At the next station, the captain returned to our compartment and reiterated his order for us to leave. We ignored him. When one of the soldiers tried to grab our baggage, a terrific brawl broke out. Suffice it to say we managed to beat some sense into those soldiers and they decided to leave us alone.
At Metz, we unloaded our baggage and changed trains to Munich. Unfortunately, there was a reception waiting to greet us there: a Railway Police detachment with orders to arrest us—and this time they were armed! But to arrest us, they first had to catch us! A comical chase ensued, with us pushing a cart piled high with our baggage, being pursued by several railway policemen. Luckily for us, there were several hundred Army soldiers waiting on the platform. Soldiers, sailors, and airmen often have their disagreements, and sometimes violent ones. But when confronted with the police, we were all brothers-in-arms. The soldiers made way for our cart, but “accidentally” got in the way of the police, allowing us to make good our escape.
Alas, Kapitänleutnant Zschech had also been notified by telephone of our little adventure and was waiting for us when we arrived in Bad Wiessee. He cursed us in the very strongest of language. The next morning we received our punishment. The Navigator and the Chief Torpedo Mechanic got ten days of close arrest in the brig. The Boatswain got six, and the rest of us received three. Fortunately, the punishment wouldn’t take effect until our return to Lorient, so we all managed to have a great time skiing at the beautiful Alpine resort.
We were shocked to see the condition of U-505 upon our return to Lorient. The entire conning tower had been removed and was being replaced with a completely new and improved style unit. The 105mm deck gun had also been removed. Because of increased Allied defenses, surface attacks with a deck gun were no longer considered practical. In lieu of the single large cannon, we would now be armed with a four-barreled 20mm anti-aircraft weapon. Two twin-barreled 20mm guns were also installed. In order to accommodate the mounts for the new weapons, the rear of the new conning tower featured a large extended platform nicknamed the “Wintergarten” (Winter Garden). The replacement of our deck gun with a flak gun was eloquent testimony to the increasing effectiveness of Allied air attacks on our boats.
There were also internal changes. More than 36 square meters of new pressure hull plating had been riveted and welded into place. One of our electric motors had been exchanged for a quieter, more powerful one. Weeks dragged by as the shipyard workers labored over our boat.
The RAF was equally busy during this period, making bombing raids several nights each week. The Brits were desperate to destroy anything that was even slightly associated with our U-boats, even if they couldn’t damage the vessels themselves. Whole neighborhoods of Lorient, including outlying residential districts, had been reduced to dusty rubble.
Despite the damage to the city, we sailors still managed to find what we were looking for in the way of amusement. Actually, our lack of money was putting a bigger crimp into our entertainment than the bombing raids. As our Reich Marks and Renten Marks dwindled to a precious few, other crews began taking up the slack, inviting us along for dinner and drinks.
Of course, many times it happened that these men perished on their next war patrol. I have heard from veterans of other nations’ military services that it was traditional for them to avoid making friends because of the emotional pain involved if they were killed. That idea was never found in the U-boat crews I knew. Fighting alone against a dangerous enemy and the ruthless sea bred a feeling of intimate brotherhood between us. We treasured our friendships with each other, and when the war turned against us and more and more of our comrades failed to return after a mission, the memory of those friends was all we had left.
Of course, these philosophical thoughts come more than a half-century after the end of the war. At the time, despite the heavy losses we were suffering, we remained confident about our future. We were the chosen 10% of the navy; an elite specifically chosen for our physical and mental toughness. The possibility of defeat was never considered. If we should die, we considered it a worthwhile sacrifice in the name of victory. In the meantime, we lived life one day at a time, determined to enjoy every sunrise God granted us.
Work on U-505 continued through the spring of 1943. We spent most of our time on practice drills and physical training. In early March, however, I was sent with a few other crewmen to an anti-aircraft gunnery school in Mimizan, close to the Spanish border. By coincidence, my cohort included the same group of guys who had gotten in so much trouble delivering the baggage to Bad Wiessee. Somehow, whenever we got together, there was trouble.
