An Honorable German

by Charles L. McCain

  “Worst of it is,” Heinz said over a cigarette later that night, “the filthy pig might be right. We’ll do our best to keep you safe, Herr Kaleu, but there’s nowhere to hide in this camp.”

  Max nodded. What Heinz said was true. And because it was true, he let Carls and Heinz convince him to go with them to the movie being shown that night. “We’ll be on either side of you, Herr Kaleu,” Carls assured him. “There will be American guards everywhere, Lehmann won’t go for you there.”

  “What are they showing?”

  “The Thin Man.”

  Max smiled. Myrna Loy. She would be worth seeing again. And The Thin Man was a favorite. He’d seen it twice with Mareth in Berlin before the war. He smiled, something Carls and Heinz hadn’t seen in a while. “Then let us go, gentlemen.”

  “Jawohl,” said Carls, “all ahead full.”

  Smoke filled the brightly lit mess hall. Everyone seemed to be smoking; it was almost like a hobby in the camp. The Americans gave the men as many cigarettes as they wanted. Max, Heinz, and Carls sat on the floor at the back of the hall, not far from the door. Hardly anyone seemed to have noticed them come in. Even if they had, it would take a brave soul to jump him with Heinz and Carls on either side.

  The men began to stomp their feet around 2000 hours. They did it in unison, like participants at a Nazi rally, and the American guards took the cue. They cut the lights and started the projector, beginning the show with a newsreel about the war. Allied progress in France was steady, unstoppable. Caen had indeed fallen; the newsreel showed Allied tanks rolling through the burnt-out city. The men booed vociferously, throwing cigarette butts at the screen. They went on booing as the footage shifted to Italy, to the American troops now in Rome, and the Pacific, where the first American bombs had begun raining down on Tokyo.

  Finally the movie itself began, the prisoners shouting and catcalling at any woman who walked through the frame. They erupted when Myrna Loy finally came on screen, one man in front jumping up to rub his crotch in her direction as the others howled. The Americans hadn’t added German subtitles but this hardly seemed to bother the men, who followed along as best as they could.

  Max was able to lose himself in the laughter for a few minutes. American movies were the best in the world. Max whispered translations of the dialogue to Heinz and Carls at crucial moments. The men went on smoking, laughing loudly when they sensed the slightest joke; they were eager to laugh. Max had noticed this in the movies at Camp Taylor, too. It was as if they were all trying to prove to themselves that they hadn’t lost the ability.

  Halfway through the movie, the screen went dark. The men hooted but the lights did not come back on. Max realized the building’s electricity had been cut. No one moved because it was too dark to see and they wanted to watch the rest of the movie. But Max’s battle instincts had him rising to his feet before his mind had even consciously registered the danger. A hand clapped over his mouth. He drew the knife and plunged it blindly at whoever was behind him. The knife cut into flesh but something metal slammed against the back of Max’s head, staggering him, and he dropped the blade. A burlap sack dropped over his face and he heard Carls and Heinz struggling beside him. Bodies hit the floor but he couldn’t tell whose. Men in the audience were getting to their feet, some of them beginning to shout for the movie to come back on. Max had gone groggy from the blow to the head. His joints went loose as they dragged him to the door.

  Outside now. Max felt the cool night air on his skin. He was being carried by three men, maybe four, walking quickly across the dark compound. Nobody said anything. They passed through another door, dropped Max into a hard wooden chair. Someone yanked the bag off his head.

  They were in one of the outbuildings. Max couldn’t tell which. The room was not large, just a small hut made of thin plywood. Six men were seated at a rectangular table in front of him—Lehmann, Bekker, and four of their comrades, all noncommissioned Nazi extremists. A soldier stood at parade rest on either side of Max; he recognized one of them as the burly young acne sufferer who had harassed him the week before. The man’s uniform was torn and blood dripped from a shallow knife wound below his ribcage, but he seemed unfazed.

  Lehmann presided. He sat at the center of the table, holding a ceremonial Nazi dagger. Max wondered how he’d gotten his hands on one of those—it was among the first items American soldiers looked for to take as a souvenir. The British fought for empire it was said, the French for glory, the Americans for souvenirs. The table was draped with a homemade banner: a mildly warped swastika in a white circle on a field of red that looked more like burnt orange. The room was lit with candles stuck in empty Coke bottles. All the men at the table stared directly, severely at Max, with the exception of Bekker, who seemed to have his eyes fixed on a point on the wall above Max’s head.

