by Bodie Thoene
“Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
This sentiment caught the attention of every man in the hold.
Dooley was silenced. The discussion began: “Seek the kingdom of God and I’ll be given Garbo?”
It was a beginning at least.
Chaplain Gabriel did not explain everything to his captive congregation, but from strawberries and Greta Garbo came great debate about the nature of heaven and the chaplain’s belief that the power of heaven could be summoned and miracles could happen when people pray and speak the Word of God.
“Even here in hell?”
“Were there ever fellows more in need than we are?” Chaplain Gabriel asked.
And so even the doubters decided to give it a try. Nob—who had not spoken aloud to his Creator since childhood when he asked lightning to strike his Yorkshire schoolmaster—inquired exactly what a fellow said to God, anyway.
“Just have a nice chat,” the chaplain urged. “That’s all. And then listen for a while.”
Halting, childish prayers began to be uttered by desperate men. It was a time when prayer became a reality—not the egocentric petitions of the well-to-do self-righteous or the frantic prayers of the drowning man, but something altogether different. The men in the hellhole prayed for each other.
“Lord, let Nob’s cough be better tomorrow than it is today.”
Then came the listening part: “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near. . . . I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
“Jesus, take the ache out of Chaplain’s legs.”
“Father, protect our children from ever having to go through anything like this, ever.”
And Chaplain Gabriel spoke the promises: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil . . .”
There was resistance when Chaplain Gabriel suggested that they pray for their captors.
“Pray that they get caught out in the open and shot to ribbons you mean!” The normally soft-spoken Nob was not buying this “love your enemies” line.
“Nob,” the chaplain asked, “where will you be in a hundred years?”
“What nonsense are you talking? I’ll be dead, of course.”
“And where will the guards be?”
“In a hundred years? They’ll be dead, too.”
“Can’t happen soon enough to suit me,” someone grumbled in the dark.
“But think,” the chaplain replied. “Suppose you could change places with the guards right now, but doing so meant that you had to change with them again a hundred years from now.”
There was a sober reflection in the hellhole.
“To stand before a righteous God and give account?” the chaplain continued. “I’d rather stay right here in this stinking hold for a while than stand in the shoes of Captain Thun on that day, thank you, sir!”
A point well made.
Later, as Chaplain Gabriel slept, it was quietly discussed by the boys in hell that one hundred years from now heaven was sure to be filled with women who looked like Garbo and all the steak and strawberries a man could eat. It was a great comfort to them all.
Norway’s craggy coastline jumped up from the dark gray sea in front of Mac. The snow-covered outcroppings offered only tiny amounts of level shoreline. It seemed as if the Norwegian fiords wandered through a drowned country of which only the tops of the mountains remained above water.
A glistening coat of ice sheathed the forward rigging of His Majesty’s Ship Cossack. The destroyer had been Mac’s home for the past several weeks. It and the rest of the squadron patrolled the North Sea, pouncing on German merchant shipping and unwary U-boats.
At the moment the kind of action Mac had often witnessed was unfolding against the backdrop of the Norwegian coast. Minutes before, Cossack had intercepted a small freighter gliding along just outside Norway’s territorial limits. When her skipper caught sight of the destroyer’s knifelike prow cleaving the waves, he put his helm hard over and ran for the Norwegian coast.
It was a game of sorts. Intercepting German shipping was part of war. If the steamer was not armed and carried no military cargo, international law permitted her to seek refuge in neutral waters. The game turned more interesting due to the deceptions practiced by the German officers. It was made infinitely more complex by the ability of Adolf Hitler to intimidate the neutral nations.
The Cossack accelerated to more than twenty-five knots, rapidly overtaking the merchantman. “Put one across her bow, Mr. Longbow,” Mac heard Captain Vian order.
