The Last Wolf (18 page)

‘
Arrested
her? What for?'

‘Because she was Jewish. It has been happening all the time in Berlin. There was a lot of noise and she was crying. It was terrible. I don't know where they took her. Someone told me they send them to labour camps.' She was staring suspiciously at him, at his uniform, at the shiny new Iron Cross. ‘Was Katrin a friend of yours?'

‘I only met her once.'

‘Well, I'm afraid you won't be meeting her again.' The woman turned and walked away.

He went back to the railway station and stopped at the café where he had seen Katrin sitting with her book
Further Steps in English
. He ordered a beer at the bar and then quickly asked for another. And then a third.

The Alpine resort was very peaceful. He had skied there with his father and Bruno a number of times before the war and nothing had changed. The chalet hotel still had its pine floors and its goose-feather beds, its overhanging balconies with wonderful views of the snow-covered mountains. The crisp, cold air was as invigorating as he remembered, the steep ski slopes as exhilarating. He skied from early morning until darkness fell, taking the most difficult pistes at top speed, taxing himself to the limit so that he had no time to think about the war, or about anything else. In the evenings, he drank and dined with other guests before he fell into bed to sleep soundly until dawn.

When he went home to Hamburg for the second week of his leave, Greta, their old servant, wept when she saw him and he gathered her up in his arms. His father had invited friends to the apartment to share in the reflected glory of his achievement – his Iron Cross and his promotion to commander of a U-boat. For his father's sake, he was polite and smiling at all the praise and compliments but he knew very well that the hard part was to come. He had yet to prove himself.

When the friends had all left, he talked to his father about Katrin Paulssen.

‘It seems that she was arrested simply because she was Jewish – for no other reason. She wasn't a dissident or a trouble-maker; she did not belong to any political party, so far as I know. She was a blameless citizen, a nice girl doing an ordinary office job. What possible excuse can there be for such an injustice? How can such a thing happen?'

His father sighed. ‘It would have been wiser for your friend to have left the country before, as many of the Jews have already done.'

‘Why should she? Her home is in Germany.'

‘I told you before, Reinhard, that I don't always approve of the Führer's methods, but without him we have no chance of prospering, and, worse, we risk Communist rule. Yes, he has certainly used the Jews as scapegoats, blaming them for many of our misfortunes, driving them out of Germany. And many people are only too pleased to see that happen. They resent the Jews for being so talented and successful and are thankful to be rid of them, often in order to step into their shoes. It's been very hard for those Jews that have chosen to remain. All these special laws about what type of work they may do, where they may live, where they may go, and so on . . . Doubtless you are aware of them?'

‘No, I am not aware of them, Father. It's not something we were taught at the Academy, or in any part of our training.'

‘It will do you no good to get so angry, Reinhard. No good at all. Politics are not your concern. The Kriegsmarine has never been a political force, only a fighting one. Concentrate on what matters – winning this war for your country, preventing us from sliding back into that terrible mire again. That's what counts.'

Bruno turned up later in his Luftwaffe uniform, decorated with his pilot's wings, and more champagne was uncorked. Their father had got over the disappointment of his defection to the Air Force. He put his arms around their shoulders.

‘I am so proud of my two sons. The whole of Germany will be proud of you and grateful for what you are doing.'

After their father had gone to bed, Reinhard and Bruno sat drinking brandy, smoking and talking. Like the soldiers in the Danzig train, his brother had complete faith in a German victory.

‘The Royal Air Force have their good points, I admit – especially their fighters – but their bombers are useless. They're still dropping stupid leaflets and when they drop bombs they nearly always miss their target. Look what a mess they made of their last raid on Hamburg! Father says there was thick cloud cover and most of the bombs fell out in the countryside, miles away from the shipbuilding yards. And, thanks to you grey wolves, so busily sinking all their convoy ships, the British are in bad trouble. They have their backs to the wall and it shouldn't take much longer to finish them off completely.'

He rolled the brandy glass to and fro between his hands. ‘The one small snag, Bruno, is that they're getting better at finding us. And the more they improve, the more of their ships will get through. The Atlantic battle's not over by a long chalk.'

