by Herman Wouk
Whatever happens, doing away with the Jews will remain Germany’s historic achievement. For two thousand years the European nations tried converting them, or isolating them, or driving them out. Yet when the Fiihrer took power there they were still. Only the leader of Kommando 1005 can appreciate the true grandeur of Adolf Hitler to the fullest. As Himmler said, “We will never talk about this to the world.” Even the mute evidence of the corpses must not exist. For otherwise the decadent democracies will pretend holy horror at Germany’s special measures against the Jews, should they find out, though they have no use for the Jews themselves; and the Bolsheviks of course will make crude distorted propaganda of anything that can be turned to the Reich’s discredit.
In short, Kommando 1005 has become the custodian of the great and sacred Reich secret; indeed, of Germany’s national honor. He, Paul Blobel, is in the last analysis as great a guardian of that honor as the most famous general in the war; but the difficult work he must do will never get the praise it merits. He is a German hero who must go unsung. Drunk or sober, this is what Paul Blobel truly thinks. He is, in his own mind, no common concentration camp plug-ugly; nothing like it. He is a cultivated professional man, in peacetime an independent architect, a loyal German who understands German world-philosophy and is serving heart and soul in a very demanding war job. One honestly needs nerves of iron.
Greiser learns, on arriving at the house in Minsk which the Standartenführer is occupying, that Blobel is not interested in a report on the economic process. There is big news. Kommando 1005 is going to the Ukraine! The Standartenführer has been nagging Berlin for a month to issue these orders. He is in a jovial mood, and presses a large glass of schnapps on the young officer, who is glad enough to get it. Down in the Ukraine things will hum, because that is his own territory, Blobel says. He was a leading officer of Einsatzgruppe C, and he insisted from the start on keeping decent maps and accurate body-count reports. As a result the Ukraine sweep can be done with system. All this groping around for grave sites wastes precious time, and the ground in the north is still frozen, and the whole thing is stupid. While they are cleaning out the Ukraine, he will send an officer detail back to Berlin to make a thorough review of all the confused records, maps, and reports of Einsatzgruppen A and B. That detail will then return and search out and mark every northern grave site in advance.
Hope stirs in Greiser that he is being detailed back to Berlin, but that is not it. Blobel has another mission for him. The graves in the Ukraine are enormous, much bigger than any Greiser has seen. One frame will not do down there, they will have to work with three for best results. Greiser is to proceed at once to Kiev with a detachment of a hundred Jews from the section, a suitable number of SS guards, and report to the office of the Reich commissar for the Ukraine. Blobel will issue to him the necessary top-priority authorizations for steel rails and the use of a foundry. The Jew work leader “Sammy” is a construction man, and Greiser will have no trouble manufacturing the frames in a week or so. Blobel wants them finished and ready for use when Section 1005 arrives in Kiev. Meanwhile, it will clean out one more small grave to the west of Minsk, which was found today.
Greiser diffidently asks about the economic processing of the new grave. Very little to do, says Blobel; the bodies in that grave are naked.
But Standartenfiihrer Blobel’s plan for the move to the Ukraine is delayed at the outset by a grave accident at the Minsk railroad station.
At about nine o’clock in the morning, when the train has already failed to show up for two hours, and the Jews in striped suits are drooping sleepily on their feet in two long lines that stretch the length of the platform, and the SS guards are grouped in desultory talk to kill time, a burly figure bursts from the Jews, grabs a machine gun from one of the guards, and begins shooting! It is never known whose gun he snatched, because several guards fall and their guns go clattering over the platform. But no other Jews have time to snatch up the fallen guns and make real trouble. From both ends of the platform SS men come running, pumping bullets into Sammy Mutterperl. He topples, still holding the machine gun, blood flowing over his striped suit. The surviving guards surround him in rage and riddle his body with bullets; possibly a hundred slugs enter his already lifeless body. They boot and stamp and kick the corpse all around the platform, kicking and kicking at his face until it is a mere pulp of blood and broken bone, as a hundred Jews look on in dumb paralyzed fear. Yet they do not quite kick off the wrecked face the contours of a grin.
