Max waited only a few minutes before the admiral came in. Saalwächter was tall and lean, with gray hair receding from the temples. His perfectly tailored blue uniform with his many decorations sparkled in the soft light of the dining room. Max immediately came to attention. “Oberleutnant zur See Brekendorf, reporting as ordered, sir.”
Saalwächter looked him over and smiled. “At ease, Oberleutnant.” He shook Max’s hand. “It is an honor to meet such a brave young man.”
Max could feel the blood flushing his cheeks. “Thank you, Herr Admiral.”
“You have had many adventures since leaving Germany.”
“A great many, sir.”
“I hope you will join me in an apéritif?”
“It would be my sincere pleasure, sir.”
A white-jacketed steward entered with two glasses of champagne.
Saalwächter raised his glass. “A toast to the young lieutenant, and to his survival.”
“Thank you, sir. Thank you.”
They drank.
“Come, my young friend, be seated, be seated.”
The steward reappeared with a cheese soufflé, followed by baby lobster in champagne sauce, then steak with sauce béarnaise, white wine, red wine, a dessert wine. Strawberries with heavy cream. Espresso. Max felt himself becoming groggy as he made his way from course to course, but each dish was better than the one before; he wondered at the admiral’s trim physique. Saalwächter kept the conversation light throughout the meal, asking after Max’s home and family, getting all the details about Mareth once the romance had been uncovered. Afterward he showed Max to a study at the rear of the house furnished with overstuffed chairs, a phonograph player, and shelves of leather-bound books.
“Cognac? Cigar?”
Max took both from the steward, who then withdrew.
Saalwächter put a record on the phonograph—an aria from La Bohème, he explained. “Opera is the West’s highest art form, Oberleutnant. Have you been?”
“No, sir.”
“Ah, you must go, young man, you must go. I keep a box but have so little time to use it. If you ever want to attend, just call my adjutant and he will make the arrangements.”
Max couldn’t imagine anything worse. “The admiral is very kind.”
Saalwächter sat and lit his cigar. His mouth drew down at the edges and his manner seemed to change. He said, “When did you leave the Marineschule Mürwik, Oberleutnant?”
“Thirty-seven, sir. I am a member of Crew 33.”
Saalwächter shook his head. “So few thoroughly trained men are available now. We’ve cut training time by half, two-thirds in some cases. Prewar officers like you with combat experience are a
tremendous asset to the service.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Max’s cigar had gone out and the admiral offered him another light from the heavy ornamental lighter on the end table. “Were the circumstances of Captain Langsdorff’s suicide the same as those reported to the Naval War Staff?”
“I presume so, Herr Admiral. I did not make the report myself, as you must know.”
Saalwächter looked away and puffed his cigar. It was a good smoke; Langsdorff would have approved. Quality cigars were becoming rare on the continent because none from the Americas made it through the British blockade, unless they came from Spain via the black market. “Tell me about it, Oberleutnant, if you would. You are the first officer of Graf Spee I have had the opportunity to speak with in person.”
Max shifted to the edge of his chair. Speaking quietly, he related the events in Montevideo harbor, and the scuttling of Spee in the Rio Plata. “We went upriver to Buenos Aires afterwards so we would be interned by the Argentines. Captain Langsdorff regarded it as his duty to see the crew through to safety, and to negotiate the terms of our internment himself. Otherwise, I’m certain he would have gone down with the ship.”
Max paused to sip his cognac. The confusion and disappointment of those days still registered in his gut. “They bunked us in the old Naval Arsenal in Buenos Aires when we arrived. I went to my quarters early the next evening because I was tired. The captain’s steward woke me around zero six hundred and asked me to come to the captain’s room. I thought he was sick, but when we got there, I saw that he’d killed himself.”
Saalwächter was gazing intently over the rim of his glass. “And was there anything unusual?”
Max nodded. “Captain Langsdorff had wrapped himself in the ensign of the Imperial Navy before shooting himself.” Max knew this had been omitted from the official report; it was a gesture of which the Nazis would not have approved. Certainly Langsdorff intended it as a slight toward Hitler and the party. The captain was not alone in feeling that the interests and advice of the navy were being disregarded by the party leadership. Langsdorff had also been photographed at the funeral of the German sailors killed during the battle, giving the naval salute, hand to forehead, while all the German embassy officials and German civilians around him gave the Deutsche Gruss, the Nazi salute. The photograph had been on the front page of every major newspaper in the world. Berlin was not pleased.
The admiral stood and poured himself another cognac. “Whoever wrote the report was wise to leave that out. Did others know?”
“Only a few of us, Herr Admiral. We unwrapped the body—that is, the doctor and myself—before notifying the Argentine navy of the incident.”
“You have much presence of mind, Brekendorf. A valuable trait in a naval officer. Of course we will keep this conversation to ourselves. There is Captain Langsdorff’s family to consider. I’m sure you understand.”
“More and more, sir.”
