1917 original pen and ink drawing of a sentry in the dunes of the Belgian coast viewing a ship on the horizon. Possibly by W Wenber, Leading Seaman.
Gescreiben den . . . 1917 (Written the . . . 1917; printed text, the '7' handwritten)Küstenwacht an der belgischen Küste Gaz. A. Wenber ObermatroseCoastguard on the Belgian Coast, by? W Wenber, Leading Seaman
"There was a moment immediately [after the wind change dispersed the smoke screen] when it seemed to those on the ships as if the dim coast and the hidden harbor exploded into light. A star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells; the wavering beams of the searchlights swung round and settled to a glare; the wildfire of gun flashes leaped against the sky; strings of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank; and the darkness of the night was supplanted by the nightmare daylight of battle fires. Guns and machine guns along the Mole and batteries ashore awoke to life, and it was in a gale of shelling that Vindictive laid her nose against the thirty-foot high concrete side of the Mole, let go an anchor, and signed to Daffodil to shove her stern in. Iris went ahead and endeavored to get alongside likewise."
Excerpt from a British Admiralty statement on the April 22–23, 1918 raid on Ostend and Zeebrugge, ports on the North Sea connected to the German submarine base at Bruges (Brugge) by canals. Under the command of Roger Keyes, the British raided the two coastal cities to block the canals, sinking aging warships across them. The flotilla had already set out twice before, but had been turned back by weather conditions. But on the 22nd, eight monitors, six old cruisers, eight light cruisers, fifty-two destroyers, sixty-two motor launches, twenty-four coastal motorboats, two submarines, two Mersey River ferryboats, and one picket boat, bearing nearly one thousand men, made their way, the coastal motorboats laying and maintaining the smokescreen. At 11:56 PM the wind shift exposed the fleet to the batteries on shore and on the two-mile long breakwater, the Mole. The Vindictive was the primary landing craft, and was held in place against the Mole for much of the operation by Daffodil, one of the ferries.
The Great Events of the Great War in Seven Volumes by Charles F. Horne, Vol. VI, 1918, p. 134, copyright © 1920 by The National Alumnia, publisher: The National Alumni, publication date: 1920
1918-04-22, 1918, April, Zeebrugge, Vindictive, the Mole, Zeebrugge raid, dune watch, Belgian dune watch
