"Commander to the bridge!"
Schulz dropped his pencil and ran up the ladder. He was on the bridge almost before the sentence was finished.
"Look, Herr Kaleu," Mohr pointed. "The battleship!"
"Make ready all torpedo tubes!" the commander called. "Prepare for surfaced torpedo attack! Come to course one-three-o!"
The U-boat had scarcely settled on her new course when the battleship turned. "Hard port!" Schulz said. Then he leaned over the open hatch. "Commander to L.I.!"
Brinker's upturned face appeared below him.
"I've got to have more speed, Brinker," Schulz told him.
"This is all she'll do, Herr Kaleu," Brinker called back. "She's wide open now."
"Well it's not good enough!" Schulz shouted impatiently. "Have a talk with those diesels. This is a battleship we're after, and she's fast as the devil!"
"Aye, sir. Will do."
Brinker turned and went back into the engine room. "Boys," he yelled above the noise of the diesels, "there's a fast lady up there, and the commander says he's got to have more speed to catch her! Let's see what we can give him!"
"Aye, Herr Brinker!" the men nodded, grinning. This was the sort of challenge they liked. Somehow they would give Willem the speed he asked for.
"Commander to control room!"
"Control room here!"
"Be ready to shoot as soon as I give the settings. It will have to be a quick shot. She's wild as an ape!"
The U-boat turned back and forth in an effort to close in on the erratically zig-zagging battleship and get in a position to attack. She was steaming fast, with such rapid and unpredictable turns that Schulz was finding it difficult even to maintain contact with her in the pitch black night
"Well, Henke," he said casually to the II.WO, "have you got her zig-zag pattern figured yet?"
"Good Lord, no!" answered Henke. "I think they're making it up as they go along!"
"I think whoever's got the conn is drunk," Mohr announced. "Somebody's been spiking the Tommies' tea!"
Schulz and Henke laughed. "Well, one thing is sure," Schulz said. "Drunk or sober, that old girl knows all about U-boats, and I'm not going to waste any more time with her. We'll go find the children instead of waltzing in the dark with Mamma all night. That convoy's close."
The U-boat turned, searching the blackness around them for some sign of the merchant ships that had thus far eluded them.
"Ship in sight!"
Schulz turned to watch the sleek destroyer gliding up on their starboard quarter. She was not heading directly for them.
"Port fifteen!" he called. "Come to 265 degrees."
"Port fifteen. Come to 265 degrees." The order was repeated below to Kundt, the helmsman, who acknowledged. A second later, the boat heeled over gently with the turn.
"That should be the sweeper," Schulz remarked to Mohr, meaning the escort that ranged back and forth in front of the convoy. "And now for the convoy!"
The long hunt was finally over as U-124 steamed calmly on the surface into the midst of the merchant ships. They were ranged in staggered columns, about 800 meters apart, and they moved steadily through the long swells, unaware of the U-boat that had turned around and was now traveling along with them.
With Mohr as torpedo officer, Schulz had quickly set up an attack in the almost overwhelming abundance of targets that now surrounded him. Only a few seconds remained before the torpedoes would be fired when a brilliant flash lit up the port side of the convoy, followed by the rumbling roar of the explosion. U-105 had torpedoed an auxiliary cruiser, which burst into flames. Schewe had beat them to the punch!
The hated star shells were now fired from every direction, lighting up the convoy with dazzling brilliance. The men on U-124's bridge stared apprehensively at the merchant ships towering around them. Seconds before, they had been only vague hulking shapes in the black night. Now they were lit up as brightly as in a peacetime port, and one of them was well under the minimum distance of 300 meters required for firing a torpedo.
Schulz watched the men lining the rails of the freighter on his starboard side. He could see the glowing lights reflected on their faces as they watched the burning ship. How could they keep from seeing the U-boat so close beside them, he wondered frantically, and won't those damned star shells ever go out?
Still the Britishers stared at the hypnotic red flames that marked the loss of one of their ships and the death of seamen like themselves, and never once did they glance down at their deadly little companion, steaming along unnoticed beside them. Perhaps the last place they would have expected to see a U-boat was where U-124 was: on the surface squarely in the middle of a British convoy.