Four SS men are sprawled dead on the platform; one crawls around wounded, trailing blood, crying like a woman. It is the Pisser; and after a few moments he lies still across the track, dead as any corpse he ever pissed on, his blood spurting on the steel rails and the wooden ties.
In his report Greiser fixes the blame on the SS noncom in charge of the armed guards, who drifted together instead of holding spaced positions along the double line of Jews as regulations require. The Jew work leader “Sammy” was a privileged character who got special food rations. The incident demonstrates again that the subhuman Jews are totally unpredictable. Therefore the harshest and most vigilant severity, as with wild animals, is the only safe method of handling them.
The detachment marches back from the station carrying the bodies. The dead SS men are left in Minsk; to receive honored burial in a German military cemetery. Mutterperl’s blood-soaked and bullet-riddled remains go on the truck with the Jews to the grave site, to be burned on the frame with the day’s corpses. Berel Jastrow sees the body, hears the whispered story down in the pit, and makes the blessing on evil news, Blessed be the true judge. He places himself at the frame when the pyre has burned down, and himself rakes out what he believes are Mutterperl’s bone fragments. As he shoves them into the crusher, he murmurs the old burial service:
“Lord, full of mercy, dweller on high, grant true rest, under the wings of the Presence among the holy and pure ones, to the soul of Samuel, son of Nahum Mendel, who has gone to his eternity…. Blessed is the Lord who created you justly, fed and sustained you justly, gave you death justly, and in thefuturewiüI resurrect’you justly.
So the faith teaches. But what resurrection can there be for these burned atomized remains? Well, the Talmud takes up the question of bodies destroyed by fire. It teaches that in each Jew there is one small bone that no fire can consume, that nothing can shatter; and that out of this minute indestructible bone, the resurrected body will grow and rise.
“Go in peace, Sammy,” Berel says when it is finished.
Now it is up to him to get to Prague.
63
AMERICAN torpedoes were still failing when the Moray set forth on its first war patrol. The two problems that haunted SubPac were dud torpedoes and dud captains. The service was secretive about both alarming deficiencies, but the submariners themselves all knew about the unreliable magnetic exploders of the Mark Fourteen torpedo, and about the captains who either had to be beached for overcaution or, on the Branch Hoban pattern, fell apart under attack. Aces like Captain Aster who combined cold courage with skill and luck in battle were few. Such men of picturesque sobriquets — Mush Morton, Fearless Freddie Warder, Lady Aster, Red Coe — were setting the pace in SubPac, inspiring the rest of the skippers despite the damnable torpedo failures. Within broad limits, they could get away with murder.
A large sign over Admiral Halsey’s advance headquarters in the Solomons read:
KILL JAPS
KILL JAPS
KILL MORE JAPS
A photograph of this sign hung on the bulkhead of Captain Aster’s cabin in the Moray.
April 19, 1943; one more day of war; a day burned into Byron Henry’s memory. For others elsewhere it was also a fateful day.
On April 19 the International Bermuda Conference was opening, after much delay, to decide on ways and means of helping “war refugees,” and Leslie Slote was there in the American delegation. And on that selfsame April 19, Passover Eve, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were rising in
revolt, having been warned that the Germans were about to wipe the ghetto out — a few underground fighters taking on the Wehrmacht, seeking only the death of a Sammy Mutterperl in fighting and killing Germans.
On April 19 sorrowing Japanese were cremating Admiral Yamamoto. The Japanese still could not grasp that their codes were being broken, and so the plan for Yamamoto’s risky air tour of forward bases had been broadcast in code. American fighter planes ambushed him in the sky, shot their way past escorting Zeroes, and gunned down the bomber he rode in. The search party groping in the Bougainville jungle came on Yamamoto’s scorched corpse in full-dress inspection uniform, still gripping his sword. So perished the best man Japan had.
On April 19 the American and British forces in North Africa were closing the ring around Rommel’s armies in Tunis, a German defeat as big as Stalingrad.
