Last Man to Die

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘How many men on a submarine, Captain?’

  ‘Like this? Around fifty.’

  ‘Times three. A hundred and fifty men. To bring me back home.’ He nodded towards the crew waiting on the U-boat deck. ‘Do they know …’

  ‘That’s why they’re all there. To see you. To honour you. To know what they might be dying for. That’s all a soldier ever wants, isn’t it, to know what he’s dying for? I thought it only fair.’

  ‘And I have become their Angel of Death …’

  They were bumping alongside the hull, the dark waters of the Atlantic slapping its side, throwing the tiny rowing boat around and making it impossible for him to keep his balance, but there were hungry hands stretching down to grab him and haul him on board. As he found his feet on the slippery wooden deck casing he glanced around the men who were facing towards him, still saluting. He tried to look everyone directly in the eye, relieved in the near-darkness that he couldn’t. He stood to attention but did not return the salute; he saw no point in saluting death, there had already been too much dying.

  ‘Straight below, please. We’re already taking more risk than we ought to, sitting here. I think we’ve outstayed our welcome in Irish waters.’

  It was only as they led him away that he turned for one final look at the shore and Sinead, but she was already lost in the descending night. He hoped she had already dried the tears and had gone.

  EIGHT

  It was around first light on what looked like being a filthy day when the asdic operator aboard the frigate HMS Juno picked up the fleeting echo. It was just as likely to be a shoal of cod as a 1,000-tonne U-boat, he thought, but his was not to reason why. He informed the officer of the watch, a punctilious if unimaginative youth from Yeovil, a former stores clerk made lieutenant who did everything by the book. The young officer had no hesitation in deciding to wake the captain; it was his first tour of duty as officer of the watch, and he was already mightily frustrated that the war would almost certainly be over before he had a chance to lob a depth charge in anger and play his own role in the annihilation of Hitler. He had no desire to add to that frustration by getting caught out, so he pulled his naval cap more firmly over his head and blew down the voice pipe.

  The captain didn’t complain, he was too professional for that, but the croak in his voice betrayed the fatigue. They had just finished a particularly rough passage from the Arctic and were about to finish a far longer war, and somehow the adrenalin wasn’t pumping in the way it used to. He hadn’t been in home port for more than three months, none of them had, and to be ordered to turn round just a day out and take up position counting whitecaps off Rockall tested the patience of everyone. Yet even the suggestion of a submarine still caused the turbines to turn and the blood to surge. Through tactics and technology the Royal Navy had largely won the confrontation with the U-boat packs yet no commander underestimated the potential and the toughness of any U-boat crew, particularly one which had survived this long. The captain was on the bridge in less than a minute.

  ‘Report, Mr Ansell.’

  ‘Fleeting echo, sir! Indicating northerly heading. Trace very faint – asdic’s trying to pick it up again,’ the excited duty officer spluttered.

  ‘Steady on, Mr Ansell, you’ve got time to take a breath,’ the captain counselled. ‘Now, no chance of it being one of ours, heading back home to Scapa? Don’t want us snapping after our own tails, you know.’

  ‘Definitely not, sir,’ came the reply with a tone of hurt pride. ‘No reports of ours in the area, I’ve double-checked. I’ve also alerted the other ships in our group.’

  ‘Very well. We’d better try and pick them up again. Yeoman, form on a line bearing 270 degrees – course 030 degrees – ships 2,000 yards apart.’

  ‘Further instructions, sir?’

  ‘“Tally Ho!”, Mr Ansell. “Tally Ho!”’

