William Barber’s grandfather had once told him the Barber family came from a long and distinguished line of poachers, so William came by his disregard of warnings honestly. He had been advised to move inland, but he had claimed, rightfully, that he was an essential worker. He had also been warned to stay on shore this early morning, but, truth be told, the American sentries had not seemed too concerned about his casting off. One of them had growled, “It’s your ass, pal.”
Too much profit to be made to stay on shore. The mongers had never paid so much for fresh fish, not in his life. Thank the war for that. Barber and his three brothers owned two beach-luggers, clinker-built boats, thirty and thirty-five feet long. The boats had wide beams, and their shallow bilge keels limited their heel when they were winched onto the beach over baulks of timber. Lately their beach moorage had been hemmed by land mines.
The four Barber brothers fished for anything they could get: cod, skate, hake, conger eels, mackerel. That morning they were out for dogfish. Harold and Timothy were in the longer lugger, fishing a half mile west of William and Arthur. It was an hour before the first glints of dawn. The brothers had already spent an hour rigging their lines, each of which had several hundred hooks and would be left in the water for hours. William had quickly lost sight of the other boat.
William and Arthur were two miles out, but could not be sure precisely how far because there were no shore lights. Planes were overhead, as always. William had seen so many fighters and bombers over the past weeks that he had lost interest in whose they were. An unusually patchy fog had settled over the water, a haze that tasted slightly of smoke. Fog covered the channel one day in five this time of year, but the Barbers were accomplished boatmen.
Just as they began to lower their lines, a burst of fire erupted on the beach. The explosion was made soft by the haze and distance. Another ball of flame shot up, then a series of them. The sound of marshaled airplanes grew above the shoreline. Then more explosions, which quickly grew to a steady knell. The fog hid the land from Barber, so it seemed the bomb flashes were suspended at eye-level in the distance. Soon the entire length of the shoreline was speckled with red bursts. So many bombs were hitting the beach that the night sky above glowed orange, as if from the lights of a distant city.
William turned to his brother. “We might have taken one too many chances, eh, Arthur? I mean, we were told they might be coming this morning, and here we are anyway, eh?”
His brother, a taciturn man good with lines and nets and pots, quickly hauled in his gear, not taking his eyes from the roaring shore.
“Where we going to winch out, I wonder?” William asked.
A moment passed, then his brother deigned to say, “I would argue you are a dunce.”
“We fished during last month’s Alert Number Two,” William protested, “and you didn’t mind our fifty quid profit.” He lifted his line hand over hand. “And, besides, this may be just more German dodgery.”
Arthur exclaimed, “God, William.” His voice constricted. “Look.”
A form congealed out of the black haze, first just an indistinct smudge emerging from the fog like a spirit, black on black, then gaining size and shape as it closed. It was a Räumboote, a motor minesweeper, and it bore down on the brothers, its prow pushing aside a white wash.
“Take us astern,” William yelled.
Arthur scrambled for the rudder, but it would have been too late, had not the minesweeper’s helmsman spotted them. The R-boat changed course only a few degrees, brushing by the beach lugger. The R-boat was 140 feet long, cruising at seventeen knots. Added to its complement of thirty-four crewmen were fifty engineers.
“I’ll never forget them,” William remembered after the war. “They were lining the rail, all in black rubber suits, with burnt cork on their faces, masks raised to their foreheads, many readying rafts to lower over the side. Each of them must have been carrying a forty-pound pack.”
The R-boat was ferrying engineers to the surf, and the packs contained explosives. The ship’s armament was limited to 20mm and 37mm AA guns, and, installed for this mission, MG 34s on AA mountings on the foredeck. One of the heavy machine guns swiveled toward the brothers, the gunner peering over the barrel at the fishermen.
“That machine gunner was our Jack Ketch, no question about it,” William told me, using slang for an executioner. “But another German, must have been an officer, held up his hand, and the gunner raised the barrel. The ship slipped by, as black as tar, leaving us bobbing like a cork in its wake.”
As soon as the first R-boat disappeared into the haze, a second emerged, following the white water of the first, long and dark, its twin diesel engines rumbling. It was also full of engineers, and they too ignored the brothers as the minesweeper sailed by. The R-boat was so close William could make out the blue collars of the sailors’ pullover shirts. The collars were worn outside their blue pea jackets.
His hands over his head, Arthur said, “No mistake, you are a dunce, William, bringing me out here this morning.”
“Where are we going to land?”
When he found a theme, Arthur was a dog with a bone. “A dunce. Harold and Timothy will readily agree, when I tell them what we’ve just been through.”
The second motor minesweeper vanished into the murk toward the shore fusillade.
Wiping his palms on his pants, William said, “Our brothers won’t believe it, not a bit of it.”
The brothers would never learn of it. Harold and Timothy Barber were never heard from again. Neither their bodies nor their beach-lugger was ever found.
After having towed the midget submarine into port, the Pettibone returned to station off Benacre Broad. The sub’s ensign had been run up the foretopmast. The ship was patrolling, on watch. Its store of mines had been exhausted days before, and there were no more in all of England.
Uncomfortable in a uniform on loan from the captain and hoping none of the crew would notice the extra piping, Lieutenant Keyes leaned over an aft rail, a pair of binoculars at his eyes. He looked east, to the first traces of false dawn, purple trails low in the sky. The danger would come from the east, from Holland and northern Germany, from Army Group C and its commander, Erwin Rommel.
“See anything, sir?” asked a warrant officer.
“Not a thing.”
“I thought they might be coming this morning, sir. Felt sure they would be sailing right at us.”
“So did I.”
But before them was an empty North Sea, rocking gently in the predawn.
In a weary voice, Lieutenant Keyes said again, “So did I.”
The surf pitched Erich Rogge forward, skimming him along the sea bottom, which raked his wet suit and tore at his legs. He could see nothing through his mask but churning bubbles. When he was tumbled by the next breaker, he lost his bearings and had no idea which way was up or which way was toward shore. The surf pulled him back, then rushed him forward again. The weight of the plastic explosives pulled him toward the ocean floor. Another frogman’s leg smashed into Rogge’s ear, stunning him. He shook his head and kicked, his fins digging into the water.
The water receded, bouncing him on the bottom. He struggled to his feet, pulled off his fins, and began laboring up the beach. The next wave bowled him over, spinning him along the sand. His head dragged on the bottom, tearing his mask away. He spit saltwater and sand, and tried to stabilize his legs under him. He waded ahead.
To his left and right, other frogmen emerged from the water. The nearest engineer wagged a thumb at him. It was Kummetz, his sergeant. The morning was still too dark to see the short hill Rogge knew rose behind the beach, and the ferocious defenses he knew to be there, despite their captain’s scoffing at them. Endless explosions were ripping the beach apart.