The Last Wolf (14 page)

Powered by electric motors, the boat glided on silently through the oily harbour water, past derricks and buoys, past a rusty old freighter lying at anchor. A patrol boat armed with anti-aircraft guns accompanied them like a vigilant nursemaid, and seagulls provided a winged escort, swooping around and over the boat, screeching a raucous salute, and flapping their wings in a – probably mocking – farewell.

The grating beneath Reinhard's booted feet and the iron railing under his gloved hands began to shiver and shake as the diesel engines started up. Their first uneven rumblings settled to a strong, regular beat and the sound of the jolly brass band music had faded away. The U-boat emerged from the port's outer basin and turned her bows in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean, leaving her patrol boat and her seagull escort behind.

As usual, they kept a sharp watch out for enemy aircraft. The Old Man, a squat, square figure in his thick grey leather coat, cleared the upper deck of men, preparing to crash dive if necessary, and ordered a zigzag course. He scanned the sky repeatedly through binoculars, head tilted back, the white crown fitted to his cap marking him out distinctly from the rest, plain for all to see. The boat's commander. The man who carried their fate in his hands.

‘Thanks to our French friends ashore, the enemy will know exactly what time we cast off and they'll be waiting for us to walk into their parlour. We must make quite certain that we disappoint them.'

The remark was addressed to nobody in particular but those left on the bridge paid it very good attention.

The boat had provisions for a long patrol – every available space was crammed with supplies. Loaves of bread, sacks of potatoes, strings of sausages and hams hanging from hooks, boxes of apples and lemons, onions, eggs, jars of pickles, dried fruit and stacks of tinned food for when the fresh supplies ran out or turned too mouldy or rotten to be eaten.

The North Atlantic weather was abysmal. Howling winds, mountainous waves crashing over the conning tower, torrential rain, then driving sleet, visibility virtually nil. Impossible to see through the binoculars on a watch, no matter how assiduously one wiped them; impossible to keep a steady footing on a deck see-sawing wildly like a runaway rocking-horse; impossible to keep the lash of salt spray away from one's face and eyes or the icy seawater from finding its way beneath the oilskins and into boots. At the end of his four-hour stint Reinhard staggered down from the bridge soaked, frozen and exhausted. His eyes were red, the skin on his face flayed raw, his arm muscles aching from the weight of the binoculars. He shed the oilskins and his sodden clothing and rolled naked into his bunk. Lay there inert while the boat corkscrewed violently around him. A slug of schnapps might have done some good but that was forbidden. Even a cigarette would have soothed, but smoking was only permitted out on the bridge.

At mealtimes, the boat's loudspeakers relayed German broadcasts of martial music, the sort that the farewell brass band had played on the quayside, or stirring passages of Wagner. Sometimes, the radio man played his own favourite records instead, often producing groans of protest.

There were regular news bulletins from Berlin informing them that the Luftwaffe were still bombing London and other English cities to rubble while the British cowered cravenly in their shelters. Mr Churchill's vainglorious speech-making was fuelled by brandy and fooled nobody. An attack on Bremen by the Royal Air Force had been an abject failure and another attempt to bomb Emden had been equally unsuccessful. There was nothing to fear from the RAF incompetents. A National Socialist talk followed on the stupidity and evils of the enemy, the superiority of the German peoples and of their proud Fatherland. The Second Officer kept nodding his head in silent agreement, which earned him yet another furious blast from the Old Man who had plenty of respect for the enemy and very little for the Nazi Party.

‘Only a cretin pays any attention to that propaganda crap.'

‘But surely it's only the truth, sir.'

‘If you believe that, then you're an even bigger fool than I thought.'

One thing was undoubtedly true in Reinhard's eyes: the Luftwaffe had been bombing London and several other British cities. A lot of damage had been done and many civilians killed. What had happened to Stroma? She could have been in London for the Christmas holidays but, by now, she should be back at her boarding school in the country and therefore safe. He could not picture her cowering in a shelter. She was more likely to be standing outside it, shaking her fist at the Luftwaffe bombers.

Cursing all Germans!

