Max grabbed the periscope housing to keep from sliding to the deck as the angle of dive increased. The chief engineer and his two men had just settled in at the hydroplane controls when a thin voice shouted from the stern: “Outboard air induction valve won’t close! Boat taking water!”
Shit. “Blow all tanks!” Max ordered. Sailors in the control room spun the wheels on the trim panel and blasted compressed air into the ballast tanks, blowing out the seawater. “Both engines ahead three-quarters. Emergency surface.”
At the diving station the two sailors bore down on the push-button hydroplane controls, raising the bow planes and lowering the stern planes. The boat rose to forty meters, then started back down. Fifty meters, sixty meters, seventy meters—this bitch was dropping like an elevator. The boat balanced for a moment on an even keel, then slid backward, the water in her stern too heavy to overcome.
“Pump stern trim tanks forward. Pump out main freshwater tank. Both full ahead,” Max ordered. The electric motors went to full speed.
“Can’t hold her, Herr Kaleu,” the chief said.
A can of ham broke loose from the storage compartment in the forward torpedo room and rolled down the central corridor like a bowling ball till it struck the combing of the control room hatch. More cans now, followed by a suitcase and a pair of pliers. Then a case of potatoes. Men slipped, fell backward, slid down the inclined deck. Max again heard the terrible roar of water spewing into the boat. They hit bottom with such force the light bulbs shattered. Darkness now, water pouring in. The men grew skittish.
“All engines stop,” he ordered. Pray the propellers hadn’t been damaged. Emergency lighting flickered on. Georg, the control room petty officer, produced a flashlight and illuminated the depth gauge. One hundred and thirty meters. “Silence in the boat,” Max called. His men chattered like a bunch of jackdaws. Most of them were just youngsters—seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old. Only a handful were regular sailors.
Max let go of the periscope and slid down the deck plates to the engine room hatch. Two machinists stood upright, working like demons on the valve, water spraying everywhere, black and freezing. Max felt the frigid Baltic water against his rubber sea boots. He tried to still his anxiety—situations like this would be common on the boat. A depth charge too close, a crack in the hull, a broken valve. Water rushing in. Men screaming before their yells were choked away. “Report!” Max shouted over the noise of the water.
The Dieselobermaschinist had his arm in the valve, straining against something, his face red with the effort as a torrent of frigid seawater sprayed over him. “Something stuck in here, Herr Kaleu,” he gasped. He jerked back and fell onto the sloping deck, yanking the obstruction free. His mate spun the wheel that shut the valve. It seated itself and held. The roar died away, leaving the after compartment quiet. The Dieselobermaschinist held up a wrench. Some bloody fool had left a wrench topside and it had jammed the valve.
Max clenched his fists. Jesus Christ Almighty and all the Saints above. He should expect it, not five of his crew out of their teens. Only the senior petty officers were true navy men. Most of his crewmen knew nothing of war; many had yet to discover women. A few weeks back Carls had said to him, “Until I met this lot of pimple-faced boys, Herr Kaleu, the only virgin I knew was the Virgin Mary.” The young sailors thought this a grand adventure, their chance to get away from home and avoid conscription to the Russian Front. Even some of the petty officers were retreads like Bekker, the radioman, who had been in the U-boat personnel office before he and other office horses had been put to useful work and sent to the fleet. Because the radioman also served as the medic on a U-boat, Max could only pray that he did not fall ill since nothing Bekker did with his medical kit inspired confidence.
But it was Lehmann, the first watch officer, who should have found the wrench. As first watch officer, it was his responsibility to inspect the boat for any condition that could jeopardize their safety before reporting to Max that they were ready to proceed. And he had inspected the boat—which worried Max more—because it meant Lehmann lacked thoroughness. But then he was only twenty, with twelve months of training to master what it had taken Max more than five years to learn. In the old navy, a mistake like Lehmann’s would end a sea officer’s career. All Max could do now was to speak very sharply to him. If he sent him packing, his replacement would likely be worse.