At last the star shells went out, and the night was infinitely blacker after their blinding glare. It was time for U-124 to try her luck.
"Here, Mohr," Schulz said, pointing. "This target."
Mohr bent over the night sight, making rapid calculations. Schulz quickly chose targets as he put his boat in position to attack. They would fire as many torpedoes as possible at as many different targets, and an attack like this had to be fast and exact. Once the first torpedo hit, the confused movements of the other ships could ruin the other shots.
"Wait, Herr Kaleu!" Mohr suddenly cried. "See? This one is bigger!" He motioned to another ship close to their first target.
"Okay," answered Schulz. "Take her."
It was the same with the next "Herr Kommandant, this one is bigger!" Mohr was wild with excitement. "Wait! Here's one even bigger!"
"For God's sake, Mohr," Schulz screamed, "shoot!"
Grins appeared on the bridge watch's faces, and Mohr leaned over the night sight as he industriously called out the torpedo settings.
The torpedoes left the tubes at rapid intervals. Four from the bow tubes, two from the stern, all aimed at different targets.
The first torpedo hit a freighter of about 9,000 tons from a distance of 1500 meters. They saw her sink immediately. The second hit a 6,000-ton ship 900 meters away, setting her afire. Another 6,000-ton freighter, some 2,000 meters away, caught the third torpedo. She also burned, and they watched her sinking, her bow under water up to her running lights.
The fourth torpedo was a stern shot, and hit a 7,000-ton freighter from a distance of 700 meters. The lookouts saw her sink. The fifth shot, also from a stern tube, hit a 5,000-ton freighter 1500 meters away. The lookouts could see she was going down by the stern, up to the main deck in water, presumed sinking.
Schulz watched the track of his sixth torpedo, shot from a bow tube, as it sped toward a large freighter on his port quarter. It was running straight and true, leading the ship enough to meet her precisely amidships.
Suddenly he noticed a turbulence in the ship's wake and remarked to Mohr, "We'll miss this one. Her captain's seen the torpedo track and ordered her full astern."
As the ship abruptly slowed her speed, the torpedo with her name on it sped harmlessly across her bow, only a few meters away. The freighter master's order had saved his ship.
U-124's position was now clearly marked by the torpedo tracks running out like the spokes on a wheel, and a destroyer was racing directly for them.
"Alarm!" yelled Schulz. "Dive! Dive!"
As the boat dived, they knew they could expect no depth charges in the middle of these merchant ships. Their tubes were empty, and in an attack lasting less than 10 minutes, they had counted four ships sunk. The torpedo that passed ahead of its target went on to find another, however, and the count was actually five ships.
U-124's crew congratulated themselves on their success. Not a bad bag for ten minutes' work! Their Willem had certainly blitzkrieged this convoy. The destroyer up there knew where they were, but there was nothing she could do about it. Besides, she would have her hands full picking up her own survivors. Meantime, they would reload their torpedo tubes and come back to have another crack at the convoy.
Then through the hull of the U-boat came noises from the water around them—t
he chilling and unmistakable sound of ships breaking up as they sank. The U-boat men looked at each other, the triumph drained from tense frightened faces. Suppose one of those torpedoed ships came down on top of them?
How macabre to be carried to the bottom by one's own victim!
To watch a ship sink from the surface was a tragic sight, no matter how hard one had worked to bring about just that event. But to be under water, and to hear the sounds from within a dying ship was a horribly graphic preview of what the U-124's crew knew perfectly well could happen to them at any time. The rending crumpling sound of bulkheads caved in by the water pressure made their flesh crawl, and they stared at their own grey bulkheads. Would these same awful sounds be someday repeated in their own boat, and would these sturdy steel walls be crumpled around them for a torn and jagged coffin?
Schulz looked up and shuddered involuntarily. Was one of those sinking ships above them? As terrifying as the depth charges were, this was worse. How grisly to be locked in a fatal embrace with a wrecked ship, to be caught and crushed and borne down to the bottom of the ocean by a ship he himself had torpedoed. It was like being carried to one's death by a corpse. He shuddered again and bit his lip.
