The Burning Shore c-8

by Wilbur Smith

  Content yourself, Lothar reassured him. The torpedoes are ready, but I thought it prudent to refuel before rearming. Of course. Neither of them had to mention the consequence of the U-boat, with her tanks empty, being caught against a hostile shore by an English warship.

  I still have a little schnapps, the captain changed the subject, my officers and I would be honoured. As Lothar descended the steel ladder into the submarine's interior, he felt his gorge rise.

  The stench was a solid thing, so that he wondered that any man could endure it more than a few minutes. It was the smell of sixty men living in a confined space for months on end, living without sunlight or fresh air, without the means of washing their bodies or their clothing. It was the smell of pervading damp and of the fungus that turned their uniforms green and rotted the cloth off their bodies, the stench of hot fuel oil and bilges, of greasy food and the sickly sweat of fear, the clinging odour of bedding that had been slept in for I26 days and nights, of socks and boots that were never changed and the reek of the sewage buckets which could only be emptied once every twenty four hours.

  Lothar hid his revulsion and clicked his heels and bowed when the captain introduced his junior officers.

  The overhead deck was so low that Lothar had to hunch his head down on his shoulders, and the space between the bulkheads was so narrow that two men were forced to turn sideways to pass each other. He tried to imagine living in these conditions and found his face beading with cold sweat.

  Do you have any intelligence of enemy shipping, Herr De La Rey? The captain poured a tiny measure of schnapps into each of the crystal glasses and sighed when the last drop fell from the bottle.

  I regret that my intelligence is seven days old. Lothar saluted the naval officers with a raised glass, and when they had all drunk went on, The troopship Auckland docked at Durban eight days ago for bunkers. She is carrying 2,000 New Zealand infantry, and was expected to sail again on the 15 th - There were many sympathizers in the civil service of the Union of South Africa, men and women whose fathers and family had fought in the Boer War, and had ridden with Maritz; and De Wet against the Union troops. Some of them had relatives who had been imprisoned and even executed for treason once Smuts and Botha had crushed the rebellion. Many of these were employed by the South African Railway and Harbours Authority, others had key positions in the Department of Post and Telegraphs. Thus vital information was gathered and swiftly encoded and disseminated to German agents and rebel activists over the Union government's own communications network.

  Lothar reeled off the list of arrivals and sailings from South African ports, and again apologized. My information is received at the telegraph station at Okahandia, but it takes five to seven days for it to be carried across the desert by one of my men.

  I understand, the German captain nodded. Nevertheless, the information you have given me will be invaluable in helping me plan the next stage of my operations. He looked up from the chart on which he had been marking the enemy dispositions which Lothar had given him, and for the first time noticed his guest's discomfort. He kept his expression attentive and courteous, but inwardly he gloated, You great hero, handsome as an opera star, so brave out there with the wind in your face and the sun shining over your head, I wish I could take you with me and teach you the true meaning of courage and sacrifice!

  How would you like to hear the English destroyers go drumming overhead as they hunt you, how would you like to hear the click of the primer as the deat -c arge sinks down towards you? Oh, I would enjoy watching your face when the blast beats against the pressure hull and water squirts in through the cracks and the lights go out. How would you like to smell yourself shit with fear in the dark and feel it running hot and liquid down your legs? Instead he smiled and murmured, I wish I was able to offer you a little more schnapps- No, no! Lothar waved the offer aside. This corpsefaced creature and his stinking vessel disgusted and sickened him. You have been most gracious. I must go ashore I and supervise the loading. These Schwarzes, you cannot J trust them. Lazy dogs and born thieves, all of them. They understand only the whip and the goad. Lothar escaped thankfully up the ladder and in the conning tower sucked the sweet cool night air greedily into his lungs. The submarine captain followed him up.

  Herr De La Rey, it is essential that we complete bunker- i ing and stores before dawn, you realize how vulnerable we are here, how helpless we would be, trapped against the shore, with our hatches open and our tanks empty?

