The Last Raider Read online

  Rudi had dragged himself more than a mile to a cottage to get help, but it had been too late.

  Von Steiger had arrived home a few hours later. More pictures flashed across his tired mind. The goodness and strength of his home had come crashing down as he mounted the steps. Tear-stained faces, hands plucking at his arms as he pushed them all aside and ran up to her room. Then, behind the locked door, silence once more. He had sat all night just looking at her white, composed face and at her dark hair, still damp from the wet road.

  He found that he had halted and was staring up at the high bows of the Vulkan.

  Against the sombre warships her white bridge superstructure and jaunty funnel made a splash of colour, and her tall, black sides looked well cared for compared with the rust-streaked vessels alongside.

  Although he had been aboard for hardly more than an hour at a time since he had assumed command, he already knew every detail of her. He had immersed himself completely in the ship, if only to control the agony of mind which held him like madness.

  The Vulkan had been built just before the war as a quick-passage banana ship, and was blessed with all the latest equipment. She had large refrigeration spaces, electric light throughout and a fair turn of speed. Although to all outward appearances she was a typical ocean-going steamer with a high fo’c’sle and poop and all the main superstructure grouped amidships behind the bridge, she had been cunningly converted into a deadly ship of war. Deep in her bowels, silent and gleaming on a miniature railway, three hundred mines were stowed in readiness to be dropped from her poop. Below the bridge, screened by painted canvas, were the torpedo tubes, and on the poop was a long twenty-two pounder, camouflaged with an imitation hand-steering position. But up forward were the Vulkan’s main teeth. Two great five-point-nines were mounted beneath the fo’c’sle, their muzzles concealed by steel shutters cut in the ship’s sides, which could be dropped within seconds, and two more similar guns were mounted just a little farther aft, concealed by a false deckhouse. With that forbidding armament and two hundred and twenty-five officers and men, she could speak loudly, and with confidence.

  A few heavy drops of rain heralded the next downpour, and he walked slowly towards the main gangway. As he did so he caught sight of the officer-of-the-watch and side-party standing to greet him. It was strange that he had hardly spoken to any of his officers or men. Before, when he had commanded the Isar, he had been given the pick of the German Navy. It had been a voyage of adventure, excitement and ultimate glory. Now that side of warfare had been turned away for ever. With the first million men to die on the Western Front, and with the mounting savagery of the unrestricted sea warfare, there was little room left for such ideals as honour and glory. To survive was the fighting man’s only prayer.

  He sighed as he flicked open his fur collar, the motion automatic and arrogant, and marched up the gangway. He paused at the top, his gloved hand raised to the peak of his cap as the pipes twittered in greeting.

  He did not look back at the land. He no longer needed it.

  * * * * *

  Lieutenant Emil Heuss pushed back his chair from the table and stretched his legs. Around him the café was alive with noise and laughter, and the air was already heavy with cigar smoke and the smell of pork fat. At the far end, distorted by the blue haze, three elderly musicians bent their heads wearily across their violins as if to listen to their Strauss waltz, whilst on either side of them the service doors to the kitchen swung repeatedly to a stream of perspiring waiters, their laden trays of beer held high to avoid collision and the clutching hands of the officers who were already the worse for drink.

  Heuss stared at the littered table with distaste, and pulled a cigar from his pocket. His two companions were doing likewise, and Heuss could feel a sense of failure, as if this last dinner ashore had become yet another anticlimax. His serious face was pale and finely made, sensitive yet stubborn, and he felt in some way excluded from the drunken merriment around him, even from the conversation of his companions.

  Lieutenant Karl Ebert, the Vulkan’s gunnery officer, his round pink face flushed and unusually cheerful, grinned at Heuss and stuck his cigar between his teeth. ‘Cheer up, Emil! This time I think we are really going to sail! Soon we shall be away from all this.’ He waved his arm vaguely and set a glass skittering on to the floor. ‘I can almost smell the deep water again!’

