Wreckers Must Breathe Page 5

  The second gave the order, and soon even a layman like myself could realize that the boat was lighter and more manageable. Then the second and the commander bent over a chart. I could just see them from where I was seated on my bunk. I think the commander must have sensed me watching him, for he looked up and his gaze swung from me to Logan. Then he strode down the gangway. He was still dressed in civilian clothes and wearing his stiff military-looking waterproof though the interior of the submarine was getting extremely hot. He stopped opposite Logan. ‘You are a fisherman, are you not?’ he asked.

  Logan looked up and nodded.

  ‘Well, I do not expect you want to die any more than we do,’ the commander said. ‘I should be glad if you would help us. We are lying at about fifty feet. The motors are out of action and that torpedo boat of yours is somewhere up above waiting for us. We dare not surface. But we do not know the drift so close to the shore. If we stay down we may pile ourselves up on the rocks. I calculate that at the moment we are less than a quarter of a mile off the entrance to Cadgwith.’

  Big Logan stroked his beard and looked across at me. I felt a sudden excitement. It was almost exultation. I think he sensed it, for he turned to the commander, grinning all over his face. ‘You’ve given me a crack on the head and dragged me on board this blasted tin fish of yours,’ he said, ‘and now you want me to get you out of the mess you’ve got yourself into.’

  ‘Pardon me, but it was you who got us into this mess—or rather your friend here. We did not arrange for a British torpedo boat to be waiting for us.’

  ‘Torpedo boat, was it?’ Big Logan suddenly clicked his fingers. ‘Well, I’m damned,’ he said. ‘So Ted Morgan took my word for it after all. And he wanted me to believe it was a shark.’ He poked a large forefinger into the U-boat commander’s ribs. ‘It wasn’t this gentleman—’ he indicated me—‘that gave you away. It was your bloody submarine coming up right under my boat when he and I were out after mackerel last night. A shark! Well, I’m damned!’ And suddenly he began to laugh. He laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. The crew gathered round, staring at him. I think they thought he had gone off his head with fright.

  At length, weak with laughter, he said, ‘And here you are, like a lot of stuck pigs, just because you interfered with this gentleman’s fishing.’ I thought he was going off into another paroxysm of laugher. But suddenly he sobered up. ‘Know what I’ll do?’ he said. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you—the papers you got from your friend at Carillon for information about the currents.’

  I thought the commander would strike him. He was a young man and Logan had made him furious. He was a nice looking lad, very slim and erect, but he had the Prussian features and the Prussian lack of any sense of humour. The joke was on him and he could not see it. ‘You are a prisoner,’ he said. His voice was cold and precise. ‘You will do as you are told.’

  ‘I’ll see you on the Gav Rocks first,’ was Big Logan’s reply. And he began to bellow with laughter again.

  The commander’s hand came up instantly and smacked Logan first on one cheek and then on the other. Logan’s answer was instantaneous. He laid the commander out with one blow of his huge fist.

  The second immediately drew his revolver. I read Logan’s death sentence in his eyes and at the same time one of the crew seized me from behind. But as the second raised the gun it was struck out of his hand by another officer who had appeared behind him. It was the navigating officer. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said in German. ‘He’s our only chance of getting out of this alive.’

  Then he turned to Logan and said in broken English, ‘Eet ees the lifes of you and dese other gentleman who ees at stake, as well as our own. Will you not help us? The torpedo boat, she will wait all night for us. Eef we could drift half a mile down the coast without wrecking ourselfs we could surface. Then we should be all right.’

  Logan’s reply was, ‘I’ve told this officer’—he indicated the inert figure of the commander—‘what my terms for helping you are. I’ve lived by the sea all my life and I’m not afraid to die by it, even if it is in a glorified sardine tin.’

  ‘And that goes for me too,’ I said. It was a heroic little gesture for my stomach felt queasy at the thought of death by suffocation. I suppose most people with any imagination possess a mild form of claustrophobia, but I must say that Logan’s phrase about a glorified sardine tin struck home.

