{"id":16443,"date":"2019-07-24T16:55:39","date_gmt":"2019-07-24T20:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=16443"},"modified":"2020-05-01T11:13:13","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T15:13:13","slug":"the-former-enemy-below","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/the-former-enemy-below\/","title":{"rendered":"The Former Enemy Below"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 400px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23fefefe&amp;backgroundColorFullscreen=%23fefefe&amp;d=ja19_flipbook&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=58&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">A surviving <strong>WWII U-boat seaman<\/strong> captured off the coast of Maine, <strong>now a U.S. resident, <\/strong>comes <strong>out of the dark<\/strong> to <strong>share his story<\/strong>.<\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em>By Colin W. Sargent<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">July\/August 2019 | view story as a .pdf<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-16472\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/JA19-Former-Enemy-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"JA19 Former Enemy\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/JA19-Former-Enemy-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/JA19-Former-Enemy-200x134.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/JA19-Former-Enemy.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>D<\/span><span class=\"s1\">uring World War II, Maine went dark. Amid whispers that U-boat wolf packs were sinking freighters off our coast, my family installed blackout shades on the windows of our cottage at Kennebunk Beach to stop enemy submariners from watching us sit down to our lobster dinners. Like all the neighbors who feared peering eyes offshore, Grandpa and Nana friction-taped the headlights on their \u201937 Hudson sedan while the kids departed for duty overseas. One morning at dawn, two strangers in U.S. Army uniforms showed up on our front lawn. They dug a foxhole in our sea roses, framed it in railroad ties, and installed a machine gun. While my father was flying B-17s with the squadron made famous in T<i>welve O\u2019Clock High<\/i>, back home we braced for sinkings and bombardment from possibly the worst-handled wartime secret ever. Through leaks and cryptic warnings Mainers learned that millions of tons of shipping were being sunk offshore. This led to panic. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">I\u2019ve always wondered, did the measures my family talked about over bourbon work? What must it have been like for a U-boat crew member to look at <i>us<\/i> through a periscope? Exactly how prepared did we Yankees look to the enemy below?<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>The Welcome Party<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cMy first impression was&#8230;surprise. The place was lit up like a Christmas tree!\u201d says <strong>Karl Robert Bauer<\/strong>, a former U-boat torpedoman, of his first glimpse of the U.S. shore from his submarine. Everywhere looked like Broadway. \u201cAt the beginning, America was not prepared for anything like a German U-boat,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I wasn\u2019t off the Maine coast until the end of the war.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">My dad, the B-17 pilot, is dead now. But I still have Robert Bauer to talk to. He was the same age as my father, barely 20 during the worst of it. Bauer\u2019s now 98.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">After initially setting the tempo for battles on land and sea, Germany was losing World War II, fast. Things were losing their center. Everything was in freefall. \u201cBy that time, in mid to late 1944, we were stationed in Norway,\u201d a hiding place for U-boats once the German coast was made unsafe by American and British bombers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Orders came in for Bauer\u2019s boat, the <strong>U-805<\/strong>, to join \u201cSeewolf,\u201d a submarine wolf pack patrol, to hunt freighters off the coast of Maine. \u201cWe went all the way from Norway past Iceland in the North Atlantic,\u201d cruising \u201coff the eastern coast, 200 miles off Cape Cod.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Trouble on Deck<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">M<\/span><span class=\"s1\">orale was so low by then\u2014savagely low, bizarre. So far from home, \u201cWe started developing problems with the boat. By that time, there was a lot of sabotage by the dockworkers. They knew we weren\u2019t going to make it [when they sent us out on this last patrol].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Then, finally, German <strong>Admiral Karl Donitz<\/strong> radioed the order for the fleet to surrender. Fate\u2019s musical chairs had placed the U-805 off Bar Harbor. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">They\u2019d wondered about Americans, listened to our music on the wavery VHS channels. Now the crew was finally going to meet us face-to-face. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cCommander [Korvettek\u00e4pitan Richard] Bernardelli told us to take all the arming pistols off the torpedoes. We started radioing on an open frequency, knowing we were going to be taken prisoner.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><b><br \/>\nHumiliation, Interrogation<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">The legendary Lieutenant <b>Eliot Winslow<\/b> was in command of the Coast Guard cutter <em><strong>Argo<\/strong><\/em>, which approached the U-805, boarded her, accepted her surrender, and took most of the enemy crew below decks of the <em>Argo<\/em> under armed guard. Without delay, <em>Argo<\/em> harshly accompanied (escorted would be too polite) the U-805 to internment at the Portsmouth Navy Yard.