“Close call,” said Bentzein, “but I don’t think they’re on to us. Let’s get out of here.”
“What’s the hurry?” said Deckert. “That has to be a British sub, and you know damn well where they’re going—Bizerte, or perhaps even Tunis to lay off the harbor and wait for our next convoy.”
“Why do you say that?” said Bentzein, stroking his full beard beneath hair that was slicked back tight on his head with gel, gleaming in the wan light. He would not get his own boat until November that year, U-425 up north in the Arctic. And he would be one of the hungriest U-boat commanders ever to put to sea, mounting nine war patrols over 211 days and failing to sink a single ship before being sunk off Murmansk by the British sloop Lark and corvette Alnwick Castle. The events of the next 48 hours would be the most excitement he would experience in the entire war.
“They could be going to Palermo, you know,” he suggested.
Deckert was not deterred. “Bizerte,” he said. “That’s where the action is now, and we might as well get in on what they’re up to before we head home.”
“What? We’re due back at La Spezia in just a few days. We don’t even have any torpedoes left.”
“We’ll get there,” said Deckert. “What do you say Fritz? Shall we see what they’re up to?” He looked at his young 2nd Warrant Officer, Detlev Fritz, just 22 years old, a fresh faced lad who had been bothered by bad dreams of late. Fritz had served with Rosenbaum in this same position, and each night while he slept, his mind filled up with visions of a ship, long and powerfully built, its battlements towering up and crowned by strange antennae and rotating radar sets. He was seeing things that once were, but events that had not survived the rudder turn Kirov made after its second coming to this war. A few of the other crewmen were also bothered by those dreams, but few talked about it, except Fritz, and so the memories remained hidden, silent vestiges of another life.
“Maybe you’ll get a chance to spot that battleship you keep talking about,” Deckert said with a wink. So it was decided to wait until things settled down, and then head east towards the friendly port of Bizerte. By day they would travel submerged, but as soon as darkness fell, they would surface to get that fresh air, and could cruise all night on the dark waters, relatively safe from air attack.
For his part, Lieutenant Wraith had seen the German U-boat, but he was under orders not to engage unless his boat was directly threatened. He lowered his periscope, laid low after a course change, and then resumed course for Bizerte, not knowing that the enterprising Deckert was snooping about in his wake. The following day, Deckert was close enough to spot the Trooper as it surfaced, seeing the odd silhouette of the enemy boat in the distance briefly before it submerged again.
“Strange,” he said. “They have something on deck, very bulky—some kind of container.”
“Probably full of mines,” said Bentzein, arms folded, and still clearly unhappy to be off on this wild goose chase. That was perhaps a reason why Deckert would get nearly 40,000 tons before he was hit himself, and Bentzein would wander the northern seas day after day with nary a kill to his name. “What are we doing here?” he complained. “Just wasting time and fuel oil. You can’t do anything about them.”
“Oh yes we can,” said Deckert. “If we can stay on their trail, then we can call in the Luftwaffe.”
“Who’s to say they won’t attack us?” said Bentzein, ever cautious.
The other boat angled off into the shadows, and hovered, listening with his sonar operator for some time, but they could not get enough information to locate the enemy’s position. So he just followed his hunch, continuing on for Bizerte, low and slow.
The following evening, just after dusk, the two British subs reached the vicinity of Cap Blanc north of Bizerte undetected, or so they believed, and unaware that a silent shadow had been stalking them all the way from Algiers. They spotted a periscope under the moonlight, thinking it was the third member of their little mission Unruffled, which had been assigned as a rescue submarine. That boat was running very late, and was still 50 miles from the scene, but they had no message stating that.
It never occurred to Lieutenant Wraith that he had just spotted a German U-boat instead of the one he expected to meet there, Unruffled. So he gave the order to proceed with the operation. Half an hour later they surfaced briefly, and the divers began to mount up their Chariots. Lt. Rodney Dove and Leading Seaman James Freel had the first launch on Chariot #16, and Lt. Richard Greenland and Leading Signalman Alex Ferrier would saddle up and take in Chariot #22. A mile off their starboard side, the Thunderbolt was launching two more Chariots, but it would be Trooper’s little contingent that would have all the luck that night.
They had launched a few miles east of Cape Blanc, just where the headland dipped down towards Bizerte. All the Chariots had to do was follow the long dark coastline south to find the harbor, a journey of no more than four miles. Cruising at their top speed, they would make that in an hour. They would find the small breakwater that capped off Avant Port, the outer harbor, and then figure some way to penetrate the anti-sub netting. That could be tricky, and the crews off the Thunderbolt immediately ran into trouble. The battery failed on one Chariot, with a minor explosion under water that forced the two divers to try and surface to try and sort things out.
It was a chaotic moment when it happened, the dull pop underwater shaking the Chariot, and Petty Officer John Miln was thinking they had been hit by gunfire. He could see Boatswain’s Mate Simpson roll off the saddle behind him, clutching his leg, a stream of dark blood in the water. He reached for the man, but saw him disappear into the depths. Unsure of what had happened, and alone in that wild moment, Miln realized that his Chariot had lost all power, and that he would now have no recourse but to abandon it and hope he could make it to the shore. It was simply too far to try and swim north to look for their subs again. He looked in vain for Simpson, but never found him, eventually pulling himself ashore near Andalucia Beach north of the harbor, wet, tired and disheartened. He would soon become a prisoner of war, but there were still three other Chariots out there, hoping to succeed where the first one had failed.
Chapter 11
Unfortunately, the other Chariot off Thunderbolt would also have problems, not with their torpedo, but with one of the men riding it. Lt. Cook had guided his Chariot quietly towards the south entrance, beyond the long breakwater. The men submerged to try and find a way through the anti-submarine netting, but the ride thus far had left Cook in some distress, his inner ear conspiring to give him a bad case of seasickness. With his stomach queasy, he now had to breathe underwater through his mask, and was struggling to keep his meager breakfast down, when a sudden ill-timed move near the netting saw it snag his suit and cause a bad gash. Seaman Harold Worthy was behind him, and he turned to show him his badly compromised suit, then rubbed his stomach and pointed to the surface. He got there just in time to rip off his face mask and heave out his guts. A few seconds later, Worthy bobbed to the surface beside him on the Chariot.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sick to my bloody guts. You’ll have to go on without me.”
“And then where does that leave you?” said Worthy.
“Go on, I can tread water out here until you get back.”
“Not on your life,” Worthy couldn’t just leave him out there like that. “Get back in the saddle, and I’ll at least get you to shore. Then I’ll have a go.”