An Honorable German (3 page)

The B-Service men could also put their mathematical skills to more mundane use. They’d recently relieved Max of two weeks’
pay playing cards in the officers’ mess. Max’s father had warned him about gambling away all his money in the service, but
the money was gone and there was nothing to be done for it. Still, the B-Service men were good comrades, even though they
seemed to do nothing but smoke, play skat, and listen intently to the wireless.

Max read carefully through the new messages but none of the ships broadcasting were anywhere near
Graf Spee
. Damn. Finding a transmission from a ship close enough to intercept would be a lot quicker than this endless patrolling,
roaming back and forth across the empty South Atlantic like
Flying Dutchman
. Traffic was sparse now in this, the third week of the war. British merchantmen were under strict Admiralty orders to maintain
radio silence. Except for occasional lapses, they did so. Max wondered if
Spee
’s sister ship,
Deutschland
, was having better luck on her assignments farther north, along the trade routes that crossed to England from Canada and
the United States.

He replaced the messages in their notebook and returned to his cabin, stripping off his ink-stained uniform and stuffing it
into the laundry bag at the foot of his closet. Tian, head of the six Chinese laundrymen on board, would retrieve the bag
in the morning and return the uniform, starched and pressed, by midafternoon. All German naval ships employed Chinese laundrymen,
though Max could hardly imagine where on earth they came from. Probably the old German concession at Tsingtao—another piece
of German territory stolen by the Allies after the First War, along with the Germania Brewery that made Tsingtao beer.

Max massaged his neck, muscles still knotted from the tension of the morning, then reached for the picture on his small desk.
The frame had been cracked by the gun blasts. Mareth stared out from under the spiderwebbed glass. Max had taken the photo
himself on a dock in Kiel two summers ago. Mareth’s face was tilted slightly downward and she looked askance at the camera
with a close-mouthed smile, shy but crafty. A breeze off the water rippled her long blond hair. One of the navy’s new destroyers
crossed the harbor behind her. What time would it be in Berlin now? Night. She would be getting ready for bed—letting her
hair down from its ponytail, slipping on her silk pajamas. Or maybe one of his old cotton jerseys. Max smiled to himself.
Was he homesick after only three weeks at sea? Get a hold of yourself. Still, how he wished he could tell Mareth in person
about the excitement of finally sighting a ship, about the capture and even the embarrassment he’d felt with the British officers
as he constantly made excuses about
Graf Spee
’s lack of accuracy. She would laugh at that, and then Max would be able to laugh at it himself. He put the picture back on
his desk and climbed into his bunk.

Enough sleep was hard to come by on combat assignment. He tried to get some after his morning watch and then a little more
late in the evening. Like the crew of any warship at sea, the men of
Graf Spee
moved in the strict routine required for keeping a third of them on duty at all times, but this routine was frequently disrupted
by the call to action stations, drills, and other essential tasks. So Max had learned to take sleep when he could get it.
Porthole covered, lights out, the droning of the ship’s massive engines soon lulled him to sleep.

THE SOUTH ATLANTIC

DAY 102 OF THE WAR CRUISE OF
ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE

2 DECEMBER 1939

M
AX WOKE TO THE FOUR SHARP BELLS OF THE
F
LIEGERALARM: SHORT
, short, long, short. He jerked open the door of his closet, snatched a uniform from its wooden hanger, and had a leg into
his pants before he stopped. He felt no increase in the deck’s vibration beneath his bare feet; the ship was not working up
to her full speed, as she would immediately begin to do if a plane really attacked. Then he remembered the orders of the day:
Anti-aircraft guns will be exercised at 1400
. Damn. He folded his pants and climbed back into his bunk.

