LORIENT
GERMAN-OCCUPIED FRANCE
HEADQUARTERS, 10TH U-BOAT FLOTILLA
NINE DAYS LATER
29 SEPTEMBER 1943
W
ATER DRIPPED FROM
M
AX AS HE STEPPED OUT OF THE TUB IN HIS
room at Hotel Beau Séjour, which had been requisitioned from its French owners for use by the officers of the U-boat force.
Four hours in the bath had soaked away the dirt and stink of the patrol. As the water drained out, it left behind a brown
ring of grease inside the tub. Let the French clean it up.
While he soaked, his trunk had been placed on the bed by a headquarters orderly and Max opened it to find his uniforms and
some of the few possessions that mattered to him—his sextant, books Mareth had given him, a picture of her, a rosary from
his father. Also his last will and testament, dutifully made out and notarized. U-Boat Command required a valid will from
all crewmen before sailing, a practicality that did little to inspire confidence among the men. It was a sensible precaution,
Max knew—Germanic, thorough, and he liked thoroughness. With casualties in the UBootwaffe over fifty percent, sailors no longer
joked about making a will. Before going on a war patrol, you packed your belongings, careful to omit French postcards and
indiscreet letters. One hardly wished for one’s family to discover that your most treasured correspondence was with a local
fille de joie named Enchanté. Then you put your will on top, closed the lid, handed the tin trunk over to the orderly, and
tried not to wonder who would open it next—you or the deceased property officer.
Max put his will aside to save it for next time. No need to write a new one—he left everything to his father. All two thousand
marks. That’s all he had in the Dresdner Bank, all he’d been able to put away, despite the raise that came with his last promotion.
Since
Meteor
, he’d been spending every mark he earned. Why save money for a future he would never live to see?
There was a letter to Mareth tucked into Max’s will, telling her to be brave, to go on with life, find someone else to love,
have children. Noble sentiments but hard to feel with conviction. As the war went on what he mostly felt was his courage trickling
down his legs like the urine he’d let go when the destroyer appeared out of the night. He was terrified of dying, of losing
Mareth, of losing the small dreams they had for a life together—a house in Kiel overlooking the harbor so he could watch the
ships, a gaggle of children, a dog. He clung to this fantasy all the more strongly as it receded amid the chaos of war. As
for death, his acceptance of its mounting certainty did not bring a sense of peace. He only feared it more.
Max put on a clean pair of underwear for the first time in eight weeks, then slipped into a pair of clean uniform pants. The
pants were old; he’d brought them from home. He’d paid one hundred marks plus twenty clothing coupons for them before the
war at Stechbarth’s in Berlin, official tailor to the forces. After pouring himself a glass of wine from the bottle on the
nightstand, he took up the thick packet of letters Mareth had sent while he was at sea. She wrote him every day. There must
have been fifty envelopes in the stack. He smiled as he flipped through them. The field post was free but Mareth had stamped
the envelopes anyway—with stamps that showed a U-boat commander, white cap reversed, peering into a periscope. She’d written
Max’s name below each one.
He lay down on the bed and began to go through the letters, starting with the oldest. Maybe it was his naval training, or
simply the Prussian blood in his veins, but he liked to do everything in its proper order. “Prussia is proud of you,” Mareth
sometimes teased him.
She prayed for him every morning in the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche near the Zoo Tower now, with St. Matthäus off the
Tiergartenstrasse having been destroyed. All the stained glass at the Gedächtniskirche had been taken down and stored after
the first bombing raids and it was dark in the church with the windows boarded up, but hundreds of candles burned, their reflections
dancing on the polished wooden pews and altar. She lit a new candle for him every day. Maybe it was good that he wasn’t in
Berlin now, because everyone smelled musty and damp—bathing was no longer permitted on weekdays. When he visited they could
take baths together, patriotically conserving water. But he should bring the soap, preferably something French and perfumed.
