An Honorable German (11 page)

But they were in time.

Spee
combed the tracks, the torpedoes speeding harmlessly down her sides. But now only her forward turret bore on the British
ships. The light cruisers hounded her with all sixteen of their combined guns. On the other side, the burning
Exeter
continued to press on, bidding desperately to close the range—and what? Ram? Fire her torpedoes?

“Emergency left rudder,” Max shouted to the helmsman. The rudder bit and
Graf Spee
swung slowly back to parallel with the light cruisers. “Ring for full ahead all engines,” he ordered the men at the engine
telegraphs.

“Report, Brekendorf.” It was Langsdorff, back on his feet with blood spattered across his uniform.

“
Exeter
closing to port, sir. Two light cruisers engaged to starboard. Main batteries trained to starboard and firing.”

“All batteries to fire on the light cruisers.”

Max went to the gunnery phone, wiping blood from its receiver. “Order from captain: all batteries commence against light cruisers.
Repeat, all batteries to commence against light cruisers.”

Immediately, all
Graf Spee
’s guns that would bear—main and secondary batteries, anti-aircraft guns, machine guns—opened fire on the two British ships.
Spee
bucked with the recoil, metallic reports ringing loud in Max’s ears.

The fusillade riddled the light cruisers. A hoist of bright signal flags broke over the two ships and they immediately turned
away and bore off toward the horizon, engaging their smoke generators till they both disappeared into clouds of oily smoke.

Max could hear the sailors cheering.

“All batteries train on
Exeter
,” Langsdorff ordered.

Again the main batteries fell silent as they turned on their rollers and trained onto H.M.S.
Exeter
. The crippled heavy cruiser was still five kilometers from
Graf Spee
, still too distant to fire her torpedoes. With a tremendous roar the big guns opened back up.
Exeter
cut a zigzag through the pockmarked sea, always steering for the most recent splashes—a standard tactic for throwing off
enemy gunners. But
Spee
’s gunnery team found
Exeter
’s range, pounding her again and again. Suddenly she came hard a port and turned away. Dark smoke billowed from the fires
up and down her length as the British ship struck out hard for the horizon.

“She’s turning away!” Max shouted.

Langsdorff did not react. The bridge crew watched in silence, grinning at one another. “Train main batteries on the light
cruisers,” Langsdorff ordered.

But gunnery could not find them in the black clouds into which they had disappeared. Max reported this to the captain.

Langsdorff nodded. “Cease firing.”

The sudden quiet unnerved Max. The tinkling of brass shells as they rolled on the deck, the swish of the sea as it flowed
past the hull, the whine of the ventilators as they drew air into the engines, the tramp of feet—all these sounds, unheard
during the battle, filled the stillness. Pain throbbed in Max’s battered eardrums, spiking with each thump of his heart.

The concussions had stopped his watch. He put his head into the navigator’s cubby to check the clock. Thirty-three minutes.
The entire engagement had lasted only thirty-three minutes. Max’s arms and legs quivered from the tension. Blood washed the
bridge, obscuring some of the instruments. If the shell had been bigger, the ship slower, if he’d been standing on the other
side—the fear now pressed in on him, catching in his throat. But he had survived.

Far in the distance, the light cruisers were still marked by their smoke clouds. They would now shadow
Graf Spee
from afar, outside the range of her big guns, afraid to come any closer and baying incessantly to the Admiralty for help.
Royal Navy battleships from Rio de Janeiro to Cape Town would already be recalling their crews from bars and whorehouses,
building up steam to slip their moorings, sailing to intercept the wounded
Spee
.

Langsdorff turned to Max, who came to attention and saluted. The captain nodded in return. Max picked up a small scrap of
the metal plating that had been sheared from the bridge. He turned the fragment over in his hands, then slipped it into the
pocket of his tunic. Medics were on the bridge now, hauling the casualties away. They loaded one of the signalmen onto a stretcher,
his left arm hanging by tendons from the shoulder, torn from the joint and flopping at his side. Two deckhands stood by, under
the watch of a bosun’s mate, ready to sluice away the bits of flesh and rivulets of blood on the deck. Max turned away, vomit
catching in his throat.

