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The wardroom customs of the Ciudad de Cádiz were very much the customs of ships of the line of the Royal Spanish Navy. This was not only because Capitán de Banderano was a graduate of the Spanish Naval Academy—as three generations before him had been—and because before the Civil War he had been a lieutenant commander in the Royal Spanish Navy and master of the frigate Almirante de Posco. It also was because the Ciudad de Cádiz was, in Capitán de Banderano’s judgment, not an ordinary freighter but a de facto man-of-war, and had to be run accordingly.
Before the Civil War, de Banderano had every reason to believe that he would rise in rank to capitán—his father had—or possibly even to almirante— as had his grandfather. But the godless Communists and their friends had destroyed that ambition, as well as most of Spain itself.
Early in the Civil War, de Banderano had been detached from the Almirante de Posco to serve on the staff of El Generalissimo Francisco Franco shortly after that great man saw it as his Christian duty to take over the reins of government from the king and expel the godless Communists from Spain in order to restore Spain to her former greatness.
As the Civil War dragged on and on, de Banderano’s duties had less and less to do with the navy; but they had taken him to all fronts and given him the opportunity to see what the Communists had in mind for Spain. And he had seen that they were godless, the anti-Christ. With his own eyes, he had witnessed the murdered priests and the raped nuns and the results of mass executions.
And he had seen, too, that the Germans and the Italians—both fully aware of the threat communism posed to the very survival of Christian civilization— had come to the aid of a fellow Christian nation that once again had infidel hordes raging at her gates.
It was de Banderano’s professional opinion as an officer that without the help of German weapons provided to General Franco’s army, without the aerial support of the German Condor Legion, without the sixty thousand troops the Italians had sent, the war probably would have been lost.
The English and the Americans had remained “neutral” in the conflict. But that in practice had meant they were helping the enemy. The Americans had even sent soldiers, formed into the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, to aid the Communists.
The behavior of the English and the Americans had baffled de Banderano. The usual explanation of it was that they were not Roman Catholic, and that their “churches” had been infiltrated and corrupted by Communists; but he thought that was too simple an answer. A large number of the Germans who came to help Spain were Protestant. He also thought the other answer was too simple: that the Jews controlled both England and America.
Too many good Spanish Jews had fought as valiantly as anyone on the side of El Caudillo—Franco—for anyone to believe that all Jews were allied with the anti-Christ.
By the time General Francisco Franco had finally, after three bloody years, brought the godless Communists to their knees, Spain was destitute—and not only because the Communists had stolen almost the entire gold stocks of the kingdom; literally tons of gold taken to Russia.
There was hardly enough money to operate, much less construct, men-of-war. The once-proud Spanish navy was on its knees again, thanks to the Communists. By then Capitán José Francisco de Banderano had understood there would be no command of a man-of-war for him in the Royal Spanish Navy post-Civil War.
Yet both his ability and his faithful service had not gone unnoticed. He was rewarded with a command in the Spanish merchant navy.
Before he was approached by the German naval attaché and offered com
mand of the Comerciante del Océano Pacífico, he had seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears American navy ships roaming the North Atlantic.
The Americans were searching for German submarines, the latter of which had under international law every right to sink vessels bound for England laden with war matériel. When the American ships found a U-boat they reported their positions by radio, in the clear. In the clear meant that radios aboard English men-of-war were given the positions of German submarines—near the supposedly “neutral” American men-of-war.
The notion of violating the rules of warfare by violating anyone’s neutrality would have deeply offended him before the Civil War. Now it seemed only right. The actions of the English during the Civil War were blatantly antagonistic to neutrality. And, later, the actions of the Americans after the beginning of the current war, but before they themselves joined the hostilities, were equally contrary to neutrality.
Whatever their reasons for opposing Hitler, for refusing to accept that the war Hitler was waging against the Communists was their own war, the fact was that England and America were fighting Germany, and that was sufficient cause for Capitán José Francisco de Banderano to do whatever he could to oppose them.
Capitán de Banderano hadn’t hesitated a moment before accepting the German offer to take command of the Comerciante del Océano Pacífico, and he had been honored by their offer for him to take command of the Ciudad de Cádiz.
[TWO]
Aboard U-boat 405 48 Degrees 85 Minutes South Latitude 59 Degrees 45 Minutes West Longitude 1250 7 July 1943
Kapitänleutnant Wilhelm von Dattenberg, twenty-six years of age, was a large but gaunt Swabian—since leaving the submarine pens at St. Nazaire four months earlier, he had lost forty of his normal 190 pounds. Von Dattenberg took his eyes from the now no-longer-resilient rubber pads of the periscope and saw that both his chief of the boat and his number one had their eyes on him.
He issued two orders by making two gestures, first signaling by pointing to the deck . . .
“Down periscope!” the chief of the boat bellowed.
... then, accompanied by a smile, jerking his thumb upward.
“Prepare to surface!” the chief of the boat bellowed.
“Signals lampman, stand by to go to the conning tower,” Kapitänleutnant von Dattenberg ordered.
“With the Herr Kapitänleutnant’s permission?” the chief of the boat asked softly.
He wants to operate the signal lamp himself?
Well, why not?
Von Dattenberg nodded.
