Winter Sniper: A World War II Novel

Chapter 6

On the night of December 26, two men stood duty in the watchtower at Fort Miles. If the wind didn’t have such a bite, they might even have enjoyed the view of the Delaware Coast. There were no clouds, just a sliver of moon and starlight, so that the bay was dark as wet slate before them. Orion, the constellation named “The Hunter” by the ancient Greeks, was especially bright in the winter sky. Behind them lay the sleeping Delmarva Peninsula, flat farm country that was the domain of potato fields and chicken houses. Here and there a light twinkled. To the northeast was the fishing village of Lewes, formerly a haven for pirates like Blackbeard and bombarded once by the Royal Navy during the War of 1812. The artist Howard Pyle vacationed here to find inspiration for his pirate paintings among the sand dunes and legends of the Delaware coast. But if the two men dwelled at all on the landscape, it was to think that it was a goddamn cold and forlorn place.

“I’m going down for coffee,” one of the young guards said. “You want some?”

“Lots of sugar in mine. And bring up any of that cake that’s left from yesterday.”

The other man went down the tower, his boots ringing on the metal steps. The captain would bust their balls if he found out there was just one guard, even for a few minutes. The captain made it clear he wanted two men on duty at all times, their eyes constantly scanning the sea. But he would be asleep this time of night while they were freezing their asses off, so it served him right.

The remaining watcher looked out now at the bay. Not much to see at night due to the blackout. A few miles to the southwest, Delaware Bay opened onto the Atlantic. There were some very deep places not far from shore; the charts marked chasms that reached down more than one hundred feet. Dangerous shoals ran out from the Jersey shore, so the Cape May light still flashed its warning, U-boats be damned. From here, the channel ran all the way to the ports and Navy shipyards at Philadelphia. Even one German U-boat could have done an awful lot of damage if it slipped into the channel, which was why Fort Miles and its several watchtowers had been thrown up in the early days of the war to guard the entrance to Delaware Bay.

Up in the tower, the guard could hear his partner whistling on the landing below. Someone had rigged up an electric hot plate down there. The smell of coffee drifted up. He flexed his fingers, which were growing stiff even inside his gloves.

That’s when he saw the flash. Not a light, but only starlight reflecting off a hard surface. It might have been the wet flank of a porpoise or even a whale. He stared toward the dark sea. There it was again. The guard lifted powerful binoculars to his eyes, making the bay spring closer. In the magnified field of vision a black form materialized in the choppy surface. He was sure it hadn’t been there a minute before. What was that, a log that had floated down on the current? No, it was too big. Then, incredibly, the conning tower of a U-boat took shape.

Without taking the binoculars from his eyes he shouted to his partner, “Get your ass up here!”

“The coffee’s almost ready,” came the reply, echoing up the tower.

“Forget the goddamn coffee!”

The guard thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. That happened when you stared at the sea too long, especially late at night, which was why the captain wanted two guards on duty. Two men weren’t likely to see a phantom. But he could still see the black silhouette among the waves. “Two o’clock, about four hundred feet out,” he said as the other guard came pounding up the steps and grabbed up his own binoculars.

“I don’t see … wait a minute. Holy shit!”

“Better call it in.”

The other guard ran back down the steps and grabbed up the telephone in the landing, connecting to a sleepy-sounding duty officer at fire control.

“If anyone shows a light, I will shoot him myself,” the kapitanleutnant warned. He sounded nervous and kept glancing toward the Delaware shore. They were so close that the watchtowers could clearly be seen, dark sentinels against the starry sky. The night was brighter than he would have liked. It was too much to hope that the Americans might not be paying attention.

Hecht manned the machine gun mounted in the conning tower, but the captain hadn’t bothered to uncover the 20 mm deck gun. It wouldn’t be much use against the shore battery and he wanted their passenger away as quickly as possible. This was madness, the captain thought, to expose his ship and all on board for the sake of delivering a single man to shore. But those were his orders, and he would follow them.

Down below, in the belly of the submarine, Zumwald was at his listening post, headphones clamped on tightly, ears straining for any radio traffic that might indicate they had been spotted. So far, he heard only the crackle and hiss of dead air, punctuated by the occasional chatter between merchant ships in the channel. Their captains all seemed worried about U-boats. At the moment, Zumwald thought, this U-boat was far more worried about them. The last thing they needed was to be spotted by some passing ship. He glanced up, saw Bueller on the bridge, his pale face intent on the ladder leading up into the conning tower. A stray breeze ruffled his hair. Bueller closed his eyes and smiled.

On deck, the crew was having trouble inflating the rubber raft that would carry the sniper to shore. Hess stood nearby, rifle strapped to his back. “Hurry it up!” the captain snapped, struggling to keep his voice low. He knew how far voices carried across water on a quiet night.

He needn’t have bothered. Seconds later the quiet shattered when a gun on shore fired, the flash so bright it was like summer lightning in the sky. The shell clawed at the air, then ripped into the bay not more than fifty feet from the submarine.

The men on deck scrambled, hurrying to get the raft away. The gun fired again. A geyser of seawater erupted just off the bow. The rubber raft was finally inflated. “Get in the boat, Hess!” the captain shouted, no longer caring if he could be heard on shore.

“Sir, do you want me to fire on that tower?” Hecht asked, his finger poised on the trigger of the machine gun.

“Nein, nein,” the captain said. “All hands below! Sound the dive alarm!”

The U-boat’s klaxon sounded as Hess tumbled into the raft and cast off. The shore battery fired again. An instant later, the shell tore through the submarine’s hull. U-351 rocked with the explosion, throwing the men still on deck into the water, and then the submarine began to list heavily to one side. Smoke poured from the hatch in the conning tower. The American gun fired again and missed, but it didn’t matter. U-351 was already on its way to the bottom.

