Death and Honor

by W. E. B Griffin

  “And there had been no reason to send the Stadt Kassel to the South Atlantic to intercept Allied merchantmen headed from Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay to England or the Mediterranean Sea. For one thing, the U-boats again were doing a fine job, in large part because they were being replenished in the River Plate by ‘neutral’ ships while the Argentines looked the other way.”

  Von und zu Waching had let them absorb all that, then continued: “That situation deteriorated severely and rapidly, as you well know, gentlemen, when the Americans established their air base at Pôrto Alegre, Brazil, from which they fly their specially rigged B-24 bombers on wide-ranging antisubmarine patrols. That had made it necessary for the U-boats to operate outside the B-24’s patrolling range.

  “Secondly, the Americans caught on to the replenishment by ‘neutral’ merchantmen in the River Plate. The Americans sent one of their submarines after one of them, the Reine de la Mer, sinking her and the U-boat that was tied up alongside for the replenishment.

  “The official version of that sinking was ‘an unfortunate explosion,’ but the Argentines let us know they would be very unhappy if we attempted to resume replenishment activities anywhere in Argentine waters.

  “And your unfortunate experience in Samborombón Bay has made it clear they were perfectly willing—no matter their personal sympathies—to do what was necessary to protect their neutrality.

  “For obvious reasons—although we tried it and are continuing the effort— use of U-boats converted to replenishment vessels is an unsatisfactory solution to the problem. By the time the replenishment submarines rendezvous with the hunter U-boats, they have barely enough of their own fuel to take them home, and little—sometimes no—fuel available to transfer.

  “And as they have no refrigerator compartments, they cannot bring adequate supplies of frozen food to their sister submariners. And further, transferring heavy machinery—much less torpedoes—from one U-boat to another on the high seas was something that had not been considered when the U-boats had been designed. As you well know, it is difficult to move anything heavy in smooth seas, and just about impossible to transfer torpedoes in anything rougher.

  “At this point, Admiral Raeder, Admiral Canaris, and others took another look at the Stadt Kassel. With only minor additional modifications—the installation of auxiliary fuel-storage tanks and the addition of winches and pumps, primarily, and ports near the waterline—she readily could be converted to a splendid submarine replenishment vessel. Getting her through the English Channel remained risky, but in present circumstances, that risk seemed justified. The U-boats in the South Atlantic were out of fuel, out of torpedoes, out of food. The conversions were ordered.

  “Admiral Canaris then suggested, and Admiral Raeder agreed, that it would be better to reflag the Stadt Kassel. Not only could a neutral—say, Spanish— vessel pass through the English Channel immune to British interference, but she could call at Montevideo and Buenos Aires and other ports, and there purchase food and other supplies, obviating the need for her to sail back and forth to Europe.

  “The question then became where could we find a competent crew for what was now the Ciudad de Cádiz? A crew not only in sympathy with the aims of Germany, but of proven devotion and courage?”

  Von und zu Waching had taken a moment to look each man in the eye, then had said, “You have just answered that question for me, gentlemen. I salute you.”

  And his right arm had shot out in the Nazi salute.

  Ten minutes later, Rottenführer Plinzer returned to the bridge to tell Capitán de Banderano that luncheon was served.

  He nodded his understanding, took one last look at the empty South Atlantic, then left the bridge for the wardroom.

  The wardroom was large enough for a dining table used for nothing else. It had not been that way on the Océano Pacífico. Her one wardroom table had to be used for everything that required a flat surface.

  When Capitán de Banderano walked into the wardroom, all those officers who were not standing rose quickly to their feet. They were all neatly uniformed, and there were far more of them than were normally found on a freighter of this size.

  “Please be seated, gentlemen,” Capitán de Banderano said as he slid into his chair at the head of the table.

  The officers sat down. Unless there was an emergency requiring their services, they would remain seated until Capitán de Banderano left the table or he formally excused them.

