The Princess of Berlin segment three

Café Bannhaus, dark oak booths leading off the central bar and dining floor, little changes from the prewar.  Brass railed and velour seating, solid walls, ensures privacy.  Shortly after eleven in the morning trade was at the low point. The kitchen opens for lunch.

“Lamb is very good here, as is cod- steamed and flakey.  The beer is excellent. Rollmops and beer to start, cheese to finish. All local produce. The taste of salt clover and minty infuses our island lambs. .

Welcome, WP, to your last peaceful meal. After you register, word will be around the island. You are then newly famous.”

WP grimaces. “I was – hoping to avoid that”.

“Why not? You get a guide from the local Gestapo. Tedious dinners with the local SD chief, - and I mean tedious. One is the unfortunate promotions form street fighter to local potentate.... sooner or later, your Uncle sends an airplane over to get you, or pack you out on the shore ferry- depending how important you are…”



Lunch arrives- two orders of steamed cod.  Crisp winter vegetables. Raeder’s a preferred patron, and this kitchen goes to extra lengths to please. The year around Luftwaffe work is a profitable bonus to the summer surge in trade.

“Sooo- you have no solid reason why Adolf and Alois, after ignoring your existence for r decades, suddenly have an interest in your residing in Germany?”

WP’s inner alert trigger starts to glow. No, I don’t have a solid reason, and you like to draw out information for a ‘new friend’, Werner.

‘You have a better read on Germany than me, Werner. Suppose you tell me....’

“Fair enough’ First of all, you are aware that his hold on power increased in June, when the SA was-decimated.  However, so did his enemies.  Your Uncle, I feel, has come to believe that a Dynasty can be reborn in his name.”

A dynasty calls for – a bloodline. and I’m hardly a German Nobleman!”

Werner Grins. The noble list of the Nazi’s got decimated on the Night of the Long Knives.  You are a vast improvement. “

That’s crazy, Werner or else... are you just pulling my leg”.

                                       

"Not at all. Fourteen years of the Weimar is the first time we have done without a Monarch since the early middle ages”

Catch and release, Werner, warns Canaris’s voice at the back of his thoughts. Your weak point is that you become too enthusiastic, then you start to ‘expound”. Coffee follows lunch, hot dark, and rich. Exercise follows coffee. Get him moving, get walking...

“I’m working at the West end of the island. Surveying sites. Why don’t you come and walk with me” Afternoon on the Beaches. This unseasonal sunny weather won’t last. When it rains here, the tap comes on and doesn’t stop for weeks…”

The Wangerooge Westanleger klienlocomotive steams idly outside the Bahnhoff windows. Werner pays at the counter. Customers glance and smile at him, the sun beams through salt speckled windows, and for just a moment the mood seems ordinary on this island where new construction, new money and new restrictions have arrived as a mixed blessing. Worn wooden plank form a boardwalk, the summer coaches wait on the far tracks, dreaming of the spring, There is a single semi enclosed attached to the work train, and there is a surprising amount of passengers. On the hard oak slat benches.

Narrow gauge tracks, newly ballasted and new steel rails. Heavy concrete carriers make up the bulk of the freight. ‘All Aboard ‘calls the brakeman, who throws the wye switch,  A  last passenger steps onboard at the far side of the coach, slim,  the local police in civilian roughs, swinging a knapsack. “Hans”.

“Hallow Werner”.

The little tank engine backs against the Buffers, then pulls forward. Jerk and rattle of chain links as he takes up his slack. Coal smoke billows. The opposing cylinders cough under the strain and they are moving on the Inselbahn,  the little island, unseasonably awake and uneasy.

The dune land is dotted with shepherds, herds, and sheep dogs, taking advantage of the late fall break in weather to pasture. The Island sheep, used to no predators, are loosely flocked and bold, every animal bellwether searching rough sedge for the last summer clover. The low noon sun casts long, hopeful, slightly warming rays across the dun dunescape as they enter the low flats. Steam heat from clunking pipes under the seats. welcome against legs, as the engine settles into the level and the engineer diverts heat. The brakeman walks through the coach. The work pauses at a new rural switch where the track north is new, ties on rock chip, shiny steel rail.  Rails through shiny steel gates marked Verboten. Entry authorised only.

Slower. Fifteen kilometres an hour, on the older rusting worn light track to the west mole. The track quivers, cars sway. Full culverts run with the spate water, daring the grade, challenging the crossing. Thelon tidal flats where gulls wheels. A rusted freighter, beached, is being pulled apart for scrap by lean weathered men under guard.

                                                 

“Prisoner work party, salvaging a war wreck “says Werner. “The new Reich clamors for steel. See the barges by the shipwreck? They float off at high tide. Mills in Emden.” The cofferdam lets them work between tidal rises…

Steel is rare but forced human labour is more and more common. Werner sighs. Convict labour contractors are the neuveau riche. No one gets a prison cell with a secretary and typewriter to compose Mein Kampf in this New Germany. Cofferdams.  Shore barges. Of course! A solution to one of the major concerns of Werner’s resistance rises like a bubble at the back of his mind.  Werner recalls a  wreck he  helped investigate and salvage. A tiger moth trainer, wings clipped in mid-air, plunging to the sea.  Think Werner, remember…

Local fishermen had salvaged the fuel tank, off a tidal flat. A tank which survived dented and intact, surrounded by a steel spar. The spar was rusted- the aluminum tank intact! The fuel inside unadulterated. The fishermen incorporated the tank into their boat.

We can bury weapons, documents, funds, under our new bunkers. Devise a way to secure the resistance right under the eyes of the searchers.

A low whistle, brakes apply, steel on steel. The train lurches to a stop. Horses, mixed island pony and Trakehner, flow,  flow by the front of the small train. Tracks. Manes following, nickering. Stretching their legs the waning November sun. Strengthening for the military roads of the New Reich. The horse herd surges around the front buffers of the Wasserbahn locomotive. Island ponies, mixed coats and frizzy manes, blend with the noble Prussian warmbloods. Horse to horse, happy to run in the soft salted sand. The island ponies, backbone of the island logistics will soon shelter in cover when winter storms lash the dunes or will haul cart loads under oilskins.

The sight of free horses animates conversation in the passenger car.  Passengers amble about, move from side to side of the rail cars point and laugh. Hans remains seated, guarding his rucksack, not noticing a bulge from the camera and telephoto lenses through the fabric.

“Young geldings are run on sand all summer, unshod, to allow their hooves to harden. Wehrmacht rittermeister selectively ‘prefer’ a Trakehner or similar warm blood gelding for mobile transport`. At the age of two they are shod and taken into service.  Lame and sprained horses are bought here for the summer to recover. Running with the local ponies lifts their spirits and keep them out of and away from dangers.  Lesson in there somewhere, Patrick.”

         The little narrow gauge train slows to ten km to cross the tidal mud flats. Monk seals, sunning themselves on the sand bars, lift their curious heads. Unculled since 1917, the seals are at ease, more attuned to the gathering storm on the west horizon than any hint of danger from this cement haul flats and passenger car Wasserbahn.  Free horses, bold sheep, and unwary seals, bask in your temporary freedom, for this cement will be poured into pads for shore bunkers and flak towers.  The era for men hunting men has begun, once again, on the German coast.