The Sea Break

Title Page
Epigraph
The Background to the Hagenfels Affair
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright

World War II had few better kept naval secrets than the circumstances surrounding the break out from Lourenço Marques in November, 1942, of the German freighter
Hagenfels.
To this day no official account of the incident has been published, nor was there any reference to it at the time other than a brief naval communiqué. Constituting as it did a flagrant breach of Portuguese neutrality by armed forces of the British, the
Hagenfels
affair created a delicate situation between Britain and Portugal although it was carried out as a private venture without the authority of the Admiralty.

For some time, the Wilhelmstrasse’s denials notwithstanding, the Portuguese Government believed that the break out was a German operation, but as time went on and evidence
accumulated
it became clear that the ship had been under British command.

It was fortunate for British diplomacy that the affair ended as it did and that the principal witnesses were not, while the war lasted, available to the Portuguese. Although the
operation
was well conceived and skilfully executed the Navy claimed no credit for it, maintaining an uncompromising silence which no amount of inquiry has been able to break. But all this happened a long time ago since when some of those concerned on both sides have talked, and with the aid of Lieutenant-Commander Widmark’s diary it has been possible to piece together the story. In particular David Rohrbach, now working on a kibbutz in Palestine, and Johan le Roux, a farmer in the Western Transvaal, have provided useful information. On the German side Captain Kurt Lindemann, living in retirement in Westphalia, has been equally helpful.

In considering the conduct of Lieutenant-Commander Widmark, the prime mover in this unusual affair, it is as well to have some knowledge of his background. The only child of a wealthy Cape family, he read law at Cambridge and on his return to South Africa entered his father’s legal practice in Cape Town. He showed little enthusiasm for the law, however, his real interests being yachting and the R.N.V.R. He collected naval books, built up a useful naval library, and became a minor authority on Nelson, whose tactics and strategy he had closely studied.

In 1937, with two friends, he sailed the ketch
Albatross
from Cape Town to the West Indies and thence through the Panama Canal to San Francisco, where he sold her, he and his crew returning to the Cape by way of England. This voyage established Widmark as a man of considerable determination and a resourceful seaman. Reserved, with a dry sense of humour, his close friends knew him to be both responsive and sensitive.

When war broke out he was a lieutenant in the Cape Town Division of the R.N.V.R. (S.A.) and was soon in command of a mine-sweeping trawler based on Simonstown. Later he graduated to an anti-submarine trawler. At the end of 1940 he was given command of the Antarctic whaler
Nordhval,
then fitting out in Durban as an anti-submarine escort vessel. He took her to the Eastern Mediterranean, arriving in Alexandria in April, 1941.

A month later she was ordered to Suda Bay to assist in the evacuation of the army from Crete, that operation having reached a critical phase.

Three days after her arrival in Crete,
Nordhval
was
dive-bombed
and sunk in the Kasos Strait in the early hours of the morning while escorting a small merchant vessel. The destroyer
Vibrant
was soon on the scene and although burdened with some six hundred Australian troops, she picked up the
Nordhval
’s survivors.

Later in the morning she herself was attacked by
dive-bombers
,
sinking shortly before 11 a.m. Widmark then found himself on a carley float with fifteen other men, one of whom was his first lieutenant, Richard Olafsen, an old friend from R.N.V.R. Cape Town days. Towards noon a number of low flying Messerschmitts made systematic runs over the area, machine-gunning the men in the water. Widmark saw most of the men on his float killed or wounded, including Olafsen, who died in his arms. At nightfall the destroyer
Whiteside
arrived and picked up those who had survived, among them Widmark.

On his return to Alexandria he was sent to Cairo on survivor’s leave. This over he was given command of the A/S whaler
Southern
Berg
, a more modern vessel than the
Nordhval,
attached to the Inshore Squadron for escort duties on the Libyan coast.

Early in July he arrived back in Alexandria in
Southern
Berg
to learn that his mother had been lost when the ship in which she was returning to South Africa had been torpedoed in a gale by a U-boat south of Madeira. There were no survivors.

Those close to him saw a marked change in Stephen
Widmark
at this time. He became cold and withdrawn and it was evident that his mother’s death, and the manner of it, following so close on the incident in the Kasos Strait, had affected him profoundly.

