An Honorable German

by Charles L. McCain

Genres: War & Military

Synopsis

“A truly epic and stirring tale of war, love, and the sea . . .  An original and surprising look at World War II from the other side.”—Nelson DeMille When World War II begins, Max Brekendorf, a proud young German naval officer, fights for his country with honor and courage. With the unstoppable German war machine overrunning Europe, Max looks ahead to a bright future with his fiancée, Mareth. But as the war progresses, their future together becomes less and less certain. German victories begin to fade. In the North Atlantic, Max must face the increasing strength of the Allies on ever more harrowing missions. Berlin itself is savaged by bombing, making life for Mareth increasingly dangerous and desperate. And as the Third Reich steadily crumbles, Nazi loyalists begin to infiltrate Max’s crew and turn their terror on Germany’s own armed forces. Recognizing what his nation has become, Max is forced to make a choice between his own sense of morality, and his duty to the Reich. With its stirring, rarely seen glimpse of the German home front during WWII, vivid characters, and evocation of the drama and terror of war at sea, An Honorable German is a suspense-filled story of adventure, of love and loss, and of honor and redemption. “A fast paced, old fashioned naval yarn that crackles with authenticity, An Honorable German will leave the taste of salt on your tongue as you breathlessly turn the pages. A first-class tale that aficionados of the Second World War will find especially satisfying. I enjoyed it immensely!”—Christopher Reich, New York Times bestselling author “Outstanding maritime action sequences.”— Publishers Weekly

Release date: May 8, 2009

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 343

Sample

THE SOUTH ATLANTIC

ABOARD THE GERMAN POCKET BATTLESHIP ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE

30 SEPTEMBER 1939

0830 HOURS

“BRIDGE!”


“Bridge, aye.”

“One ship, fine on the starboard bow.”

Max focused his binoculars on the starboard horizon and saw a thin tower of smoke. He stiffened. A warship? No. Must be a
freighter. A warship would never make that amount of smoke—gave you away to the enemy too quickly.


“Bridge to gun director, train rangefinder on smoke,” he ordered, his command passed by the telephone talker. The officers
in the gunnery directing post, high above the bridge, could see much farther through their optical range-finding device.


In a few moments the telephone talker, receiving information over his headset, relayed the word to Max. “Herr Oberleutnant,
gunnery says the ship is a freighter, three to four thousand tons. Range is ten kilometers.”


“Acknowledged. Continue tracking.”

Max took up the metal phone that connected him to the captain’s sea cabin.

“Ja?”

“Oberleutnant Brekendorf reporting from the bridge, Herr Kapitän. We’ve sighted a small freighter about ten kilometers off
the starboard bow.”


“Coming.”

Max’s pulse quickened. They’d been wandering around out here for three weeks, searching the empty ocean, waiting for this.
Max again put the binoculars to his eyes and swept the sea; the blue water shimmered in the morning sun, the symmetry of the
view spoiled only by the smudge on the horizon. Around him, the South Atlantic stretched away seemingly to the ends of the
earth.


“Good morning, Oberleutnant.”

Max turned to see Dieter step onto the bridge with his usual wry smile. A dark smear of grease cut diagonally across his forehead.
They had been friends since their cadet days at the Marine-schule Mürwik. An engineering officer on Graf Spee, Dieter stood sweating in his leather coat and pants—standard issue for the engineers, designed to protect them from the
engine room machinery. Comfort had not been taken into account. When Spee went to full speed with all eight of her diesels on line, the temperature in the engine room went to one hundred twenty degrees.
Dieter paused to let the fresh salt breeze wash over him.


“What brings you up from the bowels of hell?” Max asked.

“Fuel consumption report for the Kommandant.”

“I hope we have enough for a chase.”

Dieter lifted his eyebrows. “Are we having one?”

“We may. Just sighted a freighter off the starboard bow.”

“Well, don’t worry, we’re not down to the paint thinner yet.”

They laughed.

“Attention on deck!” a starched bridge messenger called.

Everyone came to rigid attention as Captain Langsdorff made his way to the center of the bridge. Langsdorff removed the cigar
from his mouth. “Stand easy,” he said, and the men resumed their positions.


