Silver Wings, Iron Cross

by Tom Young

  Whatever the old man’s cause of death, this riverbank littered with rubble seemed a forlorn place to end one’s earthly existence.

  A zipper, zipped halfway, secured the jacket across the man’s belly. As soon as Karl touched the zipper tab, the jacket’s tightness pulled the zipper all the way down. The corpse’s stomach bulged as the jacket opened, and the sight put Karl in mind of gutting a big fish. He looked up at the U-boat man, expecting words of reproach, but the sailor said nothing.

  Karl lifted the man’s arm and took hold of the jacket sleeve. Tried to pull the dead arm out of the sleeve, but the arm slid only a couple inches. With much tugging and yanking, Karl learned it was a lot harder to take clothing off a dead man than you’d think. While he worked, a dead shad floated by near the river’s edge, a shard of silver bobbing belly up in the dark water. By the time Karl freed the jacket, he’d jerked the corpse around enough that a box of matches and a green cigarette pack fell from the dead man’s shirt pocket. The label read Eckstein No. 5 Cigaretten; Karl took the matches, but left the smokes. Not that he didn’t want them; he could have used a cigarette right now. But he decided he should take only things he needed to survive, even from the dead. Especially from the dead.

  He shook out the jacket to remove some of the dirt and bits of dried vegetation. Put it on and zipped it up. Too big, but it would do.

  “I thought you might yell at me for robbing the dead,” Karl said.

  The U-boat man shook his head. “You need a coat,” he said, “and yesterday I did something very like what you just did.”

  Karl wondered what that meant, but didn’t ask. He pulled his Colt from a pocket of his coveralls and rechecked it: hammer cocked, thumb safety engaged. Ready for quick use. He tried to put the weapon in a jacket pocket, but the large-frame pistol was too big for that. Karl returned the .45 to his coverall pocket. Looked down at the corpse one last time.

  “Thank you for the coat,” Karl whispered in German. “I’m real sorry.”

  He thought of his German relatives nearby. Any of them could have wound up like the man at his feet. He recalled getting to know Uncle Rainer and his wife, Aunt Federica, when they visited the States while he was still in high school. Federica was known for her apple strudel—which Karl could still taste. Apples, cinnamon, vanilla ice cream. And Rainer had been so delighted when he learned Karl liked to hunt and fish. Rainer promised to send him a drilling, the combination rifle and shotgun favored by German outdoorsmen. The perfect solution, Rainer said, for the grouse hunter who happens across a stag. Just flip the selector and shoot the stag with the rifle barrel. To Karl’s American sensibilities, joining a fowling piece with a high-powered rifle seemed a strange hybrid. In the end, it didn’t matter. Because of money problems, the drilling became too dear a gift for his uncle to afford. Eventually Rainer lost his job—and Karl’s dad had heard nothing from him since. Karl recalled Adrian’s speculation: Had Rainer spoken out against slave labor or some other Nazi abuses? Entirely possible.

  Uncle Rainer, so eager to share his love of the outdoors, was about the age of the dead man whose jacket Karl now wore.

  “Let’s move on,” the U-boat man said. “We should get out of the city as soon as we can.”

  The aviator and the submariner climbed to the top of the riverbank. Amid the riprap and other debris, each step forced them to feel for balance and foothold. Karl realized he couldn’t afford to get hurt. If he fell and broke his arm, seeking a doctor to set the bone would amount to surrender and imprisonment. For a flier downed in enemy territory, high stakes accompanied even the smallest choices: Do I put my heel on that broken brick over here or that stub of rebar over there? And for the German, Karl realized, the stakes ran even higher. For a deserter, capture meant death. To remain alive, the U-boat man would need to remain free until Germany’s inevitable defeat played itself out.

  They continued southeast, staying close to the water. A diesel engine snarled somewhere up ahead, deep-throated and loud. Something on the surface, not in the air. Karl placed the sound when a tugboat rounded a bend in the river.

  The tugboat dragged a barge loaded with scrap metal. Swells from its bow rippled the Weser’s flat calm. Karl guessed the scrap would wind up in some furnace downstream, melted down and turned into new tanks or rifle barrels. In wartime, no steel went to waste.