“Oberleutnant.”

“Ja, Herr Kapitän?”

“Reduce speed to eighteen knots. Train turret Bruno on light cruisers.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”

Max passed the captain’s orders. In a minute, the vibration of the steel deck eased as
Graf Spee
’s speed fell off. Surgeon Commander Kertzendorff appeared, his coat smeared with blood from emergency operations. The doctor
advanced on Langsdorff.

“Not now, Doktor.”

“Herr Kapitän, I insist.”

“A moment then, Doktor, a moment. Oberleutnant, are you able to carry on?”

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”

“Very well. Come hard starboard and resume our base course on a compass heading of one five five south-southeast. Maintain
speed. As you come hard starboard we will have a chance to give them a broadside. Instruct the gunnery officer to fire on
the light cruisers whenever they come in range and he can make them out. I’m going below to let the doctor examine me, and
then I must inspect the ship. Carry on.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”

Langsdorff took a last slow look around the blood-soaked bridge and went below.

Max notified gunnery, then came hard starboard and swung the ship around by almost one hundred eighty degrees.

A few minutes later, one of the signalmen spoke. “Herr Oberleutnant, damage control requests you to reduce speed. They are
taking too much water in the bow compartments.”

Max took the phone from the signalman. “Wachoffizier,” he said.

“Ah, what a pleasure to know that Your Braveness lives.”

“Dieter! What are you doing?”

“Groener’s dead. I’ve been posted to damage control.”

“What’s the damage?”

“Well, we’ll stay afloat but we’ve got more holes than a Swiss cheese. We’re taking a lot of water up in the bow compartments.
There’s a hole in the port bow about three by six meters, and it won’t be easy to fix. You have to slow us down so we can
plug it.”

“I can’t. Captain’s orders are to maintain course and speed.”

“Max, there’s a damn hole the size of a picture window in the port bow.”

“Above or below the waterline?”

“Above, but just barely. Wind is picking up now and forcing water in.”

“Dieter, you’ll just have to rig more pumps. We can’t slow down.

“Dieter…” Max paused on hearing the firing gong and braced himself as the aft turret fired at the shadowing British ships.

“Dieter, are you still there?”

“I am, but I won’t be soon.”

“You have to find a way to carry on. We can’t reduce speed because those light cruisers keep darting out of their smoke to
fire at us. We have to shake them.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Max hung up and went to the starboard wing of the bridge. He fixed his binoculars on the smokescreen being thrown up by the
distant British ships. From time to time one of the cruisers would charge out of the smoke, let loose a broadside at
Graf Spee
, then retire into the smoke again.
Spee
’s rear turret fired back.

They’d have the devil’s own time shaking the cruisers, but they could do it, especially if they hit some heavy weather. In
a storm, a larger ship could go faster than a smaller one. On their present course,
Graf Spee
headed east away from land into the deep ocean, the way home, to Germany. Max knew the raiding cruise was over. The most
dangerous part of their journey had now begun. But if they made it through, and they would make it, he’d be home in two weeks,
perhaps three. Home. Mareth. His father. His wedding.

Exhaustion filled him as the tension of the battle drained away. Still, he kept the bridge all morning, forcing himself to
listen to the damage reports as they came in. More than twenty British shells had struck
Graf Spee
. Many had simply bounced off the ship’s four-inch armor belt, but one had exploded in the galley; another smashed part of
the internal communications system; others had carved up the launches, shattered lenses in the rangefinder, and punched numerous
small holes in the deck and hull. Thirty-six men had been killed, many more wounded.

Fortunately, neither the engine room nor the main gun turrets had sustained any damage, although they’d shot away half their
main battery ammunition. Apart from the hole in the bow, the ship appeared to Max to have sustained no crippling damage.

But when Langsdorff returned to the bridge at midday, he stood silent for a long moment, gazing out at the sea in front of
them. Then he took his binoculars and looked aft, seeing in the far distance the two small towers of smoke that marked the
shadowing British cruisers. “Oberleutnant,” he said at last.