  The navigating officer, whom I guessed to be a far more human individual and consequently a much better reader of character, immediately took Logan at his word and set about reviving the commander. This took several minutes, for Logan’s whole weight had been behind the punch.

  The man eventually staggered to his feet, but he was so dazed by the blow that it was several minutes before the navigating officer could make him understand the position. When he did he blazed up in a fury. ‘You have the audacity to try to make terms with me,’ he cried, turning on Logan. But he kept his distance this time. ‘You come aboard this ship as a prisoner, you behave like a lunatic, strike the commander and then expect to barter information which you possess on fantastic terms.’ He gave an order to the crew. Three of them closed in on Logan. Logan remained calm and impassive, but his little grey eyes roamed the narrow gangway, gauging distances and possibilities. It looked like a real scrap.

  The navigating officer, however, continued to talk in low tones with the commander. The two men were of completely contrasting types. The navigating officer was small in height and rather stocky, with a round ruddy face that spoke of years at sea. The commander, on the other hand, was a typical Nazi—excitable, overbearing and cold-blooded. However, the navigating officer apparently got his way, for the commander turned to Logan and said, ‘If you help us, we will land you and your companion on shore as soon as it is safe to do so.’

  I pictured the surface of the sea, the towering cliffs, Cadgwith and the green fields beyond. What a relief it would be to get out of this little nightmare world of machinery that reeked of oil and was so hot and stuffy. A word or two from Logan and we were safe. He glanced at me. Something stubborn and perverse seemed to rise up within me. I shook my head. He nodded and smiled. ‘We want the papers,’ he said.

  The commander swung round on him. ‘Well, you won’t get them—understand that.’

  ‘Then neither will your superiors,’ Logan answered quietly.

  When the fury of a man’s emotions gets the better of him and he is at the same time baffled, it is not a pretty sight. I wondered how long his nerves would hold out against the incessant tension of service in U-boats. The strain had been too great for a number of submarine commanders in the last war.

  At last he mastered himself sufficiently to say, ‘Very well, we’ll stay down for half an hour.’

  ‘And send yourself and your crew to certain death?’ asked Logan. He looked at me. ‘That serves our purpose just as well, eh?’

  I had to agree with him, though I felt like being sick.

  The commander tried to bluster for a moment. ‘You are bluffing,’ he shouted angrily.

  Logan shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’d best call my bluff, if you think so.’

  The man’s uneasiness, however, got the better of him. He stood watching Logan for some seconds and then he said, ‘All right. I’ll get you the papers.’ He turned and strode down the gangway to the officers’ quarters.

  I looked at Logan, wondering what good it would do to get hold of the papers since the man might very well have a copy or have memorized them. ‘Why don’t you keep silent and let them run on the rocks?’ I asked in a whisper.

  ‘Because,’ he replied, ‘the drift of the current here is seaward. They’re as safe as houses, if they only knew it. If we can’t get an undertaking from them to wireless the information through to Fort Blockhouse, then we’ll have to try and scare them into surfacing and hope that the torpedo boat will still be around.’

  The prospect seemed pretty grim.

  It was some time before the command
er returned. He held in his hand a single sheet of paper. This he handed to the navigating officer, who passed it on to Logan. ‘Now step up here and explain the drift on the chart,’ the commander said.

  Logan glanced at the sheet of paper and then held it out so that I could also read it. I cannot remember all the details of it. But it gave the position, longitude and latitude, of a rendezvous for three separate squadrons of British ships—one from Gibraltar, one from the Atlantic and one from Portsmouth. Logan explained to me that the rendezvous was about thirty miles south of the Shambles Light—that is off Portland. Those coming from Gibraltar and the Atlantic were largely capital ships. Those coming from Portsmouth were mainly destroyers and minesweepers.

  Logan placed his big forefinger on the list of those coming from the Atlantic. ‘They’re short of destroyers,’ he said. ‘Until they meet up with the Portsmouth boats those four battleships will be insufficiently screened. What a chance for the U-boats!’