  The submariner motioned for Karl to follow, and he pointed to a street that paralleled this section of the river. Karl took his meaning: Let’s get farther from the water so that tug crew doesn’t spot us. The boat probably had a radio, and the captain could report suspicious characters skulking along the waterfront. Karl and the U-boat man could not remain invisible; it was impossible to travel through a city without being seen. But better to be seen by random civilians than by someone with quick and easy communication to the police or shore patrol.

  The two fugitives stepped over a low concrete wall that lined the street. They walked as casually as they could, and they came to an avenue that ran directly away from the Weser, through another residential area. A left turn placed the men among brick town houses, some intact, some destroyed by fire or bombs. An oak had grown from a hole in the sidewalk, but now the tree stood charred and dead. The bark had turned to charcoal, mostly black, but in some places burned to gray ash. The block of townhomes beside the tree had burned away as well, leaving blackened brickwork.

  Off the riverbank and less conspicuous, Karl and the German turned and watched the tug and barge float by. As the barge passed, Karl got a better look at the cargo of scrap metal.

  The barge carried the carcasses of crashed airplanes. Maybe the casualties of last night and yesterday, given German efficiency. The wreckage offered mute testimony to the aerial combat over this spot: hammering flak, spitting guns, tumbling bombs, and machines and men raining to earth.

  The scrap included a Messerschmitt’s wing, a Lancaster’s empennage, and a Focke-Wulf ’s fuselage and canopy. Flames and explosions had scorched away most of the paint, but one wingtip bore the German Balkenkreuz. Another displayed the red-white-and-blue roundel of the RAF. Karl saw no American markings, but he did recognize the cowling of a Wright engine, possibly one of Hellstorm’s. Or perhaps not. From his parachute, Karl had seen his plane hit the ground and blow up. There were probably no pieces of it left as big as an intact engine.

  Karl considered the journey of the American metal on that barge: from a mill at Bethlehem or Sparrow’s Point to the Boeing plant to an air base in East Anglia. Then to a battlefield in the sky. Now down to this floating mass grave where the remains of Axis and Allied machines comingled. Back to the furnace for reincarnation as another weapon. Karl turned his back on the scrap barge and followed the German down the avenue, looking ahead for the next sign of trouble.

  Karl realized he was scanning around him, much the way he’d done in the cockpit—looking as far ahead as possible, hoping to see the fighters early enough to alert the gunners and take evasive action. Old habits died hard, and maybe that was a good thing.

  He saw no people, but he noticed an odd sight. Piles of dirt, or maybe coal dust or slag, littered the pavement. Three or four feet across, maybe a foot high. They came in no regular pattern, and one appeared every few hundred yards. When Karl came to the next one, he gave it an experimental shove with his boot. The substance turned out to be blackened sand.

  “Leave that alone,” the U-boat man said.

  “What is it?”

  “They use sand to smother incendiary bombs.”

  Remnants of last night’s visit by the Lancasters, Karl realized. He could still feel the heat through the sole of his boot.

  16

  Amber Waves

  By now, Wilhelm believed, the navy had probably reported him as a deserter. Under other circumstances, they might have waited longer to reach that conclusion: An officer with a stellar record suddenly goes missing after an air raid? Perhaps he’d taken a blow to the head and now wandered dazed and lost. Perhaps an explosion h
ad thrown his body into the river.

  But an officer goes missing shortly after receiving an order for a suicide mission? A different story entirely. Traversing the firebombed neighborhood, Wilhelm stepped around a still-smoking pile of sand, and he warned the Yank that the danger had likely just increased.

  “Remember how those SS men in the armored car worried about being late?” Wilhelm asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “They were heading in the direction of the naval base. Maybe for a briefing about a missing oberleutnant.”

  “You think so?”

  “Very likely.”

  The American looked into the distance as if in deep thought. Perhaps reconsidering whether it’s a good idea to travel with me, Wilhelm thought.