The captain raised his binoculars, scanned the sea around them, then fixed his gaze on the distant smoke. He dropped the binoculars
to his chest and lit a fresh cigar from the stinking butt of the old one. Langsdorff was the only man Max knew who chain-smoked
cigars. Taking up his binoculars again, the captain peered once more at the unknown ship, balancing the binoculars on his
fingertips, his body swaying to the easy motion of Graf Spee. “What do you make of her, Oberleutnant?”


Max answered carefully. There was a great difference between identifying silhouettes and pictures of British ships in your
cabin and saying for sure that a smudge on the horizon was a British freighter. “Appears to be British built, Herr Kapitän.”


Langsdorff let his gaze linger on Max, and Max felt the captain’s disapproval. Langsdorff stood silent for a moment, then
looked again at the ship. Taking the binoculars away from his eyes, he noticed Dieter, who came to attention under the captain’s
stare. “Yes?”


“Fuel consumption report, Herr Kapitän.”

“Thank you but not now, Falkenheyn. Muster your boarding party and stand by.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.” Dieter executed a sharp salute, raised an eyebrow at Max, and hurried off the bridge. Langsdorff returned
his attention to the unknown ship.


“Range?”

“Nine kilometers now, Herr Kapitän.”

Langsdorff took the cigar from his mouth and studied the ash. Max knew the captain had to be careful: orders prohibited him
from interfering with neutral shipping. Three weeks into the war would not be the time to start protests burning the wires
to Berlin from neutral powers whose ships were being sunk by a German commerce raider. That was exactly what the Oberkommando
der Kriegsmarine wanted to avoid. Graf Spee’s mission was to sink British merchant ships and draw off units of the Royal Navy from other duties. It did not include engaging
enemy warships, and definitely did not include blowing some Swedish or American freighter out of the water by mistake. The
Naval War Staff in Berlin had been very clear on these points in their operational orders—in fact, they regarded the matter
with such concern that, on this cruise, Graf Spee reported to Berlin directly, bypassing the admiral commanding Marinegruppenkommando West in Wilhelmshaven altogether. This
had caused quite a row—Marine-gruppenkommando West was supposed to control all German warships in the Atlantic—but Graf Spee and her two sister pocket battleships were the pride of the German fleet; Admiral Raeder himself, commander in chief of the
German navy, wanted to keep close tabs on their performance. “I believe Ajax was on mercantile patrol in these waters before the war, yes?” Langsdorff asked Max.


“She was, Herr Kapitän.”

Langsdorff pursed his lips for a moment. “Have turret Anton’s center barrel depressed to the deck.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”

Max addressed himself to the telephone talker, who passed the order over the system to the captain of the forward turret.
A hydraulic whine sounded through the bridge as Anton’s center barrel was lowered. From a distance, the turret would appear
to have only two barrels, like the forward turret of H.M.S. Ajax, a Royal Navy cruiser familiar to merchant ships in the area.


“Range?”

“Seven kilometers now, Herr Kapitän.”

“Sound action stations.”

Max nodded to the signalman, who jerked the red-handled battle alarm upward. Gongs sounded throughout the ship while loudspeakers
blared: “Achtung! Action stations! Achtung! Action stations!”


The sailors dashed for their battle posts, hundreds of shoes pounding steel decks throughout the ship. Guns revolved outward
from the center line. Stewards snatched crockery from tables in the mess, as watertight doors were slammed shut and dogged
home up and down Graf Spee. All eight of the massive diesel engines were fired off and connected to the propeller shafts.


In the gun turrets, hydraulic loaders rammed the six-hundred-seventy-pound shells into the breeches of the main batteries.
Orange ready lights for each of the batteries flickered on in the gun directing tower, where the gunnery officer and his staff
took the range of the small ship in the distance. The big guns would be ready to aim and fire as soon as the captain gave
the order.


On the bridge, several more messengers and officers appeared. Max looked at his watch. “Cleared for action, Herr Kapitän.
Two minutes, forty-one seconds.”


Langsdorff nodded. “Excellent, excellent.”

With the sailors buttoned up in their action stations, a strange quiet descended over the ship, broken only by the swish of
water as it flowed down the steel flanks of Graf Spee and the creak of the ship as she rolled in the seaway. Max cupped his trembling hands against the breeze and lit a cigarette.
Captain Langsdorff lit another cigar.


Max drew on his cigarette, looked through his binoculars, then began to repeat the motion but stopped abruptly. He must not
appear nervous. He was nervous, it was true—but not from fear. He was sure of that.


“Range?”