At last they were free of the carnage around them, and they reloaded the torpedo tubes and surfaced, forcing themselves to shake off the clammy fear that had gripped them. In the distance, lights flickered as rescue boats moved slowly through the water picking up survivors.
Now rearmed, U-124 started after the convoy again, but was forced under by a destroyer which dropped a few depth charges, none very close. And while the destroyer kept the U-boat down, the mangled convoy made its escape.
Next morning, Schulz again made contact with Scharnhorst, but the battleship could offer no clue to the convoy's position. Schulz was sure it had altered course, but could find no trace of it.
Still hunting, he met U-106 and talked to her commander, but Rasch was also at a loss as to the convoy's whereabouts.
Unable to relocate the ships, Schulz resumed his interrupted journey toward the West African coast. The cruise had begun with striking success.
A few days after the convoy battle, Dr. Goder was called in to see Maschinistmaat Toni Walbröl, who was lying in his bunk, feverish from a painfully infected arm. For several days, Dr. Goder treated it, but the injury had been severe and the infection was seriously advanced, so that in spite of all the doctor could do, Walbröl grew steadily worse.
Finally Goder told the commander that an operation was imperative—an operation that would be impossible to perform on the U-124.
"Why wasn't I told about it when he got hurt?" Schulz demanded irritably. "His arm was already badly infected before I even heard about it."
"It happened in port, Herr Kaleu," Goder told him. "A couple of days before we left Lorient."
"Well why didn't he get it taken care of then instead of letting it get in this shape?" Schulz asked, surprised to find that the injury had occurred some two weeks before. "He could have gone to a hospital then."
"That's what he was afraid of," Goder said. "He didn't tell anybody because he was afraid he'd be put in a hospital and the boat would sail without him."
Walbröl was one of the original crew that had survived the sinking of the U-64.
Schulz shook his head. "That was very foolish," he said. "It was dangerous for him; and besides, I need every man I have. I certainly ought not to leave base with any casualties on board."
"I agree absolutely, Herr Kommandant," Goder said innocently. "But I wonder what you would have done under the circumstances."
"That's entirely beside the point, Doctor," Schulz snapped. But his brown eyes flickered in sudden amusement as he conjured up the preposterous mental picture of his sitting tamely by with a bandaged arm while some other commander took his boat on patrol. "You've made your point, Doctor," he said, grinning. "I'm going to see Walbröl now. And if you can put off surgery for two more days, I'll have a real operating theater for you. We rendezvous with the Kormoran on the 18th."
The rendezvous point was south of Freetown out in the open Atlantic. U-124 arrived at the precise spot at the precise moment in a raging storm—and with her officers and crew understandably congratulating themselves on a fine piece of seamanship. Taking on torpedoes was impossible in the weather, a fact that was rather forcefully brought home to both commanders when the attempt resulted in damaging the one torpedo that survived the precarious trip. They then agreed on a second rendezvous and met there a few hours later.
The weather was still too rough for the U-boat to be supplied, but Dr. Goder and Walbröl were taken over to the auxiliary cruiser in a small boat. Goder, assisted by the Kormoran's surgeon, operated as soon as they arrived.
The storm was worse when he finished, so he was obliged to remain on board the Kormoran until the next day, and spent his time basking in the luxurious wardroom and officers' quarters on the raider. As soon as his duties in surgery were completed, he plunged enthusiastically into his role as man of the hour, every inch the dashing U-boat officer as he told his fascinated audience about their encounters with the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the convoy battle that followed.
After waiting some four hours for the weather to improve, U-124 took on four torpedoes forward and two aft, and also a replacement for the injured Walbröl, Obermaschinistmaat Ackermann.
It was the following morning before the diesel oil and fresh water could be taken aboard, and with the completion of transfers all concerned breathed a sigh of relief. Rendezvous points were always chosen for their remoteness, but should an enemy plane or ship stumble upon one, the ships engaged in refueling would be helpless to fight or run.
