July 19, 1942
UP OR DOWN. IT WAS A TRADE-OFF FOR THE MEN OF THE U-166. On the one hand, a sailor might endure the relentless bucking and pounding of the waves on the surface while enjoying the fresh air that came with an open hatch. On the other, he could appreciate the relative calm of undersea navigation, but would most assuredly suffer the headaches caused by the smell of diesel and sewage.
Occasionally, however, the stars aligned. For three days and nights, the best of both worlds had come together, and the U-166 cruised flat, calm seas. The constant supply of clean air and a steady, even, forward motion had allowed the men a much-needed rest. Moving in an uninterrupted line on a north-northwesterly course, the submarine stalked deeper into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. With all of his officers present as they changed the early-morning watch, Kuhlmann finally revealed their mission.
“Gentlemen, gather ’round, please.” The commander stood on the forward section of the conning tower as the last colors of sunrise melted away. The boat had not crossed paths with a target of any sort since the sinking of the Gertrude. This did not disappoint or surprise Kuhlmann, for they were not hugging the coastline or prowling shipping lanes as they might normally have done. The U-166 was headed for a specific destination.
“Fischer . . . Klein . . . Landermann . . .” The commander called each of his officers by name as they circled him closely. The men wanted to hear every word Kuhlmann spoke and knew they would struggle to do so over the chugging of the surface diesels. “. . . Oppel . . . Wille . . . Traun.” The Nazi observer, Schneider, was present as well, but Kuhlmann had failed to acknowledge him. The slight was purposeful and afforded the officers a small degree of smug satisfaction. They didn’t like or trust the man any more than did their leader.
“You are the finest officers assembled on the greatest, most modern attack vessel that has ever been produced in the history of warfare. Admiral Doenitz, in his wisdom, has seen fit to use us in a way that will bring glory to your families and your homeland. We are taking the fight to the enemy in his own backyard. We will be joining a wolf pack already patrolling the coastline of the northern Gulf of Mexico. There, the U-166 will seek petroleum tankers and merchant freighters bearing east from Texas ports as well as those leaving New Orleans and the Mississippi River. The other U-boats are already experiencing success beyond imagination. The Americans are off-guard and unprepared. Gentlemen . . . Operation Paukenschlag—Drumbeat—has begun.”
The officers listened to their commander with excitement. They had seen this part of the world only on maps, and the opportunity to spring upon the enemy in a completely unexpected location was a fighting man’s dream come true. Josef, for his part, barely heard the words his commander and friend was speaking. His gaze was fixed on Schneider . . . who stared back at him with a thinly disguised look of contempt. And there was something else too . . . an expression of . . . what? Advantage? Victory? An odd countenance, Josef thought, on a man whose presence is being disregarded. What is he up to?
Josef wasn’t long in finding out. As the men questioned Kuhlmann about navigation of Gulf routes and fuel-to-distance ratios, Ernst Schneider interrupted. “Commander Kuhlmann.” They all turned to see him remove a book from the folds of his jacket. Holding it forward, he asked, “What is this?” The first warm rays of the morning sun were just streaking above the horizon, but Josef felt a distinct chill run down his spine.
The book’s cover was red hardboard with black lettering. A circular stain from a carelessly placed water glass dirtied the front of the book to the right of its title. Josef recognized the object in Schneider’s hand, for it was his. And it had been hidden in Kuhlmann’s bunk—a location both Josef and Hans had been certain would be safe from Schneider’s prying.
Kuhlmann recognized it too, and figuring the best defense was to attack, he spoke immediately and loudly. “Schneider! I will have you in chains for this! That book is mine and was in my stateroom. You dare to enter my private quarters without my permission? Wille, Fischer, arrest this man and confine him to the engine room.”
One look from Schneider was all it took to stop Wille, the chief quartermaster, and Seaman Second Class Fischer in their tracks. Unsure of themselves, they looked to Kuhlmann again, but before he could urge them on, Schneider spoke, not intimidated in the least. “You will not arrest me, Commander, and you know why. Point one . . . I have also been given a mission on this voyage—by the admiral himself—and as I am the only one able to decipher the enigma code pertaining to that mission, you will stand well clear of me.