  The wardroom customs of the Ciudad de Cádiz were very much the customs of ships of the line of the Royal Spanish Navy. This was not only because Capitán de Banderano was a graduate of the Spanish Naval Academy—as three generations before him had been—and because before the Civil War he had been a lieutenant commander in the Royal Spanish Navy and master of the frigate Almirante de Posco. It also was because the Ciudad de Cádiz was, in Capitán de Banderano’s judgment, not an ordinary freighter but a de facto man-of-war, and had to be run accordingly.

  Before the Civil War, de Banderano had every reason to believe that he would rise in rank to capitán—his father had—or possibly even to almirante— as had his grandfather. But the godless Communists and their friends had destroyed that ambition, as well as most of Spain itself.

  Early in the Civil War, de Banderano had been detached from the Almirante de Posco to serve on the staff of El Generalissimo Francisco Franco shortly after that great man saw it as his Christian duty to take over the reins of government from the king and expel the godless Communists from Spain in order to restore Spain to her former greatness.

  As the Civil War dragged on and on, de Banderano’s duties had less and less to do with the navy; but they had taken him to all fronts and given him the opportunity to see what the Communists had in mind for Spain. And he had seen that they were godless, the anti-Christ. With his own eyes, he had witnessed the murdered priests and the raped nuns and the results of mass executions.

  And he had seen, too, that the Germans and the Italians—both fully aware of the threat communism posed to the very survival of Christian civilization— had come to the aid of a fellow Christian nation that once again had infidel hordes raging at her gates.

  It was de Banderano’s professional opinion as an officer that without the help of German weapons provided to General Franco’s army, without the aerial support of the German Condor Legion, without the sixty thousand troops the Italians had sent, the war probably would have been lost.

  The English and the Americans had remained “neutral” in the conflict. But that in practice had meant they were helping the enemy. The Americans had even sent soldiers, formed into the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, to aid the Communists.

  The behavior of the English and the Americans had baffled de Banderano. The usual explanation of it was that they were not Roman Catholic, and that their “churches” had been infiltrated and corrupted by Communists; but he thought that was too simple an answer. A large number of the Germans who came to help Spain were Protestant. He also thought the other answer was too simple: that the Jews controlled both England and America.

  Too many good Spanish Jews had fought as valiantly as anyone on the side of El Caudillo—Franco—for anyone to believe that all Jews were allied with the anti-Christ.

  By the time General Francisco Franco had finally, after three bloody years, brought the godless Communists to their knees, Spain was destitute—and not only because the Communists had stolen almost the entire gold stocks of the kingdom; literally tons of gold taken to Russia.

  There was hardly enough money to operate, much less construct, men-of-war. The once-proud Spanish navy was on its knees again, thanks to the Communists. By then Capitán José Francisco de Banderano had understood there would be no command of a man-of-war for him in the Royal Spanish Navy post-Civil War.

  Yet both his ability and his faithful service had not gone unnoticed. He was rewarded with a command in the Spanish merchant navy.

  Before he was approached by the German naval attaché and offered com
mand of the Comerciante del Océano Pacífico, he had seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears American navy ships roaming the North Atlantic.

  The Americans were searching for German submarines, the latter of which had under international law every right to sink vessels bound for England laden with war matériel. When the American ships found a U-boat they reported their positions by radio, in the clear. In the clear meant that radios aboard English men-of-war were given the positions of German submarines—near the supposedly “neutral” American men-of-war.

  The notion of violating the rules of warfare by violating anyone’s neutrality would have deeply offended him before the Civil War. Now it seemed only right. The actions of the English during the Civil War were blatantly antagonistic to neutrality. And, later, the actions of the Americans after the beginning of the current war, but before they themselves joined the hostilities, were equally contrary to neutrality.

  Whatever their reasons for opposing Hitler, for refusing to accept that the war Hitler was waging against the Communists was their own war, the fact was that England and America were fighting Germany, and that was sufficient cause for Capitán José Francisco de Banderano to do whatever he could to oppose them.

