Wreckers Must Breathe

by Hammond Innes

  I looked at my watch. It was nine-thirty. Logan, his feet sticking out over the bottom of the bed, was sound asleep. Above the general roar I could just hear the snoring intake of his breath. I lay half awake for some time in that uncomfortable state of reluctance to get up that is induced by an insufficiency of bedclothes. I felt chilled to the bone, yet I had not the strength of will to climb out from beneath my inadequate covering.

  At ten o’clock sharp a guard of three men appeared—a petty officer and two ratings. They were equipped with side arms and revolvers. We were marched to the washrooms. But though we were allowed to wash, we were not given any razors, and even after a thorough clean-up I could hardly recognize my own features in the glass. My rather long face was rounded by the beginnings of quite a healthy-looking beard. My eyes were sunken and red-rimmed. In fact, I looked a proper ruffian. I said so to Logan. ‘That’s nothing,’ he replied with a bitter laugh. ‘You wait till these bastards have been at you for a week. If the naval authorities here had control of the prisoners it wouldn’t be so bad. But you’re in the hands of the Gestapo. We’re going to have a helluva time.’

  He was right, of course—I knew that. But I felt he might have been a little more optimistic. As soon as we had completed our toilet, we were marched off to the guard-room, where we were introduced to another Gestapo agent who was presumably on the day turn. He was a little man with a large head and a sharp face. I liked him no better than the first. He picked up a green-coloured form from his desk, glanced through it and then led us down a narrow gallery that led off the guard-room and into the office of the commandant of the base. This was Commodore Thepe. He was a short thick-set man with greying hair and a fine head. He impressed me quite favourably and I recalled Big Logan’s words in the washroom.

  The Gestapo man conferred with the commodore for a time in low tones while we stood between our guards at the door. At length the commodore ordered us to approach his desk. ‘You know the Cornish coast—is that so?’ he asked Logan. He had a quiet precise way of speaking, but his English was not as good as that of the U-boat commander.

  Logan nodded, but said nothing.

  ‘We are in possession of charts detailing all coastal information,’ he went on. ‘We have not, on the contrary, the fullest information about the rock formation and currents close in to the shore. This we require and you can give it to us, yes?’

  Logan shook his head slowly. He had a puzzled look, rather like a dog that has been refused a bone. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t know? Why?’ The commodore glanced at the form before him and then at Logan. ‘You are a fisherman, yes?’

  Logan was still looking puzzled. ‘Yes,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I believe so—I don’t know.’ I glanced at him, wondering what had come over him. I thought at first he was playing some deep game. But he had his hand to his head and he was rubbing his eyes as though he had just been woken from a deep sleep.

  The commodore looked at him closely. ‘You are a prisoner. You understand that?’

  Logan nodded. ‘Yes, your honour.’

  ‘As a prisoner you must answer questions.’ The commodore spoke kindly as though to a child.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then come over here.’ The commodore led him over to a glass-topped cabinet in the corner. Beneath the glass was a chart. He slid this out and replaced it with one of the West Cornish coast from the files which filled the cabinet. ‘Here is Cadgwith,’ said the commodore, indicating a point on the map with his finger. ‘Now, are all the submerged rocks charted?’

  Logan did not answer, but just stood staring at the chart in a dazed kind of way.

  ‘Are they or are they not?’ demanded the commodore, getting impatient.

  ‘They may be,’ murmured Logan, lapsing into the slurred syllables of the Cornish dialect.

  ‘Answer the Commodore’s question,’ ordered the Gestapo man, coming up behind Logan. He had a sharp penetrating voice and spoke English fluently.

  Logan looked round furtively, like a trapped beast. ‘I can’t,’ he said. And for a moment I thought he was going to burst into tears, his face was so puckered.

  ‘Explain yourself,’ snapped the Gestapo man.

  ‘I—I just can’t. That’s all. I don’t remember.’ And Logan suddenly turned and went blindly towards the door like a child in a panic. His breath was coming in great sobs as he passed me and I could see the tears running down into his beard. To see a grown man crying is always rather pitiful. But to see Logan crying was so unexpected that it shocked me profoundly.