“In addition, I do not believe this book is yours.” He cocked his head curiously and held the book loosely in front of him, turning it and bouncing it in his hand. “This book is typeset in English, and forgive me, but I do not judge your command of the language sufficient to digest a tome of this complexity and magnitude.” Schneider paused dramatically and affected a casual attitude, flipping through the pages as if he had all the time in the world. No one dared breathe as he held the book aloft again. He turned sharply and pointed the book at Josef. “I believe this book is yours.”
The men unconsciously moved away from Josef, leaving him to stand alone, facing his accuser. “And all this time, Landermann, I thought you were cleaning the commander’s stateroom . . . a cabin boy . . . now it appears you are a traitor as well.” Schneider made a tsk, tsk sound as he shook his head.
Schneider held the book up for all to see and read its title aloud in German: “Im Westen Nichts Neues.” The men glanced nervously from Schneider to Kuhlmann as the Nazi continued to berate Josef. Moving closer, he said, “You are aware—everyone is aware—that this book is illegal?” Josef did not speak. “Come now, Landermann . . . did you not remember that I can read English as well as you? Did you think I would not recognize Remarque’s classic? But help me here, Landermann . . . if every copy of All Quiet on the Western Front has been burned by specific order of the Führer . . . what is an English translation of it doing in your possession?” Schneider shifted his eyes toward Kuhlmann. “And in your stateroom?”
The observer let the thought hang in the air for a moment, then stepped to Josef and extended his hand, palm up. “Sub pack, Landermann,” he demanded.
Josef licked his lips and shot his eyes to Hans Kuhlmann, who nodded slightly. “Present your submariner’s pack now, Landermann!” Schneider said again more forcefully. Josef never removed his gaze from the handsome, arrogant man as he reached behind, into his trouser pocket, and produced the waterproof pack all Kriegsmariners were required to carry.
The package usually held formal enlistment documents of several types and chained metal identification tags that U-boat crews were required to carry but forbidden to wear. The tags were prohibited because the loose chain could become snagged by running machinery in the tight quarters of a submarine. Not that anyone cared about the danger to the man being snatched off his feet and pulled into a messy death; the concern was about the harm that loose metal might cause one of the Führer’s engines.
Schneider snatched the sub pack from Josef and unzipped its waterproof seal. Reaching inside it, he paused, then held it up into the sunlight as if to confirm his initial findings. Disbelief washed across the Nazi observer’s face as he removed a single picture. “Where are your papers, Landermann? Where are your tags?”
Josef said nothing.
“Where are your required possessions?” Schneider screamed in Josef’s face.
“They were lost in battle.” It was a lie, and everyone knew it. Josef was a submariner. There was no battleground per se. He had thrown them away.
For the moment, Schneider regained his poise. “You do not carry Kriegsmarine or party identification on your person? One or the other is required. Instead you have only a photograph of . . .” Schneider frowned, actually looking at the picture for the first time. “. . . of you, a woman, and a child in a wagon?” The Nazi was about to casually toss the photograph into the churning water below, but a sudden something—a wildness perhaps—in Josef’s eyes stopped him.
Raising his head as if to think for a moment, he held the photo up by a corner and asked, “What is this? To you, I mean.”
“It is my identification,” Josef responded. “That is who I am.”
Not finished, but wisely judging Josef’s state of mind, Schneider placed the photograph back in the sub pack. He took a deep breath as if to close the matter, then narrowed his eyes and said, “I am adding two more quality photographs to your tiny collection.”
Opening his own sub pack, Schneider removed the first. It was a picture of Josef. “I have been saving this. I knew a time would come when I would be able to present it to you.” It was the photograph of Josef as a cadet. Schneider had obviously rescued it from the trash. All crew pictures were posted in the wardroom and replaced with new ones as the man achieved higher rank. “I will remove the current photograph in the wardroom. It will not be replaced. After all, you have no identification. Therefore, you do not belong on the wardroom wall. You will, however, keep this picture on your person . . . to remind you of your status. You are no longer a mighty under-lieutenant. You are again a cadet.”