  In the monochrome light that flooded U-494, the crewmen seemed already to be wearing death masks. There was a weariness about them even the tension couldn’t disperse. Hencke discovered the crew had returned to Kiel after a gruelling tour of duty in the waters of the Bay of Biscay, torpedo tubes empty, one victim claimed, nerves shattered and duty done, the crew desperately hoping that this was the end of their war, when they’d received orders to sail immediately for Ireland. They hadn’t even finished handing over their craft to the maintenance crew before they were instructed to refuel and were turned around; many of the crew hadn’t had chance to set foot on shore. The days without sunlight, breathing air contaminated by diesel fumes and rotting food, listening to the monotonous, maddening drip of condensation, having had no bath in fresh water for weeks, not even being able to take a relaxed crap, all left their marks on the faces of the submariners. They were haggard, bearded, dirty and scared. They had been ordered back to sea on a Friday, the thirteenth of April, and that was as bad a sign as an albatross building its nest in the conning tower.

  Early on the first day out from Ireland they had been brushed by the tentacles of enemy asdic, but a sharp change of course seemed to have thrown that off. Perhaps they hadn’t been noticed at all. On a normal patrol they would have taken a wide sweep round the Faeroes to avoid their notorious minefields before heading into the North Sea, but nothing was normal on this patrol. They had orders to take the short cut and risk the mines. It would save time. It might make them crab meat. But it also seemed to have fooled their pursuers. When finally they broke away from British coastal waters and into the North Sea the crew were allowed in pairs onto the conning tower bridge for a taste of night air to recover from the putrid atmosphere created by the tension.

  Eling had wanted to head for one of the U-boat bases in German-occupied Norway, or even one of the isolated fjords along the Scandinavian coast, but his suggestion had been rejected. The High Command didn’t want Hencke in some distant outpost of the Reich where their control was all but shot to hell and with local resistance fighters crawling out from behind every rock. They wanted Hencke home, in Germany. Eling’s orders were specific about that. So once in the North Sea they proceeded south, risking the surface by night, submerged by day and hugging the deep trench off the coast of Norway where the darkest, safest waters of the North Sea were to be found. But they couldn’t stay in the depths forever. Sometime, sometime soon, they would have to make a break for it.

  ‘Then we’re really going to find out how good a sailor our captain is,’ one veteran spat. ‘No torpedoes, no aircover, that stupid Scheisskerl Goebbels having told the entire fucking world what we’re up to … Going to be a ride to remember, this one.’

  ‘To where?’ Hencke had asked.

  ‘Kiel. Wilhelmshaven. Bremen. Probably to Hell. Wherever’s open. And if not … as close as we can get.’

  ‘He’ll get us home? The Captain’ll get us home?’ The voice belonged to a young sailor, on his first patrol, whose features had already been aged by the experience and the pale light as he sat in the shadows of empty torpedo racks.

  The veteran offered no reply, preferring to study the dirt in his finger nails.

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ the youth continued. His words lacked sentimentality; he was making a statement of fact rather than a plea of self-pity.

  ‘No one wants to die, you bloody idiot. We don’t get any choice in the matter,’ the veteran responded. His words were sharp, but his tone understanding.

  ‘But not yet. Please God, not yet. I … I haven’t even had a woman,’ he said. He was struggling hard to control the tremor in his voice, wanting to share. ‘I had it all planned for when we got back to port. A shower. A beer. Then a woman. I had it all arranged …’

  ‘Shit, you’d deserve an Iron Cross after going with one of those raddled old whores. They say they’ve had the clap so many times it’s incurable, nothing can touch it. The Bremerhaven burn. Rotten way to go.’

  It was coarse but not intended to be callous; the young seaman was now worrying about something other than dying at the bottom of the ocean, a
nd anything was better than that.

  ‘And what is it that you’re so willing to die for, Hencke?’ the veteran prompted, wiping the sweat from his brow with an oily rag.

  ‘What makes you think I’m so eager?’

  ‘You’re going back, aren’t you?’

  ‘Only if you are.’

  ‘I didn’t get a choice in the matter.’

  ‘Somehow war seems to take our choices and tear them into a thousand tiny pieces.’

  The veteran looked at Hencke caustically. He wasn’t in the mood for someone who talked in poetic riddles. He turned back to his young companion as his thoughts wandered off to their favourite hunting grounds. ‘When we get back, son, I’ll take you to a proper place, not one of those crabinfested whorehouses you’d end up in. A proper place with real women who understand what pleases a man. If you’re going to die, that’s the place to do it. A long, slow afternoon’s screwing with some gorgeous blonde who knows what she’s doing, her lips all over you, the fire stoking up inside you, then one great, fantastic explosion – and it’s all over. What a way to go!’

