Free An Honorable German by Charles L. McCain

felt close to his usual strength again by the next morning when the swell began to die away. Two
     hours after dawn, the waves had settled, and the men went to work.
    Max supervised a loading party. With another day of bright sunshine, his men again took off their shirts to feel the warmth
     on their pale skin, while they worked to strike a mound of 105-millimeter shells belowdecks.
Altmark
had sent the load of shells over in
Graf Spee
’s launch, and, using a block and tackle, Max’s crew hoisted the shells one at a time and lowered them into the refrigerated
     magazine. Cordite, the propellant used to blow the shells from the guns, deteriorated and became unstable at high temperatures.
    “Easy, easy!” Max shouted as one of the shells swayed over the access hatch. “It’s slipping!” The words had barely left his
     mouth when the shell slid free of the harness and dropped six decks to the hold. Max shut his eyes and jammed his fingers
     into his ears. Nothing. The sailors grinned at him—everyone, from the assistant cook on up, knew the shells could not explode
     without their detonators, which were not inserted until the shells were about to be fired. Without the detonators you could
     drop the shells from an aeroplane and they wouldn’t explode. Max had to laugh, too, even if he was embarrassed.
    A series of curses drifted up through the hatch from the deck below. “Back to work,” Max ordered, “and be more careful!”
    Three boats from
Altmark
and two launches from
Graf Spee
hauled a warehouse of provisions to the big ship. Canned food, boxes of macaroni, crates of apples, tins of pickled cabbage,
     dried fruit, coffee, cigarettes, cases of Beck’s beer, slabs of frozen beef, all piled up on the teak deck boards. Along with
     the food came supplies to run the ship: jerry cans of lubricating oil, cylinders of carbolic acid for the refrigeration plant,
     replacements for burnt-out engine parts. In turn, the men filled the unloaded boats with most of their British prisoners.
     They looked bedraggled and moved slowly into the launches, gripping their small suitcases and kit-bags. Max wondered what
     being a prisoner of war would be like. No action, no job, no responsibility. Crushing boredom.
    Sweat streamed from his men as they wrestled the stores below. Officers ran around yelling orders, sailors muttered under
     their breath, winches screeched, cargo nets rose into the air, swayed over the deck, then down into the holds. Commander Kay,
Graf Spee
’s executive officer—a thin, fussy martinet of a man—darted among the stacks of supplies urging everyone on. “Keep those men
     working,” he said to Max, whose bare-chested sailors already pushed and hauled cargo with all their strength.
    When Kay saw something he didn’t like, he blew a silver whistle that dangled from a string around his thin neck. By late morning,
     Max wanted to grab the whistle and throw it overboard along with the commander.
    Still the supplies kept coming to fill
Graf Spee
’s empty storerooms. A thousand men consumed enormous amounts of food. Even with the provisions captured from the British
     ships,
Spee
was running low on almost everything. Sacks of dried beans, of flour, cases of tinned milk, boxes of dried eggs, all came
     aboard in massive quantities. Freshwater was one of the few items they did not need from
Altmark
.
Graf Spee
’s desalinization equipment produced the fifty tons of water required every day by the crew and the huge diesel engines, which
     could not be cooled with salt water because salt corroded their inner parts.
    At 1200 Langsdorff passed the word for everyone to put their shirts back on. Several of Max’s men were already a bright shade
     of pink, and Max’s own face felt burnt from the morning sun. November was summer in the Southern Hemisphere but it was easy
     to be fooled by the wind. A strong southerly breeze kept the air cool, masking the strength of the sun’s rays.
    Half the working parties