2nd Unterseebootsflotille
Keroman Base
Lorient
The security barrier lifted at last and the black Citroen lurched forward, its engine roaring impatiently as the driver searched for the gears. Deep ruts had been cut in the loose gravel track and the car bumped awkwardly across the construction site, a cloud of summer dust in its wake. Smoke was billowing from a vast rectangular trench a few metres from the track and drifting lazily across the hot white sky. Men and machines were busy at its edge, tearing at the ground as if intent on cutting a rough finger of land from the rest of Lorient. The driver of the Citroen braked hard for a column of French labourers who showed no inclination to step aside. Handkerchief pressed to nose and mouth, Leutnant Erich Radke gazed impatiently from the back seat at their sullen faces and through them to where the Reich’s engineers were marking out the ground for a vast new U-boat bunker.
‘Shit. I’m going to be too late, Albert! It’s almost two o’clock.’
Albert leant insistently on the horn and one of the German engineers looked up and shouted across at the Frenchmen. Reluctantly, they started to drift from the track and the Citroen began to creep through the gears again.
Beyond the dockyard gate, it turned left on to the quayside cobbles just as the band was striking up the ‘Sailing Against England’ song. The U-boats were moored in front of the new cathedral bunker, the tip of its concrete Gothic arch just visible above the makeshift offices and workshops that had been thrown up around the military dock. A crowd of well-wishers, secretaries with flowers, comrades in naval uniforms and soldiers from the local barracks, was gathering on the quay. Snatching his camera from the seat beside him, Radke jumped from the car, his smart leather-soled shoes slipping a little on the cobbles.
Two boats were alongside with their crews in orderly lines on the deck aft. The screws of the one closest to Radke were already churning deliberately through the oily water. As it swung gently away from the wall the crowd began to cheer and shout, ‘Good luck’, ‘Happy hunting’, and the military band struck up ‘We Sail Against England’ again.
Radke struggled to control his emotions. He was to have sailed with the U-330 but at the last minute Admiral Donitz had refused to release him from his Staff duties. A pity: the commander of the 330 was only twenty thousand tons from a Knight’s Cross and everyone had expected him to sink enough to secure it on this war patrol. Kapitanleutnant Martin Schultze was known to be outspoken and his views on the Nazis had brought him to the attention of the Gestapo, but that had only served to cement his reputation. Radke had visited the 330 in the echoing gloom of the cathedral bunker the previous evening, as the last of the fresh food was being stowed, and had drunk a farewell glass of champagne. Schultze and his officers had been in excellent spirits, laughing, joking, and there was much talk of how the U-boat would win the war for Germany. It was refreshing because everyone at headquarters had been a little downcast since the loss of the U-112 in the spring, and anxious too — the capture of Kapitan Mohr was a grave blow. But Radke had been able to give Schultze and his men the latest figures — almost four hundred enemy ships sunk in the first half of the year. England was finished. Finished.
Someone touched his elbow. It was Siegmann, one of the other young officers on the Staff.
‘Wish you were going with them?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Of course. Don’t you?’
Siegmann gave a non-committal shrug.
There was a general murmur of excitement from the crowd and they shuffled to the edge of the quay to get a better view of the U-330. One of the boat’s officers was carrying out a formal headcount and a camera crew was filming him for the newsreel. Before it could finish there was a tremendous cheer as the commander began to make his way down the gangway.
‘There’s Schultze,’ Siegmann shouted.
The commander was wearing his white cap and a black leather jacket, tall, fair, youthful, an almost beardless thin face. He must have said something to the camera crew because it instantly scuttled up the gangway to the quay. The crowd watched him climb the ladder on the outside of the tower to the bridge as the ropes were released fore and aft.
As the 330 slipped past, Radke could see that the symbol of the lion rampant on the conning tower had been repainted. An order from the bridge and the crew began to fall out, some disappearing inside the steel body of the boat, most lingering on the cigarette deck, talking and waving, enjoying the light and the air.
A woman on the other side of the security fence at the end of the pier was screaming hysterically. Siegmann nudged Radke: ‘Listen to that. A broken heart.’
The ‘lion boat’ was clear of the dock now and swinging slowly about. For a moment it was lost in a cloud of exhaust fumes as it switched from battery to diesel engines, then it began to follow the wake of the first U-boat out into the river, gathering speed towards the fortress at the harbour entrance, the passage to the west and the wide Atlantic.