Last Man to Die (20 page)

Perhaps the captain of the frigate was a touch too eager. Had he left it a few seconds longer there could have been no doubt but, in his anxiety to ram the submarine, he hit her just before she was fully surfaced.
The bows sliced across the forward hull tearing a great gash, but the submarine bounced rather than being ripped instantly in two. She would die, of course, but slowly rather than in a moment.

Through the pandemonium Hencke could feel the craft beginning to settle rapidly bow-down. And still the water rose, up to his calf now, pulling at him and the others, trying to drag them under.

A face forced its way through the hatch which led from the control room. It was a sub-lieutenant, with blood running from a gash on his forehead.

‘Hencke to the control room!’ he screamed. ‘And secure all watertight doors!’

So that was it. The bulkheads were being sealed, the six compartments around which U-494 was built were being shut off from each other, transformed into their own private coffins. The most experienced hands prayed she would flood quickly and put an end to their inevitable agonies, the less experienced with their naive hopes of survival hoped it might flood more slowly, but everyone knew it was only a matter of time. Yet still the order of duty and command prevailed. The veteran grabbed Hencke by the arm and thrust him towards the hatch. Unceremoniously he was bundled through, smacking his head against some sharp metal edge, and as he picked himself up and turned he could see the veteran about to close the bulkhead door, with water already beginning to spill over the sill. The submariner’s eyes were raging with anger.

‘I wish to God you hadn’t come,’ he swore.

Then the steel door slammed shut, the wheel which secured the watertight seal was being turned, and he saw the veteran no more.

Inside the crowded control room Eling was standing by the intercom, barking instructions, eyes fixed on the dials and gauges as he listened to replies. But already he was giving instructions to sections of the boat from which no reply was forthcoming. As the chief engineer shouted in his ear that both aft torpedo hatches were flooding and water began seeping down an instrument panel, there was the unmistakable sound of the electric motors complaining, complaining again, and falling silent.

‘Engine room! Report!’ Eling shouted into the mouthpiece, but there was no response. He looked imploringly at the chief who stood soaked in a torn singlet beside the far watertight door, shaking his head.

With the dying of the engines and the closing of the hatches, a relative quiet descended over the craft. Metal was still pounding against metal in a distant forward compartment, but soon that also stopped. The craft was settling nose-down in the water, and they listened to the submarine’s death throes. A groan here, a creak there, the crying of tortured metal, the cracking of the internal wood fascias as they buckled and split, and always the slow, deadly sound of gurgling water. But from the crew there was only silence, the silence of men fallen to despair. The captain’s gaze was fixed unblinkingly on the depth gauge, watching its hypnotic fall, great beads of perspiration trickling down his forehead. Then there was a heavy bump, hands once again reached out for support, and the submarine settled on the bottom.

The captain tapped the gauge. ‘A hundred and twenty metres,’ he announced, his eyes glazing. ‘Could be worse …’ There was silence as everyone
calculated the odds. ‘Chief! Damage report,’ the captain instructed.

‘Engines dead, rear compartments flooded. I can’t raise the forward torpedo compartment. The bilges are flooding so the batteries are gone and if they’ve not yet drowned they’ll be choking on chlorine gas in next to no time … Sorry, Captain,’ the chief apologized as Eling’s stare gave him silent rebuke. This was still the
Kriegsmarine
, and there was a proper way to die. ‘The control room is the only watertight compartment. For now.’

‘How many men do we know for sure are still alive?’

‘Just what you see, Captain.’ It made a total of fourteen. Fourteen out of fifty. No, out of a hundred and fifty.

‘Looks like we have them surrounded, eh?’ Eling said grimly. He turned to Hencke. ‘I’m sorry, Hencke. It seems we failed. I’ve got a dead craft and fourteen men left. As far as we can tell all other compartments are flooded, which means that anyone behind those doors is already dead. I
am
sorry.’

Hencke marvelled at this man who had been ordered to sacrifice his craft and most of his crew in order to bring one passenger home, yet who still felt the need to apologize.

‘Is there anything to be done?’ Hencke was surprised how calm his voice sounded, betraying none of the turmoil and twisted nerves within.