  There were certainly not nearly so many destroyers and torpedo boats with this squadron as with that coming up from Gibraltar. My eyes travelled on down the paper. The rendezvous was for Monday, September 18 at 13.30 hours. The object of the gathering was to sweep up the Channel, pass through the Downs and carry out a raid on the Kiel Canal. Blockships were to be waiting in the Downs and these were to be sunk in the canal if it proved possible to silence the shore batteries. Raids by Bomber Command of the R.A.F. were to accompany the attack and three fighter squadrons would co-operate in preventing enemy aircraft from harassing the raiding fleet.

  As I grasped the magnitude and daring of the plan, I could not help being amazed at the ability of the German secret service to obtain information of such a vitally secret nature. ‘Have they got a chance of sinking those four battleships?’ I asked.

  ‘Quite a good chance, I should say,’ Logan replied. ‘And if there are enough U-boats in this vicinity they might have a shot at the main gathering.’

  Our conversation was interrupted by the commander. ‘Stop that whispering,’ he ordered, ‘and let us have the information we require.’

  Logan strode down the gangway towards the control room. ‘Certainly,’ he said, ‘if you’ll transmit a message to Fort Blockhouse, Portsmouth.’

  The commander’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have the information I obtained. Keep your side of the bargain.’

  ‘You know my purpose in requiring this information before directing you to safety,’ Logan answered. ‘My intention was to prevent its use by the enemies of my country. If you have a copy of this or if you have memorized——’

  ‘I have neither copied it nor memorized it,’ the other cut in.

  ‘In that case there is no objection to your sending my message to the Admiralty.’

  The commander moved forward. There was something stealthy, almost cat-like in the way he moved. ‘I will not be called a liar in my own ship—certainly not by a verflucht Britisher. You have the insolence to demand that this ship’s radio be used to transmit messages to the British Naval authorities. I’ll see you in hell first.’

  ‘Then, you won’t have long to wait,’ was Logan’s reply.

  The navigating officer, who had been following the conversation intently, said, ‘Eet will be your lifes as well as ours.’

  ‘If these ships meet as arranged,’ Logan replied, tapping the paper in his hand, ‘it may mean the loss of hundreds of lives. It’s our lives against theirs. We prefer that it should be two and not several hundred British lives that are lost. So it’s Davy Jones for you if you don’t give me a solemn pledge to radio my warning to the authorities as soon as I have got you out of this mess and you have a chance to dry off your aerials.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said the commander. There was something of a sneer in his voice. I think he thought we might crack up under the strain, for after he had barked out an order in German he stood watching us. The hiss of the compressed air entering the tanks of the submarine, forcing the water out, was incredibly loud. It seemed to fill my ears.

  ‘Now do you still withhold the information we need? If you do, I am going to surface and take a chance with this torpedo boat of yours.’ And when neither of us answered, the commander shrugged his shoulders. ‘Gun crews stand by!’ he ordered in German. Then he disappeared up into the conning tower.

  The next few minutes were some of the most unpleasant I have ever experienced. It was not difficult to sense the tension in the submarine. The atmosphere was by now getting very heavy and I was sweating like a pig with the heat of the place. The hiss of the compressed air gradually lessened. The second officer adjusted the trim. The submarine had risen on an even keel and was now, I presumed, lying at periscope depth while the commander watched the torpedo boat and chose his time. I wondered whether the port diesel had been affected or not. If it had, then we were for it.

  The commander’s voice suddenly called out, ‘Blow all tanks! Surface!’ The compressed air hissed in the tanks and the boat shot up so quickly that I could hear the sea water flooding back from the deck. ‘Geschuetzmannschaften auf Bereitschaft!’ The gun crews swarmed like monkeys into the conning tower. The hatch slammed back and feet sounded over our heads. Then the one diesel engine began to throb and the ship shuddered as the bows bit into the waves.