  But if the aviator entertained misgivings, he did not voice them. He said only, “Then we better make tracks.”

  Another Americanism, Wilhelm supposed. Why couldn’t these Yanks make do with standard English?

  Traffic began to move through the streets. A bus trundled past Wilhelm and the American. It steered around the sand piles, weaving along cracked pavement until it stopped at a corner two blocks ahead. The bus’s door opened and five civilian workers boarded. The door closed, the brakes hissed, and the vehicle swayed around another sand pile as it continued on its way.

  Hunger gnawed at Wilhelm’s gut. He imagined the Yank pilot was hungry, too, though the American had not said so. Wilhelm had a few marks in his wallet, so paying for food was not the problem. The problem stemmed from the very act of visiting a butcher or baker. Interaction with anyone posed a risk. Would civilian shopkeepers be alerted to watch for deserters? Even without an official alert, would some ardent National Socialist automatically suspect any young man not in uniform? The sailor-on-leave story probably had a short shelf life.

  Perhaps I did not think this through, Wilhelm considered. Maybe I’ve traded one suicide mission for another.

  Still, they had to eat.

  “I’d like to find a butcher or a grocer to get some food,” Wilhelm said, “but not so near the waterfront and the naval base.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. You got money?”

  “Some.”

  “I have a few marks, too. I can spot you some cash if need be.”

  “Spot” me some cash? That made no sense in English or German. “What are you doing with German money?” Wilhelm asked.

  “They give it to us in case we wind up going on a hike with a U-boat officer who’s called it quits.”

  “Called it quits”? Verdammt, this American slang is annoying.

  “I have enough money for one meal for both of us, at least,” Wilhelm said.

  “Thanks. Then I’ll pay for cocktails at dinner tonight.”

  Wilhelm sighed. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “I’m a regular Bob Hope.”

  “Who in God’s name is Bob Hope?”

  “You don’t know Bob Hope? How about Jimmy Stewart? They’re actors. You know, Jimmy Stewart’s a bomber pilot, too.”

  Actors? Bomber pilot actors? What is this nonsense?

  “We do not watch many motion pictures in the submarine service.”

  “How about Marlene Dietrich? Bet you’ve heard of her.”

  “A very brave woman.”

  “Yeah, the two of you ought to get together after the war. I bet you’d have a lot in common.”

  Yes, I’ll just call her the next time I’m in Hollywood, Wilhelm thought. The famous German actress who denounced the Nazis will cancel her dates with celebrities and rush right out to see me. How are these Yanks winning the war if they are so foolish?

  Wilhelm’s hunger was making him irritable. Even the basic necessities would present challenges from now on. Though Wilhelm had faced mortal danger on a daily basis aboard his submarine, he’d nearly always had enough to eat. Sometimes the food was awful, especially near the end of a patrol. But only rarely did sailors face short rations.

  Captain Slocum had written of subsisting on potatoes, salt cod, and biscuits during his sail around the world. Even that rough fare sounded good to Wilhelm right now. He decided he would get away from this section of Bremen, then maybe take a chance on entering a shop farther along.

  A staff car appeared ahead, coming straight on. Wilhelm and the Yank stood in plain sight for the car’s occupants; it was too late to hide. Wilhelm felt his palms grow damp—and the car whooshed past. An admiral sat on the backseat; Wilhelm caught a glimpse of the thick gold braid on the man’s sleeves. The admiral never looked up from his papers, and the car never slowed.

  A close call averted by luck or providence, Wilhelm speculated—or perhaps something else? Maybe two men walking together looked less suspicious than one, especially if an alert had gone out for a single deserter.

  At the next intersection, the pair came to a cobblestoned side street. Wilhelm pointed silently, suggesting they go down the cobblestone—only because he saw no traffic on the street. No bombs had fallen here; no craters or firestains marred the stones smoothed by hundreds of years of hooves and feet. Wilhelm took a vague comfort from the street’s permanence, but the uneven surface made for uncomfortable walking. Cobblestones apparently worked better with horseshoes than navy boots. Still, Wilhelm appreciated the quiet of this street. The American had stopped yammering, so for a few moments, the quiet became complete. No sound but the faint buzz in Wilhelm’s ears left by the blast at the U-boat bunker.