The gunnery officer relayed the command, and seconds later the destroyer’s forward five-inch gun barked a command to halt. The shell exploded a hundred yards in front of the steamer, now straining to turn out eight knots of speed. But rather than heaving to, the German ship steered even more sharply toward Norway and safety. Her shuddering frame and lone funnel streaming black smoke proclaimed her resistance to surrender. The name on the stern that waved defiantly in Cossack’s face announced her to be the Schwartze Himmel, the “Black Sky,” out of Hamburg.
“I’ll have another round closer in, Mr. Longbow,” Vian ordered coolly. “Mind that your crew do not blow off her bow, like they did to that trawler last week.”
“Practice makes perfect, sir,” returned Longbow with a grin.
The next shot fired landed just under the freighter’s nose. She abruptly pulled up and turned broadside to the warship. It was clear to the German vessel, as it was to Mac, that the next shell would not be a warning.
“Bravo, Mr. Longbow. Nearly clipped her anchor chains! Mr. Perry, hail the captain.”
But the master of the Black Sky got his words in first. “Ve are loaded mit hospital und relief supplies only,” he called over the loud-hailer. “Und ve are inside Norvegian vaters. Let us proceed, if you please.”
“Tell him, right after we verify his cargo,” Vian said.
When this was relayed to the Himmel, there was no further reply. The deck of the freighter was littered with cable spools and canvas-covered stacks of crates. It was difficult for Mac to see anything warlike in her appearance.
The destroyer put down a boat, and First Mate Perry led the inspection team. He and his men would become the prize crew to sail the freighter back to England if the German captain’s story proved untrue.
There were groups of sailors clustered on the deck of the steamer, studying the progress of the launch. As Mac watched, they slowly resolved themselves from an aimless mass into two distinct formations. One set of men stood near a heap of crates forward, the other around a netting-shrouded pile amidships.
“Captain,” Mac muttered.
“I see them, too, Mr. McGrath. Longbow, order those sailors to back away to the far rail. And tell them to step lively.”
It was as if the command was the signal the Germans had been waiting for. Instead of retreating, the two teams of seamen pulled the tarps from the supposed cargo, exposing a pair of antiaircraft guns. At the same moment, the Himmel belched a sulphurous blast and shook herself into motion again.
“Sink her,” Vian ordered. And to the helmsman he commanded, “Put us between the launch and the target.”
One of the rapid-firing German guns opened up on the small boat. Whether this was planned as a way to force the Cossack to save her own or simply murderous intent, the result was the same. The quick chopping noise of the antiaircraft shells had not reached Mac’s ears before the launch was splintered along with the men in it. Three figures were seen diving over the side into the icy water, and then Mac had to duck as the other antiaircraft gun fired into the bridge of the destroyer.
The five-inch gun of the warship boomed again, crashing into and silencing Himmel’s midships weapon. The chatter of machine guns coming from both vessels added to the sudden cacophony. From hearing only the keening of the wind and the slap of the waves a few minutes earlier, the torrential blare of war now broke over M
ac.
A shell exploded against the bridge, knocking the helmsman away from the wheel. Captain Vian took his place, aiming the destroyer’s bow directly at the fleeing German craft. The marksmanship of the Germans proved no match for the Royal Navy. First the other antiaircraft position and then the machine guns fell silent.
“Put over another boat to pick up our survivors,” Vian ordered. “Then we’ll finish this business.”
Into the carnage of the bridge rushed a young officer Mac vaguely recognized as the radio operator. He was waving a yellow cable form. “Urgent message, sir,” he told Vian, who was silently urging the rescue operation to hurry as the Himmel limped slowly out of range of Cossack’s guns.
“Not now!” Vian snorted. “This battle is not finished yet.”
“But sir!” begged the communications officer. “It’s the Altmark! They’ve located the Altmark!”
Against this piece of news, even the treacherous ploy of the Schwartze Himmel no longer mattered. As soon as a handful of remaining sailors were retrieved from the frigid sea, the Cossack shifted her course south. Soon all that remained of the deadly encounter were a few floating bits of debris and a smudge of the freighter’s smoke on the horizon.