  ‘So we are going to get back, you think?’ the youth asked eagerly.

  Once again, the veteran didn’t reply but the insistent question disturbed him. He wiped his hands vigorously on the rag trying to rid himself of the frustration building up inside him, but no matter how hard he wiped it didn’t work. His hands got grimier, his frustration grew. He threw the cloth impatiently into a far corner of the torpedo room and turned on the unwanted guest. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Hencke?’

  Hencke looked at the anger in the other man’s eyes. ‘Don’t you want to get back to Germany?’

  ‘You must be a brave man, braver than I am to want to go back. Or mad, like a lunatic trying to get back into the asylum. Maybe you’ve been away too long and simply don’t know what a bedlam our beloved Reich’s turned into,’ he continued bitterly. ‘Each time we come back from a patrol everything’s changed again. The buildings and bars you used to know have gone, half your friends dead or disappeared, nothing works anymore. You try to find out if your family is still alive, but it can take you days to do that, by which time you’re out to sea again on another bloody patrol. The orders get crazier, the odds get more ridiculous, none of the bloody torpedoes work properly, while the medals on the chests of those shit-eating Nazis get bigger and bigger. That’s not the Germany that I signed up to defend!’

  ‘But it’s home, the only home you’ve got.’

  ‘And we were there! A spit away from dry land. It would have been the end of the war for us. Then you came along. If it weren’t for the fact that we’re Kriegsmarine and we’d follow the captain to the other side of damnation, you’d still be sitting on some potato pile in Ireland and we’d both be on our backs getting laid.’ He shook his head bitterly. ‘I really wish you weren’t here, Hencke.’

  ‘Don’t expect me to apologize. I didn’t ask to be here either.’

  ‘I don’t want an apology, I don’t want anything from you. All I want is half a chance of getting out of this tin can alive, and you can’t give me that.’

  Before he could continue, all conversation throughout the boat came to a stop. The submarine had changed course; it was noticeably bow-up and beginning to ascend. They were climbing out of the depths. They were heading home.

  ‘Message from Admiralty. They’ve established contact.’

  Churchill looked up from his chair in the Library. He had been in there an hour on his own, surrounded by the great men and events of history, wanting to be in touch, to draw strength, feeling at home amongst the memories. He had asked not to be disturbed unless it was important, and Cazolet knew that this was important. Yet the Old Man appeared not to have heard him. He sat in the light of a single green-topped table lamp, poring through the pages of an old book, bound in cracked leather.

  ‘Carlyle,’ he explained. ‘History of Frederick the Great. D’you know, Hitler is a devout follower of the old Prussian king. Almost mystical about him. Thought I might find some clues, some insight.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘Frederick waged war against all his neighbours, his armies rampaged throughout the land. He won great victories yet he reduced Prussia to poverty and starvation. And he took off his boots only once a year – on his wife’s birthday.’

  ‘So what clues do you find in that?’

  ‘None, dear boy. Absolutely none. But there is more. There came a time, in the middle of a long winter, when he found himself surrounded by a great coalition of his enemies. Winter of ‘62 – 1762. There appeared to be no salvation. Frederick himself was besieged in Berlin and considering taking poison, so desperate stood his cause.’

  ‘That does sound familiar.’

  ‘But then, then the miracle happened. At the height of his peril his enemy the Czarina died, the great coalition ranged against him fell apart, and the sun shone on his endeavours once more.’

  ‘A fairy tale.’

