He shook his head. This little venture had the feeling of a disastrous balls-up waiting to happen. These dinghies were all that could be produced at short notice for the mission. They would be a poor offering as a life raft; they were certainly less than adequate for an amphibious landing. And although he had no doubt that the men were fine soldiers, Lundstrom wondered whether these Alpine troops, trained for combat in arctic and mountainous conditions, were ready for this kind of action.
He heard boots on the ladder leading up to the conning tower. Koch emerged beside him and gleefully sucked in a lungful of the chilly, salty air.
‘I imagine that tastes pretty good after the last few days below, eh?’ said Lundstrom.
The young man nodded. ‘Very good. I don’t know how you and your men can stand to live in such conditions.’
‘Yes, of course, you must be used to the great outdoors, not the inside of a sardine can.’
Koch stretched his arms in front of him, enjoying the space. ‘It’ll be good to get on with this, least of all so we can stretch our legs.’
Koch had been careful not to reveal a single detail of the mission he and his men were to carry out. Lundstrom guessed that the young man’s orders had specified that the nature of their undertaking ashore remain classified. Nonetheless, knowing the war was entering its final days, he felt the imprudence of asking him was forgivable.
‘Can I ask what it is you and your men are up to?’
Koch tightened his lips and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not permitted to reveal the content — ’
‘- of your orders. I know. I thought as much. Well, I hope whoever’s behind this has a damn good reason for throwing you and your lads into the sea. I can’t see anything any of us can do right now is going to change the way things will go.’
‘We’ve not had a lot to do but retreat for the last year. My men wouldn’t mind one last chance to have a go back at them.’
Lundstrom had on many an occasion in the last year shared a drink with passionate young officers in the bars of Bergen. There were nearly 40,000 servicemen isolated in Norway — soldiers, airmen, sailors, many of them veterans. A large proportion of these men had fought in elite regiments that had served tours of duty in the east. They were good soldiers, the cream of what was left of Germany’s fighting forces, but they were stuck where they were, separated by the Baltic from Germany and frustrated that they could do little to help their comrades and defend their country.
He had listened to these young men, soured and embittered by losing the eastern campaign and watching from afar as the war ground to a bitter end. The only opportunity many of these officers had had to prove their leadership was how quickly and efficiently they could withdraw their men and move resources back from the advancing enemy. He pitied the young captain.
The end of the war would bring him only a sense of loss, failure. For Lundstrom, however, it meant only relief. He and his men had already tasted the bitter pill of defeat a year ago. Those feelings had passed, the wounds had healed, and now they were just waiting for the rest of their compatriots to catch up and accept the inevitable, acknowledge the game was up.
‘Good night for it, I think,’ said Koch, studying the dark sky. The cloud cover was total; the full moon would not give them away tonight.
‘Yes, but the sea is choppy. Don’t let your men sit on the edge of the dinghies or they’ll go in.’
Koch nodded.
‘And be careful when you start seeing white water. That means you’re close to the shore. I’ve no idea what there is to land on here, sand or rocks. Be careful, eh?’
The men on the foredeck had inflated two out of the three dinghies, and the third was nearly done.
‘I should join my men now. Thank you for your hospitality.’
Lundstrom held out his hand. ‘Well, I wish you success with whatever it is you hope to achieve.’
‘Perhaps our little action will make a minor headline or two in some newspaper somewhere, and then you’ll find out what we’ve been up to.’
‘Maybe a footnote in a history book some day, eh?’
Koch smiled. ‘That would be nice.’ He nodded formally at Lundstrom before descending the ladder to return inside the sub and check one last time that all their field equipment had been bagged up and taken. A few moments later, the rest of his platoon spilled through the hatch on to the foredeck, followed by Koch. They quickly gathered together their firearms and wrapped them up in several waterproof canvas kit bags, then sorted themselves into three groups.
Lundstrom watched them with concern. Unlike seamen, these men were careless in the way they stood on the deck, close to the edge, not holding on to the railings, not keeping an eye on the sea for any approaching swells. They were men unused to the sea, and its ways.
Tonight, however, it seemed the Atlantic wasn’t thrashing as unkindly as it had promised. That and the good cloud cover as well. Perhaps fortune had decided to smile on this little endeavour.
Now that his part of the job was done, he wondered if he would hear any more about this operation after reporting back to Bergen. Maybe Koch was right; it would probably amount to no more than a small news item in the provincial newspaper that served this area of France. All eyes were on Berlin now.
‘ Thirty German bodies washed ashore near Nantes.’
‘Poor bastards,’ he muttered as he watched the first dinghy slide off the deck into the sea, and begin to bob unhappily as successive swells and troughs raised and dropped it by half a dozen feet.
The other two dinghies followed suit, and awkwardly, their inexperience showing, the men clambered down into them.
The last of Koch’s men scrambled down the side of the hull and the three inflatable rafts began to head away into the night, as paddles on all sides sliced into the foaming water.
He watched their painfully slow progress, as they seemed to move more up and down at the mercy of the swells than away towards land.
Ten minutes later, when Lundstrom could no longer make out the pale wake trailing Koch and his men, he ordered the helmsman to turn her around and head due north-west.
He sighed with relief, hoping this time he could take the U-1061 home to Bergen to await the end of the war in peace.
Chapter 32
2.05 a.m., 29 April 1945, an airfield south of Stuttgart
Max had watched as the work assembling the cradle was done and the bomb, under the supervision of the recently arrived civilian, and under the cold gaze of the SS men who had come with him, had been carefully installed aboard the bomber.
The civilian had ordered his SS guards to continue watching the plane; none of the ground crew, nor the crew who were to fly it, were now permitted to approach it. Then the civilian had left the hangar for the bunker.
Max had also noticed the Major watching the whole process from a corner of the hangar, and as the civilian had departed, he had summoned Rall with a flick of his wrist. It appeared that all of a sudden this man was now calling the shots on the airfield. No longer did it seem to be the Major’s show.
That had been an hour ago. Max and the others now waited impatiently for the last of the fighters to be fuelled and the extra-large ammo canisters installed. Even carrying the extra ammunition drums, Schroder and his men would need to ensure they were careful to conserve what ammo they had. Yet another thing for them all to keep in mind.
Zero hour, Major Rall had promised, would be midnight, but the cradle had taken longer than planned. That was two hours of wasted night cover.
‘Shit!’ he muttered to himself. The waiting was getting to him. He slipped out through the hangar hatch door
