“I could ask around,” Klaus said.
“Don’t,” Lemp told him, not without regret. “Anybody who told you would be breaking security. Better not to tempt somebody-and better not to give the Gestapo an excuse to come down on us.”
“Oh,” Hammerstein said, and then, “Right.” Lemp’s head went up and down once more, crisply this time. Things went better when you didn’t need to worry about looking over your own shoulder… quite so much, anyhow.
Two days later, the U-30 chugged out into the North Sea. The men ate like pigs. You had to get rid of the fresh food first, because it wouldn’t keep. They’d go back to sausage and tinned sauerkraut and hard-baked bread soon enough-too soon, really. Boiled beef, stewed chicken, fresh cabbage, even some peaches… Lemp gobbled down his share. He might have eaten a little more than his share. He was the skipper, after all. But his pants still fit all right, so he couldn’t have been too much of a greedyguts.
Gerhart Beilharz put the Schnorkel through its paces. Lemp was less nervous about the gadget than he had been when it first got installed. It hadn’t misbehaved too badly, and it did come in handy every now and then. Lemp still would have liked it better if the brass had given it to him as a reward rather than a punishment.
The tall engineer said, “It’s working the way it’s supposed to, Skipper.”
“All right.” Lemp hoped it was. He was also more willing to believe Beilharz than he had been when the beanpole came aboard with the Schnorkel. Beilharz had to be two meters if he was a centimeter. He needed his Stahlhelm, all right. U-boats weren’t built with people his size in mind.
This was a different kind of patrol. Instead of telling him to go out into the Atlantic to torpedo freighters traveling between the Americas and England, the orders over which he and Klaus had puzzled instructed him to stay in the North Sea and patrol north and south between two fixed parallels of latitude. He was to sink anything he saw, and to be especially alert for Royal Navy warships.
That codicil kept him scratching his chin. The Royal Navy wasn’t in the habit of pushing into the North Sea. As long as it could keep German surface vessels bottled up-which it hadn’t managed with the Admiral Scheer -it kept its distance, leery not only of U-boats but also of land-based airplanes.
So why did his orders talk about enemy warships as if expecting them to rush into the path of his patrol? It made for a nice strategic question, one that gave both officers and ratings something to chew on. Lemp had his own opinion-or rather, his own suspicion. He didn’t voice it; even on a U-boat, people were often reluctant to contradict the skipper. He was amused to discover he wasn’t the only one to arrive at that suspicion. Amused, yes, but not surprised. If you could read a map and thought a little about how and where the war was going, it was one of the things that seemed likely.
Likely, of course, didn’t have to mean true. It might prove nothing but so much moonshine. Lemp knew how much he didn’t know. The ratings sounded much more confident than he did. They didn’t worry about what they didn’t know. From his days in school, Lemp remembered Socrates going on about such things.
Socrates had got sunk for his trouble. Lemp intended to be on the other end of the bargain. At the moment, though, it looked like no bargain at all. No Royal Navy battleships or carriers, destroyers or corvettes-hell, no Royal Navy tugs or garbage scows-showed themselves in his patrol zone. From what the radio operator could pick up, things were also quiet elsewhere.
No freighters bound from Norway to England or the other way lumbered past, either. Petrels skimmed by the U-30. One landed on the radio aerial atop the conning tower. It seemed surprised to find an island in the middle of the sea. After a minute or two, it flew off.
One of the ratings on watch up there let his binoculars down onto his chest and grinned at Lemp. “Do we sink the sea birds, Skipper?” he asked. “They’re the only things in the neighborhood.”
“Bad luck!” another sailor said, and everybody else nodded. You didn’t hurt petrels, not for anything.
“I was only kidding,” the first man protested.
“Don’t worry about it, Erich,” Lemp said. “We know you didn’t mean anything by it.” By their expressions, not all the ratings agreed, but they let it lie-for now. Lemp wondered if Erich would get himself a set of lumps after he went below. He hoped the others wouldn’t rack the sailor up to the point where he couldn’t carry out his duties. A U-boat needed every man it carried.