She’d run out of the supply she bought in Paris and all you could get in Berlin was a synthetic soap substitute that smelled
terrible, left a thick scum behind on the water, and was strictly rationed besides: each person received just two ounces per
month. The allotment of detergent was hardly more generous, and it was fortunate under these circumstances that the Sergeant
Major had been able to send along several boxes of Persil washing powder he’d “just happened to come across in one of his
storerooms.” (Max could only shake his head at that. His father probably had an entire storeroom full of the stuff.) He downed
another glass of wine and felt the warmth spread through his belly. U-Boat Command provided unlimited amounts of alcohol for
its sailors between war patrols, a small consolation to men living under a sentence of death.
Max knew he couldn’t get too drunk in the room—within the hour he had to attend a dinner being laid on by the flotilla commander
for the officers and crew of
U-114
.
He worked his way through the pile of envelopes. Soot fell out of one. She had passed a chimney sweep on the Hohenzollernstrasse—renamed
the GrafSpeestrasse now—and he let her break two small bits off his brush. She’d kept one and sent the other to Max in the
hope that it might bring them luck. On the U-Bahn last month she saw a new poster showing women how to examine their breasts
for lumps every week, part of the party’s anti-cancer campaign. She would teach him to do this for her. But only if he promised
to do it regularly. The twelfth letter now. He smiled at Mareth’s news and gossip: how she had stuffed her purse with rolls
at a banquet given by the Spanish ambassador so she’d have something to eat later; how she was feeding ten stray cats outside
her apartment building; how her father was furious with her for wasting food on the strays. She accompanied Herr von Woller
to diplomatic receptions at least twice a week. Mostly they were boring but sometimes there was dancing, and Mareth loved
to dance. One could only do so now at diplomatic receptions because Goebbels had banned dancing in public after the defeat
at Stalingrad. At the receptions she never took any partners under the age of sixty, so Max should not be jealous, though
it was true that most of the older men were lechers. His Excellency, the Swedish ambassador, had let his hand wander over
her derriere during a slow waltz. She ground her heel into his foot without saying a word and the hand returned quickly to
its proper position. The Croatian ambassador was even worse: he went so far as to pinch her on the bottom. She kicked him
in the shin and he didn’t do it again.
The bombing had not been so bad in recent weeks. Perhaps the British were being worn down. Perhaps they were feeling the pinch
because of brave men like Max who were doing everything they could for Germany. She hoped so. She prayed so. Meanwhile, she
was volunteering three nights a week for the NSV, the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization, providing assistance
to those displaced by the bombings, many of whom had lost everything and become desperate—women with small children to look
after and a husband at the front. Mareth had given away most of her wardrobe so he shouldn’t expect her to be so well dressed
the next time he returned on leave (though she promised she’d kept the lingerie he bought for her in Paris). She and Loremarie
played Ping-Pong at least twice a week to unwind and Mareth was getting quite good. Max should be prepared for defeat next
time they played.
He stopped reading and stood to put on his shirt, tie, and blue naval tunic, now heavy with the Iron Cross First Class, black
wound badge, auxiliary cruiser badge, and the U-Boat Service Medal, all pinned to the left breast of his coat The headquarters
orderly had polished his knee-high black riding boots. Max knew the boots were an affectation but enjoyed wearing them all
the same; most U-boat officers did, even though they were non-regulation.
Max took the last letter off the bottom of the stack and opened it. Mareth’s writing seemed unsteady. She had used an unusual
black ink. The letter began,
My mother was killed last night in a bombing raid. She agreed to come to Berlin for the Foreign Minister’s birthday party
at the Adlon. We were to fetch her at the apartment at 8:00. The British came over early, about 7:30, just as Papa and I were
leaving his office. Just as Daniel brought Papa’s automobile, the sirens went off and the police ordered us back inside. Papa
was terribly upset and we rushed to his office to telephone Mother. He said to go immediately to the bomb shelter in the far
end of the cellar—that it was very safe. I spoke to her and said please not to worry, that I loved her and soon we would all
be together. The police told us later that most residents of the building had properly gone to the cellar but a heavy bomb
hit the back of the building and it collapsed on top of the shelter and killed everyone. Our flat had no damage except for
some window panes blown in. Mother could simply have stayed in her room and would not have been harmed in the least. Max,
please, please come to Berlin as soon as you can.
He put down the letter and stared at the wall for a moment. He couldn’t remember his own mother and didn’t know what he should
be feeling. He hardly knew what to feel about anything anymore. At least Mareth hadn’t been hurt, thank God. He crossed himself.
