The wolf hunt by Justin Fox (Jonathan Ball
The wolf hunt (Nazi terror in South African waters)
Author: Justin Fox
ISBN: 9781776194025
Publisher: Jonathan Ball
The wolf hunt is a historical naval adventure novel. The second of the Jack Pembroke series, named after its eponymous Royal Navy protagonist, Lieutenant Jack Pembroke, the book nevertheless reads well as a stand-alone novel. Most of the action takes place along the South African coast during the Second World War, when Nazi U-boats operated in so-called wolf packs to sink Allied ships and disrupt the vital South Atlantic shipping lanes.
The novel opens in 1938 in Stellenbosch, during the centenary of the Great Trek. The Van Zyls, an Afrikaans family, are divided when their two teenage sons take opposite sides in the increasingly polarised pre-war South African political scene. The younger son, Jannie, is more enlightened, favouring reconciliation between the Afrikaners and their erstwhile Boer War foes, the English. His older brother, Hans, on the other hand, is a hardliner who becomes involved with the right-wing Afrikaner cultural movement, the Ossewabrandwag’s para-military division, the Stormjaers, which is modelled on the National Socialist (Nazi) Storm Troops.
The story soon focuses in on Hans’s university friend, Gerhardus Kruger, a tall and athletic young man who is fanatically devoted to the Afrikaner nationalist cause. Like many of his Ossewabrandwag peers, Kruger becomes an admirer of Adolf Hitler and how his National Socialist Party regime managed to lift the German people from the poverty and runaway inflation of the Weimer Republic years. When on an Afrikaanse Nasionaler Studentebond cultural tour of the Reich, he is recruited by Albert Schulze, an undercover agent of the German secret service, the Abwehr. A couple of years later, he finds himself enrolled in the Reichsakademie in Berlin at the outbreak of war between Germany and England, to be trained in the dark arts of espionage, sabotage and propaganda before being sent back to South Africa to link up with the Ossewabrandwag and foment a sabotage campaign to overthrow the pro-British Smuts government.
The perspective then shifts to that of Lieutenant Jack Pembroke, who is in Simon’s Town’s West Dockyard in July 1941, watching his “beloved” HMSAS Southern Gannet and its sister ship, the HMSAS Southern Belle – both peacetime whalers converted to minesweepers at the start of World War Two – being refitted after having incurred damage in their battles with a German raider earlier in the war. At this point, the younger Van Zyl brother, Jannie, now of age and having volunteered for the South African Navy, joins the crew of the Gannet as first lieutenant, reporting to Pembroke. As a cameo, the famous “seadog”, Just Nuisance, whose grave today can be found on the mountainside above Simon’s Town, makes an appearance.
Throughout the rest of the novel, the narrative alternates between Kruger’s and Pembroke’s points of view, showing the personalities and experiences of combatants on both sides of the conflict.
The Allies receive intelligence indicating that German U-Boats plan to extend their area of operation to include the southern coast of Africa, and begin to shore up the area’s defences. Jack and the crew of the refurbished HMSAS Gannet – together with the HMSAS Southern Belle, captained by the giant Norwegian Lieutenant Sven Alstad, HMSAS Waterberg and HMSAS Langberg – undergo rigorous training in anti-submarine warfare, led by the uncompromising and hard-charging Lieutenant Commander Dalgleish, a specialist in anti-submarine warfare from the Royal Navy.
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Narrowly avoiding Allied warships, U-68 makes its way around the west coast of Africa, crosses the equator and drops Kruger off at his family farm, Steenbokbaai, on the remote west coast near Lambert’s Bay
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While this is happening, Kruger embarks on an overland journey from Berlin to the U-boat base at the occupied French port of Lorient, where he joins the crew of U-68, commanded by Fregattenkapitän Brandt. A formidable warrior and respected by his crew, Brandt, like many of his real-life equivalents in the Kriegsmarine, is not the stereotypical Nazi fanatic often portrayed in more traditional WWII accounts. For example, his humanity is displayed as he struggles with whether to rescue survivors from sunken enemy ships or simply obey orders.
Narrowly avoiding Allied warships, U-68 makes its way around the west coast of Africa, crosses the equator and drops Kruger off at his family farm, Steenbokbaai, on the remote west coast near Lambert’s Bay. There, Kruger meets up with his friend