Night Crossing

by Robert Ryan

  Uli looked at Hilda. ‘Well, if we are going to socialise, we’d better find you something to wear.’

  Ross took Bess up the incline to the brackish finger-like pond that ran parallel with the sea. From here he could see his house, the shop, part of the Mere and the beach, but not the shoreline where the sea hissed softly, exhausted, over the stones. That was masked by the ridges of pebbles and the ugly concrete defences. He saw a cigarette flare down in the shadows of a bunkhouse.

  That telephone conversation with his father had been the last straw. Ross had risked his neck in Berlin, his emotions were in turmoil—how and why he wasn’t sure, but Uli had certainly managed it in the course of two days—and no one had even had the courtesy to tell him what they had discovered about Draper.

  He wasn’t a spy, he reminded himself, he was a copper, a good one, and as such he ought to get back to it. The tales of looting during the bombing raids that had appeared in the papers were bad enough, but it also seemed that the blackout could be a very handy thing for the criminally minded. Robberies and murders were at record levels, too.

  Ross’s mind was made up. He’d return to London. Uli was gone for ever, he was sure. He’d settle for the warm openness of Emma, rather than the sweet mysteries of the German girl, and make the most of it. He had begun the walk down the hill, tossing a stick for Bess to get her to run ahead of him, when he heard the buzz of an aero engine. It was hard to know where it was coming from at first, the sound seeming to swirl around him. It was when the noise suddenly burst over him like a wave that he knew why. The plane had come in incredibly low, skimming the calm ocean surface, and he felt the prop wash of the 109 smack into him as it flashed by and began to climb. The crosses on the side were clearly visible, as was the Sigrune, the SS marking, on the engine nacelle.

  The Messerschmitt gained height and began to turn, just as Ross heard another plane approaching. This time it was a pencil-thin twin-engined Dornier, its elegant silver fuselage glinting, coming in higher than the smaller fighter had. He looked around for intercepting RAF Spitfires or Hurricanes, but there were none. Ross refused to believe what he was seeing.

  Four black cylinders slid out from the Dornier’s belly, propelled forward briefly by the momentum of the plane, gave a little wobble, and then began to descend, straight and true.

  ‘No.’

  Like a fool he ran down the hill, towards the bombs, arms windmilling as if he could catch the explosives and hurl them away, aware at the same time that the 109 had turned and was coming back towards him.

  ‘Bess! Emma!’

  The dog looked back at him, puzzled and frightened by the strange noises.

  Ross saw flashes of light flicker from the leading edges of the fighter’s wings. The cannon shells tore through the shingle roofs and into the flimsy woodwork of the houses, but the sound was swept away in the roar of the bombs detonating.

  The door to his house opened and Emma was there, sleep driven from her by terror, a robe pulled hastily around her. Bess started forward, pounding down the hill, tongue flopping out. Emma held her arms open for the dog, which yelped as it ran faster. Ross followed, then a line of cannon shells danced in front of him and he slowed.

  The Dornier had finished its run, one last bomb trailing down, apparently coming right for him, but plummeting straight to earth at the last moment. Ross saw his house transformed into a boiling cloud of smoke, then watched the blackened wood spiral upwards, propelled heavenward by the blast, sucking the interior with it.

  Emma and Bess had been swallowed by the dust and debris, and, as Ross raised his arms to protect himself, a fist of metal and wooden splinters punched into him, ripping away his clothes and skin and gouging deep into his flesh, leaving his broken shape sprawled on the pathway as the two German planes circled, dipped their wings and headed back to Calais.

  Part Two

  1941–2

  From the office of: Oberst Karl Boehmer. DATE: 23 OCTOBER 1941.

  FORM 03/775. Recommendation for honours. Field Units of the Ordnungspolizei for the period: January 1941–June 1941.

  SUBJECT: Scharf. Axel Schuller. Police number: S230765/B.

