The Wrecking Crew

by Taylor Zajonc

“You know we have no torpedoes in the torpedo room,” said the sailor. “Left ’em back in Trondheim before our departure for Japan. Couldn’t take them, see? We needed space for all the … um … special crates.”

  Doctor Goering nodded. He’d seen the boxes—radar detectors, prototype rifles, aviation turbine engines, technical plans, and similar marvels. The cargos were the best technologies that Reich scientists could offer, only to be born away from Fatherland soil for use by the Asiatics. It was all luftschloss to the doctor, castles in the sky, the idea that the massing mongrel hordes of America and Australia could be turned back by a single yellow race armed with German-made x-ray guns and jet-planes.

  “So?” asked the doctor.

  “I’m sleeping on top of a ray gun,” said midshipman. “It has to be the cause of everything! What else could cause my sickness? No one else is afflicted! Marvelous, no? If this happens when one merely sleeps upon the weapon, just imagine it discharged upon the Americans! We could roast entire divisions where they stand!”

  Carried away by his own mirth, the midshipman made a few imbecilic ‘zapping’ noises towards imagined enemy troops until he was silenced by the doctor’s profound lack of corresponding amusement.

  “You’re dismissed,” said the doctor. “I will call on you in a few hours. Do you remember what I said?”

  “Continue taking my vitamins,” said the sailor glumly, unhappy that his pet theory had not gained traction with the doctor.

  “And?”

  “Keep my scheisse in the bowl until you inspect it.”

  “Dismissed,” said the doctor, shepherding the sailor out of the medical cabin. For a moment, he stood leaning out into the main corridor, the hollow spine of the submarine connecting every compartment. Diesel and grease-stained men shuffled their way through net-hung fruits and breads, passing each other in the cramped quarters with silent familiarity, moving with the eerie synchronicity of scavenging ants.

  The doctor adjusted his uniform and walked the three meters to the captain’s quarters, doffing his hat as he knocked at the door to the cabin that doubled as the armory.

  “Kommen,” came a familiar voice from the other side of the thing wooden door. Captain Duckwitz needed not request the identity of the knocker—only one of the top lieutenants, chief engineer or the doctor himself would ever consider interrupting the captain in his private quarters.

  Doctor Goering pressed open the door, stepped inside, and latched it behind him. The captain looked up from a handwritten letter, his weary grey eyes meeting the gaze of the ship’s doctor, rows of Mauser pistols and rifles, signal guns, hand grenades and several matte-black MP40 submachine guns racked behind him. Two Japanese katana swords hung from the rack as well, conspicuous and out-of-place amongst the futuristic weapons.

  Captain Duckwitz was just twenty-eight, too young for his authoritative mannerisms and steely bearing, too young for the weight of responsibility or the wrinkles around the corners of his unusual eyes. The doctor’s daughter had expressed genuine horror upon finding the captain’s tender age—how can a man not yet thirty, not yet married and with no children even contemplate the rigors of command? But in these waning days of the kreigsmarine, command was earned through survival, survival through hard-won skill and wily intelligence, in Dutckwitz’s case ably demonstrated over three bitterly-fought tours.

  “What can I do for you, my learned friend?” asked the captain with a wry, gravelly voice as he gestured the doctor to sit on the edge of the bunk beside the desk. Doctor Oskar Goering smiled, but did not sit.

  It was true, at least part of the statement—they were indeed friends. Doctor Goering found himself in the rare position as the one man in Kapitanleutnant Duckwitz’s command with near total autonomy, a position that allowed him to become the captain’s foil and confidant. Mutual trust allowed forbidden discussions on the increasingly erratic instructions from German high command, the confusing, divergent orders, collapsing morale and the unimaginable implications of national surrender.

  “It may be the usual malingering,” grumbled the doctor. “But two of the crew have been afflicted by a strange illness originating from the aft torpedo room.”

  The handsome captain nodded, his grey eyes piercing the wall of his quarters. He ran a hand through his brown hair—hair too long for regulations—as he considered the statement. The doctor noticed the captain’s hand absent-mindedly tapping a single folded letter bearing a decryption stamp from the radio officer. Another coded communication from the Fatherland—what new and futile insanity could it demand?