  The guards turned him back and for a moment he staggered round in a circle. Then he stood still, his face buried in his hands. His sobs gradually lessened.

  I saw that both the commodore and the Gestapo agent were puzzled. Well they might be. I was puzzled enough myself. They talked together for a moment in low tones, and then the commodore turned to Logan and said, ‘Come here.’

  Logan approached the desk at which the commodore had resumed his seat. When he had reached it the commodore said not unkindly, ‘I fear you have had an uncomfortable time on the submarine. I am sorry. But this information I require urgently. Either you take hold of yourself or else we shall be forced to make you talk. Is that chart correct for your area?’

  Logan’s great fist descended with a crash on the desk. ‘Don’t keep asking me questions,’ he roared, and his voice was almost unrecognizable it was so high-pitched and hysterical. ‘Can’t you see I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. My mind is blank. It’s horrible.’

  I don’t think I have ever seen two men more surprised than those Germans. Until that moment I think they had regarded Logan as either a half-wit or a prisoner bent on playing them up.

  Logan looked at them with what can only be described as compassion. There was something extraordinarily animal-like about him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I have frightened you. I didn’t mean to. It was just—just that I didn’t remember anything. I was afraid.’ His hands fluttering uncertainly were surprisingly expressive.

  The commodore glanced at me then. ‘What is the matter with your friend?’ he asked.

  I had to admit that I did not know. ‘He seemed all right in the submarine,’ I said. ‘But last night he became rather morose.’ Then suddenly I remembered. ‘When we were captured,’ I said, ‘he was clubbed with the butt of a revolver. That may be the trouble. Later, in the submarine, he got a bit excited.’

  The commodore pondered this information for a moment.Then he ordered one of the guard to go and fetch the U-boat commander and the doctor.

  The doctor was the first to arrive. He examined Logan’s head and reported that, though the scalp was cut and rather swollen, there were no signs of any fracture. Whether or not Logan was suffering from concussion he would not say. He thought it unlikely, but pointed out that it was impossible to be sure.

  The U-boat commander, when he arrived, testified to the fact that Logan had had a severe blow from the butt end of a revolver and to the fact that, though he had seemed to have all his wits about him when in the submarine, he had at the same time behaved as though he were a little unbalanced. He explained how Logan had roared with laughter when he had been asked for information that would have saved the U-boat from disaster, but he made no mention of that part of the episode in which he had been knocked down.

  In the end, we were returned to our cell. As we went out I heard the commodore giving instructions to the doctor to keep an eye on Logan. As soon as we were alone I said, ‘Look here, Logan, are you playing them up or are you really ill?’

  He looked at me apathetically.

  ‘Is this some deep game you’re playing?’ I persisted.

  ‘Would you call it a game if your mind were a complete blank and you were fighting all the time to remember things?’ he asked.

  Even then I could not believe that he had really lost his memory. ‘You seemed all right this morning,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, as he lay do
wn on his bed. ‘It wasn’t until they began questioning me that I realized what had happened.’

  But it was not until I had seen him refuse his lunch, his tea and his supper that I really began to regard the matter as serious. Throughout the day he lay on his bed, mostly with his head buried in his arms. Sometimes he groaned as though the effort of trying to remember something were too great. Once or twice he suddenly started to beat the pillow in a frenzy of frustration.

  When he refused his supper I asked the guard to leave it with me. Bit by bit I coaxed him to eat it. It was like getting a sick child to eat. When the guard came in for the tray I asked if he could fetch the doctor. He understood the word ‘doctor.’ By that time I was really worried.

  About half an hour later the doctor arrived. Logan was lying face downwards on the bed. But he was not asleep. I explained that I was worried because he had refused his food and seemed so abjectly unhappy. Fortunately the doctor understood English, though he could not speak it very well, so that I was still able to keep up my pretence of not being able to speak German. When I had explained, he told me not to worry. He pointed out that it was quite natural for a man who had lost his memory to be unhappy. ‘Would you not veel onhappy?’ He spoke very broken English and often had to pause for a word. ‘He ees among strangers—a preesoner. He fears what will ’appen to ’im. And ’e cannot remember what ’e was before. He can remember nothing. Eet ees very sad. You most ’elp ’im. Tell ’im about ’is home, ’is village—perhaps ’e remember later, yes?’