  DETAILS OF CITATION: On 8th January 1941. Scharf. Schuller was leading a ten-man patrol of SS-Polizei through the village of Grynd in the Czech Protectorate. Schuller and his men came under intense fire from Jewish partisans and were forced to retreat into the village, where other elements fired upon them. Despite being heavily outnumbered, Schuller organised a breakout from the town, killing many partisans in the process (see attached list). Five of his own men were killed, two wounded. He himself was also wounded. Refusing medical attention, upon his return to the regional command post he co-ordinated a small force of the SS-Polizei Battalion I and the local Einsatzgruppen to return to the village The German dead were reclaimed. Over the next two days the village was pacified and cleansed of partisan elements. Schuller took full part in this action.

  Schuller has since been transferred to the 11th Company of the German 3rd Battalion of the SS-Polizei Regiment ‘Bozen’, for duties involving partisan suppression in Italy.

  Signed:

  OBERST Karl BOEHMER

  Kommandant SS-Polizei Regiment 3.

  Prague.

  i. Recommendation supported by:

  Johann Hoehne

  Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei, Czechoslovakia

  ii. Recommendation supported by:

  Reinhard Heydrich

  Reichsprotektor, Czechoslovakia

  Eighteen

  DEAR ULI,

  It seems strange to be writing to you, but I don’t know who else to address this to. My father? I have hardly seen him since the war began. My mother? She would only fret at some of the things I have to say. The truth is, I am only meant to stick to general sentiments, not to discuss the submarine or its crew at all. Who enforces this? Well, the cipher clerk, who is a lieutenant. And who is that? Well, me. I was put on a course and promoted—back to U-40, which was a surprise. Captain Prinz asked for me, apparently. Insisted to BdU that I come back. I was very proud.

  It is hard work being a cipher clerk, you have to be fast and accurate, but somehow I prefer it to working the torpedoes. It is ridiculous, but when you are the one who lets the torpedoes run you feel as though you personally, not the U-boat, have sunk the ship and killed the men. So you feel the pain and the pleasure more intensely than anyone else, except perhaps the Captain.

  We live a life of sounds here. Everything is signified by a noise—from diving too deep, to an attack, everything has its signature. Like bats, our eyes are poor and our ears compensate for it. I even dream in sounds now, and the noise a ship makes as you hear it going to the bottom is one that will never leave you. You hear the funnels tear off, the back break, the bulkheads implode, the hull smash into the ocean floor sometimes. And in my dreams I can hear the trapped sailors scream as the icy water pours over their heads. I can’t, of course, not in reality.

  Most of the ships hunting us are equipped with an echo-locating device. You can certainly hear that, searching for you, the ping-pong passing through the hull. It is like cold fingers pushing into your soul. Every three seconds, the piercing noise, over and over again, until they have you. Some hate it more than the depth charges that follow.

  There is beauty out here, too. I was on night watch last week with the navigator, a surly Rhinelander. But he noticed it first—our wake seemed to be alive. It suddenly started glowing, like white gold dancing on the thin moonlight, little gobbets of it hanging in the air before it fell down to rejoin the main organism, which boiled and thrashed around. It only lasted ten minutes, but we were mesmerised. It would have been a perfect time for the English to attack, because all five of us on watch were enraptured.

  The Captain finally got his Knight’s Cross, for when we sailed into the middle of a convoy and picked off six ships—over thirty thousand tons—while the destroyers searched for us. Of course, he wants the oak leaves to go with it n
ow!

  It is odd coming back to shore, in some ways. Really, it is like we are fighting a totally different war. We have no proper idea of what is going on at home—only what the radio tells us. We seem to be winning down here. It isn’t getting any easier, but still, the British must be losing hundreds of thousands of tonnes.

  When I go back to Germany, it is like meeting an old friend you haven’t seen for a while—you notice at once the lines and the baldness that have crept up on them gradually. In Berlin I see how many of my favourite buildings have gone, how the coffee has changed, how all the policemen are so old now that they have raised the SS police army, and how my parents have aged. Even in Lorient we see empty berths where friends once stood. U-41, 42, 44, 45, 47—yes, Prien, the hero of Scapa Flow—and 49 have all gone. And U-48 came back a shambles. It is getting to be a lonely life, being of this vintage.