  Lieutenant Paul Kohler, torpedo officer, and a member of the Vulkan’s ship’s company for less than a week, forwned and raised his hand reprovingly. ‘Keep your voice down, Ebert! Have you no thought for security?’ His pale, slightly protuding eyes were cold and hard, and as Heuss watched him from across the table he thought he looked completely without pity.

  But then, nothing seemed to be real any more. Even this ritualistic ‘last dinner’ was beginning to get on his nerves. There had been repeated rumours and preparations, and each time the sailing date had been put off. There had been three temporary captains during his six months aboard, and now they had von Steiger, although even he had hardly made an appearance. But today he had been to see the naval staff. That at least had seemed signficant. Heuss signalled towards a passing waiter, who nodded vacantly and hurried on towards some senior officers.

  Ebert was talking about guns again. ‘With the layout of fire control which I have at my disposal I can tackle two or more targets at once! We will show the world a thing or two when we get out there!’

  Kohler pursed his thin lips. ‘Torpedoes are the ultimate weapon, my friend! See what the U-boats have done so far! They have taken the war right into the enemy’s camp!’

  Heuss stirred, the old irritation growing within him. ‘Ach, you sicken me! We have a ship which according to you has everything we need! But think! Over half the crew have never been to sea before, and those who have have probably forgotten what it is like!’

  ‘At Jutland⎯’ began Kohler patiently.

  ‘No, not again!’ Heuss threw up his hands in mock despair. ‘That is all I hear nowadays! That battle was nearly two years ago, yet still people rant about it as if it solved the problems of the world! Well, it did not! It only proved that the naval staffs of the two nations involved were fools!’

  Ebert shifted uneasily. ‘Steady, Emil! Keep your voice down!’

  Kohler twisted his handsome features into a mask of disapproval. ‘Were you at Jutland, Heuss?’

  ‘Yes. Were you?’ He glared rudely at the other officer until he dropped his eyes.

  Heuss spoke more softly, his eye far away. ‘Yes, I was there, in the old battle-cruiser Seydlitz.’ The café seemed to fade, and he saw again that vision of sea power as he had watched it that far-off May afternoon. From his armoured position high on the battle-cruiser’s bridge he had watched the battle take shape, a glittering display of naval power and strength the like of which the world had never seen before.

  Line upon line of battleships and cruisers, wheeling and re-forming like ponderous prehistoric monsters until the moment of clash was unavoidable. There had been actions in plenty before, tip-and-run raids on the English coasts, skirmishes in the Channel and the battles of Coronel and Falkland, but this was quite different. Never before in the history of man had two such great fleets been drawn up to meet each other in the open sea.

  Through his observation slit Heuss had seen the lithe shapes of Beatty’s squadron drawing closer, while out of sight from each other the two main fleets had waited with agonising suspense for their scouting battle-cruisers to engage. He remembered the giant British Queen Mary as she blew up and broke in two. His own ship and her consort, the Derfflinger, had been concentrating their fire on her when a plunging salvo had ignited her magazines and blasted her apart. One moment there had been a proud and beautiful ship tearing through the grey water with every gun firing; then there was an orange flash which defied every description and a pall of smoke which rose to a thousand feet, and when it subsided there was nothing. Not even a spar.

  The two fleets had struck, parried
and separated. A great victory was proclaimed by the British. The German Fleet had retired to its base and had not dared to test the might of the Royal Navy again! The German Admiralty also proclaimed a major victory. They had sunk more British ships than they themselves had lost, and had outmanœuvred the enemy at every phase of the battle! Who was right? The argument raged without cease in every wardroom and on every messdeck in the Navy, and to Heuss the arguments had seemed empty and pointless.

  In anger he said: ‘It was a damned waste of life and ships! They fought in a way which would have made a soldier sick!’

