The Last Wolf (19 page)

The trick, she had soon discovered, was to try to forget that the markers you raked to and fro with such precision, and the sinking ships that you removed so deftly from the map, actually represented real ships and real men. You put it out of your mind and you kept your face as expressionless as a casino croupier. You tried not to think about a ship plunging to the bottom of the ocean, or about a tanker wreathed in raging flames, or about men dying in myriad horrible ways. A plotter had once burst into tears and had been sent off watch in disgrace.

Stroma was also careful to put the men in the U-boats out of her mind.

In spite of the grimness – or maybe because of it – there were always parties. A destroyer just returned from convoy escort celebrated a lucky crossing. Only one small merchant vessel had been lost, none of the escorts, and two U-boats had been sunk by the destroyer. A Wren on Stroma's watch had a cousin serving in the ship and took her along to the wardroom party. They wriggled their way through the mob to reach the lieutenant cousin and he introduced them to another lieutenant standing beside him. Both men were very smartly turned out – not a hair out of place, uniforms clean and pressed, buttons brightly polished. They looked as though they'd never been anywhere near a life-or-death struggle in the Atlantic. And yet she had been moving their ship through stormy seas and peril.

The other lieutenant said to her, ‘I'm most awfully sorry, I didn't catch your name. There's such a racket in here.'

She told him. ‘I didn't hear yours either.'

‘Tom Lewis.'

‘Congratulations on the two U-boats.'

‘I don't deserve them personally, but thanks anyway. We've never even got one before, let alone two. It helps make up for all the others that got away.'

‘Do they often get away?'

‘Frequently. But I'm glad to say that we're getting a lot better at the game. All sorts of clever ideas thought up by the back-room boys. They won't be having it all their way for much longer. Actually, we fished some of our first U-boat crew out of the drink. Scrambling nets and all the rest of it. Ironic really, after all the trouble we'd gone to, trying to kill them.'

‘What were they like?'

‘Not so different from us. They weren't very grateful, actually, considering how nice and kind we'd been.' He smiled. ‘Some of them didn't even say thank you.'

‘How rude of them. What about the other U-boat? The second one?'

‘They weren't quite so lucky, I'm afraid. Our depth charges got them. All we saw was wreckage.'

Serve them bloody well right
, Hamish would say. This lieutenant might not use those words with her, but he was most likely thinking them.

She said, ‘My brother's serving in a corvette. He says it's like going to sea in a bucket.'

‘Corvettes do have that reputation.'

‘I've heard U-boats can outrun them.'

‘Another disadvantage.'

‘But the U-boats can't outrun a destroyer, can they?'

‘Fortunately not. Or we wouldn't be having this party. And I wouldn't have met you.'

It was a smooth remark but she could tell that he had meant it sincerely. At the end of the evening, he asked if he could see her again.

‘It can't be for a while, more's the pity.'

The escort ships were never in port for long. There were too many convoys needing protection. Soon she would probably be moving his destroyer across the North Atlantic once more.

Reinhard had received orders to head westwards into AK 64, the square on the map where a British convoy had been sighted. They were to take up a position in a pack of thirty U-boats, remaining submerged except for brief periods. The enemy were getting a great deal better at using their radar and their planes had become damned pests, forcing them to crash-dive again and again. Worst of all, there was a new threat in the skies. The American B-24 bomber, dubbed the ‘Liberator' by the British, had a long enough range to cover the gap in the mid-Atlantic that had previously been left unprotected. The old ruse of popping up to decimate a defenceless convoy halfway across was finished.

They had a few tricks up their sleeves themselves, of course: a new radar device that warned them of an enemy aircraft's approach; much improved torpedoes; new anti-aircraft weaponry, better radio reception to 30 metres depth. Some bright spark had thought up the idea of attaching strings of aluminium foil to balloons that were supposed to fool enemy tracking devices into mistaking them for a U-boat. But the British were seldom that foolish. Far from it. They were always hot on their trail. So much so that he sometimes wondered if they had somehow been able to understand the coded messages sent between U-boats and HQ. But that was surely impossible? The code was said to be unbreakable.

