Two hours west of Kiel, the road was bombed out and splintered trees lay across the path. The second and third waves of trucks caught up to us, and several of the drivers pulled out chain saws to eat away the wood to allow the procession of trucks to pass through. The trucks eased forward over the destroyed road.
When we reached the outpost north of Hamburg, there was a small set of tent barracks set up in the woods about a hundred meters from shore. A crane with camouflage meshing sat next to a pier. One by one the Beavers were unloaded from the trucks and tied off.
My driver patted me on the shoulder after my Beaver was put into the water. “Heil Hitler,” he said, smiling at me one last time before turning his truck around and driving off.
The crew rested until nightfall in the tents, at which point we would depart. I slept and dreamed of my father telling stories of Thump-Drag.
When it was time for us to go, Major Oldif was on the pier. He patted me on the shoulder.
“You keep doing good for us, ensign. I’m proud to have you on this crew.” The major stood in front of me as the dome hatch clicked shut. The engine hummed as I slipped away from the pier into the greasy water of the harbor. There were commercial liners and freighters and lesser ships docked side by side and roped together. I cruised north on the path set for me, but at the opening to the North Sea, where I was supposed to turn north by northwest, I repositioned and went due west along the coast.
The waves were one-and two-foot swells as the Beaver cruised along the surface with no running lights. In the dark the midget sub motored through the night. To avoid being sighted by any airplanes at first light or spotters on land, I submerged the Beaver, diving so the nose plunged under, but kept it running five feet under the surface to pop back up any time if I needed to.
By sunset, after cruising through the day at five knots, having run 216 kilometers from the mouth of the Elbe in Hamburg, I calculated my position and steered southwest toward the little x on my map that should have been a long stretch of forested land without any large military camps west of Bremerhaven in Germany.
Several hundred meters offshore, when there was no sign of life, I aimed the bow of the Beaver downward and out to sea, where there were no lights anywhere and fired my torpedo. The torpedo released and pulled away. The force of it pushed the Beaver backward, and that familiar roil of water carved a gopher tunnel under the surface of the ocean. I prayed my shot would find no purchase but run out of momentum and quietly sink to the sea floor.
Once the torpedo was gone there was an extra three feet of clearance under the hull. Closer to land, I unlatched the dome lock and pushed it open. The moonlight curled upward into the sky as the ship air flushed against my face. With my backpack in my lap, I increased my speed as much as it would go, and steered until the hull slammed into sand and jerked me forward, my backpack padding the impact of the Beaver slamming to a stop. With my arms threaded through the front of the backpack so it adhered to my chest, I crawled out of the cockpit onto the forward planking of the sub and jumped from the bow, straddling the two worlds at once, not on land, not at sea. Not a part of Germany, not a part of Holland. Not a sailor, not a citizen. Just a fear-filled sack stuffed with bones and gristle. My feet plunged into the water and sank into the sand. The cold water cut into my feet and shins. Alone. Terrified. I worked my way through the surf, over the dark strand of the beach. Ahead of me the dark trees swayed, and I ran toward them and the darkness and cover they offered, carrying the true credo of any life: I enter unprepared.
19
I ran through the woods until my legs went numb from the cold and gave out. I hunkered down next to a felled tree, silent in the dark, listening for any signs of life coming to investigate my shadow sprinting for land. My shivering was uncontrollable. I stripped off my jumpsuit. The dilemma of clothing was now my focus. In a military uniform, there was risk of being consumed back into a unit, or some officer changing my orders. Dressed as a civilian, there was risk of being thought a spy and shot or shipped off to a camp. With the prospect of a German search party finding me at any moment, I decided to put on my German sailor’s uniform and move forward with my own papers. My frozen feet sloshed around in my wet boots.
The land map and one of the button compasses from Uncle Martin led me southwest toward Oldenburg. I walked all night. By morning, icicles on trees hung down like blue fangs, and shone in the first light.
After eating a canned meal and wrestling with the acidic pains in my stomach, I leaned against a tree and crapped in a sick green splatter onto the leaves. I marched due west all day, only coming across one road, which was like a dark river that I lay in front of, making sure no one was near before sprinting across.
My feet were in horrible pain from the cold when a storm gathered like a giant bird.
I kept thinking of Ottawa. Of finding my father there. It kept me walking. This went on for three nights, skirting south and then north of anywhere on the map where a town might be, moving no more than sixty kilometers a day, paralleling several roads from deep in the woods, hiding in the snow. The snow and ice soaked through my boots and clothes and turned my skin pink, bright red, then white. Blisters on my feet bubbled up, burst, and formed again.
On my fourth day since scuttling the Beaver, the rotten blisters and sores on my feet got so bad they turned into trench foot and large sheets of skin peeled loose. By morning I needed shelter to fend off hypothermia and what I feared was frostbite on my toes. The wind swirled in my ears and I didn’t hear the vehicle that turned onto the road behind me until the driver and passengers had me in full view. It was a German military jeep. I cursed myself for being careless. What a pathetic four-day escape. As the jeep came to a stop next to me, four soldiers got out and, at that moment, I cared little about what happened to me as long as I could get warm.
The slightest suspicion from them would mean their pistols would slip from their leather holsters, and they’d demand papers. I tried to decide which to show them. In my right pocket were the papers that said Private Lem Volmer, from Munich, in route to a guard station near the former demarcation line in France. Though there was my sailor’s uniform. On either side of me the ditches and thick woods walled me in.
“What is this?” an officer among them asked. “A long way from the water, sailor.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“You’re not German,” the man said.
“No, sir. I’m a Dutchman.”
“Ah, Dutch.” He looked at me then, judging my reaction to what he said. “The Dutch have been giving us a lot of problems,” the officer said. “Where the hell did you get that uniform?”
“I’m in the Kriegsmarine, sir. I have papers.”
“You’re not one of these border jumpers?”
“No, sir.”