  The beer arrived and he drank deeply, aware that his head was beginning to ache. He had volunteered immediately he had heard the proposed use of a new commerce raider. He frowned, trying again to fathom out the reason for his eagerness. As a regular officer he had always been rather on the outside of the Navy’s close-knit, unimaginative circle. He had enjoyed the companionship more as an onlooker than a participant, his cynical humour being a self-made barrier between himself and the others. Jutland had changed him in some way. He glanced at Ebert’s round, cheerful face and smiled in spite of his uneasiness. It will be the Eberts of this war who survive, he thought. The thinkers and the idealists like myself will go to the wall.

  There was a slight commotion at the door, and through the smoke he saw the swaying shapes of three soldiers in field-grey being pushed back into the street by an enraged waiter. The door swung cosily into place, but not before Heuss had seen the soldiers’ bandages and the one who had walked with crutches.

  A red-tabbed staff major at the next table exploded angrily. ‘Could they not see this is for officers only, eh? The swine must be mad!’

  Heuss swivelled unsteadily in his chair and stared at the angry little major with hatred. ‘They were back from the front, Major! Probably looking for their officers?’ His voice was mild, and a sudden hush fell in the café.

  ‘What the devil do you mean, sir?’ The soldier was purple with rage.

  ‘I have heard that there are no officers at the front, Major. That they are all on the staff!’ He stood up and eyed the man with contempt. ‘You’re not fit to wear that uniform, and if I was not so drunk I’d have it off your back!’

  The Major scrambled to his feet, his chin level with Heuss’s shoulder. He suddenly seemed to realise that there were half a dozen blue uniforms to every field-grey one in the café, and some of his courage failed him. He said stiffly, ‘I shall report this to the Commander-in-Chief!’

  ‘Yes, and I shall report you to the Major-General commanding this district! He is my brother!’ Heuss added wildly.

  The musicians struck up another waltz, the beer began to flow again and Heuss staggered out into the street and the steady rain. Ebert took his elbow, and together they moved along the deserted pavements.

  ‘Where is Kohler?’ asked Heuss vaguely.

  ‘He decided we were too crude for the likes of him!’ Ebert laughed, relieved to be free from a threatening scene. After a while he added: ‘Is your brother really the Major-General here?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, Karl, my brother, once a very good lawyer, is now a very bad corporal in the artillery!’

  They roared with laughter, so that some old women gathering sticks for their fires from beneath the dripping trees stopped to peer at the two naval officers who clasped each other’s shoulders.

  Ebert wiped his eyes. ‘Well, Emil, at least your brother had the sense to be a gunner, eh?’

  * * * * *

  The long, overcrowded train ground to a final halt at the Kiel terminus, and with a last convulsion the engine deluged the wet platform with steam which then hung motionless in the damp air.

  In a small luggage-van at the rear of the train the four blue-clad seamen scrambled to their feet and tried to peer through the tiny barred windows. A feeble glow penetrated in from the shaded station lights and played on the unshaven faces of the three men and on the pale exhausted one of the fourth, who was little more than a boy. For three days they had lived in the tiny van, locked up like animals, and made to manage as best they could with an evil-smelling bucket propped in one corner, and a pile of loose, dirty straw thrown in as an afterthought by the military police when they had left Cuxhaven.

  The boy, Willi Pieck, ground his teeth together to stop them from chattering. His uniform was thin and smelled of damp and sweat, and he clasped his arms round his slim body to drive away the cramped numbness from his bones. His companions were silent, and he wondered if they were thinking about their new ship or if, like himself, they were dreading what new humiliation would be thrown at them.

  Pieck had joined the Imperial Navy a year earlier at the age of sixteen, and the past six months of his young life had been spent in the dreaded Cuxhaven Detention Barracks. Try as he might, he could not believe that he was out of the place, nor had he the experience and understanding which maturity might have given him to free himself of what he believed was a permanent scar on his mind.

  One of four brothers, he had been raised in a small village just outside Flensburg. He had helped his invalid father to run the bakery after the others had left to fight in the Army. It had been a great event in the village as the three young men, self-conscious in their field-grey uniforms and smart spiked helmets, had waved a final farewell from the train window. That had been three years ago. One brother lay somewhere outside Ypres, another had disappeared on the Dardanelles, and the third had merely been posted missing.

