Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/160

142 of 1918, indeed, that the public heard anything of the special service vessels that came to be known as the "mystery" or "Q-ships"—although these had been operating for nearly three years. It is true that the public knew that there was something in the wind, for there were announcements that certain naval officers had received the Victoria Cross, but as there was no citation explaining why these coveted rewards were given, they were known as "mystery V.C.'s."

On one of my visits to Queenstown Admiral Bayly showed me a wireless message which he had recently received from the commanding officer of a certain mystery ship operating from Queenstown, one of the most successful of these vessels. It was brief but sufficiently eloquent.

"Am slowly sinking," it read. "Good-bye, I did my best."

Though the man who had sent that message was apparently facing death at the time when it was written, Admiral Bayly told me that he had survived the ordeal, and that, in fact, he would dine at Admiralty House that very night. Another fact about this man lifted him above the commonplace: he was the first Q-boat commander to receive the Victoria Cross, and one of the very few who wore both the Victoria Cross and the Distinguished Service Order; and he subsequently won bars for each, not to mention the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honour. When Captain Gordon Campbell arrived, I found that he was a Britisher of quite the accepted type. His appearance suggested nothing extraordinary. He was a short, rather thick-set, phlegmatic Englishman, somewhat non-committal in his bearing; until he knew a man well, his conversation consisted of a few monosyllables, and even on closer acquaintance his stolidity and reticence, especially in the matter of his own exploits, did not entirely disappear. Yet there was something about the Captain which suggested the traits that had already made it possible for him to sink three submarines, and which afterward added other trophies to his record. It needed no elaborate story of his performances to inform me that Captain Campbell was about as cool and determined a man as was to be found in the British navy. His associates declared that his physical system absolutely lacked nerves; that, when it came to pursuing a German submarine, his patience and his persistence knew no bounds; and that the extent to which his mind con-