Dickie did. He swung to port and stopped both engines for a few seconds. The stern juddered and slapped into the water. Smith was nearly thrown off his feet. He grabbed a stanchion just in time. But the trick worked. The second torpedo went skimming below the surface some five yards away, a sinister steel ‘fish’ carrying its cargo of death with it.
‘Full ahead,’ Dickie roared and they surged forwards once again. Smith mopped the cold sweat off his brow and concentrated on tackling the U-boat, which wallowed in the heaving sea as the wind howled and the rain pelted down from a sinister, leaden-grey sky. If he had been a destroyer skipper, Smith knew he would have rammed the conning tower. That would have sunk the U-boat within seconds. But the bow of the Swordfish was too weak for that. He’d probably sink his own ship if he attempted it. What was he going to do, then?
* * *
The Black Baron cursed. He knew he dared not fire another ‘fish’ at that range. He was too close. Down on the deck the second gun crew was trying to take over and open fire. All around them on the rain-tossed steel deck lay the men of the first crew, dead and dying, and that damned Tommy machine-gunner still kept up his merciless fire. He raised his pistol and fired a wild burst at the Tommy. He knew he hadn’t a chance of hitting him, but it did let him give vent to his burning rage.
Suddenly he had it. The Tommy was now racing towards him at top speed, the huge white bow wave almost obscuring the flying craft. It looked as if he might attempt to ram the U-23. But the Black Baron knew the motor torpedo boat’s hull was made of wood. It couldn’t stand the impact at high speed. The Tommy would be the one to sink. Therefore, he should be the one to do the ramming. He whistled into the voice tube and ordered excitedly, ‘Both ahead – full… Volle Fahrt voraus!’
Kneeling on the deck, blood dripping from his shattered nose and the new wound in his shoulder, like a boxer trying to get to his feet before a count of ten, Peters cried weakly, ‘Don’t, skipper… With this trim she’ll…’ He gasped and fell full length on the deck with the other dead, his warning unheeded.
The Black Baron’s eyes glistened like those of a man demented. ‘Fool,’ he hissed at the dead man. ‘What do you know, eh?’ His black, hideous face set in a grimace of burning rage, he tensed at the conning tower as the two craft closed up on each other rapidly. The U-23 tossed and barrelled in the water, made unwieldy by the fact that her trim had gone and her stern was out of the water. And all the time the air was filled with the hiss of the rain and the bitter chatter of automatic weapons, followed by the maniac screams of ricochets.
The wireless came tumbling down. Angry blue sparks ran the length of the deck where the cables touched. One of the gunlayers lugging shells up to the deck guns was struck. His body contorted crazily. Blue fire wreathed him for a moment. The air was abruptly full of the cloying stink of charring flesh. Instinctively the Black Baron touched his own fire-mutilated face. The man fell screaming and dying to the body-littered deck, the rain turning to steam as it hit him.
Now the two craft were some two hundred yards apart: the one going all out weaving and bobbing, the other ploughing through the heaving sea, barely under control but intent on its collision course.
‘He’s going to ram us, Smithie!’ Dickie yelled in alarm above the chatter of Ginger’s guns. ‘The Hun’s coming straight at us. Shall I break off action?’
‘Never,’ Smith replied, his handsome young face set and purposeful. ‘Billy,’ he yelled to Bennett, ‘get on that depth charge. At the double!’
‘Ay ay, sir,’ the fat cockney answered and doubled awkwardly to where the two remaining depth charges lay in their housings. He knelt and readied himself at the firing trigger.
Smith bit his bottom lip with worry. If he got this wrong, both the Swordfish and the U-boat would perish in the explosion. He made his decision. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled above the racket – the racing engines, the pounding of the German gun. Ginger’s twin machine-guns blazing away – ‘Dickie, when I drop my hand hard to port, go like hell and pull all the stops out!’
‘Righto, Smithie,’ Dickie replied cheerfully, his silk muffler flying in the wind.
Smith raised his right arm. ‘Ready, Billy?’ he called.
‘Ready, sir!’
