by Homer Hickam
Krebs nodded, though he was frowning. He was still trying to figure out why it had taken him two torpedoes to do it.
26
The Maudie Jane eased along the Stream. Sunrise was still a few hours away. Josh came up on deck with a mug of hot coffee that Millie had thrust in his hand as he passed through the galley. He was feeling pretty good. Jimmy had returned home the day before, fully trained on the sonar and filled with excitement about the new friends he’d made aboard the Diana. Now, he was below in the sonar closet, his earphones clamped on, as happy as a boy with a new Lionel train set.
Josh gauged the movement of the sea by the feel of the deck. There was a bit of a chop but a glance to the northeast revealed a star-littered sky. There was no storm coming, at least not right away. He went inside the wheelhouse and found Phimble sitting on a stool with one hand on the wheel, keeping the boat meandering generally north. Stobs was bent over his radios.
Phimble glanced over his shoulder. “Good morning, Mister Thurlow. Stobs has been picking up some interesting traffic.”
“Some merchie ships have been blown up,” the radioman said. “They’ve been screaming their heads off about a mine-field. They say the navy’s strung one off New York and New Jersey and not told them a thing about it.”
Josh and Phimble exchanged glances. “What’s the navy say?”
“Nothing,” Stobs said. “Coast Guard, neither.”
“Call Doakes. See what they know.”
“Stobs has been trying that, Skipper,” Phimble said. His voice was weary. “They don’t answer. Chief Glendale’s probably working on the lighthouse celebration.”
Josh sipped his coffee while he thought things over. He supposed it was possible a minefield might have broken loose and drifted into the sea-lanes. Possible, but not likely. He took the wheel from Phimble. “Go get some rest, Eureka. It could be a long day.”
Krebs still didn’t know what to make of it. Since the U-560 had reached American waters, it was as if it had entered an alternate universe. Even though he had torpedoed two freighters, no one onshore seemed to care. There was no evidence that the United States was at war. Cities and towns were lit up like Christmas trees. Cars could be seen moving along coastal roads. Buoy lights danced everywhere. Lighthouses threw their beams in grand strokes. And ships! The ships were cruising with full running lights on, and not one of them zigzagging. They were all going straight as ducks in a shooting gallery.
The thing that worried Krebs most was running out of torpedoes. The U-560 had headed across the Atlantic with fourteen, the usual complement for a Type Seven boat. A bit unnerved after missing the first shot, he’d attacked the next two ships with a spread of two torpedoes apiece. All four eels had struck home and sent the targets to the bottom, but that left him with only eight for the remainder of the patrol. He began to think about using his deck gun or perhaps the tactic sometimes used by U-boats during the Great War: stopping ships, boarding, and scuttling them. There didn’t seem to be anybody around to stop him.
The lookouts reported that more ships were dying out on that inky sea, all burning like bonfires. Obviously, some of the other U-boats had gotten in on the carnage a day early, too. Although strict radio silence was being observed by the boats, BdU sent a message to the Paukenschlag boats to rendezvous with Kapitän Vogel at a point thirty kilometers northeast of Montauk Point. Krebs pretended he hadn’t received the message. He suspected all the other commanders were going to do the same. Vogel would be incensed, but Doenitz would forgive them when they reported spectacular success.
After each attack, Krebs had cautiously ordered the boat to submerge. When no warships showed up, he had brought the U-560 back to the surface. By then, the torpedoed freighters were settled low in the water, and the lookouts were entertained by the American crews trying to get their lifeboats launched. They were apparently ill-trained to abandon ship. Usually only a few of the boats got swung out before the freighters sank, leaving the sailors floundering in the water. Since no one came out to rescue them, many men drowned while the Germans watched. One lookout was brave enough to ask Max why they didn’t try to rescue the Americans. “Couldn’t we take them aboard, sir?”
Max reminded the lookout there was little room on a U-boat for prisoners. He also nodded toward the sky. “You’re new so you have no concept of being attacked from the air. This close to shore . . . they could be on us in seconds if we stopped to take aboard survivors.”