We had a five-hour stopover in Bordeaux before we could board our connecting train to Mimizan. Naturally, we went to the Sailor’s Quarter for a little amusement while we waited for our train. It was gratifying to know the U-boat men in the Flotillas stationed at Bordeaux had the same tastes in entertainment that we did—probably the same tastes all sailors have had from the beginning of time.
By coincidence, we met some U-boat men who had once been stationed in Lorient. They had returned from patrol the previous week and still had plenty of money to spend. Needless to say, we were happy to accept their generous invitation to join them for a few drinks. The five free hours we had to spend sped by like five minutes as we joked, laughed, and sang with our new friends. We were singing a particularly raunchy sailor ditty when we suddenly realized we had an audience: some military policemen.
The chained dogs not so cordially escorted us to the station and bodily threw us onto the train. On board, we drank a couple more bottles of wine our comrades had given to us as souvenirs of Bordeaux. Luckily, someone woke us up when we reached our destination. Trying to stand at attention in front of the gunnery school barracks turned out to be quite a challenge. One particularly nasty Petty Officer gave us a long speech about life there at the school. There was only one thing we had to do, he said, and that was to obey every order they gave us, and nothing more.
For one full week they chased us like dogs. At one point, we did have target practice against airbags being pulled along the beach by airplanes, but most of the so-called gunnery school was needless harassment. We especially resented the arrogant attitude of the trainers, most of whom had never faced real combat. In the early morning hours of the last day, we cornered the worst offenders and gave them a thorough thrashing. It was a none-too-gentle reminder to them to be more respectful of U-boat men in the future.
By the time we returned to Lorient in mid-March, we were fed-up with being treated like Army soldiers. Some mysterious, timeless power of the sea was calling us, beckoning us to return. I often found myself staring out into the harbor, thinking of the blue-green vastness of the Atlantic.
Most of us were also very eager to get a crack at the enemy again. The past several months had not been a good time for Germany’s fortunes in war. Our poor boys in the Stalingrad pocket had finally succumbed to the cruel Russian winter and the endless communist hoards. The Brits and Americans, with their overwhelming material superiority, were doing the same to our valiant Afrika Korps. At sea and in the skies over Germany, a bloody war of attrition was being waged, the outcome of which would determine the future course of the war. We were vastly outnumbered and were being squeezed from all directions, just as our fathers had been in the First World War. We were eager to show our families, and the world, that we were prepared to make any sacrifice in order to bring about a victorious end to the war.
That being said, I’m sad to report there was one crewman on board U-505 who did not share our eagerness to return into combat: my friend Willi. He and I had gotten to be fairly close friends, especially after our experience together in the French graveyard during the bombing raid. A week or so before our scheduled departure date, Willi approached me in confidence and showed me a counterfeit passport he had gotten from his French girlfriend. He told me he planned to run off with her to Switzerland a few days before we sailed on the next war patrol. If I wanted, he said, he could get a false pa
ssport for me, too.
Willi’s plan struck me like a bolt of lightening. Of course, I had always known he was somewhat of a scoundrel. At the age of 14, he ran away from home to live on the streets of Hamburg’s rough port district. Growing up in that environment had given him the morals of a dockyard rat. Still, I never expected Willi to ever do anything like this! If the chained dogs caught him trying to run, he would be executed for desertion in time of war. Besides, I suspected his girlfriend was working for the French Resistance, and that this was a plot to capture a U-boat crewman.
After a long and sometimes heated discussion, I finally promised not to report him, but I warned him if he ever made the slightest move to desert our boat, I would tell the authorities everything I knew. Willi came to his senses and served honorably aboard U-505 until the day of our capture. Our friendship, however, was never quite the same. Trust is the foundation of any true friendship, and I just couldn’t bring myself to be chummy with someone who had considered deserting his crew mates and his country in our hour of crisis.