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Feeling ruined, frightened, off balance, the crew of U-805 sailed disconsolately past Bar Harbor, Boothbay Harbor, Brunswick, Portland, the darkened amusement park at Old Orchard Beach, Boon Island, turned right at the Isles of Shoals, and finally delivered the submarine into the hands of surly U.S. Navy authorities in Portsmouth. An underwater creature thrown onto the beach.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">There were hoots and jeers as the U-boat sailors slinked across the gang plank onto the mainland. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cMy crew and I were taken to Portsmouth Naval Prison\u201d on May 14, 1945. Navy intelligence interrogators closed in. \u201cI told them our boat had the latest T-5 torpedoes in it. That\u2019s when they perked up. It had a homing\/listening device where it would actually home in on a ship\u2019s propeller noise. It kept circling until it picked up an interesting loud noise.\u201d Not that it always worked perfectly. \u201cSometimes the noise was from the U-boat itself!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Surviving photographs from the surrender show nervous smiles from the crew. I want to hear Bob Bauer tell me what was so funny. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><em><span class=\"s1\">Why were you guys laughing? <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cT<\/span><span class=\"s1\">hey seemed so afraid of us. We were unarmed. When we were standing there by the bus, we were all kind of chuckling, laughing.\u201d Sure, it was a cover for their fear. But \u201cthe big joke was all these Americans had all these guns [trained at us]\u2014what did they think we were going to do, swim to Germany? We knew they were going to eventually end up fighting Russia. So we were also wondering, <i>are we going to go fight the Russians with you<\/i>?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Everybody\u2019s got an enemy. You shuck one off, another takes his place.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Atonement<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n<p class=\"p2\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cThey ended up taking us to the Boonesville, New York, prison camp. I got to leave in late 1946.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><em><span class=\"s1\">Was that rough? <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cOh, I loved it there. It was the greatest time I ever had. They treated us well. We helped the farmers pick apples.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><em><span class=\"s1\">Were you a Nazi?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cNo. Everyone in the Wehrmacht [the armed forces] were forbidden to be party members after they enlisted. The Waffen SS was not part of the Wehrmacht.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>A New Life<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p2\">Then, Bauer disappeared. He went back to Germany to get his wife. Bauer\u2019s son, Daniel Bauer\u2014exactly my age\u2014picks up the story. All the while during this interview, Dan has been sitting at his dad\u2019s side, because they live together in Mountain Lake, Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cHe\u2019d met my mother during the war when he was on leave in Hanover, Germany. She was from southern Bavaria. Garmisch, a ski town. During the war, she was in the Luftwaffe. She carried ammunition for anti-aircraft guns.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">After Robert and his wife, the late Lois Zimmermann Bauer, were reunited, \u201cI got a job when I got back with Caterpillar, in Germany,\u201d Robert says. \u201cI was a draftsman by trade before the war, and Caterpillar asked me if I\u2019d be interested in going back to the United States\u2014in Peoria. I worked for Caterpillar for 34-35 years. I was a tool designer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Does anyone ever really thank anyone else for their service? Many Americans have exotic immigration backstories, but some might consider Bauer a former terrorist. Let\u2019s just say if we\u2019re lucky, we get to live and love. I ask Dan, the boy on the other side of the mirror, \u201cWhat was it like going to high school in the U.S. in the cornfields of the Midwest with a former U-Boat P.O.W. as your dad?\u201d I mean, John Cougar Mellencamp never wrote a heartland song about that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">The son waits a beat, then laughs. \u201cMy dad thought the Nazis were idiots.\u201d Technically, \u201cmy mom was a member of the Hitler Youth for girls. So whenever a classmate would sneak up to me and ask, \u2018Was your father a Nazi?\u2019 I\u2019d say, \u2018No, my mother.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Karl Robert Bauer tells all on the WWII U-Boat 805 surrender.<br \/>\nBy Colin W. Sargent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,15],"tags":[415,127,412,416,323,160,322,414,413],"class_list":["post-16443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-classic-maine-stories","tag-germany","tag-maine","tag-maine-history","tag-nazis","tag-portland-magazine","tag-portland-maine","tag-portland-monthly","tag-uboat","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16443"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18580,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16443\/revisions\/18580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}