“But there are no aircraft, sir,” the lookout said, pointing to a sky empty of everything except the stars, the moon, and a few clouds.
Max had no answer to the lookout’s correct observation. “There is something very odd going on here,” Max told Krebs.
“Yes,” Krebs replied. “Perhaps we have died and gone to U-boat heaven.”
Krebs ordered the U-560 to continue south and went below. He sat on the navigator’s couch and tried to make sense of it all. Max, standing nearby with a mug of coffee, said, “Don’t they understand that they’re in a war? I expected to see convoys, at least. But single ships going back and forth fully lit up without a care! It’s amazing.”
“I think Admiral Doenitz is going to be very happy,” Krebs replied. “But the Americans must try to stop us, eventually. If they don’t, we’re going to knock them out of the war. Even they can’t build ships faster than we’re sinking them.” Krebs crossed his arms, marveling. “We’re like wolves let loose in the flock while the sheepdogs are asleep.”
“And the sheep don’t even recognize us as wolves,” Max added.
Krebs bent over the chart of the American Atlantic coast. “The second happy time of the U-boat brethren,” he mused. “But how long will it last?” He pondered the chart, then put his finger on Norfolk. “Here’s the key, Max. Will the Atlantic Fleet come out or just sit and do nothing?”
“They have to come out, sir.”
“Then what’s taking them so long?” When Max didn’t answer, Krebs said, “If they do, they’ll likely head north toward New York. That’s why we’re going south. We’ll motor right past Norfolk and set up station below Hatteras. Before the fleet can turn around, we’ll have bagged our limit and be halfway back to France.”
“The boys will be pleased to hear it. This will be our shortest and most successful cruise.”
Krebs rolled up the chart. “I screwed up that first shot, Max.”
“It happens, sir.”
“Not to me.”
“Is there something wrong?” Max asked gently. “Did something happen while you were on leave?”
Krebs was tempted to unburden himself to his second-in-command. Max was the kind of man who could be sympathetic without condescension. But Krebs could not bring himself to do it. Too many years of habitually keeping his personal life secret from the men in his command overruled the nearly overwhelming urge to share his aching heart. “Another time, Max,” he answered but then surprised himself when he added, “And I promise there will be another time.”
Although disappointed that Krebs had again chosen not to confide in him, Max didn’t force the issue. He did, however, begin to worry. It seemed peculiar to think that Krebs, of all people, might crack, but it was not unknown for the most stalwart of commanders to suffer a sudden mental breakdown. He decided he had better watch Krebs carefully for the rest of the cruise. As much as he liked and respected him, Max had no intention of dying under a mad commander.
The U-560 ran on the surface through the night, crossing the placid New Jersey waters and on down the Maryland coast. Krebs and Max came up on the tower and saw the lights of dozens of freighters and tankers coming at them like auto headlights on a main Berlin Strasse. Krebs wanted a tanker and kept telling the lookouts to find him one, though he doubted if the children he had aboard would know one if it ran them down.
Around two in the morning, a lookout called Krebs’s attention to a ship with a high bow, an indented stern, and masts hinged with booms fore and aft of the wheelhouse. Her running lig
hts were ablaze and her name on the bow could clearly be read: Metropolis General. She was a tanker, and all alone. The Chief looked her up in the ship’s register. “Eight thousand and forty-six tons, owned by General Oil.”
Since the tanker rode low in the water, she had to be filled to the brim with petroleum. “Let’s go after her,” Krebs said to the Chief. And then to Max, “Why don’t you take over? It’ll be good practice.”
Max’s face registered surprise. Krebs had never passed up such a juicy target before. “Me, sir?”
Krebs took Max aside. “Just do it, Max. I don’t want to miss this one. Put your first torpedo in her bow. If she spots it coming in, she’ll try to turn away but you’ll still catch her. And loaded as she is, she’ll burn.”
