The new camp contained only naval personnel and, as soon as he arrived, Opitz felt the welcome atmosphere of naval orderliness for the first time since he had abandoned the Gneisenau.
Morale was good at first. Every prisoner there believed that the German Army would be in Paris by Christmas and it was universally accepted that they would be with their families by Easter 1915 at the worst.
This was not to be the case, and the men settled into a dull regime of physical fitness, lectures, and games. Opitz found himself working in the tiny camp library, responsible for the few books that were brought in by the Red Cross, and sent from German cultural associations in neutral America.
Captain Kahn had been placed in charge of the educational programme for the camp. "Leutnant Opitz, I understand that you were part of the Antarctic Expedition shortly before the war? I think this would make an excellent topic for a lecture."
Opitz rarely spoke about this to other prisoners, but it was not a secret.
"Yes, sir, I was, but I really don't think I could make my experiences into a lecture that would be of any interest."
"Of course it will. Next Thursday at 14.00, yes?"
"Of course, sir."
With the aid of a large blackboard, Opitz told the story of the expedition as well as he could and the men listened with real interest. At the end, Captain Kahn bounded on to the makeshift stage and led the applause. "Excellent, excellent. Now any questions?"
Several hands shot up and Opitz pointed towards the closest man.
"Herr Leutnant, of all the things you saw on this trip, what is your strongest memory?"
For a moment he stared across the gloomy room at the assembled audience. Then his mind moved to the tiny cabin, hurriedly pulled together by the survivors of the Santa Simone. He thought of those frozen, lonely men who were lost to their friends and family, miles from home. He remembered the feeling of lifting the dead arm of the ship's captain to retrieve the navigation log which still lay with his other possessions in Germany.
The silence stretched out uncomfortably and some of the audience began to fidget in embarrassment.
"My comrades," said Opitz quietly. "I remember my comrades."
Chapter Twenty Two
Sparke could not get back from the Falklands until the following morning, so he filled the time working with Major Christie's team roughing out the various broad scenarios where civil and military organisations, and the systems they used, would have to work together.
McCafferty seemed to know a surprising amount about virtually everything he asked and he wondered to what extent she was more than an officer in the Royal Marines.
His flight back through the UK was no more pleasant than the trip down and he was thoroughly relieved when he was dropped by an Air Force driver at Terminal 5 in Heathrow Airport, and he could be absorbed again into the more bearable horror of civilian aviation for his flight home to Munich.
It was only forty-five minutes from Munich airport to his office and as he walked in, he was amazed by how far the place had developed in the few weeks since he and Lynn had sat at the one desk they had at the time. Now almost fifty people filled the open-planned space, large plants broke up the space, creating smaller spaces, and people sat at informal meeting areas with couches and what looked like picnic tables. He walked over to Lynn's area.
"Do you have a long list of horrible problems for me?" he asked.
"I can probably find you some if you are looking for something to do."
Sparke smiled and shook his head. "I can't believe how much you have done here. Everyone happy?"
Lynn thought for a moment, and then nodded. "I would say as happy as a group of people ever get."
"Good enough for me. Markus will be leading the team to the Falkands. Everything all right there?"
"You know Markus, cool as a cucumber," said Lynn. "He has been spending a lot of time briefing the others who are going."
Markus Wallem was the most experienced person in the new firm, after Sparke. He would actually be running the two main parts of the project. Although still in his early thirties, it would be he who would write the basis for the entire crisis management and safety regime in the South Atlantic. Sparke stopped at Markus's desk and found him deep in conversation with two of his team members. They spoke briefly - Sparke never needed to say very much to Markus as they nearly always thought along very similar lines.
Happy that the main part of the project for the British Government was well underway, Sparke turned his attention back to Opitz and the Santa Simone. Before that, he needed a long bath, some sleep, and fresh clothes.
His apartment was functional and comfortable, a place to live, but not somewhere that particularly gave him the comfort of being at home. He made a meal of pasta and a jar of pesto sauce and was asleep by 10 pm.
By 6.30 next morning he was wide awake and making coffee, enjoying the silence of his kitchen. For Sparke, choosing what to wear was not a major chore. He owned two types of shirt: white and blue button collar oxfords with a pocket on the breast, and short-sleeved polo shirts, several of which had the company logo on them.
After coffee, he went down to the parking garage in the basement of his building, climbed into his Discovery and headed south, out of Munich towards Feldkirchen. He had the rare pleasure of going in the opposite direction of the commuter traffic and he did not even try to feel guilty about the joy he experienced as he sped south at 140 km per hour looking over at traffic moving at less than a tenth of that. It was some sort of karmic justice for all the travel problems and delays he suffered in his job.
Shortly after 8.00 he parked his car in what seemed to be the only car park in the village. He opened his phone and clicked on the address he had for where Opitz had been born, where he sent post to as a prisoner of the British, and where he was listed as living when he died.
