The Land God Made in Anger
‘Because the loads were too heavy. When the Germans were building the harbour at Lüderitz. I was a boy then.’
‘Were you ever lashed?’
For answer Jakob pulled up his shirt. His back was a mass of scar tissue.
McQuade was shocked. ‘For what offence?’
Jakob said: ‘The sickness of hunger. And the cold.’
‘But did they not feed you enough?’
‘There were no crops. The Germans had killed very many men in the wars, and so no crops were planted. The women and children had to build the harbour because there were no men left, but there was no food because there were no crops.’
McQuade did not believe this. The old man was repeating folklore. History was not McQuade’s strong point, but nobody had taught him this at school. He knew something about the German colonial war against the Hereros, and presumed it was a pretty bloody affair, as wars of pacification were in that era. What about the Red Indians in America? What about the Aborigines in Australia? But he did not believe this story about women and children being worked and starved and lashed by the Germans of South West Africa.
The gravel-encrusted hillocks gave way to the yellow sand dunes, row after jumbled row, going on and on: then, way ahead, a haze came onto the horizon and then the mauve-black of the Atlantic.
McQuade stopped where the road joined the coastal track. He made a note of the mileage, and said to Jakob, ‘Which way?’
Jakob pointed left. South.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure,’ Jakob said.
But Jakob was not so sure. On his instructions McQuade drove off the road half a dozen times in the next two hours, grinding down to the shore, and then along it, while Jakob peered all around for landmarks. He said he was looking for a promontory of rocks sticking out into the sea. It was after four o’clock when he pointed with conviction.
McQuade stopped. From Jakob’s description he had expected the rocks to reach much further into the sea. ‘How can you tell?’
‘By the shape of that rock. Like a seal.’
‘So where did you first see the two men come out of the sea?’
Jakob pointed behind them.
McQuade turned the Landrover north again and drove along the sandy, hummocked shoreline. After about a mile Jakob signalled him to stop. Jakob got out, looked up the shoreline, at the pounding, seething surf, then down it. He studied the sea for a full minute, then began to trudge northwards, up the coast, with conviction.
McQuade followed him in the Landrover.
After ten minutes Jakob stopped, looked at the sea, then at the sky. He looked south, at the featureless surf. Then he looked east, inland, at the featureless sand dunes. He announced, ‘Here.’
McQuade looked at the moonscape of desert and sea.
‘How do you know? The coast has changed much in forty years.’
‘I know.’ Jakob pointed at the black Atlantic, the rows of breakers rolling in, the flatness beyond. ‘There,’ he said.
McQuade had to work fast. It was after five o’clock and the sun was dangerously low on the horizon: any angle approaching ten degrees had to be treated with suspicion. If he had to wait for tomorrow for the sun-sight he would have to wait until noon because the morning sun would be in the east, over the desert, and he would not have a usable horizon because of the dunes. He sat on the sand, hastily opened his notebook, put the sextant to his eye and pulled down some shades. He fiddled with the angle-adjuster, until he found the image of the sun. Then he slid the adjuster and brought the sun’s image down, until the lower limb of it just touched the horizon. He rocked the sextant, so the sun just skimmed the horizon in an arc. Then he looked quickly at his digital watch. He noted down the exact hour, minute and second, allowing for reaction time. Then he read off the angle shown on the adjuster, and sighed.
The angle of the sun was eleven degrees, twenty-four minutes and about thirty seconds. That was perilously close to ten degrees. If he had been at sea, where it did not much matter if he’d been a mile or two out, he would have used the angle: but in this case, if he was a mile out in calculating where on the earth’s surface he was sitting, he could waste a lot of money, and not find that submarine at all. The only sensible thing was to spend the night here and get a noon-shot tomorrow to verify his position.
Jakob had been watching him in amazement. McQuade picked up a piece of driftwood, and stuck it upright in the sand. He went to the Landrover and got out the provisions and the pots.
He poured brandy into two mugs, added a dash of water, and gave one to Jakob. He sat down.
If Jakob was telling the truth, somewhere just out there was an old German submarine. Loaded with loot. And James McQuade was going to be a rich man. He said to Jakob:
‘So somewhere near here lie the bones of the man who was killed? Do you think we will see his ghost tonight?’
Jakob stared at him.
‘Baas, we must not sleep here tonight! We must sleep a long way down the beach from this place!’
And McQuade knew that Jakob had been telling him the truth.
They slept two miles down the beach. McQuade was awake at sunrise, and thank God the sky was clear. He would get his sun-sights.
He built up the fire. Jakob was still asleep, curled up in his blankets; he had got drunk last night. McQuade put a pot of water on the fire. There was nothing to do but wait till noon. He went to the Landrover and got his fishing rod.