Max started to say something encouraging to Krebs, then thought better of it. If Krebs was unsure of himself, anything Max said would be an insult. “Chief, hard aport,” he ordered, “and maintain an easterly heading.”
Max went to the torpedo aiming device, thinking through each step as he peered through the special binoculars set atop it. It was a textbook situation: clear skies, a placid sea, the target in front of him lit up like a beer tent at Oktoberfest. He could almost imagine the crew aboard the tanker sitting around the mess table singing, laughing, drinking, having a wonderful time. There appeared to be no lookouts at all. Max entered the numbers, then called for a spread of two torpedoes to be launched from the bow tubes. “Los!” he barked, and watched as the first and second torpedoes he had ever launched sped straight and true. He discovered that he was thrilled.
“Chief Glendale’s on the horn, sir.”
Josh was still at the wheel. “Ask him what he wants.”
Stobs told him and then put the Chief on the speaker. “Tell Mister Thurlow his daddy said not to forget the celebration nor the fish. Two tuna.”
Josh had forgotten the tuna. Ready O’Neal was in the wheelhouse as lookout. “Roust out the Jacksons, Ready. Get them to catch me a couple of big tuna for the lighthouse party.”
Josh started the Maudie Jane on a slow turn toward a more southerly direction. They’d run along and let the Jacksons catch their fish, then head west to Killakeet. As Josh had predicted, the Keeper, after sobering up, had come to Josh on the military dock after patrol and apologized for his outburst at the Hammerhead. “The thing is, Daddy, you’re right,” Josh had replied. “I’ll attend the service for Jacob. The only thing I can’t do is be the next keeper.”
Josh recalled with a pang of conscience how the Keeper had wearily shaken his head. “I won’t condemn you for it,” he said, “but God knows, Josh, it is a bitter thing to be the last Thurlow of the light.”
Ready interrupted Josh’s unhappy recollection. He had been listening to Stobs’s radio and the merchies crying for help. “I meant to tell you, sir. Chief Glendale gave me a rifle to put on board. It’s an old Enfield from the Great War. He gave me about twenty rounds for it, too.”
“Good old Glendale. Well, roust it out and keep watch. It’s better than nothing.”
Ready headed below, to get the Jacksons to catch fish, and to bring up the only working weapon aboard, a World War I rifle and twenty bullets, this to defend the east coast of the United States of America.
The tanker burned furiously. Men on fire twirled and danced on her deck. Some of them leaped into the sea, puffs of smoke marking where they hit. Only a few lifeboats were in the water and they were on fire, too. Max’s skin crawled at the sight. He had caused the carnage. During all his years at war, he’d never seen anything like these burning men. Their screams carried across the water, hideous, wretched wails.
Radioman Pretch came up. “Sir, shall I signal BdU?”
Krebs lowered his binoculars. “We’re supposed to maintain radio silence for another day.”
“I picked up a signal from Kapitän Froelich. He’s claiming three sinkings. He’s already received a congratulations back from Admiral Doenitz.”
“The bastard,” Krebs growled, then laughed. “Good for him! Anything from Vogel?”
“Yes, sir. He’s complaining to BdU that no one showed up at his rendezvous.”
“What rendezvous? I must have missed that message.”
“Yes, sir.”
A ball of flame, looking like a bright orange cauliflower, rose from the stern of the tanker. The flames had breached the last bulkhead. “What signals from this tanker?” Krebs asked Pretch.
“They say they think they hit a mine.”
“We’re sitting here in plain sight. A blind man could see us!”
Pretch shrugged. “That’s what they’re saying.”
A deep rumble thrummed across the gap of ocean between the U-boat and the tanker. Then the crackle of flames. More men on fire leaped overboard like falling meteors.
“Another tanker, Kaleu!” a lookout called, his youthful voice cracking. It was Harro. Krebs had studiously ignored the boy during the voyage across the Atlantic. He didn’t want any rumors of favoritism to get started, especially since he meant to implement a little of it. He had in mind to take the boy out of the torpedo room and make him into a radio and sound-detection operator. He knew Miriam would have liked the idea. In any case, Pretch could use the help.