He pushed the 'Find" icon next to the address and within a few seconds, his phone gave him directions. It was a short walk along one of the three major roads that led off the village square. The houses and shops quickly gave way to some fields, then shortly after that, a discount supermarket, then after another hundred metres his phone screen told him that he had arrived at his destination.
Sparke looked up and saw a typical Bavarian farm building: good walls, clean windows, bright paintwork. But this one was a dead house. It was behind a traffic control barrier and was surrounded on all sides by a sea of tarmac. The farmhouse had become the gatehouse to a small, very modern factory building.
Turning around, Sparke walked back into the village. He dug the phone out of his pocket and searched for Feldkirchen Library. He was prompted by the question on his screen, "Do you mean Feldkirchen Community Resource Centre?" Figuring that the search engine had some logic behind it he clicked 'Yes' and a few seconds later an address popped up on the screen. He hit the Find button when the address appeared and trudged along the road, waiting to be given the exact location. He felt increasingly despondent. He had hoped to find the Opitz family still in possession of the house, or at least someone living there who might offer some ideas on Herr Opitz.
The Feldkirchen Community Resource Centre did little to raise his spirits. The main foyer was brightly lit by sunlight through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The walls of the foyer were decorated with the typical clichéd images taken, probably at random, from early black and white photographs of rural life. People staring blankly at the camera in horribly artificial poses.
Sparke stared glumly at the photographs, then looked above the three doors leading from the foyer. Seeing the German word for 'Library' above one, he pushed against the door and walked in to a small, but very tidy village library. Two young men were standing behind a counter and both looked up as Sparke walked in.
After the traditional few stuttering phrases in German from Sparke, the two young men realised that Sparke was a native English speaker and both switched over to English.
Sparke smiled in relief at the chance to speak English. H
e had learned, though, that no matter how well people seemed to talk a second language, speaking in short sentences produced the best results. "I am doing a research project. Part of this may involve someone from this village who died long ago. You probably have no record of him. He was the librarian here in 1921, but not for long. Opitz, he was a sailor..."
He was amazed to be interrupted by the younger of the two men. "Oh, you mean Martin Opitz?"
"You have heard of Opitz?"
Both men smiled. "Yes, but you walked right past him."
Sparke looked at the men. "Sorry?"
The younger of the two men walked around the counter and back out into the foyer. He pointed to one of the large, blown up reproductions of black and white photographs which lined the walls. "This is Herr Opitz."
The grainy photo showed a blank-faced young man in an ill-fitting tweed suit. He was wearing a flat cap and, Sparke now noticed, a belt cinched uncomfortably across his waist and shoulder with a pistol holster on his hip, and he was holding a rifle. Unusually, he was not looking the camera, but was gazing at a point behind and above the photographer. The caption next to the photo said, 'Oberst Opitz, Krieger-Bibliothekar'. Sparke's already poor German seemed suddenly much worse. He thought that would translate as, "Colonel Opitz, the warrior librarian."
"And this is Herr Opitz also," said the young man. It was the same face, but rather than a tweed suit and lace up boots, Opitz was standing on skis, wearing extreme outdoor clothing. He had goggles on his forehead and ice had formed around the hood of his jacket. Sparke read the caption for the photograph which said, "Lt Opitz, Navigator of the Second German Imperial Antarctic Expedition, 1913".
Sparke's head spun. He turned towards the librarians. "Antarctic?"
Chapter Twenty Three
Peace came to the German prisoners with a far greater shock than the declaration of war had four years earlier. They had read with mounting disbelief through the months of 1918 as British-led forces had smashed their way through German defensive lines that had withstood every Allied attack for over three years. The British newspapers that they were given occasionally by guards were massively biased towards the Allied point of view, but the hard facts they reported invariably turned out to be accurate.
The gloom felt by Opitz deepened further when he received a rare letter from home. It was from the village librarian, a lifelong friend. Opitz's father had died some weeks before.
The small camp gradually became overcrowded as the crews of captured and destroyed German ships and U-Boats swelled the ranks of the prisoners. In the spring of 1918, a group of German sailors, recently captured off the Dutch coast in a night action, was brought to the camp. As they were marched past the Officers' compound, Opitz and his colleagues were shocked to hear them hurling insults at them. Some stones were thrown until their British guards intervened.
On a freezing morning in November 1918, the entire complement of prisoners was called to parade in the centre of the camp. It was clear that there was something unusual happening by the way the guards were behaving. There was a lightness amongst the normally morose soldiers. Several times the Germans heard loud laughter coming from them and voices raised in unusual high spirits.
Once assembled and the roll taken, the British Camp Commandant arrived in his open-topped staff car and stood in the back to address the German prisoners.
"Germany has surrendered," he said in a loud, clear voice without emotion. "German Imperial Forces have signed a ceasefire agreement. All hostilities have ceased. The Kaiser has abdicated."
A ragged cheer went up from the tiny number of British guards. A wave of shock rippled through the ranks of prisoners.
The Commandant looked briefly at a piece of paper in his hand. "All German naval units have been ordered to sail to the nearest Allied base. The German High Seas Fleet has been ordered to sail to Royal Navy bases in Scotland, and surrender."