  Willi Pieck had watched his mother grow older and more shrunken with each devastating piece of news, and tried to pluck up the courage to say that he, too, wanted to go and fight for the Fatherland. At last he had made up his mind to go. It would be difficult, he knew, and he would have to lie about his age, but he had heard of others who had managed it well enough. Surprisingly, his mother had said very little. It was as if she thought such a decision was inevitable. But it was to be the Navy for him, and because his father had once served as a cook in the High Sea Fleet, and knew the recruiting petty officer, it was all arranged.

  Like a man inspired he had thrown himself into the business of learning to be a seaman, and had strained his frail body to the utmost so as not to fall behind the others in his squad, all of whom seemed to be quite old and in their middle twenties. The rifle drill and endless hours on the sun-baked barrack square that had left his shoulders aching and feet swollen to twice their size merely made him more determined, and at the completion of his training even his petty officer had to admit that he might make a man in the end.

  Looking back, perhaps that petty officer had been trying to warn him. Willi had led a quiet village life, and apart from the fact that he had always known that he was not so tough and strong as his brothers, he had never thought of himself as being different from anyone else.

  At the barracks some of his friends had pulled his leg about his appearance, and had said more than once that he would make a better girl than a boy. But he had laughed it off, and had set himself a task to prove that he was better than they.

  He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the damp wall of the van. If only someone had explained these matters to him earlier. He was only a country boy, and when the divisional officer had shown an interest in him he had been proud and flattered. He had planned to write to his parents and tell them that a real naval officer was helping him with his studies and was going to speak to people in the right quarters about him.

  And then that night when he had been summoned to the Lieutenant’s cabin. At first he had not understood what the man was asking him to do, and as he relived the nightmare in his memory he could picture the young officer’s face, flushed with drink, and his hands hot and unsteady on his shoulders, the lust making his eyes blaze with a kind of madness.

  Willi had run terrified from the room, and had lain shivering in his bunk, unable to wipe away the revulsion from his mind. He did not report the incident, and next day was charged with stealing money from the Lieutenant. The mone
y was found in Willi’s bunk, where it had been carefully planted while he was on the parade ground, and the case was complete. Too late he had tried to ask advice from the officer-of-the-guard, and had even tried to explain what had really happened. But the officer had looked uncomfortable, and had advised him to plead guilty to the larceny. ‘It will seem better for your parents, you know,’ he explained.

  The detention barracks; grey stone, barbed wire. Permanently damp and hungry. The guards had used every humiliation they knew to break his spirit, and several times had made him stand naked on the parade ground while they jeered and threw insults at him.

  It was there that he had met his present companions. When the time of their sentences had almost expired they had been told that they were to be drafted to the Vulkan. It was hinted that it was to be commanded by the famous von Steiger, but even that comfort had been denied to Willi Pieck. A provost officer had slapped him across the mouth and bellowed in his face: ‘You useless little pig! Von Steiger will break you in pieces the first week you are aboard!’

  He jumped as Schiller dug him roughly in the ribs. He was a great hulking mass of man, who made even his tight-fitting uniform seem shapeless. Convicted of getting drunk and assaulting the military police who came to arrest him, he seemed little changed by his recent experiences.

  ‘Come on, Willi, wake up!’ His voice was rough and nasal, his nose having been broken several times in his long naval career. He had been drunk in every port which mattered, and many which did not. He was content to remain a common seaman for the rest of the war and, if necessary, until the end of his days.

  Apart from the lack of drink and poor food, he had remained unimpressed by the prison life. Having seen it all before, he knew that in the small world of the Navy it was merely a matter of time before he came in contact with some of those guards. He mentally rubbed his thick hands at the thought. He had once crippled a provost petty officer by pushing him into a dry-dock. At the enquiry it had been found that it was an accident. Schiller often smiled at the memory.