A U-boat ahead had made contact with their quarry and he received the signal to surface for the attack. They came up in time to catch the very last of the daylight. There was no moon; the sea was moderate for once, the wind blowing from the west. He went up on to the bridge and scanned the horizon to the north, leaning against the rail with the binoculars glued to his eyes. As yet, there was no sign of the convoy or of its escorts. Not a trace.

Beside him, Engelhardt said restlessly, ‘They must be out there, sir. Unless it was a mistake.'

‘It wasn't.'

He knew Nieman, the commander of the U-boat who had found the convoy – he had met him a number of times ashore, both drunk and sober. He was not the type to make mistakes.

‘Don't be so impatient, Number One. Just keep looking.'

A moonless night-time attack on the surface provided the best conditions for success. It was harder for them to spot their quarry, but once they had, they could get close enough to manoeuvre into the best position for attack without being seen. A submarine with her decks awash in a swell and only the conning tower above the surface was almost invisible. Reinhard sniffed the air, hoping to smell the convoy's smoke before it became visible, and ordered an increase in speed. The U-boat raced on, slicing through the waves. Their radar was picking up faint impulses from escort ships scanning the surface ahead.

Engelhardt said suddenly, ‘Escort, starboard bow, three thousand metres.'

She was only a shadow and vanished again almost immediately, but not before Reinhard had identified her as a corvette. A tin box compared with a destroyer, but a tin box worthy of some respect: a corvette had almost succeeded in nailing them on the last trip. He knew all about His Majesty's Flower Class corvettes and their innocent names – Anemone, Primrose, Bluebell, Cowslip, Honeysuckle, Lavender – a fine example of English humour to name a ship of war after a pretty little flower.

He gave another command, calling for top speed, and the U-boat headed straight for the starboard side of the convoy, now visible.

The merchant ships always travelled in columns, with the escorts flanking them on each side, as well as ahead and behind. The most valuable cargoes, such as petroleum, generally travelled in the centre of the convoy – the safest place for them and the most dangerous for U-boats, though he had risked it often, penetrating the columns with the smaller escorts in hot pursuit. A tanker was well worth the risk.

He calculated the fine adjustments needed for speed, range and angle, picking three of the vessels as targets. Two torpedoes would be aimed at the largest and furthest ship, one each at the other two.

‘
Los!
'

Four torpedoes left their tubes and he swung the boat round to run her parallel to the convoy and throw the escorts off the scent. In fifteen seconds the eels should hit.

A ball of fire erupted into the sky above the largest ship; he could feel the shock wave fan his cheek. The vessel had been hit on the bow and amidships and the flames engulfing her conveniently lit up her nearest neighbours. One of the other torpedoes had missed, but they scored a direct hit on the third ship – not as big as the first, but still a good size. Tonnage was what counted. Tonnage brought honour and glory and medals. U-boat commanders were judged and rewarded by the tonnage they'd sunk. He smiled grimly to himself as he prepared to increase his tally with a fourth cargo vessel, but the convoy had turned away on its zigzag course and the escorts came tearing after them.

He gave the order to dive and took the boat down to 130 metres.

The escorts thrashed to and fro above them, criss-crossing the surface, their ASDIC ping-pinging loudly. Soon a series of depth charges exploded, then more, and still more, but at a distance. The sound of the convoy vessels' propellers and the pounding of their engines was making the escorts' job a tough one. Under cover of all the noise and fury, they slipped away.

He played the waiting game, letting three hours go by before they surfaced again to resume contact with the convoy. The sea was much heavier, the chase more difficult, the night even blacker. A white light showed suddenly on the port quarter. As they drew closer, he saw that it was the beam of a searchlight from a Royal Navy corvette directed on to a sinking merchantman – the victim of another member of the nine-strong wolf pack. The corvette was lying alongside the vessel, taking survivors on board. Reinhard observed the goings-on from the bridge with interest. The escort ship was only 700 metres away and broadside on to him. A helpless and stationary target. Her name was HMS
Buttercup
, he saw.
Butterblume
. The little yellow flower that grew in country meadows. He could remember holding one under a pretty girl's chin one summer many years ago to see if she liked butter. She did. And she'd liked him too.

