路易斯·勒·贝利爵士以一位幸存前舰员的身份对胡德号的一封记述

我想，从1932年8月到1939年11月，在“胡德”号的最后四段服役期内都有驻舰服役经历的官兵中，我一定是最后一个健在者。

从学员到军官候补生，再到中尉和上尉，我用崇敬的目光注视过詹姆斯、贝利、布雷克、坎宁安、莱顿和惠特沃斯等将领。我的上级们还包括宾尼、塔尔、普里德姆、沃克及格伦尼等各位舰长，麦克拉姆、奥康纳、奥尔-尤因及戴维斯等各位副舰长，以及轮机部门的桑基、伯松及格罗根等各位轮机长，其中格罗根与舰共沉。每人都是独树一帜的伟大人物；其中个别人尤其伟大。

很少有人曾经像我这样一直幸运，有机会见识这么多有感召力的指挥官。那时的人们在创造历史，尽管我自然没意识到。一战中的种种不成功导致皇家海军在一届届海军部委员会的无能领导下，毁掉了费舍尔勋爵的许多努力，无情地令军官退役，并由于处理降薪问题失当，在1931年引发了1797年后第一起大规模海军兵变。

我有幸在凯利、查特菲尔德、亨德森、巴克豪斯、拉姆齐、德拉克斯、W.W.费舍尔、弗雷泽及其他数十名我从未认识的军官手下工作过，他们仅用了8年，就在精神层面上带领皇家海军及这个错综复杂的系统中的每一分子从因弗戈登兵变的低谷走出，进入了战备状态。正是他们把皇家海军打造成我们的作战部队中如此坚不可摧的一部分，使它的兵力从1939年的161000人增加到了1945年的750000人。

“胡德”号被誉为建成过的最伟大的军舰，它是一件象征。从她诞生的翰·布朗船厂到1939年，近20年里，她被马不停蹄地被当作一颗政治棋子使用并展示出自己的全部美丽和力量，来维持英国主导下的和平，之后，她在历经数年的战火后被送进了沉寂的坟墓。

1939年和1940年冬季，在她奉命履行自己作战职责，作为舰队中坚去风暴频发的北方海域巡曳时，她的乘员组经受了十分不堪言说的艰辛。

“胡德”号于和平时期的职责导致她没能接受恢复水密的改装，以及抵御垂直下落炮弹的改造。于是，当她投入战斗后，不过几分钟便不复存在了，1418名舰员中只有3人生还。而从她1939年8月最后一次离开朴茨茅斯时，也就是海军部发出“对德全面作战”总信号的3周后开始，这些舰员们一直凭着沉稳的精神与风浪抗争。

克里特岛战役中的损失一小时一小时地上升，“胡德”号也被击沉了，故1941年5月可能是整场战争中海军伤亡最惨重的月份。已经被空袭搅乱的朴次茅斯、德文波特(Devonport)、查塔姆(Chatham)三座造船城在快要进入夏季时一片寂静，人们泪如雨下。

“坚持住，皇家海军一定不能让陆军失望。建造一艘军舰需要3年，但建立一种传统需要300年。”克里特岛战役中，坎宁安在手下的航空母舰、战列舰、巡洋舰和驱逐舰一艘艘在空袭中被炸沉炸伤后，他这样号召着。虽然当时没有人能预见，但正是1941年5月这场从格陵兰到地中海东部同时进行的海陆空战役致使德国输掉了战争。

在西部，虽然“胡德”号牺牲了，但“俾斯麦”号沉没后，德国在大西洋上再未发起水面作战行动。

在地中海东部，英军和殖民地军队在希腊和克里特岛进行抵抗，飞行员们驾驶着不论型号的飞机与强大的轴心国空中力量搏斗，皇家海军承受着舰船和人员的惨重损失而奋战，这一切延缓了不可避免的失利，并重创了希特勒手下唯一完整的空降师。

大西洋上敌方水面舰艇威胁被解除后，百万美军得以安全地前往位于英国的登陆行动出发点。争夺希腊和克里特岛的战役导致德国进攻苏联的“巴巴罗萨”行动被推迟了6周。按“巴巴罗萨”计划，德军将首先攻占莫斯科，进而消灭苏联，但德军如拿破仑一样，没能在俄罗斯的严冬来临前到达莫斯科。

于康沃尔郡圣图迪

2004年情人节

以上节选自《英国皇家海军战列巡洋舰“胡德”号图传》，即《The Battlecruiser HMS HOOD：An Illustrated Biography》的序章部分

其完整原文如下：

I suppose I must be the last of Hms Hood's ship's company to have served in part of each of her four final commissions between August 1932 and November 1939. From Cadet through Midshipman,Sub-Lieutenant and Lieutenant, I gazed with reverence at Admirals James, Bailey, Blake, Cunningham, Layton and Whitworth. And I served Captains Binney, Tower, Pridham, Walker, Glennie, and Commanders McCrum, O'Conor, Orr-Ewing, Davis and, in the Engineering Department,Commanders (E) Sankey, Berthon and Grogan, the last of whom went down with the ship.Each one in his own way was a great man; some greater than others.