  Lehmann cleared his throat. “This Kriegsmarine Court of Honor is convened to hear evidence and pronounce judgment on the conduct of a certain Maximilian Brekendorf, who is charged with disloyalty to the Führer and German Reich and cowardice in the face of the enemy.”

  Max raised his voice. “You will address me as Herr Kapitän-Leutnant,” he announced, but none of the men paid him any attention. His head was still ringing but he felt calm—the suspense was over. War was an endless series of absurdities, any one of which might prove fatal. “And for which of these do you suppose I was awarded the Iron Cross First and Second Class, Leutnant?” he said. “Did I receive those for my disloyalty, or for my cowardice? And the black wound badge, and the auxiliary cruiser badge? And the German Cross in gold for bringing my U-boat safely back to port after being rammed by a British destroyer? Was that awarded to me in the name of the Führer for betraying the Führer, Leutnant? Are you mad?”

  Lehmann frowned. “You will have an opportunity to defend yourself once the evidence has been heard, Herr Brekendorf.”

  “And you will have an opportunity to be court-martialed for violating the Military Law of the German Wehrmacht with these illegal and irregular proceedings if I ever get out of here, Leutnant.”

  “If, Herr Brekendorf. Shall we begin?” He turned to Bekker. “Our first witness is Rudolph Bekker, former radioman aboard U-114 under the command of Herr Brekendorf.”

  The man to Lehmann’s right began writing dutifully in a small black notebook, as if this might lend the trial some official flair.

  “Herr Bekker,” Lehmann started in, “please tell the court your position before posting to the fleet.”

  Bekker was the oldest man in the room. Gray streaks ran through his hair. He glanced briefly at Max before looking up again at his chosen point on the wall. “I served as a personnel clerk in the Naval Records Office in Kiel.”

  “I see. And did this position allow you access to any pertinent information regarding Herr Brekendorf’s background?”

  “Yes. When I was posted to U-114, I read the file on the Kommandant so I might know something about the man under whom I would serve. Naturally I was curious.” Several of the other men at the table nodded in understanding. “To my dismay, I discovered that the Kommandant had been taken in for questioning by the Gestapo in Paris after helping an Allied spy escape capture.”

  Lehmann lifted his eyebrows and swept the room with a significant look.

  “That is a specious allegation,” Max said. “It was a misunderstanding. They never would have given me my own boat if there was anything to it.”

  “Silence,” Lehmann ordered. “You will be allowed to present your case in due time, Herr Brekendorf, but the court will look on your behavior with severe disapproval if you continue to speak out of turn.”

  “Enough,” Max said. He began to rise from his chair but the two soldiers forced him back down.

  “Continue, Herr Bekker. You said he had been arrested by the Gestapo on suspicion of assisting an Allied spy ring?”

  “That is correct, Herr Lehmann.”

  Max shook his head.

  Lehmann looked to the other members of his kangar
oo court. “Questions?”

  The man with the notebook leaned forward. “So you are telling us that Herr Brekendorf’s treasonous activity against the Reich predates the surrender of U-114?”

  “Jawohl.”

  Max stared at Bekker, and now Bekker stared back. His eyes had a hollow look in them. Looking through classified personnel records was illegal, a court-martial offense in its own right, and Bekker must have known as much. If Max ever got back to Germany… but that was a moot point.

  Lehmann picked up the ceremonial dagger and began twirling it in his right hand. “Our second charge is cowardice in the face of the enemy. Herr Bekker, did U-114 in fact torpedo and sink the Royal Mail Ship Dundee while that ship was sailing alone and unescorted off the southern coast of Florida?”

  “She did, Herr Lehmann.”

  “And did Herr Brekendorf then make any effort to leave the scene of the sinking in order to avoid enemy patrols?”

  “Quite to the contrary, Herr Lehmann—Herr Brekendorf forced me to radio the enemy patrols myself.”

  Lehmann animated his face with false surprise. “And what did Herr Brekendorf do when the enemy patrol vessels arrived?”

  “He immediately surrendered the U-boat.”