By late May of 1943, the modifications and repairs on our boat were almost complete. Gone were the large gangs of shipyard workers in their thick brown welder’s suits. Only a few technicians were to be still found aboard finishing some small details.
U-505 sported a totally new silhouette. We were especially excited to stand on the spacious Wintergarten, with its deadly looking quad barreled flak gun. Combined with the two twin-barreled 20mm guns on either side of the conning tower, our boat now boasted a total of eight guns for anti-aircraft defense. At least now, we thought, we would have a fighting chance against any enemy birds trying to drop an egg on us.
We also took on an improved type of torpedo that could be programmed to run in predetermined patterns. There were several new radio and sound detection devices installed, too. Parts of the crew were sent to special courses to learn the maintenance and operational details of these mysterious new devices. Everything was very hush-hush because of the danger of espionage. Indeed, many of us did not find out about the new equipment until we were out at sea. Meanwhile, we control room crew mates practiced our tactical maneuvers over and over again until our response times could be reduced no further.
A few new men were also posted to our boat. Most notable was Oberleutnant Paul Meyer, the replacement for our wounded Second Watch Officer Stolzenburg. We liked Meyer from the start. He had originally served as Navigation Chief Petty Officer on an auxiliary cruiser, where he had been promoted to officer rank for his bravery in action. His experience as an enlisted man made him relate to us more as a comrade than as a superior. He even came into the enlisted barracks a few times to celebrate with us. This angered Zschech and the Exec, which pleased us even more. Meyer, on his own initiative, discarded the infantry drills in favor of team sports. This was a much more enjoyable way for us to get our physical conditioning. Before long, Paul Meyer was the most popular officer on board.
These final preparations made us all the more impatient to get out of Lorient and back to blue water. The pounding roar of the diesels as they were being tested brought back a flood of nostalgic memories to me: the fresh briny smell of the sea, the pendulum-like swinging of the stars as the boat gently rocked, the choreographed ballet leaps of the dolphins, the thrill of chasing an enemy ship. The restless sea was calling us back to her, and we were eager to answer.
Chapter 10
Sabotage
While it was true the sirens of the sea were calling us, at the same time I also felt sentimental about leaving Lorient. After all, the city had been very good to us. To see it so devastated left a hollow feeling in my heart. I took to wandering the shattered streets, desiring to soak in as much as I could in those few remaining days before our departure.
I was strolling through the ruins of a once-beautiful neighborhood one afternoon pondering such thoughts, when I spied an attractively dressed French girl walking my way. There was something familiar about this young lady. When she turned her head toward me, I recognized her at once: Jeanette.
When she saw me, she threw her arms around my neck and started weeping. She was in trouble, she said, because she had been friendly to us U-boat men. She felt her life was in danger from the Maquis and that she had no alternative than to leave Lorient for her own safety.
When Jeanette saw that I was still wearing the St. Christopher medal she gave me, she began to cry again. I tried to comfort her the best I could, but since I was leaving on patrol soon, there was very little I could really do for her. I think she appreciated just having someone to talk to since her friends and neighbors had all turned against her.
We spent the night together. The next day she gave me a few packs of cigarettes to enjoy while at sea, then left to start a new life somewhere to the east. I never heard from her again, though I have never forgotten her. I wore her St. Christopher medal until the day we were captured in 1944, when an American sailor snatched it from my neck as a souvenir.
As our departure date neared, we began loading personal equipment aboard U-505. The most definite sign of our impending sailing was our own move from Lager Lemp back to our old bunks aboard the boat.
One night, one of the torpedo mechanics on upper deck watch was climbing down from the bridge to the control room to wake up his replacement, when the cocking handle of his Schmeisser MP-40 machine pistol caught one of the rungs of the ladder. The bolt slammed forward, firing a short burst of three rounds down toward the men in the control room. One of the crew received a slight flesh wound in the arm from a 9mm bullet.
