Letters Home, 1914

We've been out here, Mummy dear, for the last four months,
long before the War began last August, and we've been having
a grand time. Herr Kapitaen Karl von Mueller is my idol,
he is an excellent officer and a terrible rogue, a wild magician,
he shows up precisely where the enemy least expects him,
and then we blow all their ships to smithereens!! We admire him.
The British have always believed they could rule the sea,
and now we can say, so much for the Royal bloody Navy!
We've sunk more than twenty ships, bombarded Penang,
blown up all the fuel dumps at Madras. They can do nothing.
I hear the land war is going very well in Belgium and France,
and that the whole thing will be over with certain victory.
I think of my brothers who chose the Army, wary of the sea,
unlike me, but I wish them well: I am so sorry that this war
will be over so soon. I have never had so much fun in my life!
I'm a pirate at heart, but don't tell Father! So glad I joined the Navy.

.......................

Mummy dear, we have been betrayed!
I commanded a landing party in the Cocos Islands
to cut out the wireless communication station,
this new radio thing the English use against us,
and although the raid was a naval success,
the Indian radio operator, after we beat him badly,
confessed he had sent out a warning to the enemy fleet!
Sure enough, within hours, the Sydney ran us down,
a heavyweight hostile Australian cruiser,
and our lovely Emden was chased and destroyed.
Only guile and deception could have done this,
dear Kapitaen Karl and my captured comrades!

Still ashore; aghast but comprehending, I commandeered
a schooner in the harbour, rushed my men, some useful documents,
and some 'liberated' gold aboard, set sail at pistol point
for the Dutch East Indies; we were chased, half-heartedly,
but the Australians had done the main job and had no interest.
In Jogjakarta a drunken Hollander was willing to take us on,
but willing to betray us as well. and then, interestingly,
a little Japanese girl said we should trust her
because she knew the people we needed to know.
She was pretty -- she was so pretty.

I'm a German officer. Apart from you, Mummy, I don't think of women!

Thank God, anyway, we met some German sailors, a merchant ship.
For the sake of the Fatherland they took us on board.
We got to Arabia after three weeks of bad seamanship
and disembarked fully armed. We had to make our way across the Hejaz.
Mein Gott in Himmel! Nothing but trouble. The Arabs, the Bedouins,
attacked us nearly every night. I lost six men. Only for
the two machine guns we would never have got through!
Last night I arrived in Istanbul.
I am comfortably ensconced in the Pera Palace
where you and Father stayed before, in more peaceful times,
such a nice hotel, north of the wobbly bridge, up in Taksim.
My crew are in clean, comfortable quarters
thanks to the attentions of the Embassy.
The worst is over.
Tomorrow I will meet Enver Pasha.
I am told he will give me a medal.

Do not worry, Mummy dear,
give my love to Father and my brothers at the front in France.
Everything will turn out well, you'll see.
Everything will turn out well.

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Emden, under an energetic captain, Karl von Mueller, caused havoc in the Pacific and Indian oceans, though pursued at times not only by British but also French, Russian and Japanese ships. She was eventually intercepted and sunk by the Australian cruiser Sydney at Direction Island in the Cocos and Keeling group on 9 November 1914, after the local wireless station managed to get off a signal before the German landing party destroyed the transmitter.

The commander of the landing party on Direction Island evaded the Australians, appropriated a schooner, sailed it to the Dutch East Indies, got passage to a German steamer to Yemen in Arabia, fought off Bedouin attacks, reached the Hejaz railway built to bring pilgrims to Mecca and eventually arrived to a justifiably extravagant welcome in Constantinople in June 1915.

"The First World War" by John Keegan, Pimlico (London), 1999: p. 232