  The men at the table now stared at Max in unison with mock disbelief. Max just shook his head slowly. He’d seen more combat than all six of them combined.

  “Now, Herr Brekendorf,” Lehmann said, “do you have any response to these charges before the court presents its findings?”

  Max looked steadily into the hostile faces before him. “This trial is a sham,” he said quietly, “and all of you know it. If I am a traitor, then Germany has no heroes. I have given my life to the navy, done all that I was asked, killed more men than I wish to recall, and watched my friends die around me, just as my father did in the trenches at Verdun. Although it was within my orders to do so, I would never have sunk the Dundee had I known it was a passenger vessel. Nor would it have befitted the honor of the German navy, the navy of Admiral Graf von Spee, the navy of Count von Luckner and Captain Langsdorff, to stand by and watch women and children drown when it was in my power to save them. If we have lost our humanity to this war, then we are fighting for nothing. If Germany gives her honor for Final Victory, she will still have lost.”

  “Stirring.” Lehmann smiled, then turned solemnly to his panel. “How say you?” he asked the first man.

  “Guilty.”

  “How say you?” he asked the second.

  “Guilty.”

  They went down the line like that—the verdict unanimous.

  Standing now, boyish in his wrinkled khaki uniform, Lehmann said, “Of course there is only one punishment for treason against our Führer, Adolf Hitler, and cowardice in the face of the enemy. That punishment is death.”

  Max swung with all his strength and hit the soldier on his right in the kidneys. As the man doubled over in pain, Max swung the other way and hit the big soldier to his left in the balls.

  “Stop him!” Lehmann bellowed, scrambling over the table, dagger in hand.

  Max leapt up from the chair, seized it, and broke it over Lehmann’s head. The other jurors rushed forward, one of them catching Max full in the face with a roundhouse punch. The guards recovered, pulled at his arms, and Max struggled free before more punches knocked him to the ground. Three men piled on top of him. He squirmed like an eel, flailed wildly with his fists, smelled the sour breath of the men as they pinned his body to the wooden floorboards. Then a loud crack sounded as the building’s flimsy door flew from its hinges.

  Carls leapt forward with a lead pipe. It landed heavily on somebody’s head, then again, and suddenly everyone was shouting until a new voice froze the room.

  “Hände hoch! Hands up or I shoot!”

  Heinz. He stood in the doorway pointing a pistol. Carls helped Max up from the floor. Massaging his face, Max could feel the blood pouring out of his nose. “I thought you men would never get here.”

  “We wanted to watch the end of the movie, Herr Kaleu,” said Heinz.

  Lehmann seethed, his face also bloodied, knuckles white on the hilt of his dagger. He glared at Max, then Carls, then finally at Heinz. “I will kill you all,” he hissed.

  Heinz smiled. “Not if we kill you first. Hand over that dagger.”

  Lehmann didn’t move.

  “Hand it over,” Heinz repeated, twitching the barrel of the pistol for emphasis.

  Lehmann tried to twist his lips into an ironic grin of his own. He held the dagger out in his open hand and Carls snatched it away. “Go,” the big man said to Max, who turned and ducked out the door into the darkness, followed closely by his rescuers.

  The compound teemed with men just out from the movie and they mixed in with the crowd, Carls pushing Max toward the camp’s southern end, Heinz trailing just behind in case someone gave them the jump. They cut between two of the narrow wooden huts. Carls looked around. “Under,” he ordered. Max dropped to the sandy ground and rolled underneath the hut, which sat about a meter up on cinderblocks. The big man and Heinz did the same and the three of them stretched out behind the cement pedestal that supported the water pipes. They lay there panting for air in the dark without speaking for several minutes. Finally Max caught his breath and said, “Where in the name of Saint Peter did you get a pistol, Heinz?”

  Heinz smiled and whispered, “Keep your eyes open, Herr Kaleu, and you can find anything around here. When I find some bullets for this it will be even more useful.”

  Now Max shook his head in amazement. “You have the courage of a lion, Heinz. The two of you have done more for me than I deserve. Thank you.”

  “You should be holding off them thanks for a while, sir, since we ain’t out of the jungle yet. We have to get you out of this camp, sir. It’s much too dangerous for you here now.”