He savored a pleasant memory of Miriam while glancing at Harro. The boy’s face was even thinner than he recalled, and very pale. “Well done, Seaman Stollenberg,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” Harro replied.
“Did you hear that?” Joachim whispered to Harro. “The captain knows your name!”
“We grew up in the same place,” Harro whispered back. “In a castle?”
“No, an orphanage.”
That left Joachim confused. “Von Krebs grew up in an orphanage?”
“I’ll explain everything later,” Harro said importantly.
Pretch was still waiting for an answer on whether to transmit to BdU. “Go on, Pretch,” Krebs said. “Transmit our news. Two freighters and one tanker sunk. Estimate a total of eighteen thousand tons.”
Another explosion aboard the tanker caused all the lookouts to gasp in unison. A wall of fire seemed to be walking up the deck pushed by a boil of smoke. Men were running away from the wall but they had nowhere to go.
“I wish it would go ahead and sink,” one of the boys on the machine gun crew said in a small voice.
Krebs looked toward the thin, brown smudge that marked the coast. There was still no sign of a single ship coming out to help. Max was also looking around, in the air, along the eastern horizon. “Nothing,” the Chief said, also taking a look around. “No aircraft, no destroyers, not even a rowboat from the United States Navy.”
Krebs lowered his binoculars. “Come on, boys. Let’s sink this next tanker coming up on us, then we’ll ask for news from BdU. Perhaps we’ve won the war and just don’t know it.”
“I wish that was the truth,” Max muttered. “We could end this and go home.”
Krebs could not let the comment pass. “The only home we have right now, Max, is the U-560.”
27
January 19 finally arrived. Paper lanterns hung all around the lighthouse parapet. More were hung from the pin oak and juniper trees and on the Keeper’s pizer. A wooden stage, built out of planks from the wreck of the Beaufort fishing boat Loggerhead, was at the base of the light and decorated with the hand-painted insignia of the old Lighthouse Service. The Loggerhead’s flotsam had come washing up not more than a hundred yards south of the lighthouse, which made it easy for the volunteer carpenters to build the stage. No one thought much about the coincidence. It was expected that the sea would provide for the celebration. A band played, Ready on the fiddle, Bobby on the banjo, Again on the harmonica, Once on the washboard, and Millie on the jug.
It was a glorious night, the skies clear, the Milky Way like a silver river meandering across the heavens. The moon was a bright yellow crescent, looking so close that a long-armed man might think to touch it. There was a breeze from the southwest, but jus
t enough to rustle the needles on the juniper trees and waft along the delicious aroma of the big tuna slow-roasting over an open pit of charcoal. A long table, also built from Loggerhead planks, was laden with hush puppies, oysters, clams, slaw, and gallons of punch. More than a few bottles of hooch, both legal and illegal, were making their way into the punch. Everybody was getting happier by the minute. Off the coast, in the darkness, lights moved steadily past, the great ships carrying their cargoes north and south, unaware of the celebration of the sweeping beam that was keeping them safely away from Bar Shoals.
Josh stood on the beach and worried over the running lights of the ships passing by. Dosie strolled up to join him. She was wearing a flower-patterned, ankle-length, silk-and-nylon frock with a pin-tucked bodice that showed her off in spectacular fashion. She was carrying a glass of punch. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Ships are dying out there, Dosie. Up north.”
“Can you do anything about it?”
“No.”
“Then have a drink. Try to enjoy yourself for an evening. This is a celebration of your family as much as the lighthouse.”
Josh had a flask filled with Mount Gay in his leather jacket. He pulled it out and took a hit. “Did you miss me while I was out patrolling?”
“Not a bit. I told you I don’t need you.”
He smiled. “Why don’t we go inside the lighthouse and you can show me how much you don’t need me? There’s a lock on the lantern room, you know.”
“Can you turn the light off, too?”
“Why would I want to do that? I’d love to see you lit up by eighty thousand candlepower.”