“Six kilometers, Herr Kapitän.”

“She’s signaling,” the lookout yelled.

“Read it out!” Langsdorff ordered.

“Glad to… see… you… big brother,” Max read, translating the Morse code, binoculars at his eyes. Like all German navy officers,
he’d studied English at the Marineschule Mürwik and, at the urging of his father, had continued his studies since leaving
the Academy—mainly by reading the American movie magazines his fiancée, Mareth, gave him. Max knew a lot more about Tallulah
Bankhead’s love life than he wanted to, but he now spoke fluent English, as did the captain and many other officers aboard
the ship.


“Signal, signal… ‘None shall make them afraid,’” the captain said.

The clattering of the Morse lamp sounded through the bridge. Max kept his eyes fixed on the small ship.

“Range?”

“Five kilometers, Herr Kapitän.”

The freighter’s Morse lamp blinked to life again. “But… beat your… ploughshares into… swords,” Max translated.

Langsdorff smiled. “A sense of humor, that one. Signal, ‘Heave to, I have Admiralty dispatches for you.’”

The bridge signalman began to work his lamp.

Max lowered the binoculars and squinted at the horizon. All traces of mist from the dawn had burned away in the sun, bright
now in the morning sky. Through the open bridge windows, the breeze continued to blow. He wiped the salt mist from the lenses
of the binoculars, then, balancing the glasses on the tips of his fingers to cushion them from the gyration of the ship, peered
again at the freighter. Suddenly the ship veered hard to the left, away from Graf Spee.


“She’s turning to port!”

Langsdorff rapped out his orders. “Run up the colors! All ahead full!” The signalmen hoisted the blood red ensign of the Kriegsmarine—international
maritime law required a belligerent warship to identify itself before firing, and Langsdorff was a stickler for the rules.
As the ensign rose up the halyard, bridge messengers reached for the engine telegraphs and rang for full speed. Below, in
the engine room, duplicate telegraphs and blinking lights alerted the engineers that new orders had been given. They responded
instantly. Max watched the revolution counter move swiftly upward. “Making turns for twenty-eight knots,” he said, his voice
strained from excitement.


The pocket battleship shuddered as she went to full speed, her huge propellers foaming the sea beneath her stern. The steel
deck vibrated heavily under Max’s shoes.


“Signalman!”

“Ja, Herr Kapitän.” The chief signalman snapped to attention.

“Signal, ‘Heave to, no wireless transmitting.’”

Bright signal flags soared up Spee’s signal halyards now that she was close enough to dispense with the Morse lamp, but the small ship continued turning away,
soon presenting her stern to Graf Spee. A square of brilliant red cloth broke over the stern—the Red Duster of the British Merchant Navy. What fools! Spee could blow the freighter out of the water at eighteen kilometers. By God the English were always stubborn in their pride;
Max had never met an Englishman who wasn’t arrogant as a Prussian general.


“She’s transmitting a distress signal!” one of the young telephone talkers screeched, repeating what the codebreaking squad
down below was telling him.


“No need to shout,” Langsdorff said quietly. “What’s she saying?”

“She’s, she’s… transmitting, ‘Immediate to admiral commanding South Atlantic, RRR S.S. Clement gunned.’” RRR was British Admiralty code for attack by a surface raider. Max already had his hand on the gunnery phone when
Langsdorff delivered his next order: “A shot over her bow, quickly!”


They could not afford to have the freighter disclose their location and bring down the wrath of the British fleet.

“Bridge here,” Max barked to the gunnery officer on the other end of the phone. “Order from captain: the target is the merchant
ship. A shot over her bow.”


Immediately the firing gongs sounded, warning the ship’s company that the main battery was about to fire.

Turret Anton revolved under electric orders from the gun director. Max bent his knees and gripped the metal handhold just
below the bridge windows to avoid being thrown to the deck. The forward battery fired with a deafening report, the recoil
blasting throughout the ship. As the shock waves passed through him Max instantly smelled the cordite propellant. A tower
of white water shot into the air a hundred meters forward of the freighter’s bow.


But the ship continued her flight, oily smoke pouring from her stack, and Graf Spee kept up her charge, spray breaking over her as she beat through the swells. Spee’s Morse lamp rattled back to life, continually repeating the order to cease transmitting, seconded by the whipping signal
flags.


“Still transmitting, Herr Kapitän,” the telephone talker said.