He walked along the beach, looking for bait. It was plentiful, in brown, spongy lumps the size of fists. He selected one and cut it open. The bait was inside little pockets – meaty, pink, like plums. He thought: H.M. could have survived on this stuff alone. He threaded a lump onto his hook. He swung the rod and cast out into the surf.
In fifteen minutes he had caught four good fish. He cleaned them and went back to the fire. Jakob was still asleep.
He made coffee. There was nothing to do but eat and wait.
At eleven-thirty they drove back to The Haunted Place. Five minutes before local noon McQuade sat down and faced north. He put the sextant to his eye, found the sun and adjusted the shades. He slid the adjuster and brought the sun down until the lower limb of it just skimmed the horizon. He looked at the angle, then at the time, but did not make any notes.
Jakob was watching him in amazement. McQuade smiled at him. He waited half a minute, then raised the sextant again, found the sun, tweaked the angle-adjuster, and skimmed the sun on the horizon again. The angle was a minute of arc higher than last time. He waited half a minute, and did it again. At noon the sun stays at its zenith for about four minutes before it begins to descend into afternoon. About five minutes later, after measuring half a dozen times the angle between the sun, his eye, and the horizon, he was satisfied about the zenith.
He noted down that angle. He allowed seven feet for Dip, and allowed for the sextant’s Index Error. He then subtracted the sun’s noon angle, in degrees and minutes and seconds, from ninety degrees, zero minutes, zero seconds. The final result was an exact parallel of latitude.
This piece of beach he was sitting on was exactly nineteen degrees, seventeen minutes, forty-eight seconds South. Assuming Jakob was right, somewhere out there, due west along that latitude, lay the submarine. Probably about half a mile out.
With the next part of the navigational calculation he could take his time. He had a coffee. He gave the sun an hour, then took another sight with the sextant. He noted the exact time.
He used the Landrover’s flat bonnet as a table, and began his calculations. He unfolded his nautical chart of the Skeleton Coast and drew in his latitude. He read off the longitude of the point where his latitude line crossed the coast. That in itself was enough to tell him exactly where on the earth’s surface he was. But, to double-check, he wanted to put in the afternoon position line as well. He calculated his Local Hour Angle, noted down his post-noon sun angle, allowed for Dip and Index Error, opened the nautical almanac to the page for that day, found the hour, did the calculations and arrived at Height Observed. He then opened the sight-reduction tables to the appropriate page, and worked out Height Calculated. He subtracted that from Height Observed and came up with a minuscule Intercept. He then drew in the position line on the chart. It intercepted at the point where his latitude line crossed the coast. He was quite satisfied about where on the earth’s surface he was standing.
He took a deep breath. Okay, the first step was to verify the submarine’s existence. Bring the Bonanza up here and sweep the ocean floor in a pattern. Her depth-sounder would show up anything as big as a submarine lying on the ocean bed.
Then dive down and have a look at it.
How do you get into a sunken submarine?
He had no idea. Worry about that later.
What were the legal ramifications? And if word got out there’d be fortune-hunters from all over the world looking for this submarine. So, consult a good maritime lawyer, and meanwhile tell absolutely nobody. He’d have to tell the Kid, Tucker, Elsie and Potgieter of course, but he’d give the Coloureds a few days leave and bring the Bonanza up here with a skeleton crew.
6
It was a long shot, but it was worth looking into: had H.M. survived the Skeleton Coast? Was he alive today? He might well have survived: he was a youngish man in 1945 and he had had Jakob’s water bottles, which he could have replenished at the Ugab river by digging. He had a gun and he might have shot a buck at the Ugab. Or a seal. If he reached Swakopmund, he would have gone immediately to a dentist because he would have been in pain. And probably seen a doctor, to treat his gashed arm. Records of all this might still exist. If McQuade could uncover those records he might find out H.M.’s name.
It was two o’clock the following afternoon when McQuade drove into Swakopmund, after returning Jakob to his kraal. He parked outside the old municipal buildings, under the palms, and went into the information bureau. A coloured woman came forward. ‘Guten Tag.’
‘Can you advise me please?’ (People like to be asked their advice) ‘I am writing about Swakopmund during the war period. Is there a municipal archive I can research in?’
The lady said, ‘Only the Sam Cohen Library.’ She produced a glossy brochure and opened it at the map. ‘Here. And the Public Library’s here.’
McQuade circled them. ‘How would I find out …’ he waved his hand, ‘… how many dentists there were in Swakopmund in 1945, for example.’
‘Maybe at the library.’
‘And do you happen to know what hospitals there were in 1945?’
