by Scott Palter
Clara simply didn’t want the tension to follow them back to the family area. It would upset the children. So the moment she saw her brother finishing a job, she substituted him for Joey, dragging her man off here. “I want to apologize about this morning. Mary doesn’t really understand about us. I haven’t the English to explain. I’ve tried in German, but hers has gaps. She tries but isn’t seeing it. I’ll talk to her again.”
Joey gave her another hard look. He wasn’t quite buying what she was saying. Or maybe he was trying to find the German to say what he needed. “Clara, I know we aren’t Klaus and Greta. I’m not a silly kid like Klaus, and you know the world a lot better than Greta. We didn’t do the couples dance to get here. Wanda picks you and you arrive.” He paused to see if she was following. She seemed following his words but not his meaning. “Look, you never said what you wanted out of this. You interested in making this more than a wartime shack-up?”
Clara did not shock easily. She was flabbergasted. She also wasn’t sure of his grasp of German on family matters, as opposed to engine rebuilds. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
“I’m trying to discuss it. You interested?”
“Discuss?”
“I never thought about getting married. I never thought about joining the army or moving to Iraq or opening a business at where ever in Hell Kirkuk is. Thought I was going to catch a boat to Los Angeles, get a job working on cars with a cousin out there. But here we are. It’s all sort of happening. Question is, does this end at the oil fields, or you want to make this permanent?”
“Do I have a choice? The Gestapo sent me here … ”
“Babe, you want separate tents and we just work together, say the word. I like what we have, waking up next to you in the morning, all the rest, including your kids. But I’ve never strong-armed a doll and I’m not starting now. I know a lot of guys see an old lady as a punching bag. I wasn’t raised to that. If my old man had tried that on my mother, she would have slit his throat while he slept. He was the man of the house. No squabbles with her on that. She didn’t take with a man beating on her. She brought my sisters up the same way. Then again, I doubt any husband of theirs would be that stupid. My brothers and I would knock them into next week, a sister of mine turned up with a shiner.”
Clara took that all in. “If I were to become your wife, what changes?”
“Kids. Do you want kids? ’Cause I do. I’ll need a few sons, to get one who will be right for taking over the business.”
“So no daughters?”
“Nah. They’re fine, and if that’s all we get then it’ll be a son-in-law I teach the trade to. Metalwork is a guy thing. You want to teach your girls a bit like you have us doing, sure. They can learn enough to earn a living. Bossing the shop needs muscle, and so does running a crew of grease-monkeys.”
Clara was still mentally coping with children. She had presumed when she got pregnant by Joey, she’d just find one of the unit doctors to take care of things. The guy wanted children? Did she? She never had considered it. Single motherhood was just too hard when you are poor. “Grease monkey?” She knew Joey translated literally from his American English. What did an ape covered in lubricant have to do with …
“Mechanic. You get covered in grease and oil. So it became a name for this type of worker.” Damn, he was tripping up on language and getting off the point.
“If I say yes to children, how many do you want?”
“You still never told me how old you are. My Mom told us guys that asking for more than a child every other year wasn’t right, that you gals needed time to heal between pregnancies. She would laugh at the Irish ladies that dropped one a year. You tell me how many work for you – is the every other year right, or is that just some Neapolitan folklore? I also know the whole have-kids thing gets tricky after a lady gets past her mid 30’s, or is that more old wives’ tales?”
Clara was now being very careful with her words. This had gotten very serious. “So I have a say in how many total and how much time in between and the rest? Your mother really brought you up that way?”
“Most of the ladies in the neighborhood thought my Mom was a crazy one. She was raised by her aunts in the Old Country ’cause her Mom died young. The stories about her father were fairy tales designed to shut kids up. I put the pieces together. Grandma got herself knocked up by some guy who dumped her. It happens.”
Clara had seen it happen to enough neighbors and friends. Story was probably older than the Bible. “What happens to the children I have now?”