“Range?”

“One and a half kilometers, Herr Kapitän.”

“Rake her bridge—quickly, quickly!”

Max snatched up the gunnery phone again. “Order from captain. Target is the bridge of the merchantman. Forward machine guns,
fire!”


The staccato rap of the machine guns rang out, bullets punching holes in the freighter’s superstructure and smashing her bridge
windows. But still the propellers of the British ship churned up an angry wake as she tried to make her best speed. Max’s
heart thumped in his chest. Every minute she kept up her distress call increased the danger for Graf Spee. Still, the British captain displayed courage, he gave him that; probably an old sea dog, haughty as a lord, stubborn as
pig iron, knowledge of half the world’s oceans tucked into his mind. Max wondered if the captain would be stubborn enough
to get his crew killed.


Suddenly the British ship began to yaw. A crewman dashed to the stern and struck the Red Duster.

“Transmission ceased, Herr Kapitän.”

“Cease firing,” Langsdorff ordered, “reduce speed to dead slow.”

The machine guns fell silent, spent brass cartridges tinkling as they rolled around on the deck. Max could feel the ship slow

beneath him as her way fell off.

“Oberleutnant.”

“Ja, Herr Kapitän?”

“See the boarding party away. I want the captain, the chief engineer, and any of the ship’s papers they can find. Remind them.
And Oberleutnant?”


“Herr Kapitän?”

“Of course, there is to be no bloodshed.”

“Jawohl, Herr Kapitän.”

Max saluted and ducked out of the bridge. He grasped the metal side rails of the outboard stairway with both hands, then lifted
his feet and slid to the boat deck where he found the boarding party formed up, Dieter at their side, trying his best to look
stern. In front of the sailors, both he and Max were very serious. Langsdorff always told them, “If you don’t take yourselves
seriously, you cannot expect the men to do so.” Since Max out-ranked him by a grade, Dieter came to attention first and gave
Max a parade-ground salute. Max returned the salute with equal formality.


“Orders from the bridge,” Max said.

“Boarding party standing by, sir.”

Max repeated the captain’s orders. Dieter saluted again, then faced his crew and ordered them into the sixty-foot motor launch.
Once they’d settled in, one of Graf Spee’s two cranes plucked the boat from the deck and lowered it into the sea.


Max returned to the bridge and watched the launch speed toward the British ship, its sharp bow throwing up spray. The Brits
weren’t waiting. They clambered into their own boats, lowered them, and began to row frantically away, oars thrashing the
water—a useless gesture since Dieter quickly overtook them. He seized the British officers wanted by the captain and brought
them to the deck of Graf Spee. They left the remaining British crew to sail for shore—maybe fifty kilometers. Spee would have rescued the men if they’d been another fifty kilometers out from land. That evening, Langsdorff would report the
position of the British lifeboats to the marine station at Pernambuco on the six-hundred-meter emergency band.


Max met the British officers with a rigid salute, nearby German sailors also coming to attention. Langsdorff insisted all
prisoners be treated with proper military courtesy, and his men needed little prodding to respect this order. Such courtesy
was part of the brotherhood of the sea. Max led the three British officers from the deck to the captain’s formal day cabin.
Outside the door stood two sentries, arms crossed, each with a drawn dagger in his right hand, the blade held across his chest.
Max ushered the British officers into the well-appointed cabin, its stuffed sofas looking incongruous in a warship, and motioned
for them to sit. A bookshelf along the far wall held leather-bound titles in both German and English, including Winston Churchill’s
World Crisis in two volumes, prominently displayed. “Gentlemen, if I may,” Max said, “I am Senior Lieutenant Brekendorf, second watch
officer of Admiral Graf Spee.”


“I am Captain Harris and this is First Officer Gill and Chief Engineer Bryant,” said the oldest of the three men, his thick
Scottish accent hard for Max to understand. His uniform coat had four gold rings on each sleeve, but the other two men were
in shirt-sleeves and bore no insignia of rank. They’d left their ship in a hurry; none of them even had their caps.