On 7th August, soon after dawn,
Southern
Berg
, bound from Alexandria to Tobruk escorting the water-carrier
Tidewater,
obtained a promising asdic contact off Mersa Matruh. The contact was classified as “submarine” and Widmark took his ship into the attack. After a thirty-five minute hunt during which he dropped five patterns of depth charges, he forced a U-boat to the surface and there attacked it with gunfire. The U-boat’s crew abandoned ship and there were many men, including wounded, in the water when the submarine sank. It was a fine day with a calm sea but Widmark made no attempt to pick up survivors, leaving the scene at high speed and later rejoining
Tidewater.

On his return to Alexandria he was criticised for failing to pick up survivors, but defended his action on the grounds that
he had sighted the periscope of another U-boat and had at once proceeded to the north-west to attack it. Failing to make asdic contact, he said he had felt it his duty to return to
Tidewater
. It is significant that he did not make a sighting report at the time, nor did he mention the periscope to anyone on the bridge of
Southern
Berg
. For his action in destroying the U-boat he received a bar to the D.S.C. which he had earned at Suda Bay for taking off survivors from an Admiralty tanker while under enemy air attack.

A month later he was again in the news. The convoy he was escorting was attacked by enemy aircraft off Ras Azzaz and an old ship,
The
Maid
of
Kilkenny,
carrying some seven hundred German prisoners of war, was hit and sunk.
Southern
Berg
, steaming at full speed and zigzagging, engaged the enemy aircraft and while doing so twice steamed through clusters of German P.O.W. in the water, killing and drowning many of them.

The Senior Officer of the escort in the A.A. sloop
Peregrine
signalled
Southern
Berg
:
Keep
clear
of
men
in
water.
Somewhat ambiguously, Widmark replied:
I
am
engaging
the
enemy
more
closely
in
defence
of
the
convoy.

On his return to Alexandria he was sent for by the Chief of Staff. What took place at their interview is not known, but a few days later Widmark was relieved of his command and returned to South Africa five months before the completion of his normal tour of duty. It was these incidents which earned him the nickname “The Butcher.” It was known to his associates that he resented the nickname and felt he had been the victim of a grave injustice. On reaching Cape Town he was promoted to lieutenant-commander and was placed on the staff of the Director of the S.A. Naval Forces, whom he later represented in the Combined Operations Room at Naval Headquarters. He made no secret of his resentment at being assigned to what he regarded as a non-combatant rôle. It was while engaged on these duties that he conceived and planned the capture of the
Hagenfels
.

So much for the background. To what extent its events played a part in shaping Widmark’s determination to embark upon the operation remains a matter for conjecture, but it seems likely that they had disturbed the balance of his mind and that his dislike for Germans had become psychopathic. It is evident from his diary that he brooded long and deeply over the decision he had made, for he foresaw it would endanger many lives and the cause to which he was devoted.

A final word in his defence. He has been much criticised among other things for involving women in the
Hagenfels
affair, only one of whom had any complicity in it. It is clear, however, that once the operation had been launched he could not have put any of the women ashore without hazarding its outcome and, perhaps more important, without destroying the
impression
he had so carefully created that the break out was a German venture.

The grey Buick drew away from the shade of the jacarandas in front of the Union frontier post at Komatipoort, went out through the gates opened by an African policeman and moved slowly over the small no-man’s-land to the Portuguese post at Ressano Garcia; there it stopped outside a brick building with a red-tiled roof which shimmered in the midday sun.

Stephen Widmark got out and stretched. “God! I’m stiff and hot!” He took a linen jacket from the back seat and slung it over his arm, then, methodically, he gathered up the camera, binoculars and sunglasses. McFadden came from the far side of the car carrying the brief-case with the passports and other travel documents. Their faces were streaked with dust and perspiration and they looked as if they’d come a long way, but McFadden’s eyes were still bright.

“What I cuid do to a beer is nobody’s business, Steve boy!”

“There’s a roadhouse at the Matola Bridge. Won’t be long now, Chiefy.”

As they walked up the steps to the screen door, a car came in from the Mozambique road and parked on the far side of the building.

There was nobody but an immigration official in the room they entered.