  “Is this a bad time?” asked the doctor, noticing the captain’s distraction.

  “For Germany perhaps,” said the captain. “We live in difficult days. But you are always welcome in my quarters. I take it you have never seen this affliction previously?”

  “I have not,” said the doctor. “But diseases manifest themselves differently in every man. There is no reason to assume it is new or unknown.”

  “If it is new and you are the discoverer, it must bear your name,” mused the captain. “They’ll call it Oskar Goering’s disease.”

  “I’ve had this illness for years,” grumbled the doctor. “It makes one fat and bald and easily annoyed.”

  The Captain’s hardened face twitched once, then broke into an open smile—and yet the smile carried with it such sadness.

  “Do you know what we’re carrying to Japan?” asked the doctor, steering the inquiry to his concern. “In the aft torpedo room—or in any compartment for that matter?”

  “I do not,” declared the Captain with a hint of righteous annoyance. “The eierkopf scientists believe that knowledge above my station.”

  It went unspoken that the declaration would never leave the cabin. To the crew, the captain must remain God, all-seeing, all-knowing, an ordained instrument of deliverance. But his hand still unconsciously tapped upon this letter.

  “Any insight would assist,” pressed the doctor. “If the source is some type of toxic exposure, I would recommend we rotate the men’s bunks. If it is infectious, on the other hand—”

  “Then you do not want to risk further infection,” said the captain, completing the physician’s thought. “I regret I know nothing more than you. In any case, I cannot order a man to sleep in a sick man’s bunk; he’d sooner sleep lashed to the keel. I authorize you to distribute rations of brandy to the ill.”

  “Generous,” harrumphed Doctor Goering. “We’ll soon have an entire company of afflicted.”

  The captain almost smiled, but it flickered and died upon his tired face. The doctor stepped back for a moment at the uncharacteristic tone. Something troubled the young man, and the sense of discomfort compelled the doctor into retreat.

  “We’ll speak another time,” said the doctor, bowing slightly in deference as he backed towards the cabin door.

  “Do not leave,” said the captain, apologetically gesturing for the doctor to return as he himself stood up and gently pressed the communique into the interior pocket of his wool uniform jacket. “Accompany me to the command compartment. My learned friend, I will need you at my side, today above all days.”

  Confused and troubled, the doctor nodded and followed his captain into the main corridor. For the first time, he noticed that the grey-eyed commander had donned a clean uniform typically reserved for return to port, his dress pistol sidearm, had even made an attempt to slick his hair and trim away the more unkempt patches of his scraggly beard.

  Today above all days, repeated the doctor to himself. What could this possibly mean?

  The captain forced a smile and nodded to diesel obermashinist Baek as he and the doctor squeezed past in the narrow walkway. Short—and quite fat, despite meager rations—the chief engineer had the ruddy-faced complexion of a gift-laden, bearded der Weihnachtsmann. Easily the most popular crewman on the ship, he consistently found no situation above merriment, no comrade undeserving of friendly affection.

  “Which sailors are sick?” asked t
he captain as the doctor followed him towards the command compartment.

  “Seaman Lichtenberg,” said Doctor Goering. “And his bunkmate, the one whose name I can never remember. The one from Czechoslovakia.”

  “Damnable wunderwaffen. Secret weapons, secret plans. Secrets upon secrets. So secret that even a captain knows not what he carries upon his own vessel. They tell me we carry the weapons that will save the war—but why simply trade them to the Nipponese?”

  “We have what they need, I suppose. I doubt their science or manufacturing is within a decade of ours. Their medicine certainly isn’t.”

  “We are selling our future,” declared the captain. “God has seen fit to bless their Asiatic empire with natural riches. But on my last porting in Ushant, I saw our planes without tires, trucks without diesel. Soon we’ll have soldiers without shoes.”

  To say nothing of women and children without bread, thought the doctor, thinking back to the last letter he’d received from his grown daughter before departing port. Even through her brave, stalwart insistence that all was well, he could see past the thin veneer of state-enforced optimism.