Schneider turned quickly and pointed his finger at Kuhlmann, who was about to protest. “Do not say a word, Commander. You know I have the authority. This man has been caught without proper papers and possessing a publication banned by Adolf Hitler himself.”
Schneider turned back to Josef, who glowered at him, watching his sub pack still in Schneider’s hands. After all, it contained the only picture he owned of Tatiana and Rosa. He stood poised, waiting to fight if it came to that or to dive in after the picture should this maniac toss it overboard.
“And here is another photograph, Landermann. This one also for you to carry at all times . . . a small reminder of the men to whom your life belongs. See here . . .” Josef stared at the snapshot in Schneider’s hand. It was a broad display of Hitler’s inspection of the U-166 crew several weeks earlier.
“Do you see, Landermann?” The Nazi pushed the photo directly into Josef’s face and spoke to him as if he were a child. “There is you on the front row . . . looking so angry with your unloaded rifle. There is the admiral . . .” Schneider pointed to the men as he identified them. “There is your Führer . . . and look, Landermann, look . . . there I am! Do you see me? Not a perfect picture, to be sure. The photographer only captured the image of my striking face as I look over the heads of the other officers, but I am there.
“And do you see who is not in the picture?” Josef could not imagine where the man was going with all this and continued to stand unmoving. “Commander Kuhlmann is not in the picture! So place this photograph in your sub pack. Consider it a gift. Don’t worry. I was given several. But if I ask to see it, the photograph had better be there. And look at it occasionally, Landermann. It will remind you that Commander Kuhlmann, your protector, is not in the picture. But who is in the picture? I am in the picture. You belong to me.”
Schneider leaned directly into Josef’s face and snarled, “When we return home, if I can arrange to be there when it happens . . . to watch . . . I do believe I am going to have you shot.”
Schneider moved to exit the conning tower, but remembering a slight he had not addressed, he wheeled around to Kuhlmann. With a serpent’s smile, he said, “As for having me in chains? You will be fortunate if I do not arrange for your execution as well. So, Commander, do not threaten me.”
THE RAIN WAS BEGINNING TO EASE, BUT THE WIND WAS PICKING up. Wan was driving the beach road when the call came over the radio. “Go, Doris.”
“What’s your twenty, Wan?” the dispatcher asked.
“Beach road. Mile marker four.”
“Okay, you’re it. Some summer folks just came in. They’re staying down at the Ramsey house on the peninsula. That’s mile marker . . . ahhh . . .”
“Marker nine,” Wan interrupted. “I know where it is. What’s up?”
“They said cargo boxes and vegetables and stuff started washing up about eight this morning. The house is way back in the dunes, but from the porch, they could see everything coming in. It was raining really hard, you know?”
Wan rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Doris. I know. What else?”
“Well, they went out to the beach—said the surf was real bad—anyway, there’s bodies mixed in with the stuff.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah, they didn’t know how many, but there was a lot of bananas too.”
“A lot of what?”
“Bananas. Tons of bananas all over the place. That’s how the people saw the stuff washing ashore from way back in the dunes in the first place. Bananas are yellow, you know?”
“Yeah, Doris. I know. Anything else? I’m headed that way now.”
“No, nothing else. I’ll call the med crews—bodies and all—so they’ll be right behind you. Hey, Wan, did you know bananas would float? I didn’t.”
Wan pulled into the Ramsey driveway, which was really just another sandy road—almost a half mile long. The Ramseys, he knew, lived in Birmingham and rarely used the place. It was loaned occasionally to friends and was one of eleven cottages in the dunes along a twenty-one-mile stretch of beach that Wan kept an eye on. At least once a month, Wan drove down each of the long driveways. At every location, he dutifully got out, walked around, and went up onto the decks of the small houses built on pilings, checking windows and doors.