“We in the navy must be careful, too, Oberleutnant. Old Academy men like you and me do not wield all the power, I’m afraid. Langsdorff wished to express his disapproval of this situation, but his family are not the only ones for whom it might make trouble if word got out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Saalwächter went to the phonograph. He turned the record over and replaced the needle. “You agreed with his decision about the ship?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“No?”
“No, sir. We had a chance to break out. We should have taken it.”
“Fought to the death for Volk and Vaterland?”
“Something like that, Herr Admiral.”
Saalwächter gave him a long gaze. Finally he said, “I like your spirit, young man. We will need more officers like you if we are to win this war. Where will you go next, Maximilian? We have lost Bismarck, but Prinz Eugen fought beside her with great courage at Denmark Strait when they sank Hood. Or perhaps Gneisenau? Any ship in the fleet would be grateful to have you.”
Max paused a moment. He must choose his words carefully. Saalwächter commanded a large percentage of the German navy’s surface units, plus the hundreds of minesweepers, patrol boats, and fast attack boats deployed off the French coast. Max did not want to offend him, but he had decided that Germany’s surface forces were so small, they could do little more than annoy the British. “With all due respect, Herr Admiral, I would like to volunteer for the U-boat force. I feel that I can best serve my country in that capacity—and best strike at England, sir.”
“The English are a damnable people.”
“Yes, sir. They caused us to sink our own ship in the Rio Plata, then sank Meteor out from under me, killed my friends; they…”
The admiral held up his hand. “I understand, Maximilian. Dönitz will be happy to have you, of that I am sure, and you will have my blessing. I shall ring him tomorrow and personally recommend you. With your training and experience, I shouldn’t wonder if they give you a boat of your own. We’re turning out thirty to forty every month now and experienced seagoing officers are in desperately short supply. It’s tough training. Three or four months to work the boat up at the construction yard, then six or seven more in the Baltic to train. You’ll be there in winter.”
“I survived the Marineschule Mürwik, sir.”<
br />
“Yes—and much worse than that since, Maximilian. And certainly no one will be shooting at you in the Baltic.”
The admiral turned his attention to a small velvet box beside the phonograph. He opened it and displayed the contents for Max, who stood up. “The real highlight of the evening, Oberleutnant. In the name of the Führer, I award you the Iron Cross First Class for bravery under fire at the Battle of the Rio de la Plata and the subsequent action involving the auxiliary raider Meteor.”
He pinned the Iron Cross to Max’s uniform, on the left breast pocket.
Max felt the medal—sharp and cold under his fingers. He looked down and smiled, his pulse quickening. How often in his days at the Marineschule Mürwik had he dreamed of this moment? Yet only now, when the moment had come, did he understand its price—Dieter, Langsdorff, the men who had died around him in the drifting lifeboat, all the others who would never come home. None of that had been part of his cadet fantasies. “I am honored, Herr Admiral.”
“You earned it, Maximilian. And now, an even more pleasant task. As of today I appoint you to the rank of KapitänLeutnant.” Saalwächter stood back and saluted Max. “Allow me to be the first to salute your new rank, Herr Kaleu.”
A promotion and an Iron Cross. The price had been too high, but Max felt his pride welling up nonetheless. “Thank you, sir. I will do my best to bring honor to the rank.”
“I know that you will, KapitänLeutnant. Germany will need nothing less from you.” Saalwächter saw Max to the door, shook his hand, and sent him off with the traditional U-boat man’s farewell. “Good luck, son—and good hunting.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
DANZIG, EAST PRUSSIA
HEADQUARTERS 23rd U-BOAT TRAINING FLOTILLA
ABOARD U-114
5 JANUARY 1943
EARLY MORNING
MAX FOLLOWED THE ICEBREAKER OUT OF THE HARBOR, THE GRAY steel of the U-boat’s prow pushing aside the slush left in the channel. A violent wind blew across the Bay of Danzig; Max could feel the chill of it on his skin, even though he wore a rubber diver’s suit under his heavy sweater, leather jacket, and fleece-lined bridge coat. No one was ever really warm in East Prussia with this damned wind blowing in from Russia all the time. Max wondered how the boys on the Eastern Front withstood it—especially those in Six Armee at Stalingrad, which had been surrounded by the Soviets since mid-November. How much longer could Paulus and his troops hold out? Cut off from their supplies, dying in the thousands from hunger and frostbite. But the Bolsheviks had to be defeated. If not, they would march on Germany eventually, and if the Red Army ever entered the Reich—Max couldn’t even allow the thought. It would never happen, must never happen.
The water was black and filled with chunks of ice as they passed out of the channel and came into the Baltic proper. “Helm, port five degrees rudder, come to new heading zero five zero,” he called down the open hatchway.
The helmsman, sitting blind in the conning tower, operated the push buttons that controlled the rudder. “Steady on zero five zero, Herr Kaleu.”