  “So we need raw materials from the East,” said the captain. “And for this, we must give our technology. I have the U-3531 with a submerged fast-attack speed of more than seventeen knots; I can carry twenty-three torpedoes and sixty men across oceans. And yet we are little more than a glorified oxen. My friend, there was a time when we were wolves.”

  The captain wasn’t wrong. For a moment, the doctor felt himself wondering if the Japanese had designs on the U-boat once it arrived. It’d be easy enough, wouldn’t it? Greet their German guests at the docks, lure them in, butcher the crew and take their mighty submarine.

  Striding past the radio compartment, the conversation came to an abrupt end as the captain spotted the glance of Oberleutnant Boer, the submarine’s twenty-three-year-old political officer, an inevitable consequence of the Valkyrie assassination bombing attempt on Hitler’s life. The ferret-faced sailor was committedly friendless, content in his divine mission. Every casual attempt to engage him in conversation would result in some lecture about sovereign living space, superiority of the German man, the right of Fatherland to assert her will over Europe or the dazzling brilliance of the Fuhrer. The few that tried rarely bothered a second time. Boer behaved as a man who’d never invited nor experienced a moment of doubt in his life, a trait that passed the point of admirable conviction and instead situated itself contentedly in the realm of outright parody. With his immaculate uniforms unspoiled by labor and tendency to breathlessly repeat schoolboy slogans and propaganda, even the sympathetic found his devotion to the Reich laughable. But the only truly unforgivable sin committed by Boer was his confiscation of a full third of the ship’s razors, allowing the political officer to remain the only consistently shaved man aboard.

  The captain briefly paused at the last door before the command compartment. Originally designated as the captain’s cabin, the quarters now held two Japanese military attachés. Doctor Goering had seen little of the two diminutive men, they rarely left the small room and preferred to eat their strange rice meals in solitude. He’d only seen them in the moments before embarkation, two gymnast-like, muscled Japanese officers in crisply-pressed khaki uniforms and short beards, sheathed samurai-styled blades at their hips. The doctor had watched as the two men eyed the German sailors with a mix of disinterest and contempt, not even bothering with the implied respect of one supposed master race to another.

  Captain Duckwitz checked both directions of the corridor and slid a folding oxbone pen-knife from his pocket. As the confused doctor looked on, the captain reached up to the low ceiling and allowed his fingers to find the small wire that went to the intercom speaker inside the Japanese cabin. The young captain slid his pen knife through the wire, slicing it in two. With the thick metal cabin door shut, the interior would be as silent as a bank vault. The coctor did not know what the captain intended to say over the intercom—but whatever was to be said, their Japanese guests were not meant to hear it.

  Stepping into the command compartment, the captain and his doctor were greeted by a muffled captain-on-deck and salute by the assembled officers. Captain Duckwitz ordered them at ease and turned to his radio operator, leaning low over his station and addressing him with a conspiratorial whisper, the doctor joining the huddle.

  “Loss reports?” asked the Captain.

  “Not good, captain,” said the young man, dropping a single earphone from his head. “Have just received April 30th through May 3rd. Eight losses at minimum.”

  The captain shook his head. Bad, but not as bad as the air raids of early April. “Read me the designations,” he ordered. “But quietly.”

  “U-325, missing with all hands. No cause known. U-879, sunk by warship patrol. U-1107, lost by aircraft in the Bay of Biscay—”

  “Bay of Biscay? More like the valley of the shadow of death,” mumbled Doctor Goering to no one in particular.

  “U-2359, 2521, and 3032 presumed lost to aircraft,” continued the radio operator. “And the U-3502 has been deemed unrepairable from an earlier attack.”

  “The U-2521?” asked the captain. “That was Heinz Franke’s boat, no?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted the radio operator.

  “Was he a friend?” asked the doctor.

  “Not as such, but I know the family.”

  “Were you able to decode the message from this morning?” the radio operator gingerly inquired. “I was unfamiliar with the cypher.”