The old-fashioned, chivalrous rules no longer applied. Those days were gone. It had become a savage fight to the death on both sides: dog eat dog. The corvette's captain would blow them to smithereens if he got the chance, but just now he was fully occupied in saving men's lives – not the lives of armed combatants but of ordinary merchant seamen. Stokers, cooks, deck hands – many of them older married men or lads not much more than children. He'd seen them huddled fearfully in lifeboats or clinging to wreckage. Their only hope lay in being picked up by one of their own escorts, which was in itself a very risky business for all concerned. As he was just about to demonstrate . . .

‘Quite a gift, sir,' said Engelhardt. ‘I almost feel sorry for them.'

He debated with himself for a moment, watching the hurried activity between the two ships through his binoculars. Finally he lowered the binoculars.

‘We'll leave them to it, Number One. Just this once.'

He snapped out an order and they turned quietly away. He'd probably regret it one fine day.

In fact, he regretted it rather sooner than he'd expected. When they had caught up with the convoy once again and were readying to attack a heavily loaded freighter, a corvette burst out from behind another cargo vessel and rushed at them guns blazing. She was probably called something like
Sweet Pea
. They escaped but only because they could go faster. Soon after that, a destroyer sailing astern of the convoy chased them so recklessly that it was obviously intent on ramming them. Once again they escaped, but it took all his wits and cunning.

When dawn came, it brought with it every aircraft the enemy could muster. Everything from four-engined bombers to single-engined planes appeared in the skies, or dived out of cloud whenever the U-boat came near the surface. No sooner was the boat up than it had to plunge down again to avoid a hailstorm of bombs and bullets. A hit on the diesel tank would have left a long oil slick trail in their wake and finished them. Over and over again he had to save their skins while showing none of the strain. It was the commander's job to maintain morale. He had learned that lesson early on from Grindorff, his own Old Man. Forty-four men's lives were in his hands, each one depending on every decision and move he made.

During a brief time on the surface, they picked up a signal from one of the other U-boats:
attacked by aircraft; sinking
and then another signal:
aircraft bombs; sinking
. Nothing could be done for the crews. Either they would have gone down with their boat, or abandoned it, in which case they were at the mercy of the ocean and the enemy who might or might not stop to pick them up.

They carried on with the chase, pursuing the convoy doggedly across the ocean, surfacing to recharge their batteries whenever they had the chance. Another wolf in their pack, gnawing too close at the convoy's heels, was attacked by an escorting destroyer and was sunk too.

The dark night that followed gave Reinhard the chance to claim one more vessel, but she was only a pathetic old tub – a sad straggler unable to keep up with the convoy's pace. He took no pride in despatching her. Before the next day dawned, he had notched up a better kill, this time a large freighter that went down by the stern in a matter of minutes.

The fight went on for four more days – an endless succession of desperate crash dives and ear-splitting explosions that pulverized the body and exhausted the mind. At the end of it, the score made poor reading. The grey wolves had sunk only five convoy ships – three of them his work – but out of the nine U-boats, six had been destroyed by the enemy. One of them had been commanded by his good friend from Lorient, Hans Nieman. Finally, he must have made a mistake.

They were ordered to return to base. On the way, in order to cheer the crew's shaken spirits, he told the radio man to tune in to the American forces' broadcast. Swing and jazz blared from speakers in an irresistible beat that had his men clicking their fingers, nodding their heads and tapping their feet. The leaders in Berlin would not have approved, but who cared? The leaders did not have to endure such close and regular brushes with death.

The welcome home to Lorient was not quite as jolly as usual. The band played loudly, but there were some anxious faces in the crowd and not so many smiles. Word had already got around the base that
die Gluckliche Zeit
might be ending. It looked like it would not be such a ‘Happy Time' for the U-boats from now on. He noted the empty pens in the concrete bunker and the empty chairs and places in the mess hall.