  Capitán de Banderano hadn’t hesitated a moment before accepting the German offer to take command of the Comerciante del Océano Pacífico, and he had been honored by their offer for him to take command of the Ciudad de Cádiz.

  [TWO]

  Aboard U-boat 405 48 Degrees 85 Minutes South Latitude 59 Degrees 45 Minutes West Longitude 1250 7 July 1943

  Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm von Dattenberg, twenty-six years of age, was a large but gaunt Swabian—since leaving the submarine pens at St. Nazaire four months earlier, he had lost forty of his normal 190 pounds. Von Dattenberg took his eyes from the now no-longer-resilient rubber pads of the periscope and saw that both his chief of the boat and his number one had their eyes on him.

  He issued two orders by making two gestures, first signaling by pointing to the deck . . .

  “Down periscope!” the chief of the boat bellowed.

  ... then, accompanied by a smile, jerking his thumb upward.

  “Prepare to surface!” the chief of the boat bellowed.

  “Signals lampman, stand by to go to the conning tower,” Kapitänleutnant von Dattenberg ordered.

  “With the Herr Kapitänleutnant’s permission?” the chief of the boat asked softly.

  He wants to operate the signal lamp himself?

  Well, why not?

  Von Dattenberg nodded.

  “That’s either the Ciudad de Cádiz, Erich,” von Dattenberg said to his executive officer, Oberleutnant zur See Erich Müllenburg, “or His Brittanic Majesty’s cruiser Ajax very cleverly camouflaged.”

  Müllenburg nodded and smiled, but said nothing.

  He didn’t trust himself to speak. He was one of the very few aboard who knew their fuel supply was down to only ten hours of cruising. Alternate plans had already been made, in case the Ciudad de Cádiz was not at the rendezvous point. They would make for the Falklands. When close, or the fuel ran out, whichever came first, the boat would be scuttled and the crew would try to make it to the remote islands in one dinghy, what rafts they could jury-rig, and the four fifteen-man rubber boats.

  “Send ‘Sorry to be late,’ ” von Dattenberg ordered.

  The chief of the boat put the lamp to his shoulder and flashed the message.

  There was an immediate reply from the Ciudad de Cádiz.

  The chief—unnecessarily, as von Dattenberg could read Morse code— waited until the message had finished, then reported: “The reply, sir, is, ‘Better late than never.’ ”

  “Send. ‘Request permission to lay alongside.’ ”

  Sixty seconds later, the chief reported, “ ‘Permission granted,’ sir.”

  “Put the boat alongside, Oberleutnant Müllenburg,” von Dattenberg ordered. “Carefully. We don’t want to ram her.”

  As the U-405 inched carefully up to the Ciudad de Cádiz, a huge watertight door near the waterline swung outward from her hull. A cushion— a web of old truck tires—was put over the side, and a series of neatly uniformed seamen tossed lines to crewmen of U-405 standing on the submarine’s deck.

  As the lines were made tight, von Dattenberg saw neatly uniformed officers lined up behind a man with the four gold stripes of a captain on his sleeves. And then he saw that all the uniforms were not naval. Three of them were black.

  The SS! What the hell is that all about?

  Two gangways—one a simple ribbed plank, the other with rope railings— were put out from the Ciudad de Cádiz. The gangways were nearly level with the deck of U-405, with a slight upward incline.

  If there was any fuel in my tanks, there would be a slight downward incline.

  “You have the conn, Erich,” von Dattenberg said. “The chief and I are going aboard that absolutely beautiful ship.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”

  Von Dattenberg and the chief of the boat climbed down from the conning tower and made their way to the gangplank with the rope railings.

  The U-boat commander suddenly remembered his appearance. His beard was not neatly trimmed. He wore a sweater that was dirty and full of holes, a pair of equally dirty and worn trousers, a uniform tunic that was missing buttons, grease-soaked, oily tennis shoes, and an equally filthy brimmed cap.

  He marched up the gangplank, not touching the railing, and stopped just inside the Ciudad de Cádiz. There he saluted.