‘It's not like you to be pessimistic.'

‘Not pessimistic. Realistic. Also, you've forgotten the Americans.'

‘From what I hear, the Yanks aren't going to be any help. They didn't want to join the war in the first place and if it hadn't been for the Japs bombing their fleet they'd still be sitting on their backsides watching from the sidelines.'

‘I didn't think they'd be much help either, but unfortunately they're fast coming to their senses. They've adopted the British convoy system and that's not good news for us. Not good news at all. And what about our former partners, the Russians?'

‘They're more of a worry, I admit. Unlike the Yanks, they know very well how to fight and there are hordes of them. But our forces are far superior to theirs in every way.'

‘We have to hope so.'

But the news from the Russian front was not good; the soldiers on the train had been very far from realistic.

They went on talking until late. It was a toss-up, Reinhard thought to himself later, which of them had the better chance of survival – Bruno in his Messerschmitt 109 or he in his U-boat. The odds were probably about even.

At the end of his leave he joined his First and Second Officers, Engelhardt and Mohr, and his Chief Engineer, Franz, at the shipyard where their U-boat was being completed. This was their chance to get to know her thoroughly and no demanding mistress ever received more assiduous or careful attention.

The rest of the crew arrived as the boat was being painted, its conning tower decorated with his chosen emblem – a flowing-locked Neptune rising from the deep, trident held aloft. Before they sailed he gave the customary commander's speech to his men assembled on the upper deck – part encouragement to do their best, part threat if they didn't, and the rest good humour. God knew they were all going to need it.

They went through two weeks of diving trials, silent running tests, dummy torpedo launches, reloading practices, testing the diesels and electric motors, the armament, the radar and the sonar.

At a formal dinner on the evening before his U-boat's departure from Lorient, the Flotilla Commander rose to his feet to deliver a good-luck speech and to offer a toast in vintage champagne. They all drank a great deal as usual – and, as usual, Reinhard regretted it in the morning.

It was a good send-off. The brass band played a rousing march and the crowd waved and cheered as the boat backed slowly and silently away from the pier. Fifty metres out, Reinhard gave the order to start the diesels and the U-boat came to life, hull vibrating, screws churning the water at the stern into swirling white foam.

‘Both engines half ahead together. Steer nine five.'

‘
Jawohl
, Herr Kaleun.'

He was the Old Man now.

Liverpool was a grim place. On the train journey from London, a Royal Navy rating, sitting with Stroma and six other Wrens in the compartment, had given them the gory details.

The Luftwaffe bombers had been going for the city ever since the war started, he'd said. Given it their full and undivided attention. The air-raid siren had never stopped wailing and the poor old place had copped it eighty times at least.

‘Adolf's been after Merseyside and the docks, see. He wants to stop our ships landin' supplies there from across the Atlantic. We can't use our ports in the south no more – not since the Jerries nabbed France.

‘The Luftwaffe came over Liverpool for eight nights in a row – hundreds of German bombers each night. Buildings blown to bits, corpses lyin' in the streets, people trapped in the ruins, old folks and little kids coppin' it with the rest of 'em, fires ragin' all over the city, thousands left homeless. Knocked the stuffin' out of the place for a while, I can tell you. Only Hitler didn't reckon with the Liverpudlians, did he? Didn't know about 'em. They're a tough lot. Soon got back up on their feet. 'Course, it's all been kept out of the newspapers, so nobody else knows nothing about it, but you'll see for yourselves what's been happening.'

They saw indeed. Rubble, craters, shattered glass, boarded-up windows, blackened and burned-out buildings. It was raining hard and the cobbled streets were running with water that was choked and filthy with ashes and mud.

A truck took them from Lime Street station to Wren quarters in the Navy barracks. They'd been sent to become plotters at a secret Royal Navy and RAF Combined Services headquarters controlling the Western Approaches but, as Stroma had discovered from the other Wrens on the train, none of them knew exactly what plotting involved, nor did they know anything about the Western Approaches. A Wren Second Officer enlightened them with the aid of a wall map and a pointer.