Before Eling could answer, from no great distance away came the echoing sound of an explosion, not a depth charge but something big. A grim smile of satisfaction flickered around the captain’s mouth. ‘So the dying’s not yet done, and maybe the surviving too … That was a mine. One of ours. Ripping
the bottom out of a ship. One of theirs. I took us into a minefield,’ he explained. ‘Seems to have paid off.’

‘What will happen now?’

‘They’ll have trouble locating us on the bottom with all the junk and other wrecks around here. And now they’ve lost one of their own …?’ He shrugged. ‘They’ll probably call it a day. They won’t want to thrash around in a minefield, particularly when they know there’s a 95 per cent probability they’ve sunk us already.’

As if in confirmation, from nearby came the explosion of a clutch of depth charges, one final gesture from the Royal Navy planted along the huge oil slick which was forming on the surface and which they hoped marked the tomb of another U-boat. One for luck, and farewell. The violent rocking cast the craft into darkness yet again and when at last some source of light was restored, even the rueful smile which the captain had managed to manufacture had been wiped away.

‘Further damage report, Chief! Chief?’

But the chief did not respond. He was staring transfixed at the cabinet where the emergency breathing gear was kept. ‘They’re gone. There’s not a single one left …’ And with those words, each man knew, had disappeared their last chance of survival. The chief turned in desperation towards the captain. ‘The maintenance crew, at Kiel. They were stripping the boat down for overhaul, started here in the control room. They were unloading everything. Then we got orders to turn around, I threw them straight off board …’

No one spoke. What was there to say? In spite of the angry looks cast in his direction, it wasn’t the
chief’s fault. On arrival in Kiel after weeks at sea they hadn’t even had time to break wind let alone check stores before they were ordered back out to sea. How could anyone have reckoned on some half-witted fitter forgetting to replace the breathing gear? On all the emergency supplies in other compartments being cut off behind flooded bulkheads? On being caught out playing taxi at the bottom of the North Sea?

As the silence dragged on Hencke could feel the eyes of some of the crew, particularly the younger ones, latching on to him, piercing him with accusation. The one who had brought them here. The one who had caused all this. The passenger …

‘Do we have any prospects?’ he asked the captain.

‘Staying here and slowly choking to death,’ responded Eling grimly. ‘Or trying to escape without breathing apparatus from 120 metres and probably drowning. Take your pick.’

‘It’s no fun dying slowly, Captain.’

‘I do so agree.’ He gave a small Prussian nod of respect. At least the bastard wasn’t panicking and screaming his head off; Eling couldn’t have stood that. ‘So. We make ready to abandon ship! Chief. Chief, where …?’

The chief had disappeared head-first through a service hatch in the floor. When he hauled himself back up he was coughing and his eyes were full of terror. ‘Chlorine!’ he gasped. ‘Chlorine!’

Sea water was leaking into the huge batteries which powered the electric motors, and the result was a chemical reaction which produced a gas as deadly as that found in any trench of the First War. And it was seeping uncontrollably around them.

‘For God’s sake flood the compartment and let’s
get out of here,’ pleaded one of the younger ratings.

‘Can’t,’ the chief spluttered. ‘Won’t be able to open the hatch until the air pressure inside has equalled the water pressure outside. 120 metres. At that pressure the concentration of chlorine in the lungs will kill us in seconds.’

‘But it’ll kill us anyway!’ the rating responded. ‘We stay, we die. We try to leave, we die. What have you done to us, Chief?’ The edge of desperation in his voice was beginning to infect the others around him. It wouldn’t be long before there was a general outpouring of panic which would overwhelm them all.

‘There’s one chance.’ It was Eling who spoke, very quietly, to reassert his authority. ‘One chance, perhaps. Above our heads in the conning tower. There’s room for one man. We close the hatch between the control room and conning tower, he floods the conning tower like an escape chamber, he opens the exterior hatch and escapes.’

‘But what about the rest of us?’ pressed a petty officer.

The chief interjected, desperate to bear hopeful tidings for a change. ‘The first man closes the exterior hatch from the outside, we drain the conning tower, we do it all over again. Fourteen times.’ But he didn’t sound as if he had convinced even himself.