29
Political Wrangling
On the chart in Cossack’s wardroom, Jossing Fiord resembled the head of a cobra. Less than a quarter mile across at its mouth, the inlet expanded just inside the rocky opening, then narrowed again till it pinched out one and a half miles back from the headland.
The skipper of the destroyer Intrepid conferred with British captain Vian of the Cossack about the situation as Mac listened in. “Altmark was spotted by a patrol plane as she made the passage between Iceland and the Faroes. I caught up with her a dozen or so miles offshore, but she made the run into the fiord before I could overtake. You see where our Norwegian friends have positioned their gunboats . . . that’s when I contacted you.”
Through the shrapnel-blasted shutters of the bridge, Mac could see the two Norwegian patrol craft. Their low profiles and ugly, blunt snouts reinforced the image of Jossing Fiord as a nest of vipers. Drifting floes of ice bobbed in the current, but an unobstructed swath in the center of the channel showed that something larger than a gunboat had recently entered the gulf.
Captain Vian explained the importance with which the Altmark was regarded. “The freighter accompanied the Graf Spee during the battleship’s rampage in the South Atlantic. When the Spee was surrounded, the Altmark eluded capture, carrying away with her perhaps as many as two hundred British sailors.”
“So she has remained at large ever since the Spee was scuttled? Nine weeks ago?” Mac asked.
Vian looked chagrined. “Not for want of trying on our part. She has been the subject of an intensive search. It was believed that she would try to return the prisoners to Germany for the propaganda value such a move would have. And from her position here, she almost made it.”
“How do the Norwegians figure into this?”
“Commander Riks, the ranking officer of the gunboats, is arriving now to answer that question,” Vian said, pointing at an approaching boat.
The Norwegian skipper was a stocky man with sandy blond hair and pale green eyes. He appeared uncomfortable from the minute he boarded the Cossack, saluting the British colors as he did so.
“Captain Vian,” Riks began, “I must request you to take your warships out of Norwegian territorial waters at once.”
“We have reason to believe that the German vessel sheltering in this bay carries British prisoners of war. As such, she is clearly a belligerent and has violated your neutrality.”
Riks stared at the floor. When he spoke again, the words came slowly, as if dragged from him against his will. “We have already searched the craft in question. There are no British nationals on board, nor is the ship armed. She has requested and been granted asylum in our waters.”
“Asylum!” Vian exploded. “You can’t mean it! Do you think we will let her escape to take our people back to Germany? I’ll board her and see for myself!”
“Regrettably,” Riks said softly, “I cannot allow that. As you can see, the torpedo tubes of my gunboats cover the entrance to the fiord. I have been instructed to use them against any unauthorized attempt to enter the strait.”
Vian appeared disgusted, as if he had bitten into an apple and found Riks inside. “You have delivered your message and may return to your ship, Commander,” he said tersely, “while I confer with my superiors.”
When the Norwegian had left, Mac stopped Vian on the way to the radio room. “Does this development discourage you, Captain?”
“Not in the least, Mr. McGrath,” Vian said. “First Lord Churchill will be responding to the situation personally.”
As always, the waiting was the hardest part. The torpedo tubes of the gunboats stared at Cossack like the muzzles of two-thousand-caliber guns. Mac supposed that the Norwegians did not want to fire on the British. He knew that they despised Hitler and all the Nazis stood for. But more importantly, they feared the Führer’s intentions toward their skinny, poorly defended shoreline of a country. Fragile neutrality depended on not offending the master of the Third Reich, not giving him any excuse to invade.
Besides, U-boats and mines had already sunk over two hundred thousand tons of supposedly neutral Scandinavian shipping. “So sorry,” the Kriegsmarine replied. “Better keep your ships out of the sea-lanes used by the Allies. Let them trade only with the Reich, and they’ll be safe.” As extortion, it was not very subtle.