He was also willing to bet that, as long as Erich was still able to walk, he wouldn’t let out a peep about what had happened to him. Officers didn’t need to know-and certainly didn’t need to notice-everything that went on aboard a warship.
Or maybe the rating escaped his expected fate, because the very next day a sailor fishing from the conning tower caught an enormous cod. If that wasn’t good luck, Lemp didn’t know what would be. The sailors gutted the big fish and threw the offal overboard.
“Now what do we do with it?” somebody wondered.
“I know how to make codfish balls,” another sailor said.
A wit piped up: “What do we do with the rest?”
“Funny, Michael,” Lemp said amidst groans. “You should take it on the stage-or anywhere else a long way from here.”
But, for lack of other suggestions, they let the volunteer have his way. And the codfish balls, eked out with flour, proved surprisingly good. Lemp put a commendation in the log. It might earn the amateur cook a promotion when the U-30 came home.
In the meantime, they patrolled. They saw ocean, and more ocean, and more ocean still. They saw petrels. Some were gray. Some were black. Some were gray and black. A birdwatcher probably would have gone into ecstasies about them. Lemp took them for granted, as long as no one talked about doing them in.
Still no freighters. No Royal Navy ships, either. Only long days and short, light nights. Twilight never quite left the northern sky, and the dimmer stars remained unseen. The weather was good-as good as it ever got in the North Sea, anyhow. It might almost have been a pleasure jaunt. If only the accommodations were fancier, Lemp thought. The Strength through Joy cruises do a better job.
It didn’t take long for the patrolling to get to be first routine, then dull routine. Lemp fought that as best he could. Taking things for granted was one of the easiest ways to get yourself killed.
No ships. No planes. No suspicious smoke smudges on the horizon. No stalking a quarry. No crash dives when someone came stalking you, either. Back and forth. Back and forth again. Nothing. Lots of nothing. Lemp got bored, too. He worked all the harder on account of it. He made sure the crew did, too.
The U-30 didn’t travel very far. It could stay at sea as long as it had fuel and food. No orders to do anything else came over the radio. Back and forth one more time, and then one more time after that.
* * *
Arno Baatz glowered at Willi Dernen. “I’ve got my eye on you,” the corporal warned. “You may have fooled that SS fellow, but I know damn well you had something to do with Storch lighting out for the tall timber.”
Awful Arno was right. So was a stopped clock, twice a day. Most days, that put it two up on Baatz. “I don’t know what happened to Wolfgang,” Willi said, for what had to be the hundredth time. “Maybe he did light out, but he was always a good soldier till people started giving him grief. Or maybe a shell came down right on top of him. We were catching hell from the Frenchies that day, remember. Sometimes there’s nothing left to bury, you know?” He eyed his squad leader. “It could have happened to you.”
“And you would have been happy if it did?”
“You said that. I didn’t. I don’t mean it, either.” Willi didn’t aim to let Awful Arno pin an insubordination rap on him. He also didn’t particularly hope Baatz would get blown to nothingness on the instant. That would be too quick, too easy. If the sniper with the monster rifle nailed Awful Arno right in the knee, though…
A German sniper prowled the lines these days, too, hunting the Frenchma
n or Czech or whatever he was. A rifle made for knocking out panzers did horrid things to flesh and bone. Sometimes a hit on the arm or leg would kill just from the shock of the impact. The sooner the expert with the scope-sighted rifle-he was an Oberfeldwebel named Helmut Fegelein, a grizzled veteran of the last war-disposed of the bastard with the big rifle, the happier everybody would be.
Everybody except the enemy sniper, of course. But Willi wasted no sympathy on him. Every so often, that big, distinctive boom! would echo from the trenches off in the distance. And then, as often as not, some German who’d been careless or naive would fall over screaming-or sometimes just twitching.
“Fucker’s good,” Fegelein allowed, spooning up a stew of cabbage and sausage and potatoes from his mess tin. “I’ve got a couple of shots at him, but he’s still in business.”
“How come you missed?” Awful Arno asked.
Fegelein looked through him. The senior noncom didn’t have to put up with Baatz’s bullshit the way Willi did. “You try it, sonny boy,” he said. “You got a split second at extreme long range, and maybe you hit and maybe you don’t. He stays well back, too-that antipanzer rifle’s got more reach reach than a Mauser.”
