Wreckers Must Breathe (12 page)

The base itself had three galleries. The first was at dock level. The wet cells were situated on this level. This gallery ran in a semi-circle round the ends of the submarine docks. Opposite each dock was a tunnel leading down into relatively large caves. These were the store-rooms. They were guarded by steel doors. At each end the gallery cut sharply back from the docks into really big caves strengthened by girders. In the cave near the ramp leading to the upper galleries were the dynamos run by diesel engines, and farther back a complete foundry with electric furnaces. And still farther in were the workshops where there were lathes and machine tools capable of producing every component of a submarine. The big cave at the other end of the curved gallery was a gigantic fuel and munition store. The fuel was in great tanks that resembled the tanks on petrol trucks. There were also stocks of copper, steel ingots, lead, zinc, manganese and other vital materials.

The upper two galleries ran straight, one on top of the other. These were the men's quarters. At a pinch there was accommodation for nearly seven hundred men. The personnel of the base itself numbered over a hundred, while most of the U-boats using the base were of the deep-sea type and had a crew of sixty or more.

These galleries were all cemented to avoid damp and leading off them were big food store-rooms.

The time required to complete the construction of this colossal undertaking and the huge quantities of material which would have had to be brought in through the under-sea entrance made me convinced that Logan's belief that we were on the north coast of Cornwall was incorrect. True, he had appeared to be all right when following the submarine's course with his compass, but in a mental case appearances were, I knew, often deceptive, and I was by no means sure that at that time his mental faculties were quite sound. My own belief was that the direction of the submarine's change of course had been southerly and not northerly, and that, in fact, the base was somewhere on the north Spanish coast.

Though I did not at that time know precisely how long it had taken to build the base, I knew that it must have been a considerable time. This tied up with the fact that the Spanish civil war began in July, 1936. Germany came into it from the start, and one of the reasons she did this was to obtain air and submarine bases in that country. The more I thought about it the more convinced I became that Logan had not been in a fit mental state to plot a course at the time U 34 was making for the base. And yet he was quite capable of thinking things out for himself. He could do a job of work as well and as thoroughly as any one. It was mainly in his conversation, or rather his lack of it, that he revealed his mental state. He very seldom spoke, and even when asked a direct question would as often as not reply with a non-committal, ‘Ar!' I had two conversations with the doctor about him, and found him frankly puzzled. On each occasion, he stressed that he was not a mental specialist. ‘I do not onderstand vat ees the matter vith him,' he said on the second occasion.

This depressed me and so did the atmosphere of the base, for as the days passed there was an almost imperceptible change in the spirit of the men. The reason for this was the score boards. At the end of each of the big canteens were large blackboards. On the left hand side were the numbers of all U-boats operating from the base. In all there were seventeen, their numbers ranging from 15 to 62. As and when opportunity offered the boats radioed their sinkings in code to the base. Such communication was often delayed owing to the necessity of surfacing and drying off the aerials before communication could be established. However, experience showed that in general boats reported at least every other day, and there was a standing order that they should endeavour to do this, if possible, in order that the commodore should be able to replace as early as possible boats stationed on particular trade routes which were believed lost.

Information regarding sinkings was chalked up on the boards opposite the number of the submarine responsible. Wherever possible the tonnage as well as the name of the ship was given. One of the first to be marked up was the
Athenia
. This was marked up the day before our arrival at the base. I did not see the boards until after we had been at the base three days. But from the conversation of the men I gathered that they were very jubilant about it. They were not so jubilant, however, when those who understood English and listened in to American broadcasts realized the heavy loss of life and the tone of the American press. Moreover, the attitude of the German High Command towards this sinking was not encouraging. The base was notified of their attitude through the English broadcasts. The base had no wireless transmitter and there was no attempt to keep in direct wireless contact with Germany. Moreover, the base had no seperate wavelength for receiving instructions from Germany. Instructions were given to the base by way of an ingenious code worked into the broadcasts in English. It was only by accident that I learned this—my unrevealed knowledge of German was the cause. All communications to the base were included in announcements about U-boats. How the code worked I do not know, but the idea of it was clever, for no one would look for coded instructions in German propaganda broadcasts.