Odd that the launching of the floatplane had not wakened him. Usually the steam catapult made hell’s own racket when it shot
the Arado into the air. Max didn’t envy the pilot—Spiering, a Luftwaffe man. He had to stream a target three hundred meters
aft of the plane, then fly around and around the ship for hours so the anti-aircraft gun crews could practice their spotting
and tracking skills. Max knew the endless circling would make him sick; Spiering didn’t seem to mind, but pilots were daft.
They’d do anything to be up in an aeroplane—even one like the Arado, which looked to Max like nothing more than a pile of
aluminum and wood cobbled together with glue in someone’s cellar. Sailors called it “the ship’s parrot”; they loved to tell
youngsters fresh from boot camp to go and find the ship’s parrot. The new sailors would search for hours while the older men
watched and had a laugh. Captain Langsdorff enjoyed the joke as well, though he would often be the one to finally let the
youngsters off the hook by telling them where the ship’s parrot was: on the catapult.

Max slept again, but it seemed only minutes before the action station alarm sounded, the bells shrill and demanding. Conditioned
by countless drills, Max’s body moved before his brain began to operate.

Dressing quickly, he stepped into the companionway, the river of sailors dashing for their battle posts parting to let him
through. Some ran barefoot, shoes hanging around their necks by the laces. Others carried shirts or pants they hadn’t had
time to struggle into. Petty officers hurried the few laggards. “Schnell! Schnell!” Men of the gun crews wore black anti-flash
overalls and looked like running bears as they barreled their way through the ship. The five short bells of the action station
continued to sound: “Action stations! All hands to action stations!” the loudspeakers blared.

Lights flickered on and off as the electricians tested the circuits. Pictures were snatched from walls, deck rails removed,
scuttles screwed tight over portholes, ready boxes of ammunition broken open at the anti-aircraft posts. One of the gunnery
officers walked quickly past, face lathered with shaving cream. As soon as the engineers below saw the action station alarm
begin to blink, they cut all unnecessary ship’s water to give more pressure to the firefighting mains.

As Max hurried up the ladder to the bridge, two burly gunner’s mates pushed him aside. “Warschau! Warschau!” Gangway! Gangway!

Max reached the bridge two minutes and ten seconds after the alarm sounded. Unlike the barely controlled bedlam on the decks,
the bridge was calm and quiet. Captain Langsdorff insisted on it. No shouting, no idle talk. Several other officers had just
arrived, breathing hard. Max pulled his binoculars from their bracket and took up his post in the middle of the bridge with
a telephone talker and a bridge messenger on either side of him. As second watch officer, he passed the captain’s orders to
the rest of the ship during battle. The first watch officer, the senior navigation officer, and others took their positions
toward the stern of the ship in the aft controlling station. From there, the first watch officer would assume command of
Graf Spee
if the captain was killed.

The hollow drone of the ventilating fans sounded as they sucked air into
Spee
’s mighty engines. Beneath Max, the ship began to vibrate terrifically as she went to her full speed. “Making turns for twenty-eight
knots,” Max told the captain, his voice rising over the fans.

On either side of him, the telephone talkers reported the ready status of the ship as it was relayed to them.

“Fore and aft engine rooms manned and ready.”

“Main gunnery command manned and ready.”

“Aft damage control station manned and ready.”

“Aft controlling station manned and ready.”

“B-Service standing by.”

Max heard the reports out, mentally checking off the departments, and then looked at his watch. “Ship cleared for action,
two minutes, fifty-three seconds, Herr Kapitän.”

More than a thousand officers and men had taken up their action stations in that brief time. It was as if an anthill had been
kicked over, then perfectly reestablished in three minutes. This efficiency came from incessant training. Max could not count
the days, the weeks, they had steamed back and forth in the Baltic running to action stations, to firefighting stations, to
anti-aircraft stations, day and night, under the gaze of Captain Langsdorff and his stopwatch; ship starting and stopping,
slow ahead, all ahead full, all back full, all ahead emergency. Man overboard. Swing boats out! Fore engine room shut down.
Steam on two engines, on one, on eight. Maneuver with engines, no rudder orders allowed. Steer from aft controlling. Junior
officers taking charge while their seniors ground their teeth. Lights put out. Damage control parties finding their way in
the dark. And always, always, the alarm bells with their different sounds for different emergencies: five short bells for
action stations; short, short, long, short for anti-aircraft; two long bells for man overboard. Eventually he had wanted to
smash every damned bell on the ship.