Only four of the eleven cottages were permanently occupied—one of which was the place Helen now owned—and none of them was directly on the beach. People who had built close to the beach in the past found out pretty quickly that there was no such thing as “hurricane proof” or “hurricane resistant” or “storm certified” or anything of the kind. When 140-mile-per-hour winds blew a fifteen-foot wall of water over your house . . . well, you could only hope for dry matches and enough wood to build a campfire with what was left.
Parking beside the cottage, the deputy could indeed see the bananas on the beach as he stepped from the vehicle. Walking the three hundred or so yards to the water’s edge, Wan saw dark shapes dotted here and there amid the sea of yellow. Crates, most of them were, but as he got closer, he saw bodies too.
There weren’t many. Wan could count seven dead men from the beach, but it was a horrifying sight. They had been in the water for a while—fish and crabs had taken their share. Wan waited for the med crew to arrive from Foley and moved upwind, seeking to avoid the foul odor of rotten bananas and decomposing flesh. The rain had stopped, but the southeast wind had built the waves along the shore into big rollers that fluttered the bodies in the water like a housewife shook out a rug.
It took the med crew over an hour to make it from Foley, but the five men immediately waded into the surf after what they referred to as “the floaters.” Wan sat and watched as they performed their gruesome task, and soon, the bodies they recovered—there turned out to be eight—were lined up on the beach. The med crew boss, a large man everyone called “Pal,” came over to talk with Wan while the others went to the truck for canvas body bags and stretchers.
“Eight.”
“I see,” Wan responded simply. What more was there to say? The two stood for a moment, uncomfortable in the presence of what used to be living, breathing people—men who appeared to have been their own age.
Pal cursed and mentioned an invasive procedure he’d like to try on any German he could get his hands on. Wan smiled grimly, then nodding his head to the southwest, said, “Look at this.”
Pal cupped his hands over his eyes to shield the glare. As he spotted the object Wan had indicated, the big man’s face reddened. He scowled and ran a string of curses out of his mouth in as full a voice as he could muster. “This ain’t right, Wan! You know something’s up. That dang old man is always showing up at these places.” Wan agreed, but both men simply stood on the beach with their hands on their hips and watched. Aside from the occasional curse words—nouns mostly—that Pal threw out over the water, it was all they could really do.
Harris Kramer, his thick gray beard blowing in the wind, steered his boat right into the floating wreckage and began pulling cargo boxes aboard. Kramer ran an oyster house on the south side of Mobile Bay, but by boat, it was a quick trip into the Gulf anytime he desired. A fast run west, then due south around the tip of the peninsula at Fort Morgan took less than thirty minutes. And here he was again at the site of another U-boat attack.
The attacks had taken everyone along the coast by surprise. The submarines had even begun sinking fishing boats, and from Galveston to Tampa Bay, most people were in stunned disbelief. Was this really happening? After all, there was nothing in the newspapers. Or on the radio. But it was real enough. The bodies and wreckage washing up somewhere every day or so were proof of that. Wan and Pal had worked four such sites already this summer, and every time, old Harris Kramer was the first man salvaging the scene.
Salvaging wasn’t illegal, so there was truly nothing anyone could do to stop Kramer, but the man was without conscience—Wan thought he was a ghoul. In most towns along the coast, folks would get together to clear the beach and give the food and supplies to the needy. In many cases, they found a way to return the goods to the war effort. But not here. Most of the stuff was snatched up by Harris Kramer and his nasty boat before anyone else got to it.
Most folks heard the boat before they saw it. Named the Melany, it was an ugly, fat boat—a converted oyster barge—with a wide back end and a painted red top. Its sound was distinctive, a throbbing gurgle that coughed, spewing raw fuel out its exhaust and into the water.