At the idea of the High Seas Fleet sailing into an enemy port to surrender there was an audible noise from the prisoners' ranks.
The Commandant placed his hands on his hips and addressed the men again, this time his voice less formal. "You should be aware that prisoner repatriation has been made a priority. German vessels are currently being prepared to take you home."
The Commandant had expected a cheer, but there was only a stunned silence as the prisoners tried to absorb the news. The long silence was eventually broken when a harsh, anonymous voice from amongst the guards shouted out, "So you can piss off like your bloody Kaiser, Fritz!" Laughter rippled through the guards, the Commandant scowled, the parade was dismissed.
In contrast to the orderly boredom of the past four years, the journey back to Germany was a series of horrible shocks to Opitz. As one of the longest serving prisoners he was among the first to be repatriated. His group was marched to the railway station, where they were shunted, slowly, to Folkestone. Every other train on the line had priority over German prisoners so a journey of a few hours took more than a full day to complete.
At the dockside they were hustled and prodded like cattle on board the ship. Everyone they saw seemed to be in a hurry, a hurry to get their own troops home, to get back to their own normal lives. The Germans were virtually invisible.
The conditions on the ship, however, were the first true shock. It was an old, filthy coastal cargo ship which had barely left harbour for over a year. The German crew of the ship had a lone British officer on board with a gun on his hip, to oversee them, but he ignored them totally.
No food was available during the crossing, no bedding, and the inadequate toilet facilities were overwhelmed before the ship cast off. The German crew of the ship seemed as indifferent to the prisoners as the British officer was.
It was only when they arrived in Bremen that they began to see what had happened to their homeland since they last saw it.
The first thing Opitz noticed was how healthy and well fed he and the other prisoners looked compared to the people they encountered at the dockside. People had a drawn, almost skeletal, look to them. The Royal Navy blockade had been no joke; the German population had been effectively starved.
There was no reception party and they had no idea who to report to, so the former prisoners just milled around the dock. Some simply walked away. Eventually a harbour officer appeared and asked them who they were. After another hour of confusion they were directed to the naval barracks. No sentry stood at the entrance, so they walked in to the building and began wandering around, looking for someone to report to.
After trying a dozen doors, Opitz found himself face-to-face with a bedraggled looking captain of the Marines. "Who are you?" he asked Opitz sharply.
Opitz noticed that the captain carried a pistol on his belt and that several rifles leaned against the wall. "I am...I was a prisoner of war in England. We just arrived a few hours ago, sir. Who do we report to?"
The officer starred at Opitz for a long time. "That is probably the best question you could ask," he said. "Pretty much everything has fallen apart. You can do what you like."
"What has happened here, sir?" asked Opitz.
"You really have no idea?" asked the captain, showing some glimmer of compassion for the first time.
"Only what we read in British newspapers. But I did not expect," he gestured helplessly, "this."
"Take a seat," said the officer. "There is no coffee, but you are welcome to share my lunch, for what it is worth."
Opitz sat and listened to the captain as he ate for the first time in over a day. He did his best to hide the foul taste of the dusty bread in his mouth.
"The Grand Fleet was supposed to head out to the North Sea for a glorious self-destruction at the hands of the Royal Navy near the end, but the crews mutinied. Men literally jumped off the ships and ran away. Some officers were killed when they tried to stop them.
"There is revolution, Bolsheviks. Soviet governments have been set up in many areas. You are a southerner from your accent, yes?"
Opit
z nodded. "Bavaria, near Munich."
The captain nodded. "That is a red town now. Armed Bolsheviks all over the place, people being shot against walls, everything seized, the whole nightmare."
"What is the government doing? Why has the Kaiser abdicated?"
"That question is so sad, it is almost funny," said the captain. "There is no government as far as I can say and the Kaiser was happy to scurry off and leave us in the shit." He paused for a moment. "Look, I care nothing for politics. I couldn't give a damn who is in charge, so long it is not the Bolsheviks.
"There is a new Marine Brigade being formed, the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt. Strictly volunteers. I can't see anything else to be done, so I am leaving to join them, see if they can get some order back into the place. You are welcome to come. Or you are welcome to stay here."
Opitz looked out of the window at unmanned sentry posts and a dead parade ground. Beyond the barrack wall he could see a lone woman and two children pushing a cart full of firewood across the cobbles. He thought of Munich as a new Petrograd and his empty home in Feldkirchen. He remembered, too, his first day as a sixteen-year-old cadet in the Navy and the only true oath he had ever sworn, to obey the Kaiser and uphold the peace and law of the land. The Kaiser was gone, but the country still needed law, and the stack of rifles in the captain's office was the only law that seemed to be on offer.
"Yes," he said. "I will come with you."
"Then you had better pick up one of those," said the captain, nodding towards the rifles against the wall. "This is not a picnic. You will need a strong stomach and a firm aim."
The Kaiser’s Navigator (Peter Sparke Book 2) Page 10