Max came to attention. “Herr Kapitän.”

“Come hard port and steer new course of three one zero.”

Without thinking, Max stepped to the voice tube. Then he stopped. That course would turn them right around and head them west,
toward land, toward the mouth of the Rio Plata and Montevideo. “Herr Kapitän, there must be some mistake.”

“Oberleutnant, steer three one zero.”

“Sir, they will trap us in the Rio Plata. We’ll never get home.” He stared at Langsdorff. The estuary of the Plata was difficult
enough to navigate, and after passing through the river’s mouth, they would still have to steam fifty kilometers upriver to
reach Montevideo. And when they chose to leave, they would have to conduct a fifty-kilometer running battle to get out into
the South Atlantic again. The British would have them trapped like rats.

Langsdorff looked at Max. His voice when he spoke was slow and quiet. “The British cruisers would never have attacked us so
aggressively on their own. They
must
be supported by larger British warships nearby. We cannot take the risk of encountering a Royal Navy battleship.”

“Herr Kapitän, better to find our graves here at sea than run and hide!”

“Oberleutnant, steer three one zero.”

Max hesitated, then came to attention again. “Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.” He leaned over the voicepipe. “Helm.”

“Helm, aye.”

“Come hard port to new course of three one zero.”

Graf Spee
heeled hard to port as the rudder turned and came a port in a half circle, before steadying up on three one zero, northwest
by west, the direction of land, the deep ocean left behind. Max knew they had been bluffed. Of course the British cruisers
had come at them aggressively. That’s what the Royal Navy did: attacked their enemies whenever and wherever they found them
no matter what the odds. The British Admiralty expected no less, would accept no less. In the 1700s the Royal Navy court-martialed
and shot an admiral who had not fought aggressively enough. That was their tradition.

But the German navy had no such traditions. After the only major engagement they ever fought with the Royal Navy—the Battle
of the Skagerrak, off the Jutland peninsula—the German fleet turned around and went home. And there they stayed, safe and
sound, the best men transferring to the U-boat force, until surrendering to the Royal Navy at the end of the First War. Max
realized this was the only tradition Langsdorff knew: to run for safe harbor after a battle. But in his soul Max knew that
a Royal Navy captain would never do as they were doing: turning away from battle with the enemy in sight. And standing next
to him, Max saw that a weary and dispirited Captain Langsdorff knew it as well.

MONTEVIDEO HARBOR, URUGUAY

FOUR DAYS LATER

17 DECEMBER 1939

M
AX STOOD AT THE GANGWAY, EYES ON THE APPROACHING LAUNCH
carrying Dr. Alberto Guani, the Uruguayan foreign minister, and his deputy. Just that morning the Uruguayan technical commission
had finished their inspection and returned ashore to inform the foreign minister how much time would be required to render
Spee
seaworthy again. Langsdorff had asked for fourteen days. The chief engineer and two German civilian contractors from Argentina
believed it would take that long to fully repair the ship, but Max doubted they would get so much time. The British government
was strongly pressuring the Uruguayans to force
Graf Spee
out of Montevideo harbor and into the arms of the British fleet, now assembling like a pack of hyenas off the mouth of the
Rio Plata.

Article XI of the Hague Convention of 1907, to which Uruguay—like Germany and Great Britain—was a signatory, forbade belligerent
warships from staying more than twenty-four hours in the territorial waters of a neutral power. However, Article XIV of the
same treaty stipulated that the stay could be extended only if the ship in question was badly damaged—but it was the right
of the neutral government to decide how long the necessary repairs should take, and under the treaty, the only permissible
repairs were the minimum required to make the vessel seaworthy; any repairs to damaged guns or any other equipment affecting
the combat capabilities of the ship were not allowed. No doubt the British were arguing that
Graf Spee
was seaworthy already, having already steamed more than three hundred kilometers to reach Montevideo after her battle with
the Royal Navy squadron.