Chapter One Thousand Eight Hundred Forty-Six
17th May 1968
Kiel
“If you could excuse me early today, Sir?” Louis Junior asked as he concluded the morning’s business.
“I assume that you want to pay your respects like everyone else” Admiral Teichert said, “You didn’t need to ask.”
With that the Grand Admiral went back to his work. Since Louis had been assigned to Grand Admiral’s Staff, he’d had no idea where he had stood with the former U-Boat Commander despite having worked with him for the last several months. Every day new reports came in from around the world and all of them had to read, summarized, and then orders had to be sent back. The vast logistics network of the Fleet had to be kept moving and any hiccups sent a cascade of calls and recriminations up and down the chain of command. Then there were the hush-hush projects that needed to be handled the same way except Louis had frequently found himself having to talk around what was really happening to someone who wasn’t cleared to know about the projects in question. It all made for extremely long days.
Leaving the Admiral’s office, Louis was putting on his coat and hat when he was joined by a dozen other Junior Officers from Teichert’s staff. As a Kapitänleutnant with an array of medals, Louis was among the most senior of them. He had also held Command of a Flotilla in a foreign port and overwintered in Antarctica. Those were things that put him head and shoulders above his peers, it also put a considerable distance between himself and them even before they learned his name. Today felt different though as they made their way to the waterfront of the old Naval Arsenal where the last of the Fleet’s battleships were moored.
After her name had been stricken from the registry, the SMS Preussen, the leading ship of her Class and the Flag Ship of the Pacific Fleet during the Second World War, was being towed out of port one last time. She was bound for Danzig along with her sister ship SMS Rhineland, where what remained of her would be cut up for scrap. There had been talk of preserving her as a museum ship, but for a variety of reasons that had not been possible. The ongoing effort to save the SMS Brandenburg had been deemed far more likely to succeed, she was far newer, requiring less in the way of repair and maintenance. The Preussen had served in the Pacific War from the very start and it showed.
Standing on the concrete embankment, Louis took off his hat in a sign of respect as the tugboats pulled the Preussen slowly past. Across the water, he could see thousands of people on the waterfront and atop buildings, standing anywhere they could get a view.
“Those fucking jackals, like bringing a whore to a funeral” Louis heard a man next to him say and he saw what the man was looking at. Some distance away, a small group of foreign naval observers were making sure the Preussen was truly going to the breakers. Battleships were still seen as strategic assets and one being disposed of had to be well documented to maintain the balance of world power. Even as the man said that, Louis could feel the crowd growing angry and knew that something needed to be done before anyone did anything stupid. Even as that thought occurred to him, he had another. This was the Navy, what was a funeral if the men couldn’t give the departed a proper send off?
Pushing his way through the crowd, Louis reached one of the tall lampposts that held the floodlights that lit up the Naval Armory at night. Climbing up it as far as he could, Louis was facing thousands of sailors who were suddenly focused on him.
“Three cheers for the Grand Empress of the High Seas Fleet!” Louis yelled.
At first, he was unsure of anyone had heard him. Then he heard that call being repeated up and down the waterfront. Then someone started hurrahing, which was taken up by others. It was ragged at first, but the men started coordinating it through long practice. It was a lot more than just three cheers for the Preussen. Then ships started blasting their horns in the harbor and matters took a life of their own. Louis could see the observers fretting over the about face that things had taken. They were here for the funeral, by God they were getting to witness the starting of the wake. Sliding back down the lamppost, Louis was handed his hat, which he hadn’t even noticed that he had dropped. Others were slapping him on the back.
“Thank you for that, Sir” One of the Sailors said, Louis just shrugged. Keeping the crews out of the wrong sort of trouble was his job.
The next day, the Grand Admiral asked him exactly what had happened. Louis told him the truth; the men had cheered in celebration of grand ship as she passed into history. Teichert had just looked at him suspiciously and let him go. Everyone knew that the Grand Admiral knew far more about what happened in Kiel than he let on. It wasn’t like the prior era that the old salts talked about, where Admiral von Schmidt knew what you had for breakfast and what tune you were whistling when you came back from three days liberty the month before. Still, it was clear that he kept his ear to the ground.
Part of the reason she agreed to the wedding was to have a child of her own, after all. But she does have the resources and support necessary to allow her to continue to pursue the things that motivate her and have her own life while still being a mother, so she can enjoy the best of both worlds.