‘No, Chief. It won’t work. Not at 120 metres.’ It was Eling. ‘In order to shut the hatch from the outside he’d use up so much oxygen he’d never make it to the surface. If he forgets about closing the hatch he’s got a chance. A small one. One man. That’s it, and that’s all of it.’ A stillness of crushed hopes and despondency settled amongst the men. ‘I’m sorry,
gentlemen,’ Eling continued. ‘You deserve to know.’

‘So which of us is it to be?’ a voice enquired.

‘Not I,’ stated the captain.

‘Nor I,’ whispered the chief.

‘Then who?’ insisted the petty officer. ‘Who’s going to play God and decide which one of us gets it?’

‘
Meine Herren
,’ Eling commanded sharply. ‘If there has to be an end, let us make it a good one, one worthy of the
Kriegsmarine
.’

‘I’ve got a wife and five children,’ the petty officer said. ‘My end is no bloody use to them, good or otherwise.’

‘You knew what your fate would be when you started on this war. The only thing you didn’t know was how or when,’ the captain responded, staring into their eyes. ‘So – now you do.’

‘But who is to get the chance? I’ve got five children too …’ another seaman lied.

‘Let’s draw lots,’ another suggested.

‘Call yourselves submariners,’ the wretched chief engineer cried, almost in tears. ‘Flood the whole damn boat and let’s get it over with!’ He lunged for a valve.

‘No!’ Eling instructed. ‘Chief –
Take your hands away
!’

The chief looked at his captain through red eyes and slowly withdrew. There was still too much discipline in him, he couldn’t refuse his commanding officer, not at the last, not after all this time.

‘I cannot play God,’ Eling continued in a low voice, forcing them to listen in silence, ‘but in the
Kriegsmarine
we don’t rely on luck or divine intervention, certainly not on the wisdom of our political leaders, but on
duty
. You’ve all followed that sense
of duty from the moment you stepped on board this submarine, and that’s what has got us this far. Through the ice pack off Murmansk. And the convoy escorts off the Azores. And back to home port time and again when other U-boats weren’t so lucky. So our luck’s run out. But we are still submariners! We started this mission with orders to do everything we could to get this man’ – he waved at Hencke – ‘back home. We still have those orders. You all know who should get the chance.’

‘His life means we all die,’ the rating said.

‘Whoever gets out, the rest of us are going to die. Our only choice is whether we die like men or like rats. Not much of a choice, I agree. But it’s the only one we’ve got.’

No one moved. It was the truth, they knew it, but no one wanted to accept it. Surely there was some other way? Then the chief stepped forward and stood by the conning tower hatch. He offered the captain a crisp salute. In turn, the captain faced slowly towards Hencke. He had bloodshot eyes and Hencke could see close up that he was scared.

‘Do one thing for me, Hencke. Just get back. Make all this worthwhile.’

Hencke nodded. He said nothing; words would have been inadequate, even insulting. He placed his foot on the first rung of the ladder into the conning tower and began to climb, assisted by one of the men.

As he disappeared what was left of Eling’s crew came to attention as the captain barked the final order. ‘Chief. Secure the hatch!’

‘Thanks for agreeing to see me at such short notice.’ Eisenhower’s hand shot out from a crisp cuff and
grasped the pudgy fingers extended towards him at the door of Ten Downing Street.

‘Your visit comes as a welcome distraction, General – particularly when the matter sounded of such urgency.’ Churchill led the way across the famous threshold, trailing cigar smoke. ‘I have to admit, now our armies are ploughing remorselessly through the remnants of the Wehrmacht, that time seems to hang heavy. Not so long ago – do you remember when we were planning the invasion of Europe together? – every hour seemed filled with suspense and the need to take mighty decisions. Today I find that matters for my attention are brought to me not by great commanders bearing brave ideas, but by bureaucrats who bear nothing but endless mountains of paper. I do battle with what they call post-war projections. It is an unappetising struggle.’ There was a weariness in the Old Man’s voice, an emptiness inside where once excitement and intrigue had burned.