  The gun crews would be at their stations now. I could hear the swirl of the water overhead and I presumed we were travelling with decks awash in order to keep the boat steady. The U-boat’s surface speed of 18 knots was reduced, Big Logan reckoned, to about 9 or 10 as a result of the damage to the starboard propeller shaft. The speed of the torpedo boat, on the other hand, was well over 40 knots. We had not long to wait. A bell sounded in the engine room. The pulsing of the single engine grew more and more frenzied. The whole ship seemed to be shaking and rattling. The din was incredible. Then suddenly there was a sharp detonation and we were almost thrown off our feet. For a moment I thought we had been hit by a torpedo. But I had barely recovered my balance when the explosion was repeated and I realized that it was the after gun being fired. So the torpedo boat had spotted us and we were in action!

  To analyse my hopes during the minutes that followed is quite impossible. I was torn between the desire for self-preservation and what I sensed to be my duty. The two were completely irreconcilable. I have, however, a vivid recollection of growing horror at the idea of being imprisoned and suffocated in that infernal U-boat, and towards the end of the action I must admit that that was my dominating thought. I must have been in a pitiable state of funk by the end for I remember nothing about it except that I babbled incoherent nonsense whilst Logan shook me till my teeth rattled in order to prevent me from going completely off my head.

  It was a most unpleasant experience, and as an exhibition it must have been disgusting. Strangely enough, it did not make it impossible for me afterwards to go in a submarine again. In fact, those twenty minutes seemed to sweat all terror of death by suffocation out of me. Logan, on the other hand, preserved that same calm throughout the engagement, though he informed me afterwards that he had never actually been in a submarine before. All his experience of submarine warfare in the last war had been gained on minesweepers and coastal patrols, and later on ‘Q’ ships.

  I do not remember much about that engagement. All that remains vivid in my mind is the throb of the engines, which seemed to pulse right through me, the draught from the open conning tower hatch, the incessant gunfire and my own terror. I remember that a few minutes from the outset the after gun crew ceased firing. But they remained at their stations and some ten minutes later the for’ard gun opened fire and at the same time the commander ordered an eight point turn to starboard—eight points represent a right-angle. I think it was this order that really finished me, for I was pretty certain that it meant a torpedo had been launched at us.

  Later, I learned from listening to the conversation of the officers and men that we had surfaced about half a mile out off Caerleon Cove, which lies just east of Cadgwith. The torpedo boat was
still off Cadgwith, but within a few seconds her searchlight had picked up the U-boat. The torpedo boat had immediately extinguished her searchlight. The commander, explaining the action to the navigating officer later, said that the drone of the torpedo boat’s engines was plainly audible from the conning tower even above the sound of the U-boat’s own engine. The order had been given for the U-boat’s searchlight to be switched on and as soon as it had picked out the attacking craft the after gun crew had opened fire.

  The U-boat was then travelling almost due east with the torpedo boat dead astern. Shortly afterwards the gun crew scored what looked like a direct hit and the torpedo boat swerved off its course and was lost to sight. The U-boat then made a turn of sixteen points and doubled back in the hope of shaking off the torpedo boat if it were still in action.

  What actually happened I have pieced together from a talk I had some months later with the coastguard who was on board the torpedo boat. After getting out of range of the U-boat’s searchlight, the boat had hove-to and listened for the sound of the submarine’s engine. As they had expected, the U-boat’s searchlight was extinguished and it began to double back. By this time the clouds had thinned and a rather pale young moon had appeared. As the U-boat approached they got under way with their engines just ticking over and moved up between the shore and the U-boat, endeavouring to merge their craft into the background of the cliffs. This proved so successful that they had actually manoeuvred into position and fired their torpedo before they were sighted. In actual fact, it was the torpedo, and not the torpedo boat, that the U-boat commander first sighted, for the wake of the torpedo showed like a streak of silver in the moonlight. It was then that the order for an eight point turn was made. At the same time our own searchlight picked out the torpedo boat and the for’ard gun opened fire. As the submarine swung on to her new course the after gun crew took up the fire. The torpedo apparently almost scraped the U-boat’s side.