And on April 19 the Soviet government was reaching the point of breaking relations with the Polish government-in-exile. Nazi propagandists had been trumpeting the discovery of some ten thousand corpses in the uniforms of Polish army officers, buried in the Katyn woods in territory that the Russians had occupied from 1941 onward. Expressing righteous horror at this Soviet atrocity, the Germans were inviting neutral delegations to come and view the terrible mass graves. Since Stalin had openly shot multitudes of his own Red Army officers, the charge was at least plausible, and the Polish politicians in London had joined in suggesting an investigation. The fury of the Russian government at this idea was volcanic, and on April 19 the sensation was cresting.
So things were happening; yet in general, on the worldwide fronts the war simply went on, sluggishly here, actively there. No great turning point occurred on April 19. But nobody aboard the Moray was likely to forget that day.
It started with the down-the-throat shot.
“Open the doors forward,” Aster said.
Goose pimples rose all over Byron’s body. Submariners talked a lot about down-the-throat shots; usually in the calm safety of bars on dry land, or in wardrooms late at night. Aster had often said that in extremis he might try it; and in the training of his new vessel off Honolulu, he had taken many practice shots at a destroyer charging straight for him. Even those dummy runs had been hair-raising. Only a few skippers had ever tried it against the enemy and returned to tell the story.
Aster took the microphone. His voice was quiet, yet vibrant with controlled rage. “All hands hear this. He’s heading for us along our torpedo wakes. I’m going to shoot him down the throat. We’ve been tracking this convoy for three days, and I’m not about to lose it because of those torpedo failures. Our fish ran straight, but they were duds again. We’ve still got twelve torpedoes on board, and there are major targets up there, a troop transport and two big freighters. He’s the only escort, and if he drives us down and works us over they’ll escape. So I’m going to shoot him with contact exploders on a shallow setting. Look alive.”
The periscope stayed up. The executive officer reeled off ranges, bearings, target angles, his voice tightening and steadying; Pete Betmann, a man of thirty, bald as an egg, taciturn and quick-witted. Hastily Byron cranked the data into the computer, giving the destroyer an estimated flank speed of forty knots. It was a weird problem, evolving with unbelievable rapidity. No down-the-throat exercise in the attack trainer, or at sea off Honolulu, had gone this fast.
“Range twelve hundred yards. Bearing zero one zero, drifting to port.”
“Fire one!”
Thump of the escaping torpedo; jolt of the deck underfoot. Byron had no confidence in his small gyro angle. Luck would decide this one.
“The wake is missing to starboard, Captain,” said Betmann.
“Hell!”
“Range nine hundred yards… Range eight hundred fifty yards…”
Aster’s choices were melting like a handful of snow in a fire. He could still order, “Go deep — use negative,” and plunge, or he could make a radical turn, probably take a terrific blast from a pinpointed depth-charging, and then hope to go deep and survive. Or he could fire again. Either way the Moray was already on the brink.
“Range eight hundred yards.”
Could a torpedo still work? It shot out of the tube locked on safety. At eight hundred yards and closing so fast, it might not arm before it struck…
“Fire two! Fire three! Fire four!”
Byron’s heart was beating so hard, and seemed to have swelled so huge in his chest, that he had to gasp for air. The closing speed of the destroyer and torpedo must be seventy knots! Propellers approaching, ker-da-TRUMM, ker-da-TRUMM, ker-da-TRUMM—
BLAMMM!
The exec in a scream: “HIT! My God, Captain, you blew his bow off! He’s in two pieces!”
Thunderous rumbling shakes the hull.
“HIT! Oh, Captain, he’s a shambles! His magazines must be going up! There’s a gun mount flying through the air! And wreckage, and bodies, and his motor whaleboat, end over end —”
“Let me have a look,” Aster snapped. The exec stepped away from the periscope, his face red and distorted, his naked scalp glistening. Aster swung the periscope about, droning, “Kay, the two freighters are hightailing it away, but the transport is turning toward us. That captain must be demented or in panic. Very good. Down scope!”