“They stay till they get married, go off on their own. They want to stay forever, we give them jobs. But blood is blood. I want my own blood to leave the business I’m going to build. My Dad needed four boys to find the one who would inherit. My two older brothers, one has the balls without the brains, the other had the brains but next to no balls. Me? In some ways I’m the family disgrace. Dropped out of school young and went to work for strangers. Palled around with gangsters. Interested in nothing outside of work but partying. Only good part was, I wasn’t a bum. Worked all my life and damned good at what I did. Never saw myself as a boss and neither did my old man. The joke was I’d die a bachelor with one hand on a bottle and the other around some joy girl.”
“Yet now you talk of marriage, children, setting up a business.”
“Since Gunter and I hooked up, things changed. Maybe it’s the war. Maybe it’s finally being away from my family, the old neighborhood, all the people that to them I was just a brash kid. Gunter recruited a man. Then you came along. The whole idea scared me. But I found I liked it, liked you. No movie romance BS like Klaus babbles about Greta. We fit together well and I don’t just mean in bed. That’s great and all but there’s more to life than making the bedsprings bounce. I sit there having coffee in the morning with you and the kids. It feels right. Like something I’ve been waiting for all my life but never knew where to look for it.”
“So why didn’t you bring this all up before?”
“There’s a war here, Babe. I go on this little adventure with Di Salo, Gunter, and Smitty. We are the ones who can sound right in English. Isaak sounds all wrong. I know he’s a Hebe, but it comes out not sounding English or American. Di Salo sounds high-class Brit and we sound American. There’s enough American Yids in the Palestine forces, so it may sell … or it may not, and we all get real dead. Didn’t seem fair to hit you with this until our fighting was over.” He looked at her expectantly, vulnerable in a way she had never seen him be.
She took his face tenderly in her hands and half whispered to him, “We will discuss this in Alexandria. You deserve a serious answer to your very serious proposal. I’ll take the war risk. I like you well enough. It’s the matter of children I must ponder.” Good God, what on Earth was happening here. Clara had not been this unsteady on her feet since her first questioning session by the local Gestapo. She gave him a big kiss and then led him back to the repair bays. Damned right she needed to think. This was the rest of her life she was suddenly having to decide. What a crazy war.
0300 hours local; 27 October, 1940
1300 hours Eastern daylight time; 1900 hours CET; 26 October, 1940
East China Sea
USS Langley was not able to do flight operations. Not only had half her flight deck been removed when she was converted to a seaplane tender a few years before, she had now been demoted to an aircraft transport.
But even if she would have had her full flight deck, she would not have been able to do flight ops - both hangar and flight deck had been crammed to the gills with airplanes. The loading crews had taken a few days extra time and managed to shoehorn four more planes on board her than her usual 36, by taking a few parts off some selected aircraft – Langley now carried a full squadron of 24 P-40 fighters plus a few spare birds and two light transport planes. Then they went and slipped between the tied down machines, boxes and crates of spare parts and tools that they had not been able to cram in the store-rooms or the airwing quarters.
All the fuel tanks and ammo lockers had also been filled to the brim – enough gas and bullets to fight until the next transport came in. The flight crews and mechanics and other staff necessary to get a squadron flying and fighting had been put on board the SS Maui, a mixed cargo and passenger ship chartered for the occasion, together with more spare parts, ammo, and gasoline.
Unloading her would be like solving a Japanese puzzle, and take just as long as loading took, but this was supposed to be an administrative move under peacetime conditions, not a war-time transport.
The USN had nevertheless taken precautions to protect the small, precious convoy. A Clemson-class destroyer, USS Reuben James, had been assigned as an escort; and all ships had strict orders to sail with all lights lit and to always illuminate huge US flags painted on their sides, while they cruised at a leisurely twelve knots across the Pacific, the speed being determined by the slowest ship, the Langley. The supposed pirate subs, which everyone knew were Soviet, were to be left in no doubt of whether these were US ships. A flag the US Communists had sworn to the FDR administration, made them off limits.
Two more days to Shanghai – the convoy was gliding along on a calm sea under a star-bright night sky, roughly halfway between the Japanese islands Okinawa and Tanegashima. The midnight position message had been sent to both the IJN and USN headquarters, and they had received a message to expect a Mavis – an IJN long range reconnaissance flying boat – in the morning for a check up.