Smith took one last look at the U-boat moving sluggishly towards them, the skipper on the bridge of the conning tower, the dead on the glistening rolling deck, the men cluttered round the gun, the black ribbons of their white caps flying in the wind. Then he yelled ‘FIRE!’ and in the same instant that the two depth charges flew into the air and then started dropping into the sea, he let his right hand fall.
Dickie didn’t hesitate. He threw the Swordfish round in a wild curve. Hastily Smith grabbed for a stanchion and flung a hasty look over his shoulder as they roared away. The first depth charge exploded in a gush of wild white water. A moment later the second followed. The U-boat seemed to leap out of the water to crash down low into the sea the next moment. Plates groaned, buckled and were ripped by that enormous blast wave so close. A blind blue light ran the length of the deck: a giant blowtorch of searing flame. It swept the gun crew overboard, as if they had never existed. The periscope mast buckled and then fell limply over the side of the shattered conning tower. Slowly, very slowly, the wrecked U-boat started to sink.
Dickie eased back the throttle and the Swordfish started to slow down. ‘Pick up survivors?’ he called to Smith, who stood there fixed, the raindrops lashing his face, coloured a garish hue from the flames on the burning sub.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Smith answered, his voice toneless. ‘She can’t harm us now. Yes, half speed ahead.’
They pulled level with the U-boat, its hull scarred and stripped of paint to reveal the gleaming silver of the steel plate below. A lone man in an officer’s cap stood on the conning tower of the wrecked boat, staring at them bleakly.
When they were fifty feet away, Smith ordered, ‘Stop both.’ Cupping his hands about his mouth, he yelled, ‘Do you speak English?’
The man on the bridge, his face horribly scarred, Smith now saw, from some old wound, did not answer. He seemed not to know that they were even there, but remained motionless, as the water crept ever higher, the rain beating against his battered face.
‘We’ll pick up your survivors,’ Smith cried. ‘Hurry up. You’ve only got seconds left. Hurry up.’
The words died on his lips. He could see that the German was not listening. Slowly he raised his hand to his cap in salute. For the first time the lone German skipper – for Smith guessed he had to be the U-boat captain – seemed to become aware of him. Gravely he returned the salute. It was thus, the two enemies saluting each other in that howling storm, with the rain lashing their hard-set faces, that the U-23 vanished beneath the waves, taking the Black Baron with it.
THREE
END RUN
‘Life to be sure, is nothing much to lose
But young men think it is and we were young’
A. E. Housman
One
‘Pan Baron,’ the grizzled peasant with the shotgun slung over his shoulder took off his cap, knelt on one knee and kissed Baron Oleksy’s hand.
The Baron, his fur collar turned up against the biting Silesian cold, a revolver strapped around his waist, looked worried as the peasant rose and put his cap back on. Behind them, in the ditches on both sides of the long cobbled road that led to the Annaberg some ten kilometres away, his men looked worried, too. ‘Niensti, Henryk?’
‘Tak, tak, Pan Baron,’ the peasant replied. Baron Oleksy had sent the man up the road two hours before to scout the countryside. For days now there had been rumours sweeping that icy plain where the wind blew in straight from Siberia, or so it seemed in winter, that the Germans had started their offensive on the Annaberg. Poles, their pathetic bits and pieces piled up on hand carts, had been fleeing eastwards all week, while the local Germans had become truculent and threatening. Both signs that they thought von der Goltz’s Iron Div
ision was on the march. Now it seemedthey were right.
‘How many, Henryk?’ the Baron asked, as his men crouched lower in the frost-white ditches, weapons at the ready.
In the peasant fashion, Henryk raised his fingers, all ten of them three times.
‘Thirty?’
‘Tak, tak, Pan Baron.’
Baron Oleksy frowned. He had only half that number. But he did have the element of surprise on his side, and they depressingly needed a German prisoner: one who would sing like a little canary and give the defenders of the Annaberg the information of what to expect – and when.
‘A tank, too,’ Henryk added slowly, as if every thought process cost him some effort.
‘Just one?’
‘Yes.’
‘A big one?’
‘No, a little tank. Pan Baron, with a little gun, perhaps just a machine gun.’
