Читать книгу The Land God Made in Anger - John Davis Gordon - Страница 28

You drive out of the flat little town of Sylt with its solid houses, onto the airfield road, past cold, military-fenced fields, before reaching a big gate. You show your passport, and drive on through numerous, long, low red-brick buildings, past a football field, and rows of no-nonsense apartment buildings. There follow aircraft hangars and depressing buildings that look like warehouses, all painted grey under the leaden-grey sky. The taxi stopped outside one of them. ‘U-Boot Archiv,’ the driver said.

McQuade opened the grey door uncertainly. There was no vast hall filled with submarines. A concrete staircase led upwards.

He mounted the stairs, his footsteps echoing. There were paintings of German submarines in stormy, wintry seas. He came to the first floor where an open door led into an office. A grey-haired man sat at a desk, in a grey tracksuit. ‘Ja, guten Morgen?’

McQuade said, in English, ‘Good morning. The German Naval Attaché in London suggested I come here to see Herr Horst Bredow, the U-boat archivist.’

The man got up, his hand extended. He wore sandals and yellow socks. ‘I am Horst Bredow. How is Karl?’

They sat on the carpet at the bookshelves while Horst Bredow plucked volumes off and thrust them at him. ‘You must be right in your facts! The rubbish people write about submarines! You must read books like this, and this, and this …’

The books piled up: Submarines of World War II, U-Boats Under the Swastika, Few Survived. ‘I am one of the few who survived. So I keep this museum in memory of those who did not. It is my own museum. The German government does not pay me, except my war pension, but it provides this building.’

‘I see.’

He crinkled his brow: ‘And please don’t write too much rubbish about the Nazis.’

‘I won’t …’

‘The English seem to think all Germans were Nazis. No submariner was a member of the Nazi Party. We served only the state. We saluted like this –’ he brought his fingertips up to his brow – ‘not like this –’ he gave the Heil Hitler salute. He glared, then demanded, ‘What’s your story about?’

McQuade said: ‘My hero is trying to trace the family of a German U-boat man who was sunk. Do you have records of every U-boat of World War II?’

‘Yes.’ He waved his hand at the next room.

‘And the crew members of each boat?’

‘Yes.’

‘And details of the crew’s families? Wives, for example? Where they are today?’

‘Sometimes. If they wish to tell me such details. If the man is alive, his family is his business. If he was killed in action, his widow is probably drawing a war pension – which is also a private matter. The details of such widows are kept by the pension office, the Deutsche Dienststelle in Berlin.’

‘Can you write that down for me?’ He handed Herr Bredow his notebook.

Bredow scribbled the name and address for him.

‘Thank you. So if I gave you the name of a crew member, you could trace which U-boat he served on?’

‘Yes.’

‘And once we know his boat number can you also tell me where it was sunk?’

‘Usually. But not necessarily.’

‘Why’s that?’

Bredow said, ‘Passiermeldungen. Every day the submarine commander had to radio to Berlin in code, telling his position and what he was doing, what enemy shipping was about, and so on. This is called a Passiermeldung. He also received any orders Berlin wanted to give him. So, if that submarine is thereafter sunk, we know approximately where, because the commander gave us his recent position. But a U-boat could go a long way in twenty-four hours, chasing a ship Berlin knew nothing about. Or, it may happen that a commander cannot radio his Passiermeldung on time, because of bad weather, for example. Then, if he gets sunk, we don’t know where.’ He paused. ‘But the British Ministry of Defence may know. Or the National Archives in Washington DC.’

‘How would they know?’

‘Because the British and Americans deciphered our secret code used in the Passiermeldungen, so they knew what was being said. They then hunted that submarine and may have sunk it. So they know where, but we don’t.’

‘But won’t they tell you now? The war ended forty years ago.’

Bredow sighed. ‘Civil servants. The British are not very helpful. If I have a good reason to know about a specific boat – because the family want to know what happened to their loved one, for example – the British will sometimes tell me. But sometimes they will deny all knowledge. Sometimes they will even deny that a particular British ship was sunk when we know we sank it. The Americans are more helpful. They have all their information on microfilm now and I can soon buy it. But, of course, the Americans do not necessarily know everything the British know. All the Passiermeldungen we received can be found in the B.D.U., the Daily War Book. B.D.U. means the Befehlshaber der U-Boote, and the archive is in Freiburg. Here is the address of the British Ministry of Defence.’ Bredow got up and fetched a letter off his desk. ‘Naval Staff Duties, Foreign Documents Section, Ministry of Defence, Room 2606, Empress State Building, London, SW6 1TR. The address of the American National Archives is Washington DC 20408. Write to Tim Mulligan.’

McQuade scribbled it all down. ‘I’ve looked at Jane’s Fighting Ships, and it seems from their figures that there are a number of U-boats which are completely untraced. Missing.’

‘Yes. There are twenty-eight missing U-boats. Here is a list.’ Bredow went to a filing cabinet. He brought out a cyclostyled sheet. ‘You can keep that.’