  Churchill shook his head as though it were a huge effort, weighed down by nearly two centuries of history. ‘It means I was right. He will never give in, Willie. He will live in hope of salvation until the day he dies. And this war will not stop until Hitler is dead. He will put his trust in ghosts rather than those who would urge him to give in, to bring the slaughter to an end. It must be by his death, Willie. Nothing else will do.’ Churchill closed the book reverently, as if closing the pages on his own life. ‘He’ll never leave Berlin. Eisenhower was quite wrong to worry. If only …’

  He couldn’t finish, he didn’t have to, not for Cazolet, not any more. Cazolet knew, shared the pain. And the guilt. There was a long period of silence between the two men.

  ‘The submarine. They’ve made contact with the submarine,’ Cazolet began again, but Churchill was waving his hand to cut him off.

  ‘No, Willie. No more reports. Not until it’s all over.’

  As Cazolet left he could see the tears back in Churchill’s eyes.

  There was neither time nor opportunity for finesse. The odds against them were overwhelming. There was little opportunity for surprise and the forces criss-crossing the sea and skies above them would react quickly and expertly, as they had learned to do in grinding the once insuperable Kriegsmarine into defeat. They would have only one moment in which to grasp the initiative; after that it would be simply a matter of time and great torment before their luck finally ran out.

  The plan was simple, for simplicity is born of desperation. The captain had explained it to every man in the crew over the intercom. ‘We’ve come this far together; you have a right to know what to expect.’ They would be rendezvousing with the two other U-boats – if they weren’t already at the bottom of the North Sea – just off the southern coast of Norway. It was Germany’s doorstep; there was no other route home, and that’s where the British forces would be waiting. At first contact the two other boats would go to full speed and head south and west, crossing wakes to make false echoes which might confuse the enemy, while U-494 slipped slowly south-south-east through the small hole in the net which the other boats had torn, hoping to get away before the deception was discovered, the hole was closed and their last chance gone. It was suicide, of course, probably for all three craft and certainly for the two decoys, but the fear was not new. Scarcely one in ten of their colleagues with whom they had started the war were still alive. They had been living on borrowed time for as long as any of them could remember.

  U-494 hung back, electric motors turning the screws slowly, allowing her sisters to make the running and to drag off the cover. They were blind but for hydrophones, eighty feet down, but sound travels a long way under water and the hydrophone operator could follow the trail of battle as clearly as if he were a spectator in the arena. It began with the thump of screws as the two sister ships began forcing their way through the cold waters of the North Sea, followed only minutes later by the high speed whine of surface turbines, alerted by their own hydrophones and giving chase l
ike greyhounds in the slips. The first submarine could be heard zigzagging, changing course, trying to find shelter in the underwater thermoclines which might hide and confuse the pursuers, but soon they could hear the crump of falling depth charges. You didn’t need a hydrophone to pick up their unmistakable sound. That was when U-494 began to put on a little speed, hiding behind the noise of battle, slipping through the gap they hoped had been torn in the defences.

  There was nothing for Hencke to do, there was nothing for anyone to do, but pray. He tried to concentrate on distractions, even embracing his memories to stave off the fear and the tomb-like claustrophobia, while the sweat poured down his face and splashed onto the bare metal plates beneath his feet.

  The second submarine was being attacked now, but all the time the sound of combat was drifting further away. And still no one had picked them up. ‘God help those poor bastards,’ the veteran muttered through clenched teeth as the cacophony of underwater explosions increased.

  ‘But save a little for us,’ whispered the youth.

  In the control room the hydrophone operator was reporting the action of battle. ‘Submarine engines stopped … can’t tell whether they’ve been hit or are trying to shake them off … more depth charges … engines started again at full speed … more depth charges, there seem to be at least three of the bastards circling above …’ He tried to clear the grit from his voice and swallowed his words along with it. But there was little need for his commentary; every man on board could hear the steady, insistent clamour of depth charges far away. When at last he looked up at the captain, his anguish told the story. The U-boat had been hit. Its race was nearing its end. ‘Sounds like one of the engines has stopped … tanks being blown … they’re trying for the surface but …’ He could hear the futile, ragged whine of the U-boat’s screw, more depth charges dropping on and around the stricken craft and, with an awesome finality, the sound of the pressure hull being crushed. He shook his head.