Whenever the wireless-room orderly entered the canteen to chalk up sinkings there was great excitement among the men at the base, for quite heavy bets were constantly being made either on the basis of the submarines with the greatest tonnage of sinkings or on the basis of the number sunk. But by the end of the first week four boats had not reported a sinking for three days. After ten days, there were seven boats that had not reported for three days or more. Moreover, four days after our arrival at the base, U 47 had come in with her after deck ripped open as a result of being rammed. She was leaking badly and had eight men killed. Three days later, on the Sunday that was, U 21 docked with her bridge twisted to ribbons and her for'ard gun and both A.A. guns wrecked—total killed, twelve, nine wounded. Including our own boat, U 34, there were three boats in for heavy repairs.

That was the reason for the change of atmosphere. I do not believe that the German naval authorities had reckoned with losses on this scale. Every man in the service knew that the losses in modern warface would be heavy. But seven in two weeks and three badly damaged out of a total of seventeen, was something that brought death very near to every U-boat man. On September 14 the boards were taken down. Every man in the base knew what that meant. Losses were, in the official view, becoming so heavy that they were likely to affect the morale of the men.

It was only then, I think, that I really understood how it was possible for the commodore of the base to take such drastic action against the Gestapo as Commodore Thepe had done. It could never have happened in Kiel or even at a base in the South Atlantic. What had made it possible here was the cramped quarters. The commodore had been thrown into too close contact with Fulke for over three months. Moreover, as in the removed-from-the-world atmosphere of a school, the commodore had come to regard the base as his whole world. Germany and the Gestapo were no longer real to him.

Throughout the day following the removal of the score boards the whole base radiated an atmosphere of tension. And just before U 41 went out, shortly after midnight, I thought the men would refuse to go. They came down to the dock looking haggard and dejected, and some of them seemed definitely mutinous. Once fear gets hold of a man there is no buoyancy in him. But the commander was a tough little bow-legged man, and he came down as cheery as I've ever seen a man who was going to his death. He came down with the commodore full of jokes about what he'd do when he met the British Atlantic fleet. The crew went aboard all grins. A week later U 41 was rammed and sunk by a British destroyer convoying a fleet of tankers from the Gulf of Mexico.

U 41 was the last boat to leave the base for some time. Thereafter, boats were laid up as they came in and the crews told to take a rest. By that I knew some big operation was pending and I remembered the paper that the commander of U 34 had given Logan. The date for the meeting of those units of the British fleet was September 18. It was now September 14. We had three days in which to do something.

This sounds rather as though I had only just remembered this aspect of the affair. That is not strictly true. It had loomed in the back of my mind as something which had to be faced sooner or later. I had certainly not forgotten about it. After all, it was the cause of our presence at the base. But the many little everyday problems of life as a prisoner and the life itself combined to drive it into the background. Only when I saw the U-boats being held back at the base and heard the vague rumours circulating of a big action pending, did I realize that the respon-sibility for endeavouring to prevent the loss of many British lives rested entirely on my shoulders.

It was up to me to think out some scheme whereby the U-boats could be prevented from leaving the base. And that brought me face to face with another problem—the sacrifice of my own life. I don't suppose I am any more of a coward than the average person. After all, I had been willing to sacrifice my life when on board the U-boat. But it is one thing to accept the line of action decided upon by someone else and quite another to settle down in cold blood deliberately to plot one's own death. But this is what I had to do. I could not imagine any possibility that might achieve my purpose that would not mean my own death and Logan's.

I don't believe I slept at all that night. Interminable hours I lay there in the dark, thinking. I heard the guard changed at three. I was feeling tired but determined to think out a scheme. I wanted to talk the matter over with Logan, but he was snoring peacefully and anyway I was convinced that he would be quite incapable, in his present state, of assisting in the evolution of a workable scheme, and also I feared he might not be discreet. At the same time, I was certain I could count on his help—he did everything I told him like a child.