  He gave me two sleeping tablets to give Logan in some cocoa he would have sent down. I thanked him. He was a kindly man. As he left he pulled a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his mess jacket. ‘These may ’elp,’ he said. The packet was nearly full.

  Later two steaming cups of very excellent-smelling cocoa arrived. As the man who had brought it placed it on the floor between our beds the guard outside sprang to attention. A tall slim rather elegant man appeared at the entrance to our cell. He was quite obviously a member of the Prussian officer class, the type that would have worn a monocle in the days of the Kaiser. ‘What’s this?’ he barked in German, indicating the cups of cocoa.

  The man who had brought them explained that the doctor had ordered them to be sent down to the prisoners. He dismissed the man and turned his attention to us. ‘Stand up!’ He spoke a thick guttural English. I got to my feet. But Logan remained lying full length on the bed. ‘Stand up, do you hear!’ he thundered. Then, as Logan made no move, he drew the bayonet of the guard standing beside him and stepping deliberately on to the tray containing the cups of cocoa, dug the point of the bayonet sharply into Logan’s buttocks. I saw the pleasure that act gave him mirrored in his little grey eyes.

  Logan jumped to his feet with a cry. I feared for a moment that he would strike the man, and I could see by the look on the other man’s face that he was hoping he would. Then as Logan stood sullenly in front of him, he said, ‘So you have lost your memory?’ There was no attempt to veil the sneer.

  Logan said nothing. He looked very unhappy.

  ‘Well, we’ll soon get it back for you,’ the other continued. ‘Tomorrow you’ll go to work—both of you. We’ll soon sweat this insolence out of you.’

  I said, ‘The man is ill.’

  He swung round on me. ‘Speak when you’re spoken to.’ He turned to the man who had accompanied him. It was the little Gestapo agent who had taken us in to see the commodore that morning. ‘Put them to work on the hull of U 39 tomorrow,’ he said in German. As he moved to go, he turned to me and said, ‘I should advise you to see that your friend finds his memory.’

  I said nothing, but my eyes fell to the two cups of cocoa now lying on their sides, the cocoa still steaming as it mingled with the water on the floor. I knew it was no use asking for more. The grille clanged to.

  ‘Who was he?’ asked Logan dully.

  ‘Senior agent for the Gestapo at the base, I should imagine,’ I said.

  ‘What is the Gestapo?’ he asked.

  I was puzzled. ‘You understood what the Gestapo was earlier today,’ I said. But there is no accounting for the effect of loss of memory upon a man’s brain. ‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘The doctor has given me two sleeping tablets for you. They’ll help you to remember things. Don’t worry about the Gestapo.’ I got him to lie down again and then I collected a sufficiency of water in the least broken of the two cups from a little trickle that ran down the wall at the head of my bed. I crushed the tablets into this and gave it to him. He drank it without question like a child. ‘The doctor gave us something else, too,’ I said, and showed him the packet of cigarettes. I gave him one and he smiled happily. Then I found that we had no matches. Our clothes had been taken from us together with all the possessions in their pockets, and we had been issued with a pair of coarse dungarees each.

  I went to the grille and attracted the attention of the guard. I indicated by signs that I wanted a match. There were two men on guard and they both shook their heads. ‘Verbotten,’ said one. I nodded, but pointed to my companion. ‘He is ill,’ I said. ‘It would help him.’ They did not speak English, but they seemed to understand, for after glancing hurriedly up and down the gallery one of them passed me a box of Swedish matches with the drawing of a sailing ship on it through the bars.

