Herr Kapitan-Leutnant Walther Schwieger surveyed his boat, the U-20, in the submarine dock at Emden. The first dawn light shining from Wilhelmshaven in the east etched the slender vessel’s conning tower and deck gun against the glassy harbor. Briskly in the morning chill, Schwieger’s men were busy loading the Unterseeboot with arms and provisions for a two-week cruise.
Schwieger watched as a bronze torpedo, twice as long as a man and heavy as ten, was hoisted down through the sub’s forward hatch. His crew of thirty men and several dachshunds—whose matriarch Maria they’d captured from a Portuguese merchant—would be crammed in with crew, supplies, and eight of those explosive projectiles primed to destroy shipping in the Atlantic sea lanes.
Arming, refueling and provisioning was always a struggle. It was more physically taxing than the hunt itself, which mainly required patience. Like their captain, the crew would be looking forward to setting out to sea so that they could finally get some rest.
Schwieger turned from the dock into the officers’ shack. He’d better refuel himself with coffee—or what passed for it in these war-rationed times, with Germany smothered by the verdammt British blockade.
Inside the tiny hut he bumped into Otto, another submariner accustomed to jostling in close quarters. “Guten Morgen, Kapitan Hersing,” Schwieger said, reaching for the warm pot. “How is your U-21?”
“Excellent, Walther. You’re away soon for England in U-20?”
“Within the hour, I hope. Bauer has ordered me off to Liverpool, to sink troopships, so he says. Big things are afoot. Wegener will be going too, in U-27, and more boats to follow.”
“Ha, Bernie Wegener, that schemer!” Otto Hersing snorted. “You heard what happened on his latest run to Liverpool, just last month?” He obviously didn’t care if it was an old story, and told it anyway. “Bernd lay in wait there for three days, hoping to bag the RMS Lusitania! He let two other steamers go by, he was so greedy to get the big score! But he came back empty-handed, with no kills except for a few fishing trawlers. Ach, poor Wegener!”
“Well, Kapitan,” Schwieger said, “he was only trying to beat your record.” Walther addressed Otto with respect, knowing that he was more than just a big-mouth. He was the first U-boat captain to sink a British warship and escape alive with his boat, only last September at the start of the war. “You just downed those ships in Liverpool Bay, right under the Englanders’ noses…how long ago was it?”
“Back in January, in the Happy Times!” Hersing laughed heartily. “In those days, we didn’t even waste torpedoes on cargo ships. I just surfaced, fired a shot across their bows, and forced the crews to abandon ship. Then I sank the merchant tubs with scuttling charges, or hurried them along with my deck gun.”
“Ah but, Kapitan,” Schwieger ventured, “what if you caught the Lusitania? Would you still expect to board her under those old-fashioned cruiser rules?”
Hersing squinted at him, then laughed. “Ha-ha, Walther, you jest! The Lusi and Maury, all these big steamers, are too fast. They’ll breeze right past you and risk a torpedo–not that just one fish, or even two, is certain to stop a ship of that size.” He shook his head sadly. “And now, with this devil Churchill ordering his merchant ships to speed up and ram our boats on the surface, it’s hard to take a decent lead position so as to threaten them properly.” Then he paused, regarding Schwieger. “Why do you ask? Did Bauer give you some special instruction on this?”
Schwieger shrugged. “Herr Kapitan, you know that if Fregattenkapitan Bauer had given me any special orders, I could not reveal them. But we’ve both heard his line–no restrictions at all on submarine attacks.”
“Ah, yes,” Otto declared. “And I agree. Conditions for us commerce raiders are hard enough, and always changing. We captains must have total freedom to protect our boats and crews. There are the new British Q-ships, armed decoy merchant liners. And the mines, the nets, and sub-hunting trawlers. Ach, if only those landsmen in Berlin knew what we face!” He shook his shaven head under his officer’s cap, his mustached upper lip in a pout. “But the glory is still there for the taking, and the chance to win this war for our homeland. I would not trade this U-boat command for anything!”
“Nor I, Herr Kapitan,” Schwieger agreed out of patriotic duty. He then returned to his former question. “And so, given full discretion, you would sink the Lusitania? From below, with a spread of torpedoes? No mercy?”
“My friend,” Otto assured him, “I would not hesitate an eyeblink. You and I know what those big ships carry, the war supplies and troops! It would be a mighty blow against England, and a proud distinction for any captain in this service.”
“And what about the women and children?” Schwieger asked. “And with Americans almost certainly on board, too?”
“Why, if any of them didn’t escape, that would make a big noise in the press and teach them all a lesson–England and her reckless allies, and the so-called neutral America! Another great victory for Germany.” He laughed and clapped Schwieger on the shoulder. “You’d better hurry along on your cruise, Walther, or I might catch her first!”
Schwieger checked his pocket watch. “You’re right, I must go. Good hunting, Otto.”
“Good hunting,” his friend replied. As Walther passed through the door, Hersing further saluted him, clicking his heels together in the Prussian style and barking out the current fashionable motto: “God punish England!”
“Gott strafe England,” Schwieger answered in kind, returning to the dock.
Aboard U-20 he found the loading practically complete. But the stowage still had to be checked. Schwieger was ultimately responsible for cramming every loose item into the tightly packed sub. He ordered the diesel engines started up for surface cruising, and to keep the batteries charged for a dive.
The crew was all present, and all seemed sober…torpedo officer Weisbach, Rikowski the radioman, Lanz the pilot, little Dachsie and her pups, and all the engineers and deck gunners. The only new one to keep an eye on was young Voegele, a draftee and an Alsatian by birth. He was a native of one of the long-contested German districts along the French border, the Alsace-Lorraine, that this war was partly being fought over. As such, his loyalty to Der Kaiser was subject to question. But the lad seemed to be a decent electrician. Once he was out under the sea, his life would depend on diligent service and cooperation, just as much as everyone else’s did.
In the late morning sunlight, standing up top and waving auf Wiedersehen from the conning tower and the gun deck, the crew cast off and cruised into the already-rising western breeze. Once clear of the harbor bar, Schwieger went to his bunk and immediately slept, wanting to rest while he could with U-20 still in friendly waters.
After all the exertion of getting to sea, his sleep was deep. By the time he rose, the pilot Lanz told him they were entering the war zone. Well east of England, still surface cruising. It was already Saturday the First…May Day, 1915.