  If you could send some of your seamen ashore to assist with the loading- The captain hesitated. Placing his valuable crew on land would make him more vulnerable still. He weighed the odds swiftly. Way was all a gambler's throw, risk against reward, for the stakes of death and glory.

  I will send twenty men to the beach with you. He made the decision in seconds, and Lothar, who had understood his quandary, nodded with reluctant admiration.

  They had to have light. Lothar built a bonfire of driftwood on the beach, but built a screen between it and the sea, trusting on this and the hovering fog banks to shield them from any searching English warships. By the diffused glow they loaded and reloaded the lighters and rowed them out to the submarine. As each drum of fuel oil was tunnelled into the vessel's tanks, the empty canister was holed and thrown overboard to sink into the kelp beds, and gradually the long slim vessel sank lower in the water.

  It was four in the morning before the fuel tanks were brimming, and the U-boat captain fretted and fumed on his bridge, glancing every few seconds towards the land where the false dawn was giving a hard knife-edge to the dark crests of the dunes, and then down again to the approaching lighter with the long glistening shape of a torpedo balanced delicately across the thwarts.

  Hurry. He leaned over the gunwale of the conning tower to urge on his men, as they fitted the slings around the monstrous weapon, gingerly took the weight on the straining tackle and swung it on board. The second lighter was already alongside with its murderous burden, and the first lighter was thrashing back towards the beach, as the torpedo was eased gently into the forward hatch and slid into the empty tube below deck.

  Swiftly the light strengthened and the efforts of the crew and the black guerrillas became frantic as they fought off their fatigue and struggled to complete the loading before full daylight exposed them to their enemies.

  Lothar rode out with the last torpedo, sitting casually astride its shining back as though upon his Arab, and the captain watching him in the dawn found himself resenting him more fiercely, hating him for being tall and sungilded and handsome, hating him for his casual arrogance, and for the ostrich feathers in his hat and the golden curls that hung to his shoulders, but hating him most of all because he would ride away into the desert and leave the U-boat commander to go down again into the cold and deadly waters.

  Captain, Lothar scrambled out of the lighter and climbed the ladder to the bridge of the conning tower.

  The captain realized that his handsome face was glowing with excitement.

  Captain, one of my men has just ridden into camp. He has been five days reaching me from 0kahandja, and he has news. Splendid news. The captain tried not to let the excitement infect him, hands began to tremble as Lothar went on.

  but his jk, The assistant harbour master at Cape Town is one of our men. They are expecting the English heavy battle cruiser Inflexible to reach Cape Town within eight days.

  She left Gibraltar on the Sth and is sailing direct. The captain dived back into the hatch, and Lothar suppressed his repugnance and followed him down the steel ladder. The captain was already bending eagerly over the chart-table with the dividers in his hands firing questions at his navigating officer.

  Give me the cruising speed of the enemy "I" class battle cruisers The navigator thumbed swiftly through intelligence files. Estimated 22 knots at 26o revolutions, captain. Hal The captain was chalking in the approximate course from Gibraltar down the western coastline of the African continent, around the great bulge and then on to the Cape of
Good Hope.

  Ha! Again, this time with delight and anticipation. We can be in patrol position by i8oo hours today, if we sail within the hour, and she cannot possibly have passed by then. He raised his head from the chart and looked at his officers crowded around him. but not an An English battle cruiser, gentlemen, ordinary one. The Inflexible, the same ship that sank the Scharnhorst at the Falkland Islands. A prize! What a prize for us to take to the Kaiser and Dos Vaterland Except for the two lookouts in the wings, Captain Kurt Kohler stood alone in the conning tower Of U-32 and shivered in the cold sea mist despite the thick white rollneck sweater he wore under his blue pea-jacket. Start main engine secure to diving stations! He bent to the voice tube, and immediately his lieutenant's confirmation echoed back to him. Start main engine. Secure to diving stations. The deck trembled under Kohler's feet and the diesel exhaust blurted above his head. The oily reek of burned fuel oil made his nostrils flare.

  Ship ready to dive! the lieutenant's voice confirmed, and Kohler felt as though a crushing burden had been lifted from his back. How he had fretted through those helpless and vulnerable hours of refuelling and rearming.

