Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

‘Paul Wagenfuhr, who commanded the “U-44”, pulled up the steamer “Belgian Prince” in the late afternoon of 31 July 1917. Unable to do anything against the accurate gunfire of the submarine except surrender, the captain of the steamer instructed the crew to abandon ship, and the men took their places and pulled away as she settled lower in the sea. The Germans placed some bombs on board the steamer, and Paul Wagenfuhr ordered her captain and crew to board the submarine. Sending the Master below, he lined up the men on deck, took their lifebelts and the greater part of their clothing from them, and instructed his men to destroy the boats with axes, which they did.

Leaving the men of the “Belgian Prince” half stripped, Paul Wagenfuhr and his men entered the conning tower and closed it. For a few minutes the “U-44” moved along the surface, then Wagenfuhr took his ship down to drown the 43 men left on her deck.

But for the strange workings of the human mind on the part of a few of the men, he would have succeeded in leaving no trace of the steamer or her crew. Instead of wearing their lifebelts over their clothes in the normal way, an uncanny pre-vision induced these men to put them under their clothing. Consequently the Germans overlooked them, with the result that three of the poor fellows were still alive next day when a warship came on the scene.

The world was aghast when it learned what Wagenfuhr had done; but retribution was not long in overtaking him. He notified his presence on the evening of 11 August by sending wireless messages to his base-signals which came so strongly that the wireless experts on board some British cruisers at sea knew that the vessel which sent them could not be far off ... ’

I.D. - New Tales of the Submarine War, by David Masters, sets the scene.

A fine Great War anti-U-boat operations D.S.M. group of five awarded to Able Seaman C. R. Edwards, Royal Navy, who was decorated for his part in the destruction of the U-44 in August 1917, thereby bringing to an end the career of Kapitanleutnant Paul Wagenfuhr - one of the most brutal U-Boat commander’s of the War: so, too, of Johann Volker, who had recently escaped from England on a neutral ship after surviving the loss of the U-12

Distinguished Service Medal, G.V.R. (J. 16701 C. R. Edwards, A.B., H.M.S. Oracle, North Sea, 12 Aug. 1917); 1914-15 Star (J. 16701 C. R. Edwards, A.B., R.N.); British War and Victory Medals (J. 16701 J. R. Edwards, A.B., R.N.); Imperial Service Medal, E.II.R. (Charles Richard Edwards, D.S.M.), in its Royal Mint case of issue, together with Arethusa & Chichester Training Ship 3 Years Good Service at Sea Medal, silver, unnamed, the first with official correction to ‘North Sea’, the earlier awards somewhat polished, thus good fine or better, the I.S.M. extremely fine (6) £1200-1500

D.S.M. London Gazette 17 November 1917:

‘For services in action with enemy submarines.’

Charles Richard Edwards was born in Lewisham, Kent, in March 1896, and entered the Royal Navy as a Boy 2nd Class April 1912. An Able Seaman serving aboard the cruiser H.M.S. Topaze on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he removed to the battleship Queen in February 1916 and then came ashore to the gunnery establishment Excellent that April. A brief spell in the destroyer Ariel having followed, he transferred to the Oracle in August 1916, and it was in the latter ship that he won his D.S.M. for the destruction of the U-44, under Paul Wagenfuhr, off Norway on 12 August 1917 - a memorable ‘kill’ in light of the above cited war crime enacted by him in the previous month. An excellent account of Oracle’s spectacular 27 knot ramming appears in Henry Newbolt’s Submarine and Anti-Submarine:

‘At 6.15 events happened and orders were given in very rapid succession. The U-Boat was apparently not inclined to dive and risk paravanes or depth-charges. Lieutenant-Commander Tippet no sooner grasped this than he changed his tactics, and determined to ram. It was, of course, desirable to strike the enemy at right angles, and he endeavoured to con his ship so as to secure this position. He gave the orders “Prepare to ram” and “Secure the depth-charge,” and steadied the ship on a point midway between the submarine's conning-tower (the top of which was just showing) and the stern, which was about four feet out of water. Then, at 27 knots, he drove Oracle straight at her.