Widmark put the camera and the binoculars on the counter. “Pretty quiet,” he said. “When I came through here last, there were about ten cars waiting.”

“No petrol rationing then, laddie.”

They showed their passports to the Portuguese official and filled in his forms and then went out along the veranda to the customs room. When they had finished with the clerk there
and were turning to leave, the screen-door opened and a man came in, as dusty as they were. Tall and sunburnt, he had blond hair and, unexpectedly because he was so fair, brown eyes. On his left cheek-bone, neat and symmetrical, were two small scars. He stood aside as the others passed and, speaking Portuguese, greeted the clerk, who seemed to know him. For a moment Widmark’s eyes met the tall man’s and he was aware of a flicker of recognition. Then he and McFadden had left the room and were walking back to the Buick. On the other side of the driveway they saw a beige Chevrolet with Lourenço Marques number-plates.

They drove through the far gates, handed the customs clearance slip to the African policeman and accelerated down the gravel road which led through bushveld and over the Lebombos to Lourenço Marques.

“See that chap who came into the customs office as we left, Chiefy?”

“The tall man?”

“Yes. Notice anything odd about him?”

“Can’t say I did, really.”

“Didn’t you see the duelling scars? Left cheek?”

“Aye. I saw them. Could’ve been from an accident, Steve.”

Widmark shook his head emphatically. “Not those scars. That was a Hun, Chiefy, even if he can speak Portuguese.”

“Ah, weel. There’s plenty of Jerries in Lourenço Marques by all accounts.”

“Tell you something else. Whoever he is, we’ve met before. There’s something unpleasantly familiar about him. Can’t place him, but I’m pretty certain he recognised me. Saw it in his eyes as we passed.”

“Well,” said McFadden philosophically, “there’s no law against you and me taking a wee journey to L.M. I wouldn’t fash myself about a stranger.”

Widmark frowned. “If he is a stranger.”

They drove on in silence, Widmark trying to place the
tall man, wondering where he’d seen him before. If he were a German he couldn’t enter the Union. What was he doing at the frontier post? His thoughts were interrupted by McFadden’s chuckle. “I could’a wet maself when that African policeman looked behind the back seat.”

“I never had a moment’s worry about
that
,
Chiefy. After this ruddy war’s over we’re going into the smuggling business. McFadden and Widmark—proprietary limited. Smugglers and Over-the-Border Requisites.”

For a long time after that Widmark was silent, and
McFadden
knew him too well to try and force the pace. Many miles on Widmark said, apropos of nothing. “I suppose you realise what this means, Chiefy?”

“What’s that, Steve boy?” McFadden looked sideways at the sombre face, the eyes staring ahead, the emphatically shut mouth.

“This job. You realise it means we meet these bastards face to face.” He said it with an intensity of feeling the Scot couldn’t understand. The enemy was something abstract. It was
the
other
side
.
Something he thought of as dangerous, unpleasant, to be respected, feared, and in those brief moments of combat which were war, something he tried indirectly, by doing his particular job, to destroy.

Widmark went on. “Face to face. I’ve been wanting that for a long time.”

At the Matola Bridge they sat on the veranda of the
road-house
and ate bread rolls with goat’s milk cheese and olives, and drank a glass of white wine. When they reached Lourenço Marques, Widmark dropped the Scot and his suitcase near the railway station on the Praça McMahon, where McFadden took a taxi to the Cardoso Hotel. He knew that Rohrbach and Johan le Roux were already there but he would not recognise them, nor they him, for they were to be complete strangers. Widmark drove on to the Polana. The Newt would be there but they, too, would be strangers. There were many
advantages
in concentrating their force in small groups in three
hotels, and that was why Michael Kent and Hans le Roux, when they arrived by train that day, had booked in at the Hotel Clube near the Vasco da Gama gardens on the Avenida Aquiar. To the hotel staff and its residents, these were two young South Africans holidaying in Lourenço Marques: very welcome at that time of year, outside the normal tourist season, because visitors from the Union were by no means plentiful after three years of the Second World War.

Widmark dined late that night, at a table in the shadows on the veranda, alone, remote, absorbed in his thoughts. They took him back to the ante-room outside the Chief of Staff’s office in Cape Town—it had really begun there. He sighed. They had come a long way since.