‘Only the Antonius Hospital. Across the street there.’
‘Thank you.’ He went downstairs, back into the glaring sunshine.
The Antonius Hospital was an attractive old German building. He walked into the small foyer. A number of black women were sitting on chairs with infants. On the walls were government posters about nutrition, infant care, family planning, and the smiling people depicted in them were all an attractive shade of brown. McQuade went to the door marked Reception. A black woman in a white smock was sitting at a typewriter. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said in Afrikaans, ‘is this where all the records of patients are kept?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you have the records for 1945 here?’
The woman looked nonplussed. ‘No. In those days this was a German missionary hospital. It was later taken over by the government.’
‘Do you know where the old missionary records are?’
‘The missionaries took them away.’
‘And where are the missions’ headquarters now?’
‘In Windhoek, maybe. Or maybe in Germany.’
McQuade thanked her and left the hospital. Well, he’d drawn a blank there. He walked towards the main street, Kaiserstrasse.
The public library is in the old Woermann-Brock Shipping Line building, built in Bavarian style around a large open courtyard. McQuade asked the librarian what books she had on German history of Namibia in general and Swakopmund in particular during the war period. ‘Giving me details like how many dentists and doctors the town had in those days, et cetera.’
The librarian was a cultured, elderly German lady. ‘For that you must go to the Sam Cohen library. It is dedicated to the local history. Mr Cohen made a great deal of money out of Swakopmund and built the institute out of gratitude. Meanwhile, sit at a table and I’ll bring you what books we have.’
He found a table in the reference section. The librarian arrived with a pile of books.
The topmost book was by a Professor du Passani on the constitutional history of South West Africa. McQuade flicked through it. It seemed erudite stuff, more than he needed.
The next book was written by Adolf Hitler himself, Mein Kampf. McQuade put it aside. The next was a large tome about the Nuremberg Trials. He resolved to read it one day but it seemed hardly relevant to Namibia. However, a chapter had been marked by a pencil line, so he speed-read it. The gist of it was that many people challenged the legality and the morality of the Nuremberg Trials. They were without precedent in history. Before these trials, there was no such crime as ‘crimes against humanity’, a legal concept that was invented only after the war, so it could not legally be applied to deeds perpetrated before its conception. Furthermore, it was argued, the court did not have jurisdiction to hold the trials. Only a sovereign state had such power and the Allied forces were not a sovereign state, only an occupying army: so only the state of Germany itself had the legal power to try these ‘criminals’. Furthermore, was it morally right to hold these ‘criminals’ responsible for obeying orders? McQuade skipped the rest – he had no patience for such arguments. There were photographs, however. A photograph of the principal war criminals in the dock at Nuremberg: Hess, Göring, Dönitz, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Speer and others.
Some of the names he knew as legendary villains of the war, others meant nothing to him. It struck him how ordinary these notorious men looked in civilian clothes, stripped of their awesome uniforms. There was a photograph of the gallows, specially built in a gymnasium for the executions. A photograph of the hangman, Master-Sergeant Woods of the United States Army, preparing a noose. A photograph of the bodies after the execution, lying in a long row on top of their coffins: some had blood coming from the eyes and nose. A macabre but interesting detail, McQuade learnt, was that the condemned were not told until a few hours beforehand that their executions were ‘imminent’, so each day they woke up not knowing whether it was to be their last. Furthermore, they were hanged one at a time, so once the executions started, some had a long wait before their turn came. There were photographs of concentration camps, the likes of which he had seen before, shocking pictures of emaciated people behind barbed wire, trainloads of Jews lined up on railway platforms outside concentration camps undergoing selection by SS doctors for the gas chambers and slave labour, crematoria chimneys belching smoke, emaciated corpses filling open graves.
It was shocking, but it was distant history to McQuade and had nothing to do with the modern Germans whom he knew and liked – except for what he had seen three nights ago on the Schmidt ranch on Hitler’s birthday, and what Jakob had told him about the harbour at Lüderitz. If Jakob’s story was true, the Second World War was not the first time the Germans had used slave labour.
The next book was a pictorial history of Hitler’s rise to power. It was vaguely familiar stuff. The goose-stepping armies on parade, the gleaming jackboots, the square helmets, the phalanxes of trucks, the armadas of battleships, the skies dark with Messerschmitts with the cross emblazoned on their wings. Here were the swastikas, flying, draped dramatically on walls, and the massive crowds, right arms out rigid in the Heil Hitler salute – you could almost hear the roar coming up out of the pages. McQuade had seen such pictures before and he would not have spent time on them now, but for what he had seen on the Schmidt ranch.