The crash came with lightning speed. At 6.17 Oracle cut into the submarine's back, exactly in the desired spot. It was, at the moment, inclined downwards at an angle of 15°, with the top of the conning-tower showing on the port side of the destroyer, and on the starboard side about three feet of the freeboard at the stern. The impact was heavy, and two officers on Oracle's deck, who had not ‘prepared to ram’ by taking a completely prone position, were flung forward several feet. At the same moment an explosion was heard astern. It leaped into the Commander's mind that this was either a paravane detonating, or his own depth-charge, which he had ordered to be secured, with the object of avoiding any chance of a disaster from the shock. It was, in fact, the depth-charge that exploded; but in the right way, and not by shock. The order had been mis-reported to the Sub. Lieutenant in charge of the after-quarters - as it reached him, it was “Let go the depth-charge.” This he did personally and with great accuracy, a few seconds before ramming, so that when the explosion came, Oracle's stern was well clear and no one was injured, except possibly the enemy.




Oracle, having cut through the U-Boat, drifted on for about 150 yards. The bows of the dying submarine appeared momentarily above water; projecting some 3 feet at an angle of 45°. Then she sank, stern first, in 137 fathoms. For half ·a minute the surface showed a big bubbling brown disturbance, and in the oil patch appeared a quantity of debris, mainly large pieces of unpainted cork, whose curved shape suggested that they formed part of the lining of the hull. Oracle herself was not undamaged, as may be imagined; her bows were smashed from the waterline downwards, and a considerable quantity of naval stores were floating around her. She reported accordingly by searchlight to the Birkenhead, who could just be discerned at a distance of ten miles, and then returned to her base to refit. For this fine piece of work Lieutenant-Commander Tippet received the D.S.O., and Acting-Lieutenant Butlin the D.S.C. Nine of the crew were also decorated or mentioned.’

To which may be added the following observation made by David Masters in I.D. - New Tales of the Submarine War:

‘Her [U-44’s] behaviour during those last few minutes was so peculiar and strange that it is fairly certain there was something wrong on board. Had she been working normally, she would not have reappeared after she housed her sail and submerged, but would have stolen quietly away and waited for the destroyers, which were so feared by the U-Boats because of their speed, to give up the quest. I sometimes wonder whether the captain of the Belgian Prince, if still a captive, ran amuck in those last few minutes in a deliberate attempt to encompass the end of the men who murdered his crew. That seems to be an explanation of those sharp and sudden dives up and down which brought the U-44 to justice.’

In another fascinating twist to the tale, another German submariner who lost his life in the U-44 had also hit the headlines in England, a navigator by the name of Johann Volker, but for entirely different reasons - he had escaped from captivity in Dorchester, boarded a neutral ship, and been picked up by an enemy submarine at a secret rendezvous. It was a remarkable feat, the full story of which is recounted by David Masters in I.D. - New Tales of the Submarine War. By way of conclusion:

‘His audacity and courage and determination certainly deserved success. It seems almost unbelievable that Volker could escape from a prison camp in England during the war, walk openly about London to see how the people were faring, go to Deal to try to get a boat, bluff a suspicious policeman that he was a "free" Englishman, travel the length of England while every policeman in the land was on the look-out for him, and walk on board a closely-watched ship and get clean away back to Germany. He accomplished a brilliant feat. Perhaps it would have been better for him if he had failed, for he might have been alive today. It says much for his courage that his narrow escape when the U-12 was rammed did not shake his nerve nor prevent him from going to sea in submarines again. As it was, he met his death when the U-44 was rammed by the destroyer Oracle off the Norwegian coast on August 12, 1917, and all aboard were drowned.’

For his own part, Edwards removed to another destroyer, the Ophelia, in September 1917, and remained actively employed in that capacity until coming ashore to Victory II in August 1918. He was invalided ashore in March 1920; sold with copied R.N. service record.