The U-boat headed west, its destination a secret from all but its commander. Signals and orders were sent to the Old Man in a code that only he could unlock. The rest of them were left to speculate.

Within a week officers and crew began to look less like an elite force of the German Navy and more like a gang of cut-throats. They were unshaven, unwashed, unkempt, their clothing a weird mix of official-issue uniform and personal preference, including enemy battle dress blouses abandoned by the Tommies when they had fled from France and woollen check shirts pilfered in large numbers from the defeated French.

The remaining fresh food was rapidly going bad, including the stock of lemons intended to be sucked daily against scurvy. The bread was riddled with pockets of green mould that had to be cut out like gangrenous flesh, the rancid butter smothered with jam to cover up its taste, the green on the sausages scraped away. Most meals now came cured or out of tins but wherever the food came from it tasted of U-boat – a particular taste of diesel oil and bilge water, strongly flavoured with mould.

The 4711 eau de cologne did little to sweeten the boat's foul atmosphere but was useful for cleaning off the sea salt encrusted on faces after a four-hour watch on the bridge. The boredom of an uneventful patrol was more difficult to remove: same routine, same faces, same irritating personal habits of other men. The rating who sometimes played the accordion in the bow compartment increasingly got on other men's nerves, even with ‘Lili Marlene'.

Then, suddenly, the Old Man received orders to attack a convoy on its way across the Atlantic to England and they went to battle stations. Other U-boats in the area had been alerted and the grey wolves, let off their leash, gathered in a hungry pack astern the convoy. They closed in as darkness began to fall.

With the boat trimmed at periscope depth, the Old Man was crouched at the lens in the conning tower, a huge oil tanker in his sights. A big prize. Reinhard could see him licking his lips in just the way that a wolf might savour an especially juicy victim. The torpedoes were in place, the tubes flooded, the bow doors opened, the settings for speed, course and depth minutely adjusted. It was to be a salvo of three torpedoes at a range of five hundred metres.

‘
Achtung
. . .
Los
!'

‘Torpedoes running,' the hydrophone operator reported.

They waited.

The explosions, when they came, were muffled booms that were followed later by an unearthly shrieking and cracking and tearing – the sound of the tanker breaking up. Their previous kills had been small beer compared with this one – a couple of freighters and an antiquated steamer – but the oil tanker was a prize indeed. Oil was vital to the enemy, as precious as liquid gold; without it, they could not wage a war. Reinhard could not see the sinking ship – only the Old Man could do that through the periscope – but he could picture its death-throes: dense smoke, gigantic flames, spilled oil surrounding the tanker with an impassable ring of fire, fanned to an inferno by the wind. Nothing could be done about the men who would be frantically lowering lifeboats or hurling themselves into the burning sea. An enemy escort destroyer was approaching fast and the Old Man had given the order to crash dive to eighty metres. The question, now, was not about saving the enemy but about saving themselves. They were no longer the hunter but the hunted.

The hydroplane operator was turning his wheel. ‘Screws bearing zero-four-five, sir.'

‘Steer zero-five-zero,' the Old Man said very quietly. ‘Slow ahead both.'

The British destroyer's ASDIC pinged loudly and insistently against the U-boat's hull as it drew closer. The ship passed by overhead, propellers thrashing.

They went deeper to a hundred metres and began creeping away at a dead slow speed, trying to make an escape – whispered orders, no unnecessary noise or movement – but a second enemy escort had joined the first. Eight depth charge explosions rocked the U-boat violently, and they were thrown about the hull like dice in a shaker. Glass shattered and the lights went out, leaving them only with torch beams until the emergency lighting took over. There was other minor damage but no leaks. Not yet. They waited in silence, all machinery stopped so as not to betray their position, minimum movement and all talk in whispers. More eerie cracking and tearing sounds reached them as other ships in the convoy were sent on their way to the bottom. The rest of the wolf pack was busy.