God, the whole thing gave him the creeps. He thrust the book aside and picked up the last one.
It was called The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, by Arthur Butz. McQuade stared. These were Helga’s words three nights ago when he had said that Hitler had murdered six million Jews. ‘The hoax of the twentieth century!’ she had shrieked before she hit him. McQuade turned to the back cover. The publisher’s blurb read:
Dr Butz gives the reader a graduate course on the subject of the Jews of World War II Europe – concluding not only that they were not virtually wiped out; but, what’s more, that no evidence exists to date to confirm that there was ever any Hitler government attempt to do so … He focuses on the post-war crimes trials where the prosecution ‘evidence’ was falsified and secured by coercion and even torture. He re-examines the very German records so long misrepresented; he critiques the European demographics which do not allow for the loss of the ‘Six Million’; he reevaluates the concept and technical feasibility of the ‘gas chambers’ with some startling conclusions, and separates the cold facts from the sheer tonnage of myth and propaganda …
McQuade thought, God … This was what Helga, an educated woman, believed? He flicked open the book. Many passages had been underlined. He speed-read a page which had been flagged:
The thesis of this book has been proved conclusively. The Jews of Europe were not exterminated and there was no German attempt to exterminate them … The Jews of Europe suffered during the war by being deported to the East, by having had much of their property confiscated and, more importantly, by suffering cruelly in the circumstances surrounding Germany’s defeat. There may even have been a million dead.
Everybody in Europe suffered during the war. The people who suffered most were the losers, the Germans and Austrians, who lost 10 million dead due to military casualties, Allied bombings, the Russian terror at the end of the war, Russian and French labour conscriptions of POWs after the war, Polish and other expulsions from their homelands, under the most brutal conditions, and the vengeful occupation policies of 1945–1948.
The ‘gas chambers’ were wartime propaganda fantasies … The factual basis of these ridiculous charges was nailed with perfect accuracy by Heinrich Himmler, in an interview with a representative of the World Jewish Congress just a few weeks before the end of the war: ‘In order to put a stop to epidemics we were forced to burn the bodies of incalculable numbers of people who had been destroyed by disease. We were therefore forced to build crematoria, and on this account they are knotting a noose for us.’
It is most unfortunate that Himmler was a ‘suicide’ while in British captivity since, had he been a defendant at the Nuremberg Trials … he would have told the true story … But then, you see, it was not within the bounds of political possibility that Himmler live to talk at the Nuremberg Trials …
The author went on to describe ‘holocaust’ literature as ‘supreme examples of total delusion and foolishness and will be referenced only in connection with the great hoaxes of history’.
McQuade soberly went back to the librarians’ counter with the books. ‘I’d like to take this one out please. On the constitutional history of South West Africa.’
The librarian said, ‘Another book has just come back. Do you know it?’ She held it out.
It was called For Volk and Führer. ‘No.’
‘Take it also, it is a true story about South Africa during the war.’
Swakopmund is a friendly town. The Sam Cohen librarian gave him a charming smile. ‘Ah so, the Englishman! The public library telephoned me and I have prepared a pile of books on German history in South West.’
The books stood on a polished table. ‘Thank you. May I take them home?’
‘Nein, but you can read them here as much as you like.’
‘Thank you. I’m also particularly interested in Swakopmund during the war period.’ McQuade waved his hand. ‘How many doctors there were.’ He tried to say it casually: ‘For example, can you tell me how many dentists there were in Swakopmund in 1945?’
‘Yes. One. Doctor Wessels.’
This was lucky! ‘Only one?’
‘Yes, he died only in the last couple of years.’
McQuade’s hopes sank. It sounded a strange question but he could not dress it up. ‘Where are his old records now?’ He added, trying to make it sound casual, ‘I mean, has his old surgery been taken over by a new dentist?’
‘No. We have several dentists nowadays, but they have their own surgeries. But maybe Doctor Wessels’ son has his father’s old stuff.’
McQuade’s hopes rose again. ‘His son’s here?’
‘He lives in his father’s old house.’
‘I see.’ McQuade tried to conceal his eagerness. ‘Well, it’s after four o’clock. Can I come back tomorrow to read those books?’
‘Natürlich.’ She handed him a piece of paper. ‘Here is a list of the books, in case somebody moves them.’
He walked out into the glaring desert sun, feeling lucky. Only one dentist in 1945.
He hurried down the Kaiserstrasse to the Hansa Hotel to telephone Doctor Wessels’ son. He looked up his number in the directory. He rehearsed his story. Then dialled.
The telephone rang, and rang.
He hung up. The man might not come home for hours.
He telephoned Roger Wentland, the attorney for his fishing company, to consult him on the law of salvage.
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