Pal waded along in the surf, trying to keep pace with the boat, shouting and throwing pieces of wood at the man, but Kramer ignored him and continued to pull in any of the nonperishable items he found with a gaff and stack them on deck. Wan sat and watched this circus as Pal’s men arrived and joined their boss, yelling and cursing in the water. They’re wet anyway, Wan thought, and everybody hates the old man, so why not?
There was more reason to hate Harris Kramer than they knew. He had been given a dishonorable discharge from the army during World War I. Caught stealing from the men in his platoon, Kramer wasn’t just kicked out—those were different times—he was beaten and humiliated.
Kramer had it in for everyone after that and vowed he would get even with all of them . . . the government especially. Through a friend of a friend, Harris Kramer met an influential German sympathizer and was recruited to sell food and fuel to German U-boats in the Gulf.
It was easy enough, he reasoned—easier than fishing anyway—and the money was good. He had a fuel ration exemption because his seafood business was designated a “necessary provider of food.” The Germans usually paid with gold, though once he was compensated in U.S. currency.
There was no chance of getting caught that he could determine. The transactions were handled at night, but even if they had taken place in the light of day, who was going to see anything? Everyone was so scared of the U-boats, most times Kramer was out on the water alone. And the kicker? Harris Kramer knew the areas being patrolled by the U-boats—after all, he fueled them—so it was a simple matter of cruising the beaches every day till he found a cargo to salvage. Then he sold to the Germans the food he had gathered from the torpedoed ships. It was beautiful!
Finally Pal and his men wandered back to where Wan was still sitting. Kramer, they decided, couldn’t hear them anyway. He was cruising deeper water, searching for anything that he’d missed, and was headed back to the west from whence he’d come.
Pal plopped down in the sand next to Wan just as the sun came out for the first time that day. “Better hustle them dead fellers over the dunes pretty quick. Gonna be hot soon. Don’t want to deal with that.” Wan grunted in agreement. “What do you think about this U-boat mess, Wan? What’re they gonna do?”
“By ‘they,’” Wan asked, “you mean the navy?”
Pal shrugged. “Navy . . . Coast Guard . . . Women’s Auxiliary at the Baptist church . . . hey, man, somebody better do something!”
The men got to their feet. “I don’t know that anybody knows what to do, Pal. You can’t see ’em . . . can’t hear ’em . . . it’s a whole new style of fighting a war.”
“It is that,” the big man agreed. “It sure is that.”
But it wasn’t, really. At least the submarine itself wasn’t a new weapon. In fact, the idea of undersea stealth was almost as old as recorded history. In 413 BC, warriors trained in the art of “breath holding” were employed at the siege of Syracuse. They swam undetected for long distances in order to disable ships of war. During the Middle Ages, while the Crusaders surrounded Acre, written accounts confirm an “underwater device” used by the Arabs to gain entry.
Even Leonardo da Vinci drew blueprints for some sort of underwater transport. His design was not seen until after his death, however, and his sketch notes revealed his apprehension that such a device might be used to sink ships.
During the next several centuries, inventors created increasingly sophisticated submersibles. No less a wartime expert than George Washington personally witnessed the launch of a one-man, pedal-powered submarine into New York harbor on September 6, 1776. Despite its ultimate failure as an attack vessel, Washington called it “an effort of genius.”
It wasn’t until 1864, during America’s Civil War, that the CSS Hunley became the first submarine effectively used as an offensive weapon. On a chilly February night, the Confederate sub eased out of Charleston harbor and sank the USS Housatonic—a brand-new twelve-hundred-ton Union frigate. The explosives had been attached to a long pole protruding from the submarine’s bow, and they were detonated by ramming its target. The obvious success of the Hunley’s mission was tempered by the fact that the subsequent explosion also sank her, killing all eight men aboard.
The evolution of underwater warfare had been achingly slow, but in July 1942, along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the German U-boat had reached an unimaginable level of effectiveness. And as Deputy Wan Cooper watched the med crew load the last of the bodies into their truck, he wiped his forehead with a white handkerchief, blithely unaware that, in his wildest dreams, he couldn’t have conjured up a story as unlikely as the one in which he was about to become involved.