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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With the American Submarines: Branch

The humming of the dynamo was dying away slowly, fading with an effect of lengthening distance. The guitar orchestra, as if to celebrate its deliverance, burst into a triumphant rendering of Sousa's "Stars and Stripes." My guide and I waited till after midnight to watch the going of Branch's Z-5. Branch and his second, stuffed into black oilskins down whose gleaming surface ran beaded drops of rain, stood on the bridge; a number of sailors were busy doing various things along the deck. The electric lights shone in all their calm unearthly brilliance. Then slowly, very slowly, the Z-5 began to gather headway, the clear water seemed to flow past her green sides, and she rode out of the pool of light into the darkness waiting close at hand. "Good-bye! Good luck!" we cried.

A vagrant shower came roaring down into the shining pool. "Good-bye!" cried voices through the night.

Three minutes later all trace of the Z-5 had disappeared in the dark. The submarines disappear in the dark.

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