and the other suffered heavy casualties. The
Breslau
’s own loss was seven dead and fifteen wounded from three hits.
Naturally there was shore leave between the sorties. Here is Dönitz describing a foray into the city in the summer of 1915.
We have ourselves ferried across to Stamboul. Today there is to be a great carpet raid!
First we go to Kaffaroff. He has a pair of sumptuous ‘Herats’ and a ‘poem’ of a ‘Dschaudjegan’. We decline a ‘Buchura’ which he repeatedly points out. We do not like a hard pattern; a carpet should be a flower bed. And it does not help to ‘push’ the wares, even if the praised piece is as finely-woven ‘as a handkerchief’.
Finally we agree on our choice of the ‘Dschaudjegan’.
Now the bargaining begins to settle the final price. This is to carpet-buying what love is to life.
There is a warm battle, and finally no agreement. We go, we will come back later.
Over in the bazaar Spickbok assails us with a monstrous torrent of words praising the beauty and splendour of colour of his carpets to the heavens.
But the beggar has almost only modern, harsh-coloured wares! He jumps around on his darlings in his small carpet-cave, speaking like awaterfall, assuring us on his word of honour that a brand new carpet from the factory in Smyrna is a hundred-year-old piece, an ‘occasion’, thus proving he has no idea of his carpets.
He is a true Levantine and the greatest rogue. 81
Leaving, they wandered through the old quarter to the town walls and the ancient Jedi-Kule, the castle of seven towers, where they were shown around by a Turkish invalid. When told they were from the
Midilli
, he looked pleased, and placing both index fingers together, said ‘
Alleman Turk biraarder
’ (German and Turk brothers). ‘We nod,’ Dönitz wrote, ‘and reach a hand to him with a generous “baksheesh” in confirmation of friendship.’
Towards sunset they visited the great mosque of Santa Sophia, its mighty cupola already filling with the shades of night. ‘Innumerable oil lamps in chandeliers hanging beneath the cupola are alight, and shining like stars in the gloom of the cupola heaven.’ Impressed by the sight and by the Turks at prayer, they returned aboard.
It seems like a dream to us that in the past weeks we were rolling in the Black Sea having a rough and tumble with the Russians.
Fortunate is the
Midilli
! In peaceful harbour days drawing new strength for new voyages. Should the war last months, the crew will be continually invigorated in the fairy-tale town of Stamboul, and go out into the Black Sea as fresh as on the first day of war. 82
There is a lightness and sensitivity and a quiet irony in the writing. Not bad, one feels, for a young officer at the height of a war when so many were busy turning out turgid heroics—not that his descriptions of battles at sea are free from heroics. Nevertheless one has the impression of being in the company of a civilized man.
By this time he must have met Sister Ingeborg Weber, his future wife. She was a slim, lively 21-year-old, a fully-trained nurse with a mind of her own; a distinctly ‘modern’ young woman. One can imagine that the snatched times they found together between demanding duties, and the heightened sense of life and the value of the present moment that goes with wartime gave their courtship something of the fairy-tale, poignant quality of old Stamboul itself. Certainly Karl Dönitz would have contributed temperament.
Here is another vignette from his pen of that summer of 1915. PerhapsSister Inge was one of the guests on the ‘yacht’ the
Breslau
officers had acquired for pleasure cruising:
Before Dolma-Bagtsche the yacht’s anchor is let go. For how could the
Breslau
officer enjoy the cool Bosphorus wind alone? He finds his fellow men much too agreeable. In his love for his fellows he has therefore invited the ladies and gentlemen of the German colony. They are already standing waiting before the white
Breslau
’s own loss was seven dead and fifteen wounded from three hits.
Naturally there was shore leave between the sorties. Here is Dönitz describing a foray into the city in the summer of 1915.
We have ourselves ferried across to Stamboul. Today there is to be a great carpet raid!
First we go to Kaffaroff. He has a pair of sumptuous ‘Herats’ and a ‘poem’ of a ‘Dschaudjegan’. We decline a ‘Buchura’ which he repeatedly points out. We do not like a hard pattern; a carpet should be a flower bed. And it does not help to ‘push’ the wares, even if the praised piece is as finely-woven ‘as a handkerchief’.
Finally we agree on our choice of the ‘Dschaudjegan’.
Now the bargaining begins to settle the final price. This is to carpet-buying what love is to life.
There is a warm battle, and finally no agreement. We go, we will come back later.
Over in the bazaar Spickbok assails us with a monstrous torrent of words praising the beauty and splendour of colour of his carpets to the heavens.
But the beggar has almost only modern, harsh-coloured wares! He jumps around on his darlings in his small carpet-cave, speaking like awaterfall, assuring us on his word of honour that a brand new carpet from the factory in Smyrna is a hundred-year-old piece, an ‘occasion’, thus proving he has no idea of his carpets.
He is a true Levantine and the greatest rogue. 81
Leaving, they wandered through the old quarter to the town walls and the ancient Jedi-Kule, the castle of seven towers, where they were shown around by a Turkish invalid. When told they were from the
Midilli
, he looked pleased, and placing both index fingers together, said ‘
Alleman Turk biraarder
’ (German and Turk brothers). ‘We nod,’ Dönitz wrote, ‘and reach a hand to him with a generous “baksheesh” in confirmation of friendship.’
Towards sunset they visited the great mosque of Santa Sophia, its mighty cupola already filling with the shades of night. ‘Innumerable oil lamps in chandeliers hanging beneath the cupola are alight, and shining like stars in the gloom of the cupola heaven.’ Impressed by the sight and by the Turks at prayer, they returned aboard.
It seems like a dream to us that in the past weeks we were rolling in the Black Sea having a rough and tumble with the Russians.
Fortunate is the
Midilli
! In peaceful harbour days drawing new strength for new voyages. Should the war last months, the crew will be continually invigorated in the fairy-tale town of Stamboul, and go out into the Black Sea as fresh as on the first day of war. 82
There is a lightness and sensitivity and a quiet irony in the writing. Not bad, one feels, for a young officer at the height of a war when so many were busy turning out turgid heroics—not that his descriptions of battles at sea are free from heroics. Nevertheless one has the impression of being in the company of a civilized man.
By this time he must have met Sister Ingeborg Weber, his future wife. She was a slim, lively 21-year-old, a fully-trained nurse with a mind of her own; a distinctly ‘modern’ young woman. One can imagine that the snatched times they found together between demanding duties, and the heightened sense of life and the value of the present moment that goes with wartime gave their courtship something of the fairy-tale, poignant quality of old Stamboul itself. Certainly Karl Dönitz would have contributed temperament.
Here is another vignette from his pen of that summer of 1915. PerhapsSister Inge was one of the guests on the ‘yacht’ the
Breslau
officers had acquired for pleasure cruising:
Before Dolma-Bagtsche the yacht’s anchor is let go. For how could the
Breslau
officer enjoy the cool Bosphorus wind alone? He finds his fellow men much too agreeable. In his love for his fellows he has therefore invited the ladies and gentlemen of the German colony. They are already standing waiting before the white
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