Mac imagined the discussions taking place in the Admiralty offices back in London and the response from 10 Downing Street. It was like Czechoslovakia and Poland all over again, only on a scale where everything could be taken in at once. Mac was certain that Churchill’s response would be belligerent: “Show the Norwegians that we mean business and they will stand aside . . . show the Germans that the sea is still a British possession, and its freedom will be defended.”
But Mac was equally certain that Chamberlain’s reaction would be one of dithering and fretting. “What will the Norwegians do? What will the world say about us if we blast our way through neutral ships defending their own territory? What if the Altmark has already disposed of its captives?”
And what about those captives? Mac knew that some of the prisoners taken by the Graf Spee had been in custody for as long as five months already. Had they given up hope of ever being rescued? Were they even still alive?
The hands of the clock silently registered the political wrangling going on in London. Its hands swept around the dial several times before reaching 1600 hours and a reply from the Admiralty was received. “Good old Winston!” beamed Captain Vian, waving the cable. “He says we are to ask the captain of the Altmark what he has done with the prisoners!”
Mac accompanied Vian to meet Commander Riks on the gunboat Kjell. “Are you prepared to withdraw from our territory, Captain?” Riks asked.
“Not exactly. My government has ordered me to place two proposals before you, either of which will be satisfactory. The first is that we jointly escort the Altmark to port in Bergen, where an international inquiry will be made.”
Riks was already shaking his head before Vian had finished. “You know I cannot fall for that. It would mean effectively giving an unarmed ship into your control. What is the other proposal?”
“The second option is that you and I proceed to the vessel and inspect her together. Just in case your earlier visit . . . missed something.”
Mac sensed the difficulty with which Vian was restraining his temper. But if the warning signs were present, Riks did not heed them.
“I’m sorry, Captain,” Riks replied. “That is not in my power to agree to either.”
“In that case, sir,” Vian said coldly, “we are prepared to take action without your cooperation.”
Riks pointed to the uncovered warhead of a torpedo ready for launch. “We will be forced to resist such an attempt.”
/> “May God have mercy on you then,” Vian spouted angrily.
With that the British captain and his followers returned to the destroyer.
When the rolling motion of the Altmark stopped again at last, the men confined in the hellhole began to pound on the walls and shout. Trevor tapped Morse code messages on an overhead pipe. The feeling was that the effort to alert someone to their condition might not do any good, but they could scarcely be treated any worse for trying.
A strange grinding that came from outside the hull of the freighter replaced the vibration of the engines. It was the noise of metal being scoured with wire bristles, or the shriek of fingernails on a chalkboard.
“Sounds like the bottom is getting torn right out,” Trevor said.
Dooley chuckled. “You never sailed the North Sea afore, did you, Commander? That’s the sound of ice floes rubbin’ alongside the hull. We must’ve turned into a fiord to hide out or somethin’.”
The imaginations of the men went wild. Hiding in one of Norway’s icebound waterways meant two things that spanned the gamut of emotion. The first was the despairing realization that their unwilling journey to Germany was almost over. If the Altmark passed the Skagerak Passage between Denmark and Norway, then hope of rescue was done.
On the other hand, stopping to lay over in a fiord this near to her destination must mean that Altmark was closely pursued.
No one answered the clamor made by the prisoners, nor did the engines start up again. The ice continued to creak and growl against the hull with sounds just like the English poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, described in the masterful Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Presently a new fear crept into the hellhole.
“What if them Nazis have cut and run?”
“What if this tub is stuck in the ice and no one finds us afore we freeze to death?”
It was, in fact, getting noticeably colder. With only the thickness of the metal hull between the ragged men and the ice-covered sea, the temperature dropped, as did the spirits of the prisoners. It had been a long while since the last meal, though there was no way to judge the passage of the hours in the deep hold. The gnawing in Trevor’s stomach alerted him that at least one issue of rations had been missed.