‘It's all to do with protecting our Atlantic supply convoys. Our convoys haven't been able to use our southern ports since the Germans occupied France and parked themselves on our doorstep.' The pointer tapped along the French coast. ‘Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Pallice and Bordeaux have all become well-fortified German U-boat bases, very close to England and with direct access to the North Atlantic. So, the convoys have to head up round the north of Ireland and go into Glasgow and Liverpool instead.'

The pointer moved again.

‘The Western Approaches is what we call this rectangular area of ocean off the western coast of Great Britain, where the enemy's U-boats are trying to blockade our supply ships. With some success, I'm afraid. Fortunately, we now have the eyes and ears to find out what they're up to and take action accordingly, and lately the U-boats have been suffering pretty substantial losses. All clear, so far?'

They nodded.

‘Plotting is where you come in. You will be marking the position of the convoy ships and their escorts as they progress across the Atlantic so that the latest situation can be seen at a glance. You will also track any German U-boats that join the party. It's not difficult, but it requires absolute concentration for hours on end, so be prepared to get very tired. You'll be learning pretty much as you go along, I'm afraid. Basic instruction only – no time to spare for long training courses these days. You're going to have to jump in at the deep end and start swimming like mad straight away.'

Derby House on Merseyside looked innocent enough from the outside. There was nothing to show that it concealed the entrance to the secret headquarters. Down several flights of stairs lay a bomb-proof, gas-proof labyrinth of rooms under the streets of Liverpool, with ceilings and walls reinforced with concrete several feet thick, and where a desperate battle was being fought out in the Atlantic.

At the heart of the labyrinth lay the Naval Ops Room – a vast room with a map of the North Atlantic Ocean spread out on a central table. The map, illuminated by overhanging lamps, was divided up into grids, while models and arrows marked the position and direction of the convoys and their Royal Navy escorts, of RAF planes and of reported enemy U-boats. Another map on a wall went as high as the ceiling, and had to be reached by tall ladders that could be moved along the length of the wall. There were other maps and charts on the same wall – a map of the British Isles and northern France, another of the east coast of America and Canada, and chalked-up blackboards listing the names of convoy escorts, the status of RAF aircraft, details of weather reports – all kept up to the minute. Service personnel sat at a long desk above the table map, banks of telephones in front of them and, on a higher level, the Commander-in-Chief of the Western Approaches and his senior officers observed everything that was happening from a glass-fronted cabin.

The noise never ceased: people talking, telephones ringing, teleprinters chattering, typewriters clattering. And the action never stopped. Map markers were constantly on the move, messages flooding in from all directions – from convoy escorts, from merchant ships, from Coastal Command aircraft. Notices were put up and taken down, charts chalked-up, rubbed out and re-chalked. Twenty-four hours a day. It was all Top Secret, and the most secret place of all was the decoding room, which was kept locked and guarded at all times.

They were given the basic instruction promised by the Wren officer and Stroma found it simple enough to listen carefully to the information given through headphones and to position the ships, planes and U-boats on the table map with a wooden rake, or to climb the tall ladder to alter the wall map.

But the Wren officer had been right about the exhaustion. They worked in four-hour watches over two days with a forty-eight-hour break between. The four hours on and four hours off made proper sleep impossible, and, while on duty, there could be no lapse of concentration, no question of letting the mind wander for fear of a mistake that might cost men their lives. The convoy ships and their escorts – sometimes as many as sixty ships or more – zigzagged their way steadily across the map of the Atlantic Ocean while the U-boat packs shadowed them, ready to pounce.

When things were going well, the Ops Room was calm, almost quiet, but when they went badly the tempo increased frantically, and so did the noise. Stroma was on watch when a convoy from Halifax, Nova Scotia, was intercepted by a pack of twelve U-boats in the mid-Atlantic. More than half the merchant ships were sunk, including one of the Royal Navy's escort destroyers, and in icy winter seas that gave almost no chance of survival.