World's War Events

Nineteen dispatches from the war's last two years, told by the people who were there — a destroyer officer's diary, Pershing's own report, the raid on Zeebrugge, the fighting Czecho-Slovaks — ending with the Armistice terms and the treaties that redrew the map.

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Bottling Up Zeebrugge and Ostend: Carpenter

Captain Carpenter in the flame-thrower hut.

The fire, from the account of everybody concerned, was intense. While ships plunged and rolled beside the Mole in an unexpected send of sea, Vindictive with her greater draught jarring against the foundation of the Mole with every plunge, they were swept diagonally by machine-gun fire from both ends of the Mole and by heavy batteries ashore. Commander A. F. B. Carpenter (now Captain) conned Vindictive from her open bridge till her stern was laid in, when he took up his position in the flame-thrower hut on the port side. It is to this hut that reference has already been made; it is marvellous that any occupant of it should have survived a minute, so riddled and shattered is it. Officers of Iris, which was in trouble ahead of Vindictive, describe Captain Carpenter as "handling her like a picket-boat."

The Vindictive's false high deck and gangways.

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