It was selfish to think this way when her mother was dead, he knew, but that’s the way he felt. Besides, he had never even
met Countess von Woller. He quickly piled his belongings into the suitcase and summoned the orderly, a sailor too old for
sea duty who still remembered how to take orders. “When does the U-boat train leave for Kiel?”
“At 0200, Herr Kaleu.”
“You can get me a berth on it, yes?”
“At once, Herr Kaleu.”
Admiral Dönitz kept a special train that ran between the U-boat bases in France and the main base in Kiel, so Max didn’t have
to be at the mercy of the Reichsbahn, grown increasingly unreliable now that the Americans were bombing every major rail yard
in the Reich. Mail, supplies, torpedoes, and spare parts for the submarines were carried to and from Germany aboard the shuttling
U-boat trains, along with the men of the service. Max handed the suitcase over and asked the orderly to make certain it got
on the U-boat train.
After polishing his medals in the bathroom with a damp wash-cloth and pocketing the soap for Mareth, Max made his way to the
first-floor banquet room. The windows of the big room had just been replaced after the British blew them out in a nuisance
raid a week ago; he could still smell the putty and paint. The tables had been positioned in a horseshoe, their starched white
tablecloths hanging to the polished floor. Already his men had assembled and begun to make use of the bar.
Heinz, the torpedo chief petty officer, saw Max first. “Achtung!” he called. Immediately the men came to rigid attention,
a few of them overbalancing, already unsteady from drink. Max smiled at his crew. They weren’t such a bad lot. Clean-shaven
now in their regular blue naval uniforms, they looked trim and shipshape—far better than they had looked seven hours ago when
the boat had finally docked. The prewar sailors were especially trim in their short monkey jackets with double rows of brass
buttons; such jackets hadn’t been issued since the war broke out. Still, everyone’s eyes were bruised from lack of sleep,
faces white as chalk from being locked away in their narrow tube, only the bridge crew ever seeing the sun. To an outsider
the men might appear feverish and stricken but to Max they looked good considering what they had endured. In any event, he
was proud.
“As you were,” he said.
Immediately the drinking resumed. Most would be puking in a few hours, but they had earned it. After their first patrol Max
had drunk two bottles of brandy the first night back and passed out in the officers’ club. Tonight he would spare himself
because of the banquet and the train ride. A cigar was what he wanted most after five weeks without enough tobacco. Fortunately,
the flotilla commander had sent a fresh tin over to him after they docked. Max pulled one from his pocket and lit it, the
rich smoke filling his mouth. Damn it was good. Ferret was already sitting at the officers’ table and Max joined him. Lehmann
was mingling with the men. He’d probably have them all out the next morning collecting for Winter Relief.
Max gave Ferret a cigar. “A good patrol, Leutnant.”
“Thank you, Herr Kaleu.”
“Plans for your leave?”
“Nein, Herr Kaleu.”
Ferret never said much, a blessing on the boat but awkward on land. Was he married? Max couldn’t remember. “You will see your
girlfriend soon, yes?”
Ferret shrugged. “I just go to the officers’ rest house and have the women there, Herr Kaleu. No involvements.”
“But the involvements make it more interesting.”
Ferret nodded. “It’s hard to get close to a girl when you know you’re going to die soon.”
Max puffed on the cigar to steady his features. “Well now, Leutnant, you know we have an excellent chance of surviving until
the war ends.”
“Do we, sir?” Ferret pointed to the wall at their backs. “Like them, Herr Kaleu?”
Max turned around. The wall was lined with black-bordered portraits of the flotilla’s captains who had died in action since
the war began. There wasn’t much space left. My God, Würdemann was dead? They had picked up a radio transmission from him
not five days ago.
Max thought for a moment, puffing again on his cigar. Now he knew why Langsdorff had smoked them: they gave one a few moments
to think. “Ferret,” he said, trying to speak with conviction, “you know we have a good crew. We’ve made it through two patrols
now. That’s the hardest part, getting past the first two, you know that. From now on our experience will give us the edge
we need to survive.” He could hear the hollow ring in his own voice.