  I am an old-timer on this boat now. It is me who smacks the kids round the head, who shouts at them when the eels aren’t greased properly. It is me they leave alone when they see me brooding in the mess. The crew changes all the time—some transferred, some promoted, a few die. We lost someone overboard last week, the second time it’s happened. Your line snaps or you slip and … you’ve gone. Each time we come in now, we are fitted with new antiaircraft guns, or special anti-detection systems. Anything to keep us ahead of the game. It usually gives us an advantage for a month or two, and then the other side shifts tactics to compensate.

  I think of you whenever we return to port. We sit there on the bottom, our hull scraping the shingle, a really sickly motion, waiting for the minesweeper that will lead us into the pens safely, past the big anti-aircraft batteries on the island. The band is playing, the boys are thrilled to see the nurses—they always empty the local hospital of the pretty ones when a U-boat comes back from patrol. They hurl fresh flowers at us. The smell of blooms—you wouldn’t believe that a scent can start you salivating. It’s like feeding a hunger after weeks of smelling the same thing.

  Have I been indiscreet? Have I given away too many secrets? No matter. You will never see this letter. In fact, there are many letters being written on this boat that will probably never be seen, for one reason or another.

  I thought when I broke off the engagement that it was the noble thing to do. It probably was, but I regret it now. You see, stuck in this steel tube, somewhere under the Atlantic, I now know that I love you and always loved you, and that whereas everything else I was doing and believed in during those last few years of peace—or was it just preparation for war?—now seems false and transient, that still seems to be the truth. The one truth that I can hold on to down here.

  All my love

  Erich

  Colonel Ross stood at the foot of the bed, watching the liquids feeding his son’s body gurgle in their glass bottles. The patient was swathed in bandages from head to foot, only his nose and eyes showing. The notes clipped to the foot of the bed recorded his injuries in terms whose meaning Ross senior could only guess at.

  ‘I’m sorry, son,’ he said softly, and moved closer. ‘I’m sorry. You don’t hear me say that too often, do you? It’s just like old times for me, this. I never told you, but when you were a child, after your mother died, I’d come in and talk to you. For hours on end. Till dawn once or twice. You were asleep, of course. But somehow it was a way of talking to her. I missed her so much. And it was a way of speaking to you, of saying all the things I couldn’t say to your face. Don’t ask me why. Upbringing, I suppose. I hope you are better at talking to your children …’

  He broke off and wiped his eyes. Would this boy live to have children of his own?

  ‘I have to admit I was selfish,’ he continued. ‘I didn’t want to risk losing you. So when the opportunity came to use you as a conduit to Canaris, I took it. It meant you would be somewhere safe, out of harm’s way. You were right, that we could have put anyone up there to transmit, but I thought it was a way of stopping you rushing off and volunteering to be dropped behind enemy lines or some such nonsense. That doesn’t mean it was a waste of time, son. I know you didn’t believe me, but it was important work, even if you felt like a glorified clerk.

  ‘Then, when you got all uppity, I thought the girl might keep you company, the poor thing. You don’t even know she’s dead, do you? Or the dog, I suppose. And you … look at you now. Ironic, isn’t it? Listen, Cameron, if you can hear me, I blame myself. There is this place, Bangor, in Wales, where they treat the Spitfire boys, some of whom are banged up a lot worse than you. We’ll see if we can get you up there.’

  There was a hand on his shoulder and he turned to see a nurse with a finger over her lips. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘We have to change the dressings now, Colonel Ross.’

  ‘I need to know how badly hurt he is,’ he said.

  ‘You should see one of the doctors,’ she said.

  The Colonel picked up the clipboard from the foot of the bed. ‘What does all this mean?’

  ‘I’m not allowed—’

  ‘Just a summary. Please.’

  The nurse hesitated and looked around nervously. She quickly read down the columns. ‘Concussion, possible fracture of the skull, broken leg, damaged ribs, perhaps internal bleeding … you really will have to consult one of the doctors. You can make arrangements at the matron’s office.’