Max ordered Langsdorff’s steward to bring coffee, then offered each prisoner a cigarette. Lighting one himself, he considered
Harris briefly through a haze of smoke. The man had taken a pointless risk—the war would be over in a year. Everyone knew
it—the British could never hold out against Germany. And this wasn’t even Britain’s fight: the Germans had gone into Poland
only to reclaim what had been stolen from them at Versailles after the First War. But the conceited Brits couldn’t stand to
see Germany regain her rightful place in the world; Chamberlain had foolishly signed a treaty with Warsaw committing Great
Britain to war should the Poles be attacked. Well, now the Germans had Poland and the British had their war. “Why did you
run, Captain? You placed your crew in unnecessary danger.”


Harris stared at him for a moment. “I was a prisoner in the first lot and didn’t fancy spending the second go-round that way
as well.”


“You were captured by Germany in the First War?”

The captain nodded and puffed his cigarette a few times before speaking. “By the bloody raider Wolf in 1915, on an Argyle and Dundee steamer bound for Calcutta. Bastard caught us at dawn and there was nothing to be done for
it but haul down the colors and go over in our boats. I was a prisoner on that damned cow for months.”


The steward interrupted with coffee, serving the men in china cups. It was good coffee too, bitter and strong, the kind one
needed at sea.


“Of course, we will want your codebooks and cargo manifests,” Max said.

Harris smiled pleasantly. “Of course, I put them over the side as soon as I saw you weren’t Ajax. We keep them in a canvas bag weighted with a firebrick, just like in the First War. They’re at the bottom of the drink if
you want them. I thought you bloody Germans were supposed to be so bloody smart.”


The other two officers looked away. Blood came up in Max’s face. Arrogant, these British—even as prisoners, sipping coffee
in their captor’s ship. He wanted to hit the British captain but squared his shoulders and nodded curtly instead. “Naturally,
that is the usual thing,” he said. “What cargo were you carrying?”


“Oh, for God’s sake, man,” Harris snapped. “I’m not obliged to tell you that.”

The firing gong sounded, cutting the discussion short. The British officers looked quizzically at Max. “The firing gong, gentlemen.
I’m afraid we’re going to sink your ship. Kindly place your cups down and brace yourselves.” Max held on to the captain’s
desk—bolted to the deck, like all the furniture on the ship.


A great roar sounded, like dynamite going off in a well. Graf Spee heeled from the recoil, tossing all their coffee cups onto the carpet, the report sharp in Max’s ears, even belowdecks. First
Officer Gill leapt to the porthole, followed by the chief engineer. Harris, white-faced, kept his seat, staring at the bulkhead.
Max glanced through the porthole but saw no smoke or flame rising from Clement. The abandoned freighter bobbed placidly on the swell.


“Missed her,” Gill said, almost to himself.

Max said nothing. Presently the gong sounded and the big guns fired again. This time Max watched the shells fall into the
sea, sending up geysers of seawater well short of the British ship. He felt the heat rising in his face again. No one spoke.
When the third volley missed, Harris turned and looked at Max.


“Hard to find the range in this chop,” Max said, feeling foolish as soon as he spoke. Harris raised an eyebrow. The sea was
hardly raging. Graf Spee was heavily armed for a ship her size—too heavily armed—and the main batteries made her top-heavy, which had a poor effect
on her seakeeping and, in turn, on the accuracy of her guns. The gunnery officer had managed a perfect warning shot over Clement’s bow during the chase, but Max wondered now if it had been nothing more than luck.


“Perhaps we should wait until this storm passes,” Harris offered, blinking in the bright sunlight pouring into the cabin.

“Of course our guns are also not designed to engage a ship at such close range,” Max said. This excuse also sounded foolish,
though it was true. Another loud volley missed its mark, sending up more towers of water. At this rate it would be easier
to row a boat over to Clement and shoot holes in the merchantman’s hull with a pistol. Max resolved to provide no further comment and the four men fell
silent as Spee’s big guns banged away, shaking the cabin, knocking several books from the shelves. Captain Langsdorff became so frustrated
that he ordered a pair of torpedoes fired at the merchantman. Both missed. Finally the gunnery officer found the mark and
managed to set Clement afire; Max watched the flames spread across her deck. Suddenly the freighter exploded, sending a bright orange fireball high
into the air.


“Gasoline?” Max asked in surprise.

“Kerosene, sir,” said Gill. “Packed in cases.”

Max shook his head. Harris had braved Graf Spee’s fire with a hold full of kerosene.


“Steward, a beer for each of these officers.” Max looked at each one of the three in turn. “I must ask each of you for your
word of honor that you will not interfere in any way with the operation of the ship, else I will have to order an armed guard
over you at all times.”