Admiral Dönitz and UBootwaffe Command had suddenly decided years of training could be replaced by enthusiasm for the party, widespread now among the youngsters coming into the fleet. All these young men had been in the Hitler Youth since they were ten years old—they knew nothing else. Will to Final Victory and Belief in the Führer will get us through, or so Lehmann liked to say. Not an effective way to operate a U-boat. Belief in the Führer had nothing to do with knowing which valve to turn, or knowing that you must thoroughly inspect all intake valves to ensure they were not jammed by a stray wrench.
“All hands to the bow,” Max ordered, hoping he sounded as calm as Captain Langsdorff had during battle. He wanted to curse at the top of his voice, but that would accomplish little except to rattle the men. They’d all be finished if he lost his composure now. The crew pulled themselves up the deck plates, now at a fifty-degree angle to the bow. “Faster! Faster!” Max shouted. “Bosun, move these men along, now!”
Carls growled at the young sailors. “Move, move, move! Raus, raus!” Max thanked God he had been able to steal him from Scharnhorst.
Several young sailors sniffled in fear as they went. “Quiet in the boat,” Max ordered again. If they sniffled now, what would they do when British depth charges exploded overhead? Carls drove everyone into the bow, taking two youngsters who had stumbled and dragging them by the collars of their shirts. Max hoped the weight of the men would be enough to force the boat to an even keel. He worked his way back into the control room.
“Chief, damage report.”
“Main lighting circuit out, all fuses blown. All motor relays have tripped. Gyro compass out. Port diesel operable but leaking hydraulic fluid. Fore and aft bilge pumps out. Two motor mounts cracked on starboard diesel and one fastening bolt sheared off. Batteries damaged.”
“Gas escaping?” If seawater mixed with the hydrochloric acid from the batteries, deadly chlorine gas would be produced.
“Not yet,” the chief said. “I don’t think any of the batteries are cracked.” He hit the depth gauge with his fist in frustration. “Bloody hell.” The chief engineer hated the U-boat even more than he despised the navy. He’d been “volunteered” from the merchant marine, plucked from a comfortable billet on a supply ship in Norway and packed off to the UBootwaffe. He didn’t care for Max either, since Max, as a sea officer, stood a long way up the ladder from a mere engineer.
The last man climbed into the bow compartment. Still the U-boat hung, angled up, the tons of water in her stern keeping her rooted to the bottom. The chief unfolded a diagram of the boat’s pump circuits and spread it on the small chart table. He and Max examined the drawings in the dim glow of the emergency lanterns. “Bloody hell,” the chief muttered again. “Bloody hell.” He traced a circuit with the stub of a pencil and looked at Max. “Water to the control room bilge, pump it into the ballast tanks, then blow.” Max nodded. There was no other way to get rid of the deadly water that held them down.
“Carls!”
“Herr Kaleu?”
“Bucket chain, now. As much water as possible from the stern compartment to the control room bilge. First watch on duty. Second watch to their bunks.” Putting the men to bed would lessen their need for oxygen.
Men tumbled back to the stern, seized pots and pans from the cook, buckets from Carls. The second officer—nicknamed Ferret because he looked like one—joined the line. “C’mon, men,” he said, “let’s show them what the League of German Girls can do. Put your backs into it, lads, it’s a long swim home.”
For hours they cursed and passed the water, slopping it all over the boat and
themselves. Not a man among them kept dry. The Baltic cold penetrated the hull; the temperature dropped and the cold penetrated their bones. There was no heat on a U-boat, save for a handful of portable heaters that had little effect. Men shivered in the bunks, waiting their turn. Condensation formed on the interior of the hull and ran in slimy rivulets to the deck.
Max knew it might not work. And at this depth they wouldn’t be able to open the hatch and use the escape gear. Truth be told, their escape training had been only for psychological solace. Almost no one ever escaped from a submerged U-boat. Only under tightly controlled circumstances could it even be done and certainly never below twenty-five meters. They might be entombed here, with all the other German sailors who had died in these waters. He wanted a cigarette.