  I lit our cigarettes. As I passed the matches back to the guard I asked who the officer was. He understood the word ‘officer.’ ‘Herr Fulke?’ he asked. ‘Er ist in der Geheimen Staatspolizei.’ Having said this he turned away. He did not wish to talk. I went back and got into bed. I smoked my cigarette slowly and with great relish and watched a tiny fresh-water shrimp slip slowly down the wall in a little rivulet of water. The guard was changed at nine. By that time Logan was fast asleep. I tucked the bedclothes round him and went back to my own bed, drawing the blankets right over my head in order to keep out the light. It was a long time before I could get to sleep. I was not accustomed to sleeping in my clothes and I found the rough blankets very irritating to the skin of my neck. They had a peculiar stuffy smell similar to British army blankets and took me back to my school-days and camp.

  And as I lay there listening to the sounds of footsteps and voices from the galleries above, made hollow by the echo and barely distinguishable above the incessant hum of the dynamos, I felt more miserable than I think I had ever felt before. I had that lost feeling that one has as a new boy in a big school. Had Logan been all right, I think I should have been able to keep my spirits up. But in his present state he only contributed to my dejection. It was not only a question of loss of memory. It seemed to me that his brain had been rendered defective. He had become so childlike that I felt responsible for him, and I was fearful of what the Gestapo might do to him if they were not quickly convinced that he was really ill. I was under no delusion as to the sympathy he might expect from these men. I had spoken to too many who had suffered agonies in German concentration camps to be in any doubt as to what we might expect. The only consolation was that neither of us looked in the least like Jews.

  The next day we were woken at six and set to work on the hull of U 39, which stood up, stained and dirty, like a stranded fish in the empty dock. I gathered from the conversation of the men working with us that she had docked the night before our own boat after a cruise on the north Atlantic trade routes. This accounted for the fact that her hull was coated thick with sea grass. Our job was to scrape it clean.

  Our guard had been changed at three in the morning. It was changed again at nine. The petty officer of this guard was a real slave driver. To give him his due he had probably received instructions to see that we worked at full pressure all the time, but by the way he watched us and yelled at us as soon as we slowed down I knew he enjoyed the job.

  Logan seemed to like the work. Perhaps it took his thoughts off the blankness of his mind. At any rate he went steadily forward with the work, never flagging and doing about ten square feet to my four. My muscles were soft with years of sedent
ary work and I quickly tired. By eleven the guard was making use of a bayonet to keep me at it. But the stab of the point in my buttocks was as nothing to the ache in my arms and back. We were allowed a twenty minute break for lunch at twelve. Then we had to set to again. The sweat streamed off me and my arms got so tired that I could hardly raise them and at the same time hold the scraper in my shaking fingers.

  Sheer dogged determination, induced I think more by a desire not to make myself conspicuous rather than by fear, kept me going. But about two hours after lunch I blacked out. Fortunately I was only standing on the lower rungs of the ladder and the fall did not injure me. I came to with an unpleasant sensation of pain in my ribs. I looked up. The hull of the U-boat bulged over me, whilst very far away, it seemed, the petty officer was telling me to get up and at the same time kicking me in the ribs.

  Then Logan’s huge body came into my line of sight. He stepped down off his ladder and with quiet deliberation knocked the petty officer flying with a terrific punch to the jaw. Then, before the guard had time to do anything, he had climbed back on to his ladder and resumed his work.

  I scrambled painfully to my feet. The guard was looking bewildered. Quite a number of men had witnessed the affair and they were making humorous comments to the guard. ‘Why don’t you call the police?’ asked one, and there was a howl of laughter. There was no doubt that Logan had made something of a hit with the men. From their tone I gathered that the petty officer was not popular.

  As the petty officer remained quite motionless where the force of Logan’s blow had flung him, one of the guard at length announced that he was going for the doctor. Logan continued with his work as if nothing had happened. It was not that he was trying to pretend that he had nothing to do with the business. He seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he had knocked a German petty officer cold. A crowd had gathered on the dockside above us. Everyone seemed to be talking at once and the sound merged into a low roar that almost drowned the roar of machinery. Men were attracted from other docks, and I could see that the crowd was growing every minute because the ones in front had to strain backwards in order to avoid being pushed over the edge of the dock. Some of them had jumped on to the submarine itself in order to see what was happening.