  ‘Right.’ The Colonel turned back to Ross, and said softly: ‘I’ll come again. Goodbye, son.’

  Two of the women killed themselves that first winter. Uli didn’t know the first, who hanged herself using her bed sheets from the rafters of the storeroom. But Uli was devastated by the action of Hilda who, even though apparently displaying more and more inner strength, walked off into the woods one day when nobody was watching. The trees were heavy with snow and icicles, the wind pulling the temperature down to minus fifteen or twenty. It snowed again within minutes of her being discovered missing, filling the imprints of her footsteps. By nightfall, the trackers had given up.

  Their final destination had been a camp called Kapusak, on the outskirts of a village with the same name, somewhere deep in Ontario. It wasn’t the first time that it had been used to house the unwanted and unloved. During the last war the Canadians had interned Ukrainians there since their home country had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The long, low huts to which the women were confined still bore their graffiti-poems scratched into the timber, or simply initials and a date.

  There were two parts to the camp. The women’s, the smaller compound, consisted of huts one to four, each containing between ten and sixteen inmates. It was on the western side of the railway track along which, late at night, enormous trains rumbled, their plaintive horns waking all and sundry as they came past. On the eastern side were another twenty-five huts to house the men, of which only nineteen were habitable, and the barracks for the guards, mostly old Canadian soldiers who had last seen service in the Great War and a small group of regular police.

  Uli wondered how she got through the winter of 1941–2. The huts had been built by the Ukrainians themselves, and although the logs were thick and well-trimmed, there were numerous gaps where the snow piled in. She thought she’d experienced cold in Berlin, but this was of a different order, as was the way the world could blank out in a second, leaving you lost and disoriented. During those times she imagined Hilda panicking, blundering this way and that until, exhausted, she lay down to let the cold claim her.

  Frau Menkel, for all her faults, was a fine organiser and she cajoled the military and civilian supervisors frequently and loudly. It was she who got the huts insulated better, who petitioned for more stoves and better lighting. It was Uli, however, who decided that they might as well work, making kitbags and blankets and belts and even canvas shoes. In return, Uli negotiated payment in reading and writing materials.

  As the first thaw came and the ground started to turn to a slushy quagmire, they had two unexpected visits. The first consisted of representatives of the Canadian govern
ment and the Red Cross, who said that anyone wishing to return to Germany would be repatriated. Each person who wanted to go back would have to swear that their allegiance lay with the Führer, and they would be segregated and, ultimately, exchanged for an internee held in Germany.

  All heads turned to Frau Menkel.

  ‘Has anybody agreed?’ she asked the men.

  ‘Three women from hut three, ’bout a dozen of the men.’

  She nodded thoughtfully. ‘You know, the only thing stopping me is these girls. Look at them. Hopeless. Without me, they’d probably starve to death.’ Uli saw the conflicting emotions flash across her face. ‘I will have to say no.’

  The second visit came one bright morning as the women were clearing up the worst of the dirty sludge from their hut entrance. Uli looked up as the man entered the ‘female’ compound and squished over towards them, mud splashing up his trousers as he did so. ‘Good day,’ he shouted cheerily.

  ‘Good day,’ they chorused, welcoming the respite and leaning on their shovels.

  ‘My name’s Ernst Uhlman. From across there.’ He pointed to the men’s camp. ‘Taken me all this time to get permission to come over.’ He rubbed his hands together nervously. ‘The thing is, we are getting some activities together. A camp newspaper. One chap is making greetings cards. To send back home.’ He hesitated. ‘England, I mean. Not Germany. The commandant has said we can post them.’

  Frau Menkel asked: ‘Did he say whether they’d get delivered?’

  ‘He reckons so, yes. Just as long as the ship carrying them doesn’t get torpedoed.’

  ‘Well, that’s a big if from what I hear,’ said Frau Menkel.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’ Uli asked.

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  They took Uhlman inside. ‘So,’ asked Uli, as he sipped the brew. ‘Apart from greetings cards …?’