Propellers churned back and forth overhead and depth charges went on exploding deafeningly above and around them. The boat shuddered and rattled and rocked, thrown this way and that, and Reinhard, grabbing at a metal pipe to keep his balance, could feel cold sea water dribbling down it beneath his hand. At any moment now the hull might cave in and that would be the end. A quick end, thankfully, and more merciful than it had been for the crew of the burning oil tanker. The depth charges were now so close and so violent that the submarine reared up on its stern like a frightened horse to fall back again.

It continued for several hours and it was impossible not to flinch at each explosion, though the Old Man, braced against the chart table, hadn't moved a muscle so far. Some of the men looked terrified – well, only a dolt would feel no fear – but the officers took their commander's lead. It was the Old Man's job to give confidence, as much as it was to give commands. Odd how almost everyone was looking up above their heads to where the noise was coming from, even though there was nothing to see. The air was becoming so stale now that it was difficult to breathe.

But, at last, the enemy gave up and the churning of their propellers faded away. The Old Man gave orders to surface and the boat rose slowly, to emerge, water streaming from her hull, into a grey dawn. The conning tower was thrown open and clean, fresh air flowed down into the boat. Along with the men, Reinhard stood below the hatchway to fill his lungs.

Damage repaired, they continued westwards across the ocean. The weather was even worse. Much worse. In the officers' wardroom the steward had an impossible task as the boat pitched up and down and heeled over from port to starboard and back again like a thrill-ride at a funfair. What food reached the table soon left it, ending up in an inedible mess mixed with smashed crockery on the floor. The constant rolling and lurching was exhausting to the men and the U-boat could only make slow progress against waves like unscaleable walls.

At last, the Old Man gave the order to dive and they ran submerged for a while, untroubled by the weather. Though he was well used to it, Reinhard still found the silence of the deep eerie. A miraculous stillness and quiet reigned. No roar of wind or waves, no radio blasting away. Lights were dimmed, men off-watch lay on their bunks reading or sleeping and lowered their voices when they spoke. The loudest sound was the hum of the electric motors. Reinhard lay on his own bunk, hands clasped behind his head, listening to the peaceful snores of Fehler, the petty officer in the upper tier, a matter of centimetres above.

They'd been lucky that the damage had been moderate, but it had been a close brush with death – no doubt about it – and there would be plenty more like it. The Old Man didn't hang back when it came to engaging the enemy; he never chose the easy option. He hoped that, as and when his own turn came to command, he would exhibit the same conviction and inspire the same confidence in his men. If you couldn't do that, you'd no right to be a commander.

The cut-out photo of Stroma in her school uniform lived in a pocket of his leather writing case and he took it out to look at once again. The bunk light was dim, which made it even harder to see her. She had been fourteen then; now she would be almost seventeen. The grubby child would be almost grown-up. Almost a woman. He wished he could write a letter to her, but even if it were possible for it to reach her, what could he say? What good could it do?

Dear Stroma,

I hope you are safe and well in spite of being bombed for weeks by our Luftwaffe.

I am serving in a German Navy U-boat somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and we are trying to sink as many British ships as possible, especially the ones bringing food and fuel to help you. As a matter of fact, we have just sunk a very big oil tanker belonging to the Merchant Navy and a lot of its crew were burned in the fire . . .

She would hate him.

They were ordered north to intercept a big convoy that had left the safety of Halifax harbour to begin its very unsafe journey across the Atlantic, bound for Glasgow or Liverpool, no doubt. There was no doubt either that it would be carrying all manner of very vital things for the enemy – food, armaments, rubber, oil, aircraft . . . The Old Man was slavering already.

They found them in the mid-Atlantic and shadowed the convoy of forty ships until three other U-boats joined them. After dark, they all came to the surface for the attack.

Fifteen ships were sunk in that one night and on the next night another eleven. In the days that followed, as the wolf pack snarled and snapped at the heels of the scattered convoy, yet more ships were dispatched to the bottom – 290 gross tons in all. Their boat had scored ten ships and, as a nice bonus, they had also fished a dozen or so wooden crates out of the sea packed with tins of American Libby's fruit – peaches, pears, apricots, pumpkin, fruit cocktail – as well as tins of Carnation evaporated milk to go with them. The whole crew had a feast.