When we heard the gunfire, my mates and I flew out of our bunks and ran to the control room, ready to repel boarders with any pipe or wrench we could lay our hands on. When we saw what happened, we broke into laughter. A couple of men had gone to the first aid locker for antiseptic and bandages, and in their excitement had wrapped so many bandages around the poor wounded man he looked like an Egyptian mummy.
We somehow convinced the Watch Petty Officer not to report the little accident, and three rounds of ammunition were found to replace the missing ones in the Schmeisser’s magazine. The officers never found out about the incident, though they were always curious how the man on watch got “Scharfschütze” (sniper) for a nickname.
On July 1, U-505 was moved to a wet dock in the bunkers. With her new and much larger conning tower and fresh coat of dark gray paint, she was unrecognizable as the same boat we had limped into harbor more than six months earlier.
Final preparations began for sailing. As usual, the most difficult task was loading the torpedoes. Flat boats came along side U-505 with the long black eels. These were hoisted up and manhandled by block and tackle down the small fore and aft loading hatches into their respective torpedo rooms. As each was lowered into the bowels of our boat, I often visualized these monsters slamming into the sides of enemy ships.
Next came truckloads of provisions. These were craned up and deposited in huge piles on the upper deck, then loaded in strict order according to a list. I hated seeing the potatoes being loaded because of my disgusting experience with them on the last patrol. The mere smell of potatoes brought forth a queasy feeling in my stomach, even though they were fresh.
Next came the ammunition loading. Our boat’s new armament made this a simple task compared to the old days, because the boxes of 20mm ammo were much easier to handle than the massive 105mm artillery rounds we used to store. That big quad-barreled flak gun inspired a lot of confidence that we would be able to fend off attacks by aircraft. Indeed, we were already picking out areas on its broad gun shield where we would paint the silhouettes of planes signifying our kills. But for all the bravado engendered by those 20mm stingers, we still knew all it took was one attacker to get through our defensive fire to put an end to our lives.
The last chore after loading was testing the integrity of the hull. Once the hatches and valves were closed, a big compressor was run to create a partial vacuum inside the boat. The internal barometer was monitored to e
nsure there were no air leaks. Everything checked out normal and we were given the go-ahead for our operational patrol.
The next day, we backed out of the bunker into the wet slip and completed the lengthy demagnetization process that, hopefully, would help protect our boat from any magnetic mines laid in the harbor by Allied aircraft. A nervous excitement began stirring in our stomachs as we moved, step-by-step, closer to the departure hour.
In the evening we attended the traditional farewell banquet. As usual, there was much drinking and toasting as we consumed the last of our private stocks of beer and liqueurs. With our money gone and our goodbyes said, we were finally ready to leave.
We were allowed to sleep a bit late the next morning to get over the effects of the banquet. Then, at 1030 hours, we took a bus back to the boat and loaded our personal articles onboard. I brought along a cache of several dozen lemons with me as a prophylactic against loosening of the teeth, a common affliction resulting from our poor diet at sea.
Our departure ceremony was a rather muted affair. For one thing, there was no naval band. In its place were a few accordion players who played and sang several traditional sailor songs. Some officers from the Flotilla Staff, along with about 50 well-wishers, came to say goodbye. Many in the audience had tears in their eyes, and there were a few shed aboard our boat, too.
How different in tone this was from earlier departures! Gone was the wild optimism and swaggering patriotism. In their place was a steely determination to do one’s duty, no matter the cost. And we were well aware of the mounting cost of the Battle of the Atlantic. In the past three months, no less than 90 boats had failed to return! Since our entire U-boat fleet consisted of only a few hundred frontline boats, these were staggering losses. But we were professionals, part of a proud naval tradition. Our country was in danger, and we had a job to do. To us, it was as simple as that.
Steel Boat, Iron Hearts Page 16