Instead he went and lay on his green leather bunk, leaving the curtain open so men looking up from their work could see him. They might think the situation under control if the captain stepped away for a nap. Not that Max slept, though he kept his eyes closed, shivering in fear, hoping the crew wouldn’t notice in the dim light. Imperturbability: a U-boat commander must have it, or else pretend to have it. Forty-six men jammed together in a steel tube no longer than two railway carriages and no wider than a tram—you couldn’t hide from them. They could always watch you and watch you they did. If you panicked, they would go crazy. Max found as time went along, he acted more and more like Captain Langsdorff, or even Captain Hauer. He became more formal and distant, a stickler for rules and etiquette. Not a month ago, he had given a sailor three days in the guardhouse for not saluting him. The crew feared him. He wore his blue naval tunic with the gold stripes at every meal, even if it did get filthy, and he forbade the men from wearing the ridiculous checked shirts they’d recently been issued, surplus gear seized from the French navy. His crew loved the garments, but Max wasn’t about to let them go to war in checked French shirts. Harsh discipline, spit and polish, or a semblance of it, was the only way. No wonder so many officers cracked.
The watch changed. Sailors of the first watch fell into the vacated bunks as the second watch set to work with the buckets. Max turned on his bunk, faced the black hull, touched it, felt the cold. Twenty millimeters of steel, no thicker than a boot heel, was all that separated them from perdition. And everywhere dampness; permeating everything in the boat with a sodden odor that mingled with other smells—sweat, unwashed men, urine, oil, mold, shit—and produced a heavy fog of stink. That special U-boat odor was recognizable to all who had served in the UBootwaffe. Max didn’t want to die with that foul smell on his skin. He didn’t want to die on a training mission after surviving the loss of two ships at war. He didn’t want to die at all. Were they doing everything they could? Fire the torpedoes to lessen their weight? No, they were too deep for that. Had he failed to think of something? Pump the oil tanks out? A useful trick under heavy depth charge attack, since a heavy oil slick would cause the Brits to think the U-boat had imploded. But it wouldn’t help them now. Neither of his outboard oil tanks was even one-eighth full. Lehmann had gotten the second watch to singing Hitler Youth marching songs—one of his favorite maneuvers. “A regular bloody choirmaster, our first watch officer,” Carls had said of him. The posturing of the young crew annoyed the chief petty officers. “Lot of bloody good that sort of thing will do when the Tommies are dropping depth charges on your head,” they told the sailors. The youngsters sang,
We will march on
Until everything lies in ruins,
Because today we own Germany
And tomorrow the whole world.
Max envied Lehmann his easy way with the crewmen. It came from the camaraderie of the Hitler Youth; Lehmann had been a district leader. Max never joined the Hitler Youth. He took up his appointment in the navy just months after the Führer came to power. He had been a member of the Catholic Youth League as a boy, but they spent most of their time hiking, singing hymns, and secretly discussing how to screw, whatever exactly that was.
Even on Graf Spee, Max’s relations with the crew had always been professional and correct, less relaxed than some of the other officers. “Officers must never make friends with their men,” his father had told him before he entered the Marineschule Mürwik. “They won’t respect you for it, Maximilian.” Keeping his distance wasn’t hard for Max. He did so by nature. But Lehmann was the opposite; he called the men by their forenames, listened to their troubles, joked with them—the new National Socialist officer. The Imperial Navy had been abolished in 1918, after the Kaiser abdicated, but its traditions lived on and were imparted with the greatest vigor to the Seekadetten at the Marineschule Mürwik. Lehmann knew nothing of those traditions. None of the junior officers did. Max despised the English as much as anyone, but the war was a contest between professionals. At least it was supposed to be. To men like Lehmann, the war was a crusade. But why march on until everything lay in ruins? Wasn’t that what they were trying to prevent?
Max didn’t move from his bunk until the first watch went back on duty. By then the level of black water in the stern compartment had diminished. He wanted more of it hauled to the control room bilge, but he could see there wasn’t enough oxygen remaining for the men to continue this kind of exertion. They were breathing like blown horses, though the boat could supposedly remain submerged for twenty-four hours or even longer. Obviously the genius on the Naval War Staff who had come up with that figure had never been aboard a U-boat, and never considered how much oxygen men consumed when they were working hard.
“Halt,” he ordered.
The men stopped, too exhausted to even groan.
“Chief?”
The chief gave Max a sour look, his way of saying, “You’re the sea officer with the star on your tunic, Herr KapitänLeutnant Brekendorf, so you bloody well decide.”
“All hands to the bow, then,” Max said. He had to get the boat on an even keel. The men hauled themselves up to the bow compartment and lay there like a pack of whipped dogs. Max nodded at the chief.