‘A whippet,’ the Baron told himself, the kind the French had pioneered during the war. He guessed on account of the light tank that this was a reconnaissance party, sent ahead of the division, to test the Polish positions along the main road to the Holy Mountain. Well, he thought, the Germans were going to find out that the Poles were prepared to resist to the end rather than lose their new country. He turned to his rag-and-tag volunteers, all men from his estate and armed with whatever weapons he had been able to find for them in the great hall. ‘Listen, men, the Germans are coming. They are not the main force, but just a probe. If we can stop them, the rest will hesitate. It will give us on the Annaberg another day. You understand?’ He spoke slowly and carefully. The men were a good bunch, but all were totally illiterate and a little slow-witted. One had to be careful that they understood.
‘Now, we can tackle them. Because we have surprise on our side.’
Some of them nodded their comprehension; the others just listened in that stolid Polish peasant manner of theirs.
‘But they have a tank with them. Those of you who were in the war will know what that is. Now we have no heavy guns – cannon like in the war. But we can still deal with this tank, if we keep our heads when it appears.’ He turned to the scout. ‘Henryk, get the cart please.’
The peasant took off his cap again, bowed and ran to the little thatched cottage to the rear, where they had tethered out of sight the horses and cart which had brought them here.
A few moments later came the patient clip-clop of hooves on the frozen cobbles and the two great farmhorses came plodding up, twin jets of grey breath coming from their nostrils, as they towed the open-side cart.
‘Woo!’ Henryk said, and jerked back the reins, as the cart came to the group.
The Baron didn’t waste time. It wouldn’t be too long before the first Germans appeared and by then they had to be in their ambush positions. With surprising agility for a man of his age, the Baron sprang on to the back of the wagon and said, ‘I am going to show you something. When I was with the Polish Division in France in 1918, we had nothing to fight the German tanks with. But the French showed us a trick.’ He grinned briefly, showing his gold teeth of which he was rather proud. ‘I suspect some of the French were communists and had used the device against the police before the war.’
His men did not return his grin. Peasants, he reminded himself, used to long, hard days in the fields, working by themselves, had simply no sense of humour or imagination.
‘I thought we might run into one of their armoured vehicles so I came prepared. Henryk, up here. Smartly now.’
As Henryk clambered up to him, he took one of the empty vodka bottles from the crate and held it up for all of them to see. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we are going to make petrol bombs. Like this.’ He stuffed a piece of wick into the neck of the bottle and motioned Henryk to lift the heavy square tin which contained ten litres of precious petrol. ‘We fill the bottle half full of petrol.’ He nodded to the peasant and Henryk did as he bade him to. ‘So here you are – the petrol bomb.’
‘What do we do with them, Pan Baron?’ big lumbering Andrej asked.
The Baron shook his head in mock wonder. ‘Why, you great oaf, when you spot an enemy tank, you light the wick with a match and throw the bottle at the tank. It explodes and sets the thing on fire. That’s what you do with it.’
‘Thank you, Pan Baron,’ the peasant said humbly.
‘All right then, let every man make one fire bomb. Come on, let’s get on with it. We haven’t all the time in the world.’
Half an hour later they spotted the first of the Germans: two men in field-grey on horseback, followed by half a dozen others advancing cautiously down either side of the road, weapons at the ready. Further back, perhaps some three hundred metres behind the horsemen, there was a small high-silhouetted tank. Two men sat on the hull and another ten were grouped around it in a loose protective formation.
Hurriedly the Baron whispered to Henryk, ‘Pass the word… Let the tank get by first before we start anything. And keep very low!’ He ducked deeper into the ditch and pulled the frozen straw which they had taken from the cart closer over his head.
The minutes passed in tense apprehension. The clip-clop of the horses’ hooves on the frozen cobbles came closer. Now the waiting men could pick out the voices of the Germans as they moved forwards, their rifles unslung, with bayonets attached to them.
