Michael Wenberg - The Last Eagle

There was a call from the house. Dönitz saw his granddaughter wave. “Cocoa,” came her shout on the window.

Dönitz slipped his hands into his pockets and began trudging toward the house. “God in heaven…” he whispered.

Although The Last Eagle is a work is fiction, it is inspired by the exploits of the Polish Navy submarine Orzel and her crew over the course of a few weeks at the onset of World War II in September and October of 1939.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland from the west, joined a few weeks thereafter by forces of the Soviet Red Army invading from the east. Vastly overmatched by one foe, Poland was doomed by two. She was not, however, wholly unprepared. Her army had been mobilized during spring and summer, and most of the Polish Navy was already at sea. One exception: The submarine Orzel , which didn’t sail until shortly after the attack began, leaving from her home port of Gdynia for duty patrolling the Gulf of Gdansk where she was supposed to harass Nazi coastal shipping as part of Operation Worek, the Polish Navy’s plan for the defense of Poland.

But after just a few weeks at sea, the Orzel unexpectedly put into the neutral Estonian port of Tallinn. There is some controversy about the reason. By most accounts, her captain had been acting erratically since leaving port. He claimed to be sick. Some of the crew wondered, however, if he didn’t have the stomach for warfare. Whatever the actual reason, Estonian authorities sympathetic to the Germans soon interned the vessel. They placed armed guards on board, imprisoned the crew, removed her charts, and then began to disarm the vessel, removing the breechblocks of her deck guns and disarming her torpedoes.

Though minus her captain, the Orzel crew, under the leadership of her executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Jan Grudzinski, was not done fighting. On the evening of September 17, they overpowered their guards, regained control of their ship and, despite fire from Estonian port batteries, escaped Tallinn, sailing Orzel back out into the Baltic.

During the next few weeks, Orzel became a legend. She was hunted constantly by German sea and air patrols as well as the Swedish Navy (who was concerned that doing nothing would jeopardize the country’s neutrality) and the Soviets. Initially hampered by a lack of sea charts, which had been removed from the vessel by the Estonians, the Orzel crew remained undaunted, although their course was akin to driving a car with eyes closed. Drawing on the experience and memories of her crew, they created their own crude replicas. Using these hand-drawn charts and navigating by the seat–of–their pants, the Orzel crew managed to evade her pursuers, avoid fields of floating mines and escape the Baltic. Seriously low on food and water, she made her way out into the North Sea, where she contacted the British Fleet. On October 14th, the Orzel rendezvoused with a British destroyer and was escorted to safety.

After minor repairs, the Orzel rejoined the war, participating in a number of sea actions and patrols with the British Fleet, including the defense of Norway. She was lost sometime between May 24 and June 8, 1940. Her wreck has never been found.

MICHAEL WENBERG lives just up the road from the Point No Point lighthouse on Washington State’s Puget Sound. In addition to working in technology, he’s the former CEO of the Walla Walla Symphony. He enjoys backpacking, hiking and kayaking the waters of Puget Sound with his wife, Sandy, and their dog, Gracie.

Captain Lewis’s Dog , Dognapped , Henri the Clown , Oops , Melba’s Slide Trombone, Tubby the Forgotten Tugboat , (Smashwords ebooks, 2011), Stringz (a young adult novel published by Westside Books, 2010), Seattle Blues (a young adult novel published by Westside Books, 2009), Elizabeth’s Song (a picture book illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright, and published Beyond Words Publishing, 2002).

You can find Wenberg online at www.michaelwenberg.com, or contact him at michaelcwenberg@hotmail.com.