‘Many thanks.’ McQuade ran his eye down the list. A number went missing right at the end of the war, April and May 1945. His pulse slipped. One of the missing boats was U 1093. Which matched the obscured numbers he had seen on the conning tower of the sunken submarine. ‘No trace at all? Didn’t they send any Passiermeldung?’

‘Not shortly before they went missing.’

McQuade took a breath. Now for the big question. He did not want Horst Bredow getting too interested. ‘Does the name Horst Kohler mean anything to you? Seeoffizier Horst Kohler?’

Bredow shrugged. ‘Kohler is a common German name.’

‘Would you mind looking up his name in your files? And telling me the number of his U-boat?’

Bredow frowned. ‘Why? I do not mind telling you about submarines, Herr McQuade, but I cannot give out personal information without good reason.’

McQuade sighed apologetically. ‘I’m sorry.’ He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the identification tag of Horst Kohler. He said, ‘I found this. I’d like to find out about this man. So I can return this tag to his family.’

Bredow stretched out his hand. ‘Where did you find it?’

McQuade said: ‘In London. In a stall that sells war memorabilia. That is what made me think of writing a story.’

Bredow turned it over and over.

‘If you like, I will return it to his family,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I would like to buy it for my museum, please.’

‘You can have it if the family don’t want it. But I would like to deliver it to them personally.’ He added, ‘For my story.’

Bredow nodded slowly, fingering the tag.

‘Very well.’ He went into the office beyond and returned with two files. He stood at his desk, and riffled through pages, muttering ‘Kohler, Kohler …’ His finger stopped. ‘Yes, Kohler, Horst. The only Horst Kohler. Seeoffizier. Joined in 1940 … His U-boat was number 1093.’

McQuade’s heart leapt. Herr Bredow then opened the other file and was riffling through the pages. ‘And U-boat 1093 was … It is one of the missing ones.’

Bredow sat down and looked across the desk at him pensively. McQuade concealed his elation. ‘Do your files say where U-boat 1093 was last seen?’

Bredow glanced at his file. ‘Yes. Near Flensberg, 1st May, 1945. She had just returned from a mission. But there is no record of her going back to sea.’ He sat back and frowned at the ceiling.

Oh yes! McQuade said, ‘If she had received orders to go back to sea, would there definitely be a record of that today?’

Bredow sighed. ‘Not necessarily. This was right at the end of the war. Germany was in chaos. Hitler had committed suicide. Bombs, fires, tanks overrunning Berlin, street-by-street battles. Admiral Dönitz had taken over the government and he had just moved his headquarters near Flensberg.’

It all fitted. ‘And what day did the war end?’

‘The 10th of May.’

‘Ten days later. So there was still time for the U-boat to receive orders to put to sea.’

‘This is not so remarkable,’ Bredow said pensively. ‘The submarine went back to sea, obviously, but no record exists because of the chaos. It was sunk, in the British Channel most likely, at that stage. Kohler’s body is washed ashore, somebody finds it and takes the tag as a souvenir. Forty years later it shows up in a shop in London.’

‘Maybe the submarine wasn’t sunk by the Allies, but hit a rock or a sandbank. How easy is it for that to happen?’

‘Unlikely. A submarine likes deep water. The asdic shows the commander the rocks – even a shoal of fish.’

‘But currents and the weather could confuse him? Make him lost for a while. There was no sat-nav in those days. So the submarine had to surface to enable the navigator to see the sun and use his sextant. Well, if the sky was overcast for days he’d have to dead-reckon and that could put him miles out with a strong current? Suddenly, bang – he hits a sandbank.’

Herr Bredow nodded. ‘It is possible.’

‘If he does bang into a sandbank, or rocks, how does he get off?’

‘Usually he would reverse. To pull himself off.’

‘And if he reversed into more rocks behind? And damaged his rudders?’

‘Then he’s in big trouble.’

‘He would have to abandon ship?’

‘Possibly. He would try other things first.’

McQuade took a deep breath. ‘Is Horst Kohler’s wife listed in your file?’

Bredow shook his head. ‘No. That is not unusual. If she’s still alive and drawing a war pension.’

‘So I’ll have to find out from the pension office in Berlin?’

‘Yes.’

McQuade felt he was getting places. He wanted to get going. ‘Last question, Herr Bredow.’ He pulled out the submarine brochure he had bought in Laboe. He opened it at the diagram of the submarine. ‘A naval officer explained the Abandon Ship procedure for German submarines to me. How the submarine is partially flooded by opening valves, until the pressure inside is the same as the sea pressure outside. The conning tower hatches are then opened and the escape tube fills with water. The crew swims up it, and rises to the surface. Now I presume a diver could subsequently re-enter the submarine by the same route, but in the reverse direction?’

‘Correct.’

‘Is there a better way?’

‘Only if he cuts a hole in the side. Or, if a torpedo port is open and the tube is empty.’ He added: ‘Submariners have been known to escape that way.’

That didn’t apply to his submarine because he had seen the torpedo ports were closed. ‘But all the crew would be able to escape up the normal escape tube, if the submarine was wrecked in less than fifty metres of water?’

Bredow nodded. ‘All will escape.’

So why did only two men escape from that submarine off the Skeleton Coast?