Captain Harris answered without meeting Max’s eyes again. “You have it, laddie.”

“Then, gentlemen, I must return to my duties. Our captain will be along shortly to speak with you. Please make yourselves
comfortable. If you need anything, kindly make your request to the captain’s steward or to one of the sentries outside the
bulkhead. Our barbershop and canteen are both available to you and our medical and dental staff shall attend upon your request.”
He bowed slightly to the men as he’d learned to do at the Naval Academy, and the two junior officers nodded back. The captain
just sat in silence.


Graf Spee had stood down from action stations; the men had returned to their regular duties. Everywhere Max looked, the crew repaired
the damage caused by the repeated firing of the big guns. Doors had been lifted from their hinges, flooring cracked, paint
stripped off bulkheads, and light bulbs shattered everywhere by the concussions.


When Max reached the administrative office, he opened the door to find two clerks wiping ink from the desks and floor.

“What is this?”

“Inkwells not secured, Herr Oberleutnant,” the senior rating said. Max frowned. What a mess. He helped the men clean up. By
the time they finished his uniform was stained with black ink.


His bridge watch was over and he’d been on duty since 0200, but before he slept Max sat in the office and read through the
radio intercepts of the past hours. Graf Spee had a special staff of B-Service cipher experts whose only task was to intercept and decode as many British radio signals
as possible. They spent their time in front of special radio receivers that automatically combed all frequencies and stopped
on one when it detected a message being transmitted. And the B-Service men were damned good. They had picked up and decoded
the signal from the British Admiralty declaring war on Germany three hours before Spee received official notice from Seekriegsleitung—the Naval War Staff—in Berlin. Most of the codebreakers had been mathematicians
before the war, others wireless operators aboard merchant ships. Often they could immediately decrypt the ciphers used by
the British Merchant Navy. Any code they couldn’t break in thirty minutes was sent on to their parent unit back in the Reich.


The B-Service men could also put their mathematical skills to more mundane use. They’d recently relieved Max of two weeks’
pay playing cards in the officers’ mess. Max’s father had warned him about gambling away all his money in the service, but
the money was gone and there was nothing to be done for it. Still, the B-Service men were good comrades, even though they
seemed to do nothing but smoke, play skat, and listen intently to the wireless.


Max read carefully through the new messages but none of the ships broadcasting were anywhere near Graf Spee. Damn. Finding a transmission from a ship close enough to intercept would be a lot quicker than this endless patrolling,
roaming back and forth across the empty South Atlantic like Flying Dutchman. Traffic was sparse now in this, the third week of the war. British merchantmen were under strict Admiralty orders to maintain
radio silence. Except for occasional lapses, they did so. Max wondered if Spee’s sister ship, Deutschland, was having better luck on her assignments farther north, along the trade routes that crossed to England from Canada and
the United States.


He replaced the messages in their notebook and returned to his cabin, stripping off his ink-stained uniform and stuffing it
into the laundry bag at the foot of his closet. Tian, head of the six Chinese laundrymen on board, would retrieve the bag
in the morning and return the uniform, starched and pressed, by midafternoon. All German naval ships employed Chinese laundrymen,
though Max could hardly imagine where on earth they came from. Probably the old German concession at Tsingtao—another piece
of German territory stolen by the Allies after the First War, along with the Germania Brewery that made Tsingtao beer.


Max massaged his neck, muscles still knotted from the tension of the morning, then reached for the picture on his small desk.
The frame had been cracked by the gun blasts. Mareth stared out from under the spiderwebbed glass. Max had taken the photo
himself on a dock in Kiel two summers ago. Mareth’s face was tilted slightly downward and she looked askance at the camera
with a close-mouthed smile, shy but crafty. A breeze off the water rippled her long blond hair. One of the navy’s new destroyers
crossed the harbor behind her. What time would it be in Berlin now? Night. She would be getting ready for bed—letting her
hair down from its ponytail, slipping on her silk pajamas. Or maybe one of his old cotton jerseys. Max smiled to himself.
Was he homesick after only three weeks at sea? Get a hold of yourself. Still, how he wished he could tell Mareth in person
about the excitement of finally sighting a ship, about the capture and even the embarrassment he’d felt with the British officers
as he constantly made excuses about Graf Spee’s lack of accuracy. She would laugh at that, and then Max would be able to laugh at it h