Norwich bulletin., 1918-04-29
The Raid on zsahrunae.

correspondent of The Associated Press visited the cruiser Vindictive Thursday as the guest of Captain Alfred F. B. Carpenter, who com manded her in the expedition last Tuesday against the German sub marine base at Zeebrugge on the Bel gian coast.
 Captain Carpenter received the cor respondent with his arm in sling from shell splinter wound. The ship showed innumerable signs of con- fiict, her decks and superstructure being covered with the scars of shells and machine gun hits. The com mander during the attack was at the end of the bridge in a small steel box or cabin which had been specially con structed to house a flame thrower. Describing the part taken by the Vindictive in the raid, Captain Car penter said to The Associated Press:
 Our chief purpose in the expedition was to distract the attention of the battery while the block ships ran in, especially the battery. of Il inch guns which occupied a commanding posit- tion at the tip of the mole. Our ship was deliberately prepared for the bus mess of landing soldiers on the mole which is of stone forty feet high and fifteen feet above the Findietive's top deck at the state. of the tide when the attack took place.
 ''We had a special superstructure i over the upper deck and three long gangways or 'brows' which were de- signed to take the men up to the level l of the mole as soon as we got along side. Exactly according to plan, we ran alongside the mole, approaching | it on the port side where we were i equipped with specially built buffers ] of wood two feet wide
 | "As there was nothing for us to tie 1 up to we merely dropped anchor there while the Daffodil kept kept us against | the opposite side of our ship. In the l fairly heavy sea two of our three | gangways were smashed but the third I held and five hundred men swarmed up this onto the mole. This gangway i was two feet wide and thirty feet long The men who went up it included three hundred marines and 150 storm ink seamen from the Vindictive and forty Or so from the Daffodil They swarmed up the steel gangway carry ing hand grenades and Lewis guns No Germans succeeded in approaching the gangway but a hard hand -to-h hand fight took place about two hundred Iyards up the mole towards the shore
 "The Vindictives bow was pointed towards the shore so the bridge go
 the full effect of enemy fire from tht shore batteries. One shell exploded against the pilot house, killing nearl! all of its ten occupants. Another 1 burst in the fighting top, killing { lieutenant and eight men who were doing excellent work with two pom
 poms and four machine guns
 "The battery of eleven inch gum at the end of the mole was only thret hundred yards away and it kept tryin, to reach us. The shore batteries als,
 were diligent. Only a few German shells hit our hull because it was wei protected by the wall of the mole, bu
 the upper structure, masts, stacks ant
 ventilators showed above the wall ant were riddled. A considerable propor tion of our casualties were caused b, II splinters from these upper works. Meanwhile the Daffodil continue, : to push us against the wall as if n, ], battle was on.
 II Twenty five minutes after tn IVindictive had reached the wall tn