  Around them men tramped across the yard, heading to their huts for the night. Footsteps echoed through the floor above Max’s head as well. Lehmann and his dupes might be out searching for them right now, moving from building to building, sweeping the camp. Or maybe they felt there would be time enough for that. After all, Max would be around the next day, and the next day, and the day after that.

  “We have to get you out of this camp,” Heinz said again.

  “Ja, you are correct, Heinz. You are correct. But it would be easier to smuggle a crate of schnapps onto a U-boat than to get me out of here.”

  “Not at all, sir. Me and Carls smuggled a case of schnapps onto the boat before every patrol, if you must know, Herr Kaleu.”

  Max looked from one of them to the other. “How? Where did you put it?”

  “Begging your pardon, Herr Kaleu, it would be best for us not to be getting into all that. You go out tomorrow. Tomorrow morning, sir. On the garbage truck.”

  _________

  The garbage truck entered the camp each Monday morning near the time of roll call and backed up to the garbage shed on the western edge of the main yard. Two civilian workers in beige coveralls then emptied the garbage cans into the back of the truck. Each can required both men to lift, and they usually worked at a measured clip, so the process took perhaps fifteen minutes. After the cans had all been emptied, the garbage workers would share a smoke with a few of the guards. Then back in the truck and out through the main gate. The truck was usually inside the camp fence for twenty minutes.

  Max had seen it but he hadn’t taken much notice. Heinz had taken notice and had carefully timed it out over weeks. Of his many escape plans, the garbage truck was the best, he said.

  “You want me to hide in one of those garbage cans, yes?” Max asked. That would be unpleasant, though it could hardly smell worse than the inside of a U-boat after a few weeks on patrol.

  “No, Herr Kaleu,” said Heinz, “that’s a bad idea. The truck is a new American model with a compactor built right in. It would crush you into a bouillon cube, even if the workers somehow missed you when they emptied the can. You go underneath, Herr
Kaleu.”

  “Underneath? Underneath the truck? You are certain of this?”

  “The truck is quite large, Herr Kaleu. It has plenty of clearance and I think there are pipes and grips you can hold on the undercarriage. I took a quick look several weeks ago—seems to me that a man could wedge himself in between the rear axle and the drive shaft.”

  “How long will I have to hold on?”

  “That I don’t know, Herr Kaleu. I don’t know where the truck goes when it leaves here.”

  Max bit the inside of his lip. Underneath a garbage truck? A bugle call sounded, reminding the POWs that it was almost 2230—five minutes until all prisoners were confined to their huts for the night.

  Heinz said, “Stay here until morning, Herr Kaleu. Just to be safe, stay here until roll call begins. I’ll bring you some supplies at roll call, and then you can make your break. Do you understand, sir?”

  “Ja, ja. And what of you, comrades?”

  “They won’t be looking for us—not tonight. Perhaps for you, but not for us.”

  “Thank you, Heinz. Thank you both.”

  “Take this,” said Carls, pressing the hilt of Lehmann’s dagger into Max’s hand. “We will see you tomorrow morning, Herr Kaleu.”

  “Carls, Heinz,” Max whispered.

  “Sir?”

  He shook each by the hand. “May you always have a hand’s breadth of water under your keel,” Max said quietly.

  Heinz whispered: “Good luck and good hunting, Herr Kaleu.”

  Carls nodded, too overcome to speak. Then they were gone. Max lay alone beneath the hut, the dagger clutched to his chest. Quiet came with the men in bed. Max knew he wouldn’t sleep a wink on the hard ground with nothing for a pillow. He hadn’t worn his jacket to the movie and shivered now, though it had been almost a hundred degrees at noon.

  Mexico. Heinz’s plan sounded simple enough, and if Max could get out of the camp, Mexico would be only a hundred and twenty kilometers away. How far then to Mexico City? He wasn’t sure, but he might be able to make it if he got across the border somehow. He closed his eyes and tried to picture how it would be when he walked into the courtyard of Schrempf’s house: Mareth with a glass of cold gin and a parasol in the heat, leaning in the portico with a flower behind her ear. A carnation, a rose. But this was just a fantasy. It would never happen. He hadn’t been able to stay on the outside for more than a day in Mississippi; this time, if the Americans didn’t just shoot him, Lehmann and the Nazis would finish him off when he was returned to the camp.