A wheel turned, then two. Compressed air hissed like a serpent into the ballast tanks and blew out the water that had been pumped into the tanks from the control room bilge. Then the hissing died away. The boat did not move.
Max had been clenching his fists so hard that his fingernails had drawn blood where they dug in. “All hands to the stern! Quickly, men, quickly!” The sailors tumbled past him, faces pale.
“To the bow, men, to the bow! Faster! Faster now!” They struggled back, Carls pushing them on.
It had to be the mud holding them fast to the bottom. It was the only explanation.
“E-motors both full ahead,” Max ordered. In the stern, the Elektriker Obermaschinist pushed his throttles forward. “To the stern men, to the stern. Move, dammit! Move!”
The charging of the sailors back and forth set the boat to rocking. Gently, like a feather floating to the ground, the bow came to rest on the sea floor, putting the boat on an even keel and breaking the suction of the mud. They began to rise. “One hundred twenty meters,” the chief called out. “One hundred meters, seventy meters, fifty meters, thirty meters, ten meters. Tower clear and… hatch clear.”
Max climbed the ladder from the control room to the conning tower and popped the hatch. Baltic air flowed into the boat, so rich and cold that he almost passed out from the rush of oxygen to his brain.
After they limped back to port, the flotilla commander greeted Max. “A good day?”
“Very instructive, sir,” Max said. “Very instructive, indeed.”
“Excellent, Brekendorf. Carry on then.”
_________
Two weeks later, on a frigid Baltic morning, Carls mustered the crew on the foredeck to look them over. There would be a ceremony that afternoon for U-114 and six other boats that had just completed their training. For the final operational tests, Flotilla Command had assembled ten freighters and four escort vessels that they formed into a pretend Allied convoy. The boats then took turns attacking the convoy with dummy torp
edoes. The crew of U-114 performed well—Max scored two hits with his dummy torpedoes in their last practice attack. Now an admiral from the Naval War Staff in Berlin was coming to inspect the crew and Carls wanted to make sure they were dressed strictly according to regulations. “You never know what these youngsters will put on as uniforms, Herr Kaleu,” he had told Max. The men stood shivering in their navy blue pea jackets, breath condensing in the frigid air. Carls examined each man, each button, each badge, and adjusted half a dozen caps.
“Achtung!” he ordered, the two lines of sailors coming instantly to attention.
Max and the other officers stood on the bridge, watching the assembly as Carls began to pace.
“Now, if the admiral stops and asks you where you are from, you will just say, Shithole, Bavaria, or whatever no-good rat trap you crawled out of, and you will not go into the details of who is banging your sister because the admiral is a busy man and does not give a shit.”
Max looked down to hide his grin. This was the kind of talk he was used to hearing from sailors, not all this bilge about the International Jewish Conspiracy that Lehmann bored him with.
Carls boomed out the answers to other possible questions: “The food is good, you love the navy, and you have complete faith and trust in the captain. Clear?”
“And the Führer,” Lehmann called down from the bridge. “Faith and confidence in the Führer and Final Victory, Carls.”
Carls looked up. “Of course, Herr Leutnant.” He turned back to the sailors. “And you have faith and confidence in the Führer and Final Victory. Satisfactory, Herr Leutnant?”
“Very good,” Lehmann said. “You’re doing fine.”
“I’m very glad to hear you think so, Herr Leutnant. It means a great deal to me.”
Max turned away to keep from bursting out in laughter. Carls had been in the navy for twenty-nine years, Lehmann for less than two.
After the ceremony, the men went ashore to pack their belongings, which would be sent overland to their new home port in Lorient, on the Bay of Biscay. Because of the limited space in the boat, each sailor could bring aboard only a change of clothes and a few personal items—a small toilet kit and some photographs, perhaps a book, or a packet of envelopes and writing paper. Some brought a favorite phonograph record. Men always tried to smuggle extra items on board, but Carls and the other chief petty officers searched them thoroughly at the dock and confiscated everything in excess of the bare allowance. At 1600 hours, crew at stations, diesels rumbling, Max turned to the young signalman of the watch. “Signal to Kommandant of icebreaker: U-114 ready to proceed.”
An Honorable German Page 18