“Both engines full ahead,” Max called into the voicepipe that led to the control room. Feeling her speed pick up beneath him, he navigated the U-boat into her assigned training area. With so many boats working up, Flotilla Command had divided this part of the Baltic into quadrants. Each boat was limited to a specific quadrant in hopes of preventing collisions. Still, training losses were running high, Max had heard—much higher than officially acknowledged. Bad enough being in a U-boat sunk by the enemy, worse was being in a U-boat accidentally sunk by your own navy. When it happened, Flotilla Command simply removed the name of the missing boat from the roster, removed the crew belongings from the barracks ship, and scrubbed the cabins down. Gefallen für Volk and Führer, the telegram would say.
Families printed up small death cards with the name and photograph of the departed that they sent to relatives and friends: In Proud Sorrow, We Announce the Death of Our Beloved Son, Seaman First Class Otto Muller, 17, fell for Volk and Führer, 5 December 1942, the Baltic Sea. He gave his life for Greater Germany. The Lord is my Shepherd. Anyone who read the death card would know, as the family did, but would not say for fear of the Gestapo, that the young sailor had died for nothing. In a training accident. In a U-boat. In the Baltic. In the winter. Pray God it was quick. And no doubt it was. There would be no crew-mates to assure the parents that their son had not suffered, as much of a lie as that may have been, because they all drowned as well. Not that the Baltic was deep—never more than one hundred fifty meters. But that was still much too deep to use the escape gear since the outside water pressure would prevent the opening of the hatch.
Max had reported to the Deutsche Werke shipyard in Kiel ten months ago to shepherd U-114 through its final four months of construction and learn everything about this complex machine—a type VII C, the backbone of the German U-boat fleet. Over those four months, he had also moved to recruit his officers and petty officers, gathering the best men he could find, this task made difficult by the demand for men from every corner of the Greater German Reich, especially the Eastern Front, from which no one ever seemed to return. At least he’d been able to get Carls, his Oberbootsmann, from Graf Spee, who’d been serving aboard Scharnhorst since escaping from Buenos Aires on a fishing boat in the fall of ’40. After the U-Boat Acceptance Command had put the boat through trials and officially accepted U-114 from the builders, the crew had come aboard.
For the last six months, they’d been working the boat up, with the final operational tests scheduled for the next week, including three simulated attacks—the final three of the sixty-six they’d been required to perform over the course of their training. When the operational tests finished, they would finally return to Kiel to load supplies and real torpedoes for their first war patrol.
Beside Max on the bridge, the four men of the watch shivered in the wind. Time to see if anyone was awake. “Alarm!” he bellowed.
The bridge watch jumped through the hatch. An aluminum ladder ran through the conning tower into the control room, but four men couldn’t make it down a ladder in fifteen seconds, so they just dropped the three meters and slammed into the deck plates, too bad if anyone got hurt. Most times the control room crew kept a deflated life raft under the hatchway to cushion the fall, but the raft constantly slid out of position. Max secured the main hatch and dropped into the control room, himself missing the raft, as water flooded the bridge above.
On early training runs, they had spent an hour or more checking every wheel and valve before executing the precise movements required to submerge the boat. But in combat you didn’t have an hour. You didn’t have minutes. You had seconds. Your only real protection was beneath the waves, so you had to learn to submerge at lightning speed—though submerging itself was a dangerous maneuver. The moment Max gave the alarm to dive, seawater began gushing into the ballast tanks, and by the time he closed the main hatch and dogged it home, water nearly engulfed the bridge. If you didn’t get the timing just right, tons of water poured into the boat and you sank. Simple. No one knew how often it happened, because no one ever lived to report the mistake.
“All outlet valves open.”
“Venting all diving tanks—main tank ready, bow and stern ready… port and starboard ready.”
“Reporting all air intakes closed.”
“Reporting all outboard exhaust valves closed.”
“All inlet valves open! Flooding all tanks.”
Max watched the controlled panic of an emergency dive. Sailors jackknifed through the hatchways, using their bodies as ballast to increase the forward momentum. “Move, men! Move,” Carls yelled. Alarm bells rang throughout the boat. Red lights blinked. Machinists hung from the levers that opened the ballast tanks to the sea. Water flooded into the tanks with a dull roar, a sound like the deluge at the heart of a rainstorm. And then they were under. Thirty-one seconds. Quiet now, the electric motors purring.
In thirty-one seconds, they could subm
erge to a depth of twenty-five meters, the minimum cushion of water required to absorb the blast of a depth charge dropped by a plane. An Allied aircraft needed close on forty seconds to make a depth charge run, so timing had to be just so. That was the theory. No one knew the exact timing, because the men who got it wrong never came back. But certainly you had to be quick. Aircraft were a U-boat’s deadliest foe—half of all U-boat losses came from low-level attack by Allied aeroplanes. Oftentimes, the aircraft was on top of you before you knew it and you had to stay on the surface and fight it out with your anti-aircraft guns. That had its own dangers. Just last month, Max had heard, U-459’s crew had been surprised by an RAF Coastal Command patrol bomber coming in just five meters off the water. Recovering their wits, the flak gunners brought it down only to have the plane crash into the conning tower, decapitate the Kommandant, kill the other officers, and mangle the flak crews. The boat limped back to port with its navigator chief petty officer in command and a very nervous RAF tail gunner in the forward mess, having been the only survivor of the plane’s crew.
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