“Leutnant Spiering believes he has sighted a merchantman to the east of us,” Langsdorff said. “Come hard starboard thirty
degrees to a new course of zero eight five. Let’s see what he’s found.”

Max leaned forward to the voice tube. “Helm!”

“Helm, aye.”

“At right full rudder, come thirty degrees to new course of zero eight five degrees.”

A moment passed and then the answering hail: “At right full rudder, coming thirty degrees to new course of zero eight five,
Herr Oberleutnant.”

At that rudder deflection,
Spee
heeled sharply to starboard as the helmsman brought the ship around to a course of almost due east. He had no bulky wheel
to contend with;
Graf Spee
’s rudder was operated by push-button control. Because enemy ships aimed for the bridge in a sea battle, the helmsman sat
in the heavily armored wheelhouse below the navigating bridge itself. If he were hit and killed, the standby helmsman in the
aft controlling station took over.

Max reported the course change to Langsdorff.

“Acknowledged,” the captain said, keeping the binoculars at his eyes.

Langsdorff made no secret of his dislike for Spiering. Like many of Göring’s Luftwaffe boys, the pilot was arrogant, undisciplined,
contemptuous of the navy. He had drawn the captain’s wrath not three weeks before by continuing to machine-gun a stopped freighter
for several minutes after
Graf Spee
had ceased fire. Afterward, brought before the captain in his formal day cabin with Max and Commander Kay present, Langsdorff
asked, “You will please explain to me why you fired your weapon on a defenseless cargo vessel.”

The pilot hesitated. “I—I was attacking an enemy, sir.”

“Did you see
Graf Spee
firing?”

“No, sir.”

“Why do you think
Graf Spee
was not firing at the freighter?”

“Because she was stopped and under our orders, sir.”

“That is correct, Leutnant. She was stopped and under
my
orders, like you and everyone else aboard this vessel. You were not under attack but you fired your guns on innocent civilians.
Such behavior is an affront to the honor of our country and my ship. You should be most thankful no one was seriously hurt.”

“Yes, sir.”

Before dismissing, Langsdorff had spent long moments with his blue eyes fixed on Leutnant Spiering, staring for a minute or
more without so much as a blink. Now the captain’s stern blue eyes continued to peer ahead through his binoculars as brief
reports were given to him by the chief navigation officer, whose men were following Spiering’s position on their chart. Around
Max, the officers and men adjusted their hastily donned clothing without taking their eyes from their respective tasks. Langsdorff
insisted on a neat appearance from his men at all times. Conducive to military discipline, he said. Max straightened his tie.
He had learned to dress on the fly at the Marineschule Mürwik, where everything was double time and spit shine. No excuses.

Graf Spee
, now worked up to her full twenty-eight knots, shuddered as she pushed her way through the waves.

“Oberleutnant?”

“Ja, Herr Kapitän?”

“The French flag, if you please.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”

Max passed Langsdorff’s order to the chief signalman, who took all of ten seconds to produce the tricolor of France from the
ordered shelves of his flag locker. He rolled the flag into a ball, ran it up the signal mast abaft the bridge, and with a
twist of the halyard, the French colors broke over
Graf Spee
. As long as the flag was hauled down before an attack commenced, international law would not be violated. To the untrained
observer, looking from a distance,
Spee
resembled the French battleship
Dunkurque
; the flag would add to this illusion—and because the French had foolishly joined the British in their war against Germany,
Dunkurque
was a friendly ship to a British merchantman. If the hoax could fool the freighter’s crew until they were under
Graf Spee
’s guns, the dispatch of a radio warning to the British Admiralty might be prevented.