  However, that was past, once again the ship was alive beneath his feet, ready to his hand, and relief buoyed him up above his fatigue.

  ordered. New courseRevolutions for seven knots, he 270.1 As his order was repeated, he tipped his cap with its gold-braided peak on to the back of his head, and turned his binoculars towards land.

  Already the heavy wooden lighters had been dragged away and hidden amongst the dunes; there remained only the drag marks of their keels in the sand. The beach was empty, except for a single mounted figure.

  As ohler watched him, Lothar De La Rey lifted the wide-brimmed bat from his brazen curls and the ostrich feathers fluttered as he waved. Kohler lifted his own right hand in salute and the horseman swung away, still brandishing his bat, and galloped into the screen of reeds that choked the valley between two soaring dunes. A cloud of water fowl, alarmed by the horseman, rose from the sur- J milled in a gaudily coloured cloud face of the lagoon and above the forbidding dunes, and the horse and rider disappeared .

  Kohler turned his back upon the land, and the long pointed bows of the U-boat sliced into the standing cur tams of silver fog. The hull was shaped like a sword, a broadsword I70'feet long, to be driven at the throat of at 6oo-horsep the enemy by her gre ower diesel engine, and Kohler did not try to suppress the choking sense of pride that he always felt at the beginning of a cruise.

  He was under no illusion but that the outcome of this global conflict rested upon him and his brother officers in the submarine service. It was in their power alone to A it break the terrible stalemate of the trenches where two vast armies faced each other like exhausted heavyweight boxers, neither having enough strength left to. lift their arms to throw a decisive punch, slowly rotting in the mud and the decay of their own monstrous strivings.

  It was these slim and secret and deadly craft that could still wrest victory out of despair and desperation before the breaking-point was reached. If only the Kaiser had decided to use his submarines to their full potential from the very beginning, Kurt Kohler brooded, how different the outcome might have been.

  In September I9I4, the very first year of the war, a single submarine, the U-9, had sunk three British cruisers in quick succession, but even with this conclusive demonstration, the German high command had hesitated to use the weapon that had been placed in their hands, fearful of the outrage and condemnation of the entire world, of the simplistic cry of the beastly underwater butchers.

  Of course, the American threats after the sinking of the Lusitania and Ara C wit t e ass of American lives had served also to constrain the use of the undersea weapon.

  The Kaiser had feared to arouse the sleeping American giant, and to have its mighty weight hurled against the German Empire.

  Now, when it was almost too late the German high command had at last let slip the U-boats, and the results were staggering, surpassing even their own expectations.

  The last three months of 1916 saw more than 300,000 tons of Allied shipping go down before the torpedoes.

  That was only a beginning; in the first ten days of April alone, another incredible 250,000 tons was I917, destroyed, 875,000 tons for the full month, the Allies were reeling under this fearful infliction.

  Now that two million fresh and eager young American troops were ready to cross the Atlantic to join the conflict, it was the duty of every officer and seaman of the German submarine service to make whatever sacrifice was demanded of him. If the gods of war chose to place a British heavy battle cruiser of such illustrious lineage as t the Inflexible on a converging course with his battered little vessel, Kurt Kohler would gladly give up his own life and the lives of his crew for an opportunity to empty his torpedo tubes at her.

  Revolutions for i2 knots, Kurt spoke into the voice tube. That was the U-32'S top surface speed, he had to get into patrol position as swiftly as possible. His calculations I indicated that the Inflexible must pass between no and 14o nautical miles offshore, but Kurt refused to calculate his chances of making a good interception, even if he reached the patrol area before the cruiser passed by.

  The horizon from the U-32's lookout wings was a mere seven miles, the range of her torpedoes 2,5oo yards, the quarry capable of a sustained speed Of 2.2 knots or more.

  He had to manoeuvre his vessel within 2, 5 00 yards of the speeding cruiser, but the chances were many thousands of times against him even sighting her. Even if he obtained a sighting, it would probably be only to watch the distinctive tripod-shaped superstructure of the cruiser pass hull down on his limited horizon.

