered. “We want to destroy this station quickly, and return to Galiano, before more soldiers arrive.” Lange surveyed the area around the station. A wooden ramp supporting a tramway led down to the station wharf. Various outbuildings ringed the station building to its east, further down the peninsula, and beside the wharf.
Across the inlet an open motorized boat obviously designed for very rough weather, was waving a flag of truce as it approached the listing, drifting fish boat that was still embedded in the wreckage of Lange’s former boat. As he watched, the rescuers boarded and carried the dead and wounded across to their boat, then took the fish boat in tow. The Galiano, still hovering off at the mouth of the inlet, did not interfere. On the opposite shore, the red painted buildings of the Bamfield Lifeboat station sat beside the harbour, civilians gathered around the ramp leading up to its boathouse.
The men returned from rigging the basement with explosives. “Sir, we discovered a large amount of rifle ammunition downstairs, in a bowling alley.”
“That will burn up with the rest of the building when we leave,” said Lange. “Prepare some bonfires out of furniture and what have you, one on each end of the building. It is soon time to retire.” His watch read 0700 hours.
“Alright sergeant,” Lange said to the ranking Canadian militiaman, “it is time for us to move on. We are going to release you before we burn down this station. Gather up your wounded, and head out the front door. I suggest you hold this flag of truce high, in case you have any comrades still itching for a fight.” He passed the white bed sheet to the sergeant. The unwounded men began to rise to their feet.
“This station,” exclaimed the manager in horror, “was designed by Canada’s leading architect!”
“Well,” said Lange, “more work for him when it is built back again. Along with you now.” The Canadian sergeant opened the main entrance, waved the white flag in the opening, and then walked out onto the front verandah, his arms held high. The rest of the Canadians followed single file, with the healthy carrying the wounded, down the front stairs and then along the tramway ramp towards the harbour. As the last Canadian departed, Lange closed the door behind them.
“Alright,” ordered Lange. “Let’s light those fuses, and make haste. We have been here on Canadian soil too long already. I will bring up the rear. The petty officer lead the first handful of sailors out the dining room back door, retracing the landing party’s original approach to the building. Lange awaited the return of the men setting the fuses.
When the petty officer was ten steps away from the building, he fell dead from a single rifle shot. A fusillade opened up on the back of the cable station. The German sailors already outside dropped to the ground, and began to return fire at their unseen attackers. Lang saw muzzle flashes coming from outbuildings to his right, from the base of the water tower ahead, and from the forest on the path down to their waiting boat. The Canadian militia had infiltrated along the reverse slope of the bank to cut their escape route.
“Put out those fuses!” he yelled back at the demolition crew still inside the station building. “We might be here for a while yet!”
At the mouth of the inlet the Galiano turned and steamed out into Trevor Channel, producing a large cloud of coal smoke from her funnel. Before she disappeared from sight, he heard the shot of a naval gun, sounding not unlike Galiano’s own deck gun, and he saw a waterspout from a near miss rise out of the water just behind the Galiano.
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all of us command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
Seems like those poor militiamen are getting chewed up by the close quarters power of those rapid fire Lugers although to be fair, Ross rifles can still do plenty of work at range. Perhaps rifles might not be the way going forward for sentries expecting attack from saboteurs? Regardless, excellent chapter as always. These cliffhangers are doing their job rather well haha.
Just wait for the headlines on August 23...
GERMANY LANDS ON BRITISH SOIL!
CANADA INVADED!
GERMAN ARMY AT THE GATES OF VICTORIA!
GERMANY LANDS ON BRITISH SOIL!
CANADA INVADED!
GERMAN ARMY AT THE GATES OF VICTORIA!
Well, that is the lyrical version adopted in 2018 when the Act to amend the National Anthem Act (gender) got rid of "In all thy sons command..." So you have the correct sentiment if you are singing the song today...
If Canadians were singing the song in 1914 in English, they most likely would sing the version I learned in elementary school in the '70s:
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
And* stand on guard,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee!
Oh Canada, glorious and free!
We stand on guard, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
*(or We)
There were lots more "We stand on guard for thee"s, before the Progressive Conservative Government of Joe Clarke put God in there in 1980.
Of course, if 1914 Canadians were singing the national anthem, they would sing God Save the King.
Driftless
Donor
How much of an emotional impact would the fight at Bamfield have on Candian consciousness as Canadians? The first real battle of the Great War for Canadians is on its own western shores. Of course there were some shots exchanged a few days ago, but this is becoming a battle, with some ebb and flow.
By comparison for Americans, the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord were small scale affairs in reality, but their impact has resonated for all of American history. Could this scrap and the larger fight coming up at Victoria and Vancouver have that kind of impact?
By comparison for Americans, the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord were small scale affairs in reality, but their impact has resonated for all of American history. Could this scrap and the larger fight coming up at Victoria and Vancouver have that kind of impact?