Willi smiled at his corporal. Sonny boy, was it? He liked that, and liked it all the better because Awful Arno obviously didn’t. “You ought to get closer, then-that’s all I’ve got to say,” Baatz remarked.
“If that’s all you’ve got to say, keep your big fat dumb mouth shut,” Fegelein answered. “I didn’t come here to get my head blown off, either. This guy hasn’t been doing it for long, or I never would have got a shot at him at all. But he’s sharp. He keeps learning. I haven’t got a glimpse of him for a day and a half. If I were talking to most people, I’d tell ’em to keep their heads down till I nail him.”
“But not me?” Baatz reddened with anger. “Why not?”
“Because you don’t have enough brains in there to worry about getting ’em blown out,” the sniper answered. “If he shoots you in the ass, though, you’re liable to end up with a concussion.”
Somebody behind Awful Arno guffawed. Willi would have, if he were sitting where Baatz couldn’t see him doing it. And Baatz couldn’t even round on the miscreant, not with Fegelein’s cold gray gaze pinning him down. People talked about sniper’s eyes. Willi hadn’t seen any examples of that unfailing, scary watchfulness before. But the Oberfeldwebel had it in spades.
“Were you a sniper in 1918, too?” Willi asked him as they washed out their tins side by side.
“Nein.” Fegelein shook his head and lit a small, stinky cigar. “I was an assault trooper. I carried a machine pistol and a big sack of grenades. I started this business in one of the Freikorps after the war. I’d had it up to here with fighting the other guys at twenty meters. They don’t have to be good to kill you at that range-just lucky. I figured I’d give myself better odds. I got into the Reichswehr in… was it ’21 or ’22? Anyway, I’ve been doing this ever since.”
“Makes sense to me,” Willi said. “The farther away the enemy stays, the better I like it.”
That chilly stare appraised him for a moment. Sure as hell, Willi felt as if he were in the crosshairs. Then Fegelein gave him a smile-a thin smile, but a smile. “Yeah, I’ve heard a lot of guys go on like that,” the sniper said. “Half the time, it’s right before they do something that gets ’em a Ritterkreuz.”
“I don’t want one,” Willi said with great sincerity.
Helmut Fegelein only shrugged. “Sometimes you want the medal, sometimes the medal wants you. When the time comes, you’ll know what needs doing. That piece of crap you’ve got for a corporal, now…”
Willi laughed out loud. “You mean Awful Arno?” Sure as hell, Fegelein was a keen judge of character.
The veteran chuckled. “Is that what you call him?”
Belatedly, Willi realized he might have stuck his foot in it. An Oberfeldwebel could land a Gefreiter in all kinds of trouble for badmouthing another noncom senior to him. “Well…” Willi said reluctantly.
“That’s what you call him when you don’t think anybody’ll gig you for it,” Fegelein said, which was perfectly true. The sniper reached into his pocket and pulled out the stogies again. He offered Willi one. “Here you go. I don’t blab. I remember what I called the jerks who ordered me around.”
Next morning, the son of a bitch with the antipanzer rifle potted a captain-knocked him off a motorcycle, in fact. And that evening, as darkness descended, Fegelein did go out into the no-man’s-land between the lines. “About time,” Arno Baatz said-but not where the Oberfeldwebel could hear him.
Willi didn’t see Awful Arno volunteering to go out there. He couldn’t say that, but thought it very loudly. Baatz strutted off to do some of the important things corporals did. One of those things was to make sure Willi stood sentry in the middle of the night and broke up his sleep. As always, Willi appreciated it.
Come morning, he saw no sign of Helmut Fegelein. The sniper was out there somewhere, sprawled in a shell hole or under one piece of wreckage or another. He had his rifle and he had a hunter’s patience. Somewhere farther off, the enemy sniper had the same patience and an even nastier weapon.
The antipanzer rifle thundered, its report distinctive even though it came from a long way northwest of the trench in which Willi waited. Fegelein’s piece stayed silent. Either he didn’t spot the enemy or he had no chance to hit him from wherever he hid.