  A large redbrick building appeared on the right. It, too, appeared undamaged, but sat vacant. No vehicles drove up to it; no pedestrians entered its doors. At first, Wilhelm guessed it to be a big office building, but as he got closer, he realized it was a school. A set of concrete steps led to a pair of double doors, and above the double doors, a marble stone inlaid in the edifice read GYMNASIUM WESER. Boards covered classroom windows, behind which students had gone about their lessons in mathematics, history, Latin, and Greek. And in more recent years, racial studies. The building reminded Wilhelm of his own schooling: happier days, when the world seemed full of promise.

  “An empty school?” the Yank asked.

  “Yes. I suppose the children have been moved out from under your bombers, since you consider this city such a target.”

  The American pilot folded his arms and nodded. “Probably,” he said after a few seconds. “The Brits have moved their kids out into the countryside, too. For the same reason.”

  Ten years ago, Wilhelm had sat in classrooms very much like the ones inside this abandoned school. He recalled how his classmates and teachers buzzed about the death of President Hindenburg, and how they wondered what it meant for the country now that Hitler had declared himself both chancellor and head of state. A new day was coming for a new Germany, Wilhelm and his friends had believed. Those excited conversations seemed so recent; Wilhelm could remember some of them word for word. And at the same time, that part of his life seemed so long ago. So distant, in fact, that it might have happened to someone else.

  Intense discussion had taken place at his family’s dinner table in those days. Though Wilhelm never gave much thought to religion, his parents did—especially his mother. Some members of their congregation had joined the Deutsche Christen, which sought to bring the pulpit into line with National Socialism. His parents thought it made no sense to meld a centuries-old faith with a brand-new political order, and they were thrilled when a delegate from their church signed the Barmen Declaration. The declaration rejected what it called false doctrines—such as the notion that National Socialism had anything to do with Jesus Christ.

  Later, that delegate, Herr Kraus, was forced to leave Germany. Wilhelm’s parents escaped notice because they’d kept their opinions confined to the dinner table. But now Wilhelm wondered what might have happened if more Germans had spoken out like Herr Kraus. Would bombs not be falling on Germany around the clock?

  No way to know. When swept up in an ideology, people’s passions ran high and overrode common sense. Perhaps no a
mount of dissent could have stopped the Reich from racing toward calamity.

  The reassurance Wilhelm had drawn from the cobblestones left him now.

  “Let’s go,” Wilhelm said. “The empty school makes me sad.”

  “Me too.”

  The pilot appeared genuinely concerned about the impact of his bombs. But Wilhelm felt he’d gained no ground in whatever moral skirmish was happening between them. Nagging questions kept coming up in his mind: Did we bring those bombs on ourselves? And what about the impact of my torpedoes? Sometimes fuel would spill from a stricken freighter’s bunkers, spreading a sheen of diesel across the swells. Lighter than water, the sheen would remain intact and afloat. When it ignited, the waves themselves would burn.

  On one of those occasions, Wilhelm watched from the U-351’s bridge as an American merchant seaman—a civilian—abandoned a sinking ship. With no choice but to leap into a flaming ocean, the man stood by the rail. Wilhelm could imagine what the sailor was thinking: Take a deep breath, swim underwater for as long as possible, come up for air beyond the fuel’s spread.

  The sailor gulped air, held his breath, and jumped. He dived like an Olympian, arms over his head, hands together, his form so proper he hardly made a splash. Had he been an athlete? A competitive swimmer or high diver?

  He vanished beneath the fire. Wilhelm wished him success and imagined him underwater, taking long strokes, propelling himself to safety. But when the sailor’s lungs burned for air, the water above him burned, too. He had not swum far enough. He surfaced amid the fire and inhaled flame instead of air. Thrashed on top of the water for a few moments and sank forever.

  That image numbered among many that haunted Wilhelm. It came to his mind unbidden, whenever it wanted, as if the seaman’s ghost had gotten into his head.