  “Stop probing,” the captain said with a wry smile. “If you were meant to know the message, you would know the message. Doctor—please join me as I address the crew.”

  Doctor Goering could do little but nod and stand beside his captain, feeling both the pressure of situation and expectation. His young friend was the solid oak core of ever-greater nesting dolls, bearing the weight of command, the pressure of the ocean around their tiny submarine, the hostile airplanes and destroyers that circled like locusts, the massing Allied armies at the Fatherland’s borders.

  With one deep sigh, the captain took the intercom phone from beside the attack periscope and cleared his throat.

  “Crew of the U-3531, come to attention,” he began, the intonation of his voice giving no evidence as to his forthcoming message. “This is your Kapitanleutnant speaking. We have received urgent orders from Naval High Command that I will now relay to you.”

  The Captain took another halting breath before continuing, steadying himself against the periscope.

  “All Underseebooten,” he continued. “Attention all Underseebooten. Cease fire at once. Stop all hostile action against Allied shipping.”

  Murmurs whispered throughout the command compartment, turning to hissed whispers. The doctor feared they’d soon turn to a roar.

  “The orders continue,” said the captain. “It reads as follows—my U-Boat men. Six years of war lie behind you. You have fought like lions. An overwhelming material superiority has driven us into a tight corner from which it is no longer possible to continue the war. Unbeaten and unblemished, you lay down your arms after a heroic fight without parallel. We proudly remember our fallen comrades who gave their lives for Fuehrer and Fatherland. Comrades, preserve that spirit in which you have fought so long and so gallantly for the sake of the future of the Fatherland. Long Live Germany. It is signed Grand Admiral Doenitz. Orders end.”

  Silence rang through the submarine like a gong, a profound, ear-ringing silence only experienced after a falling bomb has ripped through a city block—or when years of total war come to an abrupt end.

  “I will add a measure of my thoughts,” said the captain into the intercom. “Men—we have fought like comrades and died like brothers. I am eternally honored to have served with every one of you. We must now steel ourselves to push through this veil, whether that veil be wet with tears or red with hatred. I intend to return us to Germany and place our fates at the feet of our conquerors. Men
—brothers—we have survived the war, may we now survive the peace to come.”

  The dam broke with fifty-seven simultaneous shouts of despair and joy, insistences of disbelief, shattered expectations and uncertainty.

  Ferret-faced political officer Oberleutnant Boer pushed his way to the foremost of the Captain’s congregants, shoving aside ruddy Diesel Obermaschinest Baeck and the aghast radio operator.

  “Lies!” Boer shouted, waving a finger in the captain’s impassive face. “American, British lies!”

  “I’ve verified the code personally,” said the captain. “The orders are from Admiral Doenitz’s hand to my mouth—and Oberleutnant Boer, be well advised that I do not owe your rank an explanation.”

  “Orders?” snarled Boer as he nearly ripped open the lapel of his uniform to reach inside his interior breast pocket. “These orders of which you speak? I have orders as well—secret orders from the Fuhrer’s inner circle! In the event of a collapsing war effort or sabotage from within, we are to sail to Argentina to regroup. Captain, this very vessel has the weapons necessary to turn the tide of war. Captain, we are the key to beating back the mongrel races—but instead, you tell us these lies of surrender?”

  The captain’s mouth had just begun to twitch with an infuriated response when out of nowhere a fist flew into the political officer’s face, snapping across the young man’s jawline with shattering force, instantly dropping the political officer in a sprawling heap on the floor. Ruddy, affable mechanic Baeck had become a human cudgel, his teeth gritted and brow knotted as he continued the assault, throwing his body atop the political officer and raining down blow after blow after blow. The doctor recoiled in horror—not for the act, but the beloved man committing it.

  Shouting officers dragged the two men apart, the political officer now dazed and bleeding, the bloody-knuckled mechanic struggling against the interventionists. In the confusion, the doctor noted a flashing metallic glint in the captain’s hand as he drew a Luger pistol and drew aim at the beloved mechanic.

  “Striking a superior officer is a capital offense,” intoned the captain, cocking the hammer as Baeck’s eyes widened in surprise.