Soon after the hoses were uncoupled, the tripod masts of a warship appeared on the horizon. Schulz had been notified that the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer would join them at the rendezvous, but he cautiously dived to take a good first look through the periscope. It was always possible that a Britisher had decided to crash the party, and it was healthy to be discreet in U-boat circles.
When the Scheer hove to near the raider, U-124 surfaced and Schulz signaled to Kapitän Theodor Krancke that he had brought his cigar box. Krancke replied that he was sending a boat and also a surprise for U-124.
The boat arrived loaded with fresh-baked bread and cakes, a rare treat for the U-boat men whose rations mostly came out of cans—and even these tasted like diesel oil. Schulz, cigar box in hand, returned with the boat to the Scheer, and handed it over to Krancke, who received it with joyous relief.
Later, while he was entertaining Schulz and Kapitän Detmars of the Kormoran, he was informed that Schulz's mysterious box had done the trick, and at last Schulz learned its contents.
It was a replacement quartz for the Scheer's radar, which had been out of commission. The battleship was ready to try to break through the British fleet to get home again, an almost hopeless task without her radar.
While the Scheer's repaired radar scanned the distance and her big guns loomed protectively over them, the little German fleet lay together off St. Paul's Rocks in the South Atlantic, and the crews eagerly visited back and forth among the ships.
The U-124 men rapturously stretched their legs and ate wonderful fresh foods on board the big ships. And they reveled in the unaccustomed luxury of a bath. The bountiful supply of fresh water even allowed for laundry, so the scrubbed U-boat crew turned out in clean uniforms too.
They noted with amusement that eager as the big ship men were to visit their U-boat, they were all even more eager to leave it, profoundly influenced by claustrophobia and the special U-boat aroma which the natives on board did not even notice any more.
They lounged lazily on the decks, dreamily watching the flying fish that sailed through the air around them. Some of the graceful little fish leaped over the bow of the boat, and a few fell short to land on the deck.
Kesselheim gathered up a batch of them, intending to dry them like herring and take them home as a souvenir
of this cruise. The attempt was a spectacular failure, however, and after a few days, the smell of dead fish in the forward torpedo room was overpowering. Kesselheim received an ultimatum from his shipmates telling him that if the fish were not thrown overboard immediately, he himself would be.
The ships' companies amused each other by demonstrating their special qualities and accomplishments. Scheer, of course, awed the others with her heavy guns and armament, as well as her spanking Navy beauty and impressive size.
Kormoran, Ship 41, was a former merchantman converted into an auxiliary cruiser, and she demonstrated how she could change herself within seconds from an innocent-looking freighter into a formidable raider, bristling with guns. This high-seas Houdini could and did approach enemy ships without arousing suspicion until she unmasked her guns and ordered them to stop. Her disguise was so perfect that even the most critical close inspection revealed absolutely no flaw, and the crews of the Scheer and U-124 were fascinated.
U-124, determined not to be outdone, showed the others how fast a U-boat could dive, and vanished from the surface as though by magic.
Before the little fleet dispersed, the Scheer bound for home, Kormoran to the Pacific, and U-124 to the African coast, Kapitän Krancke asked Schulz what he could do for U-124. "Isn't there some special food you'd like to take aboard?"
"No, no," answered Schulz politely. "You'll need your own provisions, and we have plenty to last us." He tried to keep his mind off the delicious broiled steaks and fresh vegetables he and all his men had been served on board this floating palace.
"Then how about some nice fresh eggs?" Krancke asked.
"Oh, if you could spare us a few, we would like that very much," Schulz answered.
"Fine," said Krancke. "Now how many thousands do you think you can use?"
"Thousands?" gasped Schulz.
Krancke related, with obvious enjoyment, how the Scheer had captured the refrigerator ship Duquesa, which carried a cargo of 9,000 tons of meat and fruit and 900 tons of eggs. This seagoing delicatessen had then supplied all the German ships in the South Atlantic with goodies they never dreamed they would see until they got back to base.
Grey Wolf, Grey Sea Page 10