The twin explosions on the carrier woke the soldiers in their bunks on the SS Maui out of their dreams – those still on deck trying to catch a bit of fresh air, could see two columns of water and spray rising over the stricken Langley half a mile ahead and slightly to the left of their ship.
For a few seconds nothing else happened, then the alarm klaxons on both the Reuben James and Maui drowned the hissing sound of the collapsing water pillars. The Reuben James quickly doused all lights and started to accelerate, angling to right, towards were they assumed the hidden enemy to be. A few seconds later the first of a series of quick secondary explosions started to shatter the Langley completely.
The SS Maui had put her rudder hard over and started a crash turn to the left – perhaps the panic reaction of the watch officer in order to get out of the line of any other torpedoes potentially moving towards them. The action was almost successful, as one survivor later reported a single torpedo passing behind the ship – but the second torpedo caught the Maui's stern, wrecking screw and rudder and starting a fire in the aft hold.
The Reuben James started to crisscross, firing occasional burst from its quick-firing guns and star shells from its main guns, trying to find what they had first thought to be an attack by a small surface ship like a motor torpedo boat, but could not find anything. Slowing down to reconfigure for subhunting and to give her hydrophones a chance to hear anything but the sound of water rushing by her own hull, she turned out to be doubly unlucky; not only had she failed to protect her charges, she had also blundered into a position right behind the retreating submarine, which promptly fired both stern tubes at her, scoring one more hit. That torpedo broke the destroyer’s back. It took a quick V position, with bow and stern both out of the water as the cracked center split and went to the bottom. There would be no survivors. Langley lost more than 70% of her complement. Many of those that hit the water did so as floaters in life jackets rather than passengers in ship’s boats or inflatable rafts. The evacuation of the Maui was a near-total cluster-fuck. Too many passengers, darkness from both the hour and immediately losing electric power for the lights, and a civilian crew that ran for their own lives, passengers be damned. There would be repercussions on this later, with their unions defending the crew and blaming the mostly dead officers. Dead because they had put rescue over their own survival.
The IJN Mavis had been scrambled after the SOS messages arrived and quickly found the site, aided by the smoke plume of the still fiercely burning Maui, surrounded by a gaggle of raft and life boats. Several Japanese ships, both civilian and military, were not far behind.
Colonel Chennault was faulted in the early reports for abandoning his men to save himself. It took almost a week for the truth to come out. He’d been knocked unconscious in the initial torpedo strike. He’d been carried to the deck and then over the side into a life raft by others. There were multiple surviving witnesses. Sadly, many people believed the original story, and judged his future actions accordingly.
0100 hours CET
27 October 1940
Dockside, Bari, Italy
The port was in its usual chaos. As this was Frauke Peters’ first visit to a wartime port, she had no guide to what was normal. The idiot German naval Leutnant she had reported to, said it was this way every time they loaded. Claimed it had been worse before the air war stopped, thus ending the blackout.
Frauke knew she was in Italy to punish her. When she had first volunteered for prisoner transfer duty, she had been rejected. She had never asked again, so this could only be punishment. She had been detailed with two other girls from the guard corps to take a prison transfer convoy to the Bari encampment. It was a strange mix. It started with the usual ‘wayward girls’ from Ravensbrück, but at a stop in Berlin a group of middle-aged ladies with children appeared. These all had luggage and decent clothing, although more the fashions of years back. One police lady from the Berlin Ordnungspolizei saw them to Frauke’s superior on this trip. The new contingent was signed for, after which the Orpo lady left.
These new arrivals were strange. They spoke in low tones but with cultured accents. They were absolutely no trouble on the trip south. The little strumpets from the camp, on the other hand, constantly tested boundaries. Even chained together to inhibit their attempts at escape or more general delinquency, they would howl out ribald suggestions to every civilian within range. Their lusts for alcohol, sex, and general mischief were bottomless. Frauke knew how to discipline the little brats. Her superior ordered Frauke to stand down. Claimed some order from on high prohibited showing physical discipline in these surroundings.