One moment Zumwald had been listening to the headphones, nervously aware of the artillery fire marching closer, and then he was hurled from his chair by the impact of the shell. The world disappeared in a burst of white like the sun exploding and Zumwald blacked out.

When he came to a minute later, the interior of U-351 was in chaos. Showers of sparks provided as much light as the flickering bulbs of the bridge. Someone stepped on him as they rushed toward the conning tower. Seawater gushed from a dozen leaks and there was already six inches of water sloshing across the deck. Zumwald was soaked, and he decided it must have been the cold water that brought him around. Looking at the wreckage surrounding him, he wondered if it would have been better not to wake up at all. U-351 was sinking and Zumwald was trapped in the boat’s belly. It was a submariner’s worst nightmare.

Seawater swirled around him, already a foot deep. The water smelled strongly of fish guts and diesel oil. Someone bobbed past him, face down, probably killed in the same blast that had spared Zumwald. Over the sound of rushing water he heard the first mate shout, "Get back to your posts!"

But it was no use; panic had already set in among the crew of U-351. The lights flickered like strobes going off, and in the intermittent flashes he could see men scrambling for the ladder that led up through the conning tower. The ladder was the only way out and one man pushed another out of the way to get to it first. The first mate waded in and tried to stop the men, but they shoved him aside.

Zumwald knew he would have to reach that ladder if he wanted to live. He started to get up, but couldn't — something pinned his ankle. He tried to jerk his leg free but it remained wedged in place. He could not believe how quickly the water was rising; already it was up to his waist. It felt like liquid ice around his legs. He looked around and saw why the water was rushing in — just beyond the radio alcove he could see a hole in the bulkhead the size of a manhole cover. Water shot through as if out of a fire hose. The cold ocean that had always been just on the other side of the U-boat's skin had finally found a way in. I am going to die. He felt himself start to panic, forced it down. Zumwald told himself that if he had any hope of living through this, he had to keep his head.

Zumwald tried to move his leg again, but something had a firm grip on him. He could not see what it was under the foaming surface of the water. Contrary to every instinct he felt, he took a breath and ducked under. The shock of the cold almost emptied his lungs while the salt water and oil stung his eyes, but he had to see what trapped him. There. In the explosion, a jagged shard of metal had torn loose from the shelving that housed the radio equipment and hooked the cuff of his pants. His fingers were numb, but he managed to work the fabric free in a few seconds. He realized he might have exhausted himself trying to get loose if he hadn't kept calm.

His head broke the surface, though he was dismayed to see that the water had already risen to his chest. The cold now gripped his organs like a vise so that he could barely catch his breath. He began to slog through the churning water toward the knot of struggling men at the base of the conning tower.

He never made it. In the next instant, another American shell plunged through U-351 and the entire vessel shifted drunkenly, the water in the bridge area sloshing like the dregs in a dishpan. Water now poured down through the hatch in the conning tower, making it as impossible to get out as it would be to swim up a waterfall. Zumwald lost his footing and went under. He plunged into cold and darkness as most of the lights went out.

He knew he was just a minute away from drowning. Again, he pushed aside the panic and forced himself to think. What he needed was a pocket of air, even though he knew that was just postponing the inevitable —

He bumped against something soft and turned to see Bueller's face just inches from his own. But Bueller's eyes just stared, his mouth gaping open. Zumwald moved away. He groped his way through the flooded bridge, hoping against hope that he would find something that might save him. His fingers touched the jagged edge of the hole the first shell had made in the submarine's skin. The shift in the U-boat's angle meant water no longer rushed in through the rent metal. He forced his eyes open against the sting of salt water and looked out through the hole into the blackness of the open sea. And then Zumwald squeezed through the gap and swam toward what he hoped was the surface.

He broke through the water after swimming for what seemed to be forever. Gasping, half-frozen, he realized he had escaped the wreck of the U-boat only to face drowning or hypothermia. He floundered in the choppy water, horrified to see the flash of artillery on shore. It seemed like the guns were aiming at him. A shell ripped into the sea not fifty feet away. That's when someone grabbed him roughly by the collar and dragged him into a rubber raft, almost capsizing the little boat in the process.

"You still alive?" a voice demanded.

Zumwald rolled over to see the sniper's face above him. "I think so," he replied.

"Then grab a paddle and help me get the hell out of here."

Coughing out seawater, Zumwald got to his knees and grabbed an oar. They rowed parallel to the shoreline, away from the gun battery and the watch towers that stood like silent sentinels on the beach. The American gunners must have been so intent on the sinking U-boat that they did not notice the tiny raft. The rubber raft rounded a point — even passing a lighthouse at the end of a stone jetty — and they found themselves in a protected cove. They maneuvered the raft into the shadow cast by one of the long piers that reached out from shore. The bottom of the raft grated on sand. They got out and the sniper plunged his knife into the raft so that the air hissed out. Then he stuffed the rubber up under the joists of the pier. Both men shivered, their clothes wet on their backs, but they were alive.

"Now what?" Zumwald asked. "We didn't drown, but I think we might freeze to death."

"You think this is cold? This is nothing," the sniper said, slinging his rifle across his shoulder. "In Russia those wet eyelids would have frozen shut ten minutes ago. You want to stay warm? Run."

The sniper started off at a trot and Zumwald followed. He quickly discovered that the long months at sea hadn't done his legs any good, but he didn't complain, glad of the solid ground beneath his feet. He sucked in lungfuls of cold, fresh air and was happy to be alive.