Folding up the handles, stepping away from the smoothly plunging shaft of the periscope, Aster bit out clear level words over the microphone. “Now all hands. The U.S.S. Moray has scored its first victory. That Jap destroyer is sinking in two sections. Well done. And our prime target, the transport, is heading this way. He’s a ten-thousand-tonner, full of soldiers. So here’s a big chance. We’ll shoot him, then pursue the freighters on the surface. Let’s get them all this time, and make up for the convoy we lost and for all those dud fish. Clean sweep!”
Eager yells echoed through the ship. Aster, curt and loud: “Knock it off! Celebrate when we’ve got ‘em. Make ready the bow tubes.”
The attack developed like a blackboard drill. Betmann exposed the periscope time after time, crisply rattling off data. The Jap came plodding into position. Perhaps because he was heading away from the sinking pieces of the destroyer he thought he was on an escape course.
“Open the outer doors.”
The attack diagram was clear and perfect in Byron’s mind, the eternal moving triangle of submarining: the transport steaming along in the sunshine at twenty knots, the Moray half a mile on its beam and some sixty feet under water, slinking toward it at four knots, and the torpedoes in the open flooded stern tubes, ready to race from the one to the other at forty-five knots. Only malfunction, massive malfunction of American machinery, could save the Jap now.
“Final bearing and shoot.”
“Up periscope! Mark. Bearing zero zero three. Down scope!”
Aster fired a spread of three torpedoes. Within seconds explosions rocked the conning tower, and heavy shocking detonations rang along the hull. Whoops, cheers, rebel yells, laughter, whistles, shouts broke out all over the submarine. In the crowded tower sailors punched each other and capered.
The exec shouted, “Captain, two sure hits. On the quarter, and amidships. I see flames. She’s afire, smoking, listing to starboard, down by the bow.”
“Surface and man all guns.”
The rush of fresh air at the cracking of the hatch, the shaft of sunlight, the drip of sparkling seawater, the healthy growl of the diesels starting up, touched off in Byron a surge of exhilaration. He seemed to float up the ladder to the bridge.
“God in heaven, what a sight!” said Betmann, coming beside him.
It was a beautiful day: clear blue sky with a few high puffy clouds, gently swelling blue sea, blinding white sun. The equatorial air was humid and very hot. Close by, the transport steeply listed under a cloud of smoke, its red bottom showing. A strident alarm siren was wailing, and yelling men in life jackets were climbing over the side and down cargo nets. A couple of miles away the forecastle of the destroyer still floated, with forlorn figures cli
nging to it and crowded boats tossing close by.
“Let’s circle this fellow,” said Captain Aster, chewing on his cigar, “and see where the freighters have got off to.”
His tone was debonair, but as he took the cigar from his mouth Byron could see his hand shake. The patrol was a success right now, but by the look of Carter Aster he was ravening for more; tightened grinning mouth, coldly shining eyes. For thirty-seven days, sharpened by the torpedo failure, this greed for action had been building up in him. Until a quarter of an hour ago, a goose-egg first patrol threatened him. No more.
As they rounded the stern, passing the huge brass propeller lifted clear out of the water, a wild sight burst on them. The transport was disgorging its troops on this side. In covered launches, in open landing craft and motor-boats, on wide gray rafts, Jap soldiers crowded in the thousands. Hundreds more were swarming on the deck and fleeing down the dangling cargo nets and rope ladders. “Like ants off a hot plate,” Aster gaily observed. The blue sea was half-gray with troops bobbing in kapok life vests.
“Good Lord,” Betmann said, “how many of them does it hold?”
Aster said absently, peering through binoculars at the two distant freighters, “Oh, these Japs are cattle. They just pack ‘em in. What’s the range to those freighters, Pete?”
Betmann looked through a dripping alidade. A burst of machine gun fire drowned out his reply, as smoke and flame spurted from a covered launch jammed with soldiers.
“I’ll be damned,” said Aster, smiling, “he’s trying to put a hole in us! He just might, too.” Cupping his hands, he shouted, “Number two gun, sink him.”
The forty-millimeters opened up, and the Japanese began leaping off the launch. Pieces flew from its hull, but it went on firing for a few seconds, and then the silent smoking little wreck sank. Many inert bodies in green uniforms and gray life vests floated off it.