The arrival at the encampment had proven to Frauke just how degenerate the entire Ravensbrück administration was. The other two guards had travel orders back. Her superior produced an order transferring Frauke to this camp brothel. Frauke had signed up to help the war effort, but not by disciplining silly young whores. What was worse, the lady in charge, this supposedly German Pole Wanda, didn’t even need her for that. The rebellious young ladies mostly managed to fit into a structure built around alcohol and promiscuity. Four just ran away and no one chased them. The general attitude was that it was a waste of time. Sadly, the world was never short of poor girls who turned tricks to survive. All wartime did was create more desperation and poverty, hence more whores.
Frauke had no wish to help run a whorehouse. Or a cabaret. Or a bootleg liquor still. Or any of the other illegal things these swine were doing. Except somehow this was all authorized. Major Adolph had given her a camp map, with the military police and camp administration clearly marked. In a bored voice told Frauke to go report them. See what good it did. This was a project of the Reichsführer’s. The same as the Jewish women she had brought down from Berlin, were another of Heydrich’s programs.
Her new superiors did not try to get her to participate in their sexual frolics. Frauke was shocked to discover that this was the reverse of Ravensbrück. That was a supposedly strict-regime camp with attached workshops, whose administration acted like the worst of degenerate Weimar Berlin. Here was a set of businesses centered on sex and alcohol, but the administration lived quiet lives. There were couples like the two top bosses, but no wild living. Frauke knew something was off but couldn’t quite fathom what or why.
While she had no use for what they were doing, they had no particular use for her. As long as Frauke left everyone alone to do their jobs and live their lives, they were content to feed and house her.
With nothing much to do, Frauke wa
s bored out of her mind. There were many thousands of German soldiers here. but the only responses she got from them were sexual. It was Ravensbrück all over again, except the young soldiers had better bodies but no disciplinary power over her. Enter Satan’s spawn, as Frauke had come to call the child photographer named Oriana. The girl had tried to befriend Frauke. When rebuffed, she had proven her demonic origins. “Why did you join the guard corps? To be able to fight like a man?”
“Go away, silly child. Only men get to be soldiers and defend the Reich with guns.”
The child had laughed at her. “Our Betar girls in Africa are armed warriors. Helped take Malta, Beat up a British army a few weeks back. Sometime the next month or so they are off to battle again, to finish conquering Egypt. I can get you papers to go there. I know who you have to see to join the fighters. I’m going on the next shipment. I’ll just add you to the travel orders.”
How the child got the Major to sign the orders was a mystery to Frauke. The supposed convoy to Egypt was Gretchen, the madame-to-be, leading a party with a dozen experienced girls, three doctors, and a nurse. Somehow there magically appeared a second set of orders for Frauke as guard over Oriana, a Roma whore named Dika, her pimp-musician boyfriend Stepan, and two other Roma girls. Frauke thought the three Roma young ladies seemed absurdly young but they were subhuman, so … Frauke was prepared to let a thousand absurd things happen if it got her a chance to show everyone that she could fight better than any man. One Hundred Ten percent better. Maybe more.
Which brought Frauke to this dock, and the naval Leutnant saying that the ship they were designated to travel on was overfilled. He promised to get them on another in a few days. The loading process was extremely haphazard. When naval command had requested more people from Major Adolph’s contingent, they thought there was extra space. Someone had forgotten to allow for something or other. Senior officers were screaming at each other about it. Doubtless they would scream at each other about some other administrative mishap on whatever ship Frauke got them out on. Oriana had brought cases of photographic equipment. Gretchen had case-lots of bootleg whiskey. Frauke was sure the Leutnant would find room. Frauke was blonde, blue-eyed, and eye-poppingly good-looking. Flirtation was not a game she enjoyed playing. It did not mean she didn’t know how to bat her eyes and thrust out her chest to make stupid men do what she wished. Ever since she started having breasts at twelve, the world had treated her Dresden China doll good looks as some sort of magic.