Few can have been so consistently lucky as I at being permitted to watch such a posse of inspirational leaders. I did not recognise it, of course,but history was being made. As a result of failures in the First World War the Royal Navy,led by poor Boards of Admiralty, reversed much of Lord Fisher's work, ruthlessly discharged officers, and by inept handling of pay cuts created in 1931 the first major naval mutiny since1797. The officers under whom I was so lucky to serve, together with Kelly, Chatfield, Henderson, Backhouse, Ramsay, Drax, W.W. Fisher, Fraser and dozens of others I never knew, led the Navy and all its intricate elements spiritually from its nadir at Invergordon to war readiness only eight years later. It was they who made it such an unconquerable element of our fighting forces as its numbers rose from 161,000 in 1939to 750,000 in 1945.

Crowned as the greatest warship ever built,HMs Hood was an icon. For two decades from her cradling at John Brown's until 1939 she was used unsparingly in all her beauty and power as a political pawn sustaining the Pax Britannica before two years of war took her to a silent grave. It was when she was called on to fulfil her fighting role and ride the stormy northern seas as the backbone of the fleet in the winters of1939 and 1940 that her company suffered such unspeakable hardship. Hood's peacetime role had denied her the refit that would have made her watertight and the reconstruction that would have made her proof against plunging fire. And so when battle was joined she was gone within a few minutes leaving just three of the 1,418 men whose equable spirit had defied the elements since she left Portsmouth for the last time in August1939, three weeks before the Admiralty made that general signal TOTAL GERMANY.

With the losses in the Battle for Crete mounting by the hour and the Hood sunk,May 1941 was probably the worst month for naval casualties in the whole war. The three Dockyard Towns of Portsmouth, Devonport and Chatham,already reeling from air bombardment,became very quiet as summer drew near and many tears were shed.‘Stick it out. Navy must not let Army down. It takes three years to build a ship but three hundred to build a tradition'signalled Cunningham in the Battle for Crete as one after the other the carrier, battleships,cruisers and destroyers of his fleet were lost or damaged by air attack. Though none could have foretold it, it was this simultaneous naval, land and air battle stretching from Greenland to the Eastern Mediterranean in May 1941 which cost Germany the war. In the West it was the sinking of the Bismarck, at the expense of the Hood, which put an end to German surface operations in the Atlantic. In the Eastern Mediterranean it was the resistance of British and imperial troops in Greece and Crete, of pilots who flew what aircraft could be found against the might of Axis air power, and of the Royal Navy which, at terrible cost in ships and men, delayed the inevitable and decimated Hitler's only complete airborne division.The removal of the Atlantic surface warship threat gave safe passage to a million Americans to their D-Day jump- off position in Britain.The battles for Greece and Crete caused Operation ‘Barbarossa,the German attack on the Soviet Union, to be postponed by six weeks.‘Barbarossa' planned to destroy the Soviets by first taking Moscow but the Germans, like Napoleon,failed to reach the city before the terrible Russian winter set in.

HMS Hood lies 9,000 feet at the bottom of the Denmark Strait and through the marvels of technology her wreck has been filmed and shown to a worldwide audience. Nevertheless, the cause of her disintegration remains shrouded in mystery. Perhaps in another decade or so closer inspection will determine how came the end. There have been many books about HMs Hood but until man can exist and move 9,000 feet down on the ocean bed I doubt if there will ever be such a history, such a biography, such an obituary as Bruce Taylor has written.The astonishing volume of research he has managed to achieve brings alive not only Hood's irreplaceable years of service in the cause of peace,but also the neglect to update her fighting potential and the pattern of her operations in war that led to almost unbearable conditions for her gallant company who somehow kept her going against all odds.

It has been a privilege watching Dr Taylor knit together a vast and varied theme into what must surely be,for many years to come,the definitive account of an awe-inspiring piece of Britain's naval history.

St Tudy, Cornwall

St Valentine’s Day, 2004

以上转载仅做资料文献分享用途