Fegelein came in after dark. He slipped past the German pickets, which was bound to raise officers’ blood pressure. If all the Frenchmen out there were as good as he was, they could do it, too. And if cows pissed gasoline, the Reich wouldn’t have to worry about running low on fuel.
Some time in the middle of the night, the sniper vanished again. Maybe he was going back to the same hidey-hole, or maybe he changed his lair daily like a hunted wolf. Willi thought he would have if he were doing that job. He thanked heaven he wasn’t.
No sign of the Oberfeldwebel when the sun came up. He’d be waiting-or, for all Willi knew, he’d be sound asleep right now. Who was going to tell him he couldn’t do that if he felt like it?
Sweat ran down Willi’s face. Summer was coming in, all right. When he pushed his way through the Ardennes in the middle of winter, he’d thought the war would be over by now. “Shows what I knew,” he muttered.
Then the antipanzer rifle spoke again, seemingly right in front of him. A split second later, a Mauser in no-man’s-land answered. Willi’s ears told him about where the shot came from, but he still couldn’t spot Fegelein.
He couldn’t, but the enemy sniper could. That goddamn elephant gun fired once more, as soon as it could have after the man using it worked the bolt. Silence returned, punctuated only by the skrawks of frightened crows.
Helmut Fegelein didn’t come back for supper after sundown. Willi guessed he wasn’t hungry any more, and never would be again.
Chapter 14
Pussy didn’t like tanks, not even a little bit. Alistair Walsh wasn’t surprised. The cat had come to take gunfire for granted. Animals sometimes got used to things more easily than people did. Pussy couldn’t know what bullets and shell fragments did to soft, vulnerable flesh. She didn’t know how lucky she was to be ignorant, either.
Tanks were a whole different business, though. She didn’t just hear them rattle and clank. She could see them move. Here was something bigger than an elephant that could-and might want to-squash her flat. Tanks smelled funny, too. No wonder the cat disappeared into the smallest hole she could find.
Regardless of Pussy’s opinion, Walsh liked tanks in the neighborhood fine. These Mark I Cruisers seemed a vast improvement over the poor Matildas that had tried to hold off German panzers the winter before. The Matildas mounted nothing more than a machine gun, and a running man could easily keep up with them. They did have thick armor… and they needed it.
These cruisers were a different business. Their turrets packed a two-pounder cannon and a machine gun,
while they mounted two more MGs in the front of the hull, one on each side of the driver’s position. It was probably crowded as all get-out up there, but enemy infantry in front of them would be very unhappy.
And they could move. They were as fast as anything the Germans had. More than once during the retreat from the Low Countries, English tankers had had to bail out of Matildas, set them on fire, and go back on foot or in a lorry when enemy thrusts outflanked and overran them. If they hadn’t, they would have been cut off and killed or captured. In fact, Walsh had seen a Matilda or two in German service, with a prominent cross painted on either side. He suspected he would have seen more if the Nazis liked the clunky little machines better.
Jock’s reaction to the Mark I Cruisers was more like Pussy’s. “Ah wish the bloody things’d go somewhere else,” the Yorkshireman grumbled.
“Why’s that?” Walsh asked. “Now that they’re here, we can give the Fritzes one right in the slats.”
“That’s why,” Jock said morosely. “Long as we sit tight here, we’re safe enough. Oh, not safe, Christ knows, but safe enough. With them buggers around, though, they’ll tell us to go forward again, damn their black hearts. Bad things happen when you go forward, by God.”
Half a lifetime ago, Walsh had been eager to go over the top-once. Living through that first assault cured him of eagerness forevermore. He was much happier staying in the trenches and letting the Germans come to him after that. Bad things did happen when you went forward. There you were, out in the open, with nothing to protect you but a lousy tin hat that wouldn’t keep bullets out anyhow. All these years later, his leg wound still bothered him.
Which meant nothing when the brass hats told you to advance. The Fritzes might rack you up. You own side assuredly would if you didn’t follow orders. He was part of that machinery himself. If you didn’t go forward because you were battle-wild, you’d damn well go forward because bad things would happen to you if you stayed behind.
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