In March 1932, the Daily Mirror revisited an extraordinary wartime story after receiving a letter from Herr Streng, a former engineer aboard a German U-boat. More than thirteen years after the end of the First World War, he wanted to know whether the only two survivors of a submarine he had helped sink were still alive.
Those survivors included Commander Samuel A. Brooks, son of Samuel Brooks, a former Mayor of Reigate, who lived in Park Road, Redhill.
In June 1918, the German submarine UB-73 torpedoed the British submarine D7 in the North Sea. The explosion struck the starboard side, sending the vessel rapidly to the bottom with twenty-four men on board. Only two survived: Commander Samuel A. Brooks and Engineer F. S. Bell.
According to Brooks, half a dozen other crewmen managed to escape from the sinking submarine but were unable to stay afloat. Before the U-boat could surface to rescue them, all had drowned except Brooks and Bell.
Bell had been due to marry the very next day. In an unexpected act of humanity, the German commander sent a wireless message intended for his fiancée to let her know that he had survived. The message was intercepted by a British listening station, but its significance was not recognised. What the Admiralty did realise was that a German submarine was operating nearby, and British gunboats were dispatched to hunt it down. Despite a pursuit lasting two days, the U-boat escaped.
Brooks and Bell remained aboard the submarine for two weeks before being taken to Germany for interrogation. Brooks told The Daily Mirror that his captors were keen to discover how British naval officers viewed the progress of the war. They seemed surprised when he confidently told them that, in his opinion, the conflict was "as good as over and won."
While the two men endured captivity, events at home were equally traumatic. Brooks's wife, Doris, had been officially informed that D7 had been lost with all hands. Married for only a year, she believed herself widowed.
When the Daily Mirror interviewed her in 1932, she still possessed the black hat she had worn during those weeks of mourning. She remembered,
"It was an awful three weeks, and yet I came nearer to losing my reason when I heard my husband was alive than during the vain wait for his ship."
Brooks himself recalled returning home to find his wife ‘wearing widow's weeds’ - a poignant reminder of the emotional toll caused by the uncertainty of wartime.
The Daily Mirror traced Commander Brooks to Lowestoft, where he was serving as commander of a fisheries protection vessel. Herr Streng's letter had prompted him to look back on an experience that neither side had forgotten.
Unfortunately, the newspaper was unable to trace Engineer Bell. By 1932 he was serving with the Royal Australian Navy in Melbourne, so the story of his reunion with the fiancée who had almost become his widow remains unknown.
More than a decade after the guns had fallen silent, the former enemy submariner’s concern for a fellow combatant shows that humanity could survive even the bitterness of war.
Banbury Guardian - Thursday 05 April 1917
A history of Redhill Volume Three, Alan Moore
The Daily Mirror - Saturday 26 March 1932
The Surrey Mirror - Friday 01 April 1932
Photograph of the German WWI U-boat UB 14 on the surface of the Black Sea. The submarine's crew is gathered around the tower. Source: Rainer Kolbicz, held by DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University