December 26, 1944
Gunter Hoenig hadn’t slept all night. Wrapped in a blanket they had stolen from the farmhouse, he lay huddled against Josef in an arroyo several miles east, fighting the nightmare images that visited every time he closed his eyes. The man by the barn, the woman and children in the farmhouse! Even now the dying woman pleaded with him to help her. Oh, if he only had moved faster and stayed the tire iron before Das Kapitan brought it down on her. But, no, he had remained standing for that one fatal second, unwilling to believe what was about to happen.
He shut his eyes more tightly and turned his face into Josef’s warm back, but more memories rushed in. The wounded American sailors gunned down as they swam away from their burning ship, the boatload of peaceful Jews Kapitan had so gleefully torpedoed.
As if roused by Gunter’s thoughts, Kapitan stumbled up from his rocky bed on the other side of Josef and moved further down the arroyo. Soon he disappeared into a thicket of weeds, but his nearby presence was heralded by the faint grunts of a man answering Nature’s call.
Taking this opportunity—the first since they left the farmhouse—Gunter shook Josef. “Wake up! We must leave this place!” he whispered. He placed his hand across Josef’s mouth so that his friend could not cry out.
Josef awoke. After nodding understanding, he pushed Gunter’s hand away. “Are the Americans near?”
Gunter shook his head. “We must go back to Camp Papago and tell the authorities what we have seen. Those people in the farmhouse…”
Tears sprang to Josef’s eyes and his voice trembled. “Such a tragedy. The children…” He swallowed, swept his tangles of auburn hair out of his face, and began again. “Kapitan was so grieved to find those poor people dead. While you were bundling food into the blankets, we prayed together for their souls. Oh, how his heart broke! But for us to return to Camp Papago now, what good would that do? God has already gathered those poor people to his bosom and our surrender will not change that. We must remain faithful to Kapitan’s plan.”
Kaptian prayed for their souls? Ach, such hypocrisy! Why had Josef…? Too late Gunter remembered that Josef had been in the other room gathering blankets and not seen Kapitan kill the woman. Three years younger than himself and reassigned to U-237 a mere month before capture, Josef had been spared the killing of the American sailors, the Jews, and the worst of Ernst’s violence toward his own crew. In Josef’s eyes, Kapitan was the flower of the Fatherland, the savior who would lead them to Mexico.
Gunter forgave his friend’s naivete. Josef was only eighteen, too young to be a submariner, too young to be a father to the baby now growing in his even younger wife’s belly. Too young to know the world. And too young to be left to the nonexistent mercies of Das Kapitan.
With great sadness, Gunter whispered, “If you will not go with me, Josef, then I will stay with you.”
He lay back down beside his friend, hoping that he had made the right decision.