"I will, sir," Lemp replied. But he couldn't help adding, "You are going to send me out again?"
"Yes, yes." The commander of the Kriegsmarine's U-boat forces sounded impatient. "You've proved you can hit what you aim at. We need that in our skippers. I have to dress you down, because you aimed at the wrong ship. I have my orders, too, you understand."
Did that mean he'd been going through the motions before? It sure sounded that way to Lemp. If he had, he could take his act on stage. He'd make more money with it than he ever could in a naval career. "I see," the U-boat skipper said cautiously-one more phrase that stayed pretty safe.
Donitz looked altogether different when he smiled. "All right, then," he said. "Dismissed. And you can tell your crew we won't send them to a camp."
Lemp saluted. "Yes, sir. I'll do that. Some of them have been worried about it." Some of them had been scared shitless. You didn't want to say that to a rear admiral, though. Lemp didn't like the idea of living in a place where making an honest mistake could land you in this much trouble. But, no matter what else the Vaterland was, it was the Vaterland.
"Go on, go on." Donitz had spent all the time with him he was going to. Stacks of papers smothered the admiral's desk. It wasn't as if he had nothing else going on.
After one more salute, Lemp made his escape. He was glad he'd worn his greatcoat. Germany had enough coal to keep furnaces going and heat buildings, but Wilhelmshaven was bloody cold outside. Screeching gulls wheeled overhead. The air smelled of the sea and, more faintly, of fuel oil-familiar odors to a U-boat skipper.
Donitz's office wasn't far from the harbor, and from the seaside barracks that housed U-boat crewmen when they came in to port. Lemp made for the two-story red-brick building with dormer windows where the sailors from the U-30 were staying. A sailor wearing a Stahlhelm and carrying a rifle stood guard outside. He saluted Lemp. The skipper and his crew weren't quite under arrest-but they weren't quite not under arrest, either.
Returning the salute, Lemp said, "You can relax, Jochen. I think they'll give you some other duty soon."
"I wouldn't mind," Jochen said.
Lemp walked on in. The sailors crowded the wardroom, smoking and playing cards and reading newspapers. It wasn't nearly so crowded as the long steel tube of the U-30 would have been, though. Everything stopped when the men saw Lemp. They searched his face as anxiously as they would have searched the horizon when Royal Navy destroyers were in the neighborhood.
"It's over," Lemp said. "The admiral read me the riot act, but they'll let us put to sea again."
The sailors cheered. They stamped their feet. A couple of them whistled shrilly. Only later did Lemp wonder why. As long as they stayed in harbor, they were safe. Any time they went hunting, they laid their lives on the line. And they were glad to do it. If that wasn't madness…
Of course it was. He had a case of the same disease. So did the British sailors who tried to bring merchantmen into their harbors, and the other sailors who set out to sink U-boats. So did the soldiers in German Feldgrau, and so did the bastards in assorted shades of khaki who tried their best to stop the Wehrmacht.
Without that kind of madness, you couldn't have a war. Julius Lemp took it for granted. So did men far more important than he.
"What did Donitz say?" asked a machinist's mate.
"That we were bad boys for sinking an American liner. That we could have got the Reich into all kinds of trouble. But we didn't," Lemp answered. "He also said he needed people who could shoot straight."
More cheers rose. These were so loud and raucous, Jochen stuck his nose into the wardroom to see what was going on. Nobody told him. Miffed, he slouched back outside. The soldiers started clapping and stomping again.
"We'll go out there and do some more straight shooting," Lemp said. The men shouted agreement. They were good fellows, all right-and crazy the same way he was.
For more than two years, the war in Spain had electrified the world. Everybody could see it foretold what would happen when Fascism squared off against Marxism. Both sides threw what they could into the struggle. Italian troops, German planes, Russian tanks…Most of the bodies, on both sides, stayed Spanish.
Not all. Chaim Weinberg wouldn't have left New York City without a strong feeling that something had to be done to stop Fascism before it exploded all over Europe. He wasn't the only one: the International Brigades were proof of that. Outnumbered and outgunned, the Republic remained a going concern despite everything Marshal Sanjurjo could do to crush it.
And then, when the Internationals were about to get pulled from the line, the big war did break out in Europe. Spain's fight was suddenly Britain and France's fight, too. Materiel flooded south across the Pyrenees as the French border opened up. It seemed too good to be true.
It was. As soon as Hitler turned his troops on the Low Countries and France rather than Czechoslovakia, the flood didn't go back to being a trickle. It dried up altogether. Everything the French could make, they shipped northeast to shoot at the Boches.
Germany and Italy had already pretty much forgotten about Spain. With the French and English navies in the war, the Fascists had a much harder time getting through than they'd had before. And they needed their toys to use against the Western democracies.
So Spain went from being the cockpit of world attention to the war that everybody forgot. Everybody, that is, except the poor, sorry bastards still stuck fighting it.
Lately, Sanjurjo's men on an outpost a few hundred meters away had found themselves a new weapon: a loudspeaker system. It crackled to life now: "Come over to the winning side!" a Spaniard shouted, and the loudspeaker gave him something close to the voice of God. "Come over to us, and we'll feed you what we eat ourselves. It's lovely chicken stew tonight! Don't miss it!"
"Ha!" Chaim said, and turned to Mike Carroll. "You know how to make Sanjurjo's chicken stew?"
"First, you steal a chicken," Carroll answered wearily. "That's an old one. Got a smoke?"
"Yeah." Chaim gave him a Gauloise.
"Lovely chicken stew!" the Nationalist boomed again.
"Thanks. Tastes like shit, but thanks." Carroll puffed happily. Chaim agreed with him-the French tobacco did taste like shit. But Gauloises and Gitanes were better than no cigarettes at all-and better than roll-your-owns made from other people's (and your own) butts.
"Chicken stew-with dumplings!"
"Lying cocksucker," Chaim said without much rancor. Every so often, guys from the other side deserted. From what they said, the Nationalists were just as hungry, just as miserable, as the Republicans.
"Maybe their officers have chicken stew," Carroll said.
"Now you're talking," Chaim said. Republican officers ate and lived no better than the men they led. It was an article of faith on this side that the enemy's officers exploited their soldiers-they were fighting for class distinctions, after all. Some of what the deserters said supported that: some, but not all. The Republicans mostly discounted anything that disagreed with what they'd thought before.
"Wonderful chicken stew! All you can eat!"
Somebody in the Republican lines fired at the loudspeaker. If you were hungry and cold and miserable, talk of food could drive you nuts. And you had to be nuts to shoot like that. At long range, with the crappy rifles and cheap ammo most Republicans carried, how likely were you to hit what you aimed at? Even if you did, what kind of damage could you do? And besides…
Chaim pulled his entrenching tool off his belt. It was very well made; he'd taken it off a dead Italian. He started digging. "That stupid asshole's gonna bring some hate down on our heads."