  He thrust his forebodings aside. Lieutenant Horsthauzen to the bridge.

  J Arlien his first officer clambered up to the bridge, Kurt i i gave him orders, to drive out of the patrol area with all I possible speed, with the ship secured to diving stations ready for instant action.

  Call me at I83o hours if there is no change. Kurt's exhaustion was aggravated by the dull headache from the diesel fumes. He took one last look around the horizon before going below. The fog banks were being stripped away by the rising wind, the sea was darkening, its anger rising at the whip of the elements. The U-32 thrust her bows into the next swell, and white water broke over her foredeck. Spray splattered icily into Kurt's face.

  The glass is dropping swiftly, sit Horsthauzen told him quietly. I think we are in for a sharp blow. Stay the sur ce, maintain speed. Kurt ignored the opinion. e didn't want to hear anything that might complicate the hunt. He slid down the ladder and went immediately to the ship's logbook on the chart-table.

  He made his entry in his meticulous formal script. Course 27o degrees.

  Speed I2 knots. Wind north-west, i 5 knots and freshening. Then he signed it with his full signature and pressed his fingers into his temples to still the ache within his skull.

  My God, I am tired, he thought, and then saw the navigation officer watching his reflection surreptitiously, in the polished brass of the main control panel. He dropped his hands to his sides, brushed aside the temptation to go to his bunk immediately and instead told his coxswain, I will inspect the ship He made a point of stopping in the engine compartment to compliment the engineers on the swift and efficient refuelling procedure, and in the torpedo compartment in the bows he ordered the men to remain in their bunks when he stooped in through the narrow entrance.

  The three torpedo tubes were loaded and under compression, and the spare torpedoes were stacked in the narrow space; their long shiny bulk almost filled the entire cabin and made any movement difficult. The torpedo men would be forced to spend much of their time crouched in their tiny bunks, like animals in a her of cages.

  Kurt patted one of the torpedoes. We'll make more room for you soon, he promised them, just as soon as we mail these little parcels off to Tommy It was an antique joke, but they responded dutifully and, noting the timbre of the laughter, Kurt realized how those few hours on
the surface in the sweet desert air had refreshed and enlivened them all.

  Back in the tiny curtained cubical which was his cabin, he could let himself relax at last, and instantly his exhaustion overcame him. He had not slept for forty hours, every minute of that time he had been exposed to constant nervous strain. Still, before he crawled laboriously into his narrow, confined bunk, he took down the framed photograph from its niche above his desk and studied the image of the placid young woman and the small boy at her knee, dressed in Lederhosen.

  Goodnight, my darlings, he whispered. Goodnight to you, also, my other son, whom I have never seen.

  The diving klaxon woke him, bellowing like a wounded beast, echoing painfully in the confines of the steel hull, so that lie was torn from deep black sleep and cracked his head on the jamb of the bunk as he tried to struggle out of it.

  He was aware instantly of the pitch and roll of the hull.

  The weather had deteriorated, and then he felt the deck cant under his feet as the bows dropped and the submarine plunged below the surface. He ripped open the curtains and burst fully dressed into the control centre, just as the two lookouts came tumbling down the ladder from the bridge. The dive had been so swift that seawater cascaded down on to their heads and shoulders before Horsthauzen could secure the main hatch in the tower.

  Kurt glanced at the clock at the top of the brass control panel as he took control. I8.23 hrs. He made the calculation and estimated that they must be loo nautical miles offshore on the edge of their patrol area. Horsthauzen would probably have called him in another few minutes, if he had not been forced to make this emergency dive.

  Periscope depth, he snapped at the senior helmsman seated before the control panel, and used the few moments of respite to rally his senses and orientate himself fully by studying the navigational plot.

  Depth nine metres, sir, said the helmsman, spinning the wheel to check her wild plunge.

  Up periscope, Kurt ordered, as Horsthauzen dropped down the tower, jumped off the ladder and took up his action station at the attack table.