The Baron risked a swift look. The first of them were about seventy metres away now. They were a rough-looking bunch, armed to the teeth, with stick grenades in their boots and belts. He guessed they’d be veterans of the trenches, hardbitten ruthless men who couldn’t settle down again after the war and now roamed Europe taking their revenge for the defeat in 1918, stealing, looting and raping on the way. He told himself that if they failed to take them by surprise, they’d have a nasty fight on their hands.
Now he could make out the talk of the two leading horsemen, as they rode by at a walking pace. ‘Women,’ they were saying, ‘the general should give a man a woman at least once a week. When I was at Verdun in sixteen we had whorehouses with real French whores right behind the front…’
The Baron smiled slightly despite the tension. Soldiers were the same everywhere. Women and food, that’s all they ever talked about. Suddenly his smile vanished. One of the men on foot was saying, ‘Lazy swine these Polacks. Look at all that straw in the ditch. Make good fodder or bedding for the horses.’ The Baron’s heart skipped a beat. Would the German come over and take a look? If he did, they were finished.
Another voice said, ‘Probably no use anyway. Damp and then froze over. Come on. Let’s get this over with. It’ll be dark in an hour. I for one don’t want to be caught out here in the open. They say the Polacks aren’t taking no prisoners and they cut off yer love-bone before they shoot yer. Brr!’
The first batch passed and the Baron sneaked a look from his hiding place. They were well up the road but still within range of his little band. Now the tank was rattling up. There was a single machine gun mounted on its turret, but there was a soldier sitting with his back against it. Good. By the time the soldier reacted and the gunner was able to fire, their petrol bombs should have done their deadly work. He began to count off the seconds. At ten, he would give the signal.
‘One… two… three… four… five…six… seven… eight… nine…’
He shook the bottle to wet the wick with petrol once more, lit the wick and crying ‘TEN!’ rose from his hiding place. With all his strength he hurled his petrol bomb at the back of the little tank, some ten metres away.
Crack! The bottle shattered. Blue flames leapt up immediately. The petrol which had seeped the length of the hull started to burn furiously. One of the Germans, whose boots had been set on fire, dropped screaming to the cobbles and tried to tug them off with hands that were beginning to burn themselves.
That first explosion acted as a signal. Further down the road, the other half of his men threw aside the straw and rose up in the ditches. Wild firing broke out. The leading Germans were caught completely by surprise. One of the horses reare
d up, its legs flailing the air crazily. Its rider lost hold of the reins and fell to the cobbles like a sack of potatoes. Next instant Henryk had dashed out onto the cobbles and began busily sawing at his throat with a long knife while the German lay there sprawled out unconscious. His comrade who had wanted a frontline whorehouse fell slumped across his horse’s neck, a sudden patch of scarlet spreading across his field-grey back. His mount panicked. Whinnying shrilly it set off down the road carrying the dying man with it.
Now flames were everywhere. The tank was wreathed in them. The Baron, his chest heaving with the effort, could hear the piteous screams of agony coming from the trapped men inside it. But he had no time for the crewmen. He had to stop the firing and take some prisoners. Already he could see the Germans were cowed, but they’d fight to the death if his own people kept on firing.
‘Hande hoch,’ he cried, ignoring the bullets whistling through the air all about him. ‘Nicht mehr schiessen… Verstanden? Hande hoch!’
The German survivors, kneeling or taking cover behind the skeletal trees at the side of the road, stared at the tall elegant figure with the hunting rifle slung over his shoulder and a petrol bomb in his hand. He dropped the bottle to the cobbles with a crash of splintering glass.
That seemed to act as a signal. Perhaps the Germans thought this was a gentleman who would keep his word and not slaughter them out of hand, as they had been taught to believe the Poles would once they were captured. The firing started to slacken. Finally it petered away altogether and throwing away their weapons, the Germans began to raise their hands in sullen reluctance.
‘All right, men, pick up their weapons and get them over here.’
His men needed no urging. They surged forwards joyously, seizing the fine German Mauser rifles, pushing their prisoners onto the road, grabbing the factory-made German cigarettes from their pockets – they’d make a change from the coarse, black stinking home-grown morhaka the peasants smoked – and their money, too.
The Baltic Run Page 15