Not unnaturally my thoughts centred around high explosive, of which there was a big store in the base, if only one could get at it. There seemed, on the face of it, two possible schemes. One was the complete destruction of the base by detonating the munitions store. The other was the blocking of the entrance by means of some sort of explosive charge. Of the two I favoured the latter. It at least gave us a chance of escape, slender though it was. At the same time the submarines were left intact. At the back of my mind I think I had a vague picture of myself presenting the First Lord with half a dozen submarines as my contribution to Britain's war effort. It was the sort of grandiose fantastic vision that revolves in one's brain when one is on the verge of sleep.

I suppose I must have then slept, for the next thing I remember is being woken up by the guard. ‘Fatigue!' We tumbled out of bed. I glanced at my watch. It was five o'clock. When we got down to the docks we found that it was the submersible barge that was coming in. It was the first time I had seen it. In appearance it looked like a small tramp steamer—the sort of coastal barges that you see carrying oil fuel up the Thames. She plied between Dublin and Lisbon, calling at the base on each journey and always arriving empty at these two ports. Her papers were faked, I suppose.

We were back in our cell again just before six. As I lay in bed I could hear the rattle of cups in the guard-room. They were always served with coffee at six. I lay awake, thinking. A depth charge would, of course, be the most satisfactory method of blocking the entrance to the base. But there were no depth charges available and anyway I didn't know how to handle them. Another idea was to fire the after torpedo of U 21 which was lying in No. 4 dock. This dock was the centre one of the seven and the submarine's stern would be facing straight down the main cave so that the torpedo would strike that part of the cave which was directly above the under-sea exit. Even if the fall was only slight, it would take a diver some time to clear it away for the cradle to run out smoothly on its rails. The rails themselves might even get bent and have to be relaid.

The only snag was that I knew nothing about torpedoes and felt certain that they were highly complicated. Moreover, the dock gates would have to be open and the submarine floating. At present she was sitting high and dry in a dock that had been emptied of water. There remained only the guns. The after six inch gun of U 21 was in working order. But I was not quite sure what impression a six inch shell would make on the rock. In addition, of course, I had not the faintest idea how it worked or how I could get hold of the ammunition. And then there was the question of my own guard.

The key grated in the lock of our door and a petty officer poked his head in. ‘Aufstehen!' he said. I dressed myself quite automatically, ate my breakfast and started my daily chores with my mind full of the wildest and most fantastic schemes for getting control of the after gun of U 21. I now considered this the only practical means of achieving my aim of blocking the exit. It was now Friday, September 15. The rendezvous was for 1.30 p.m. on Monday, September 18. That meant that the U-boats would leave the base on Sunday night. Between now and Sunday evening I had got to find out how the gun worked and think out all the details of the plan. It was a horrible respon-sibility, and, because my mind was elsewhere, I was reprimanded several times for slacking.

Throughout the whole of the morning we did service as stevedores, unloading the store barge and piling cases of provisions on trolleys which were then dragged off to the various store-rooms of the base. Some went to the store-room opposite each dock to provision submarines. Others went to the stores in the upper galleries and were for consumption in the base. There were in all about fifty men working on the barge or busy storing the cargo in the various store-rooms.

After lunch, however, I had a bit of luck. We were taken to No. 4 dock where men were working with a mobile automatic drill. We were given shovels and a barrow with which to remove the debris. What was happening was that it had been found necessary to remove the for'ard gun of the U-boat
en bloc
from the deck so that the deck plates, which had been buckled, could be renewed while the gun itself was repaired on the dockside by the workshop engineers. When we arrived, the gun had been unbolted from its mounting, but in order to sling it on to the dockside it was necessary to erect a derrick. One leg of the derrick could be braced against the opposite side of the dock, but it had been found necessary to drill holes to steady the two shorter legs on the dock itself.