  "Kapitänleutnant von Dattenberg, commanding U-boat 405,” he announced. “Request permission to come aboard.”

  He saw that everyone was saluting as he had, by touching the brims of their uniform caps. Everyone but the SS officers—they gave the Nazi straight-armed salute.

  “Permission granted,” Capitán José Francisco de Banderano said, then walked to the end of the gangplank and offered his hand. “Welcome aboard, Kapitän. I am Capitán de Banderano, master of the Ciudad de Cádiz.”

  Von Dattenberg clicked his heels.

  “Perhaps you would care to join me in my cabin, Kapitän, while my engineering officer shows your man our refueling facilities?”

  “You are very kind, sir.”

  “Make yourself comfortable, Kapitän,” de Banderano said when they were in his cabin. “Perhaps taking a chair at the table might be best. I somehow suspect that you will be gracious enough to accept my offer of a little something to eat.”

  “With all respect, Capitán,” von Dattenberg replied not unpleasantly, “I’ll hold off on eating until my crew has had a little something.”

  “I’ve taken the liberty of ordering my stewards to send sandwiches aboard to give a little something to eat to half of your men, while the other half come aboard and go to the galley for a little something. Does that meet with your approval, Kapitän?”

  “You are indeed very kind, sir.”

  “How does ham and eggs sound for a little something for you, Kapitän?”

  “Like manna from heaven, Capitán.”

  De Banderano picked up his telephone and dialed a number.

  “Ham and eggs to my cabin immediately,” he ordered. Then he went to a cabinet and came back with a bottle of Johnnie Walker scotch.

  “I regret that when the Ciudad de Cádiz was turned over to me by the Kriegsmarine they somehow failed to ensure that she had even one bottle of schnapps in her supplies. Can you force yourself to drink this decadent English whiskey? I brought this from my previous command.”

  “Under the circumstances, I think I can force myself,” von Dattenberg said.

  De Banderano poured three fingers of scotch in each of two glasses and handed one to von Dattenberg.

  “We found each other,” de Banderano said. “I wasn’t sure it was going to happen.”

  Von Dattenberg nodded solemnly. “I was down to between six and maybe nine hours of fuel,” he said.

  Their eyes met for a moment, then de Banderano touched h
is glass to von Dattenberg’s. They took healthy swallows of their drinks.

  Von Dattenberg exhaled audibly, then took another healthy sip, draining his glass.

  De Banderano poured more for him and asked, “At the risk of being indelicate, Kapitän, would you mind a suggestion about your uniform?”

  “A decent burial at sea?” von Dattenberg said. “What do you suggest I do with it?”

  “We have clothing stocks aboard. If you will give me your measurements, by the time you have a shower, the ship’s tailor will have a proper uniform for you.”

  “For my crew, too?”

  De Banderano nodded, then said: “I think they, too, would prefer to wait until they’ve had a little something to eat.”

  “At the risk of being indelicate, Capitán, my underwear is as dirty as my outerwear. ”

  De Banderano nodded.

  “Once you give me your sizes,” he said, “by the time you come out of there, there will be fresh underwear.”

  He pointed at a door that von Dattenberg correctly suspected led to the Master’s Bath. Then he handed von Dattenberg a pencil and a notebook so that he could write down his sizes.

  Ten minutes later, Capitán de Banderano was not in his cabin when von Dattenberg came out of the shower wrapped in a towel. But there was clean white underwear on the table. And an array of plates under chrome domes.

  He had not shaved, and he wasn’t sure if that was because he thought it would be impolite to use de Banderano’s razor or because he had come to like the beard.

  He took the underwear back into the Master’s Bath and put it on, then went to the table. Reminding himself that if he ate like a pig he was probably going to throw up, he sat down and started carefully lifting the domes.

  He ate everything the domes had concealed, and was wondering when his stomach would rebel when there was a knock at the door.

  “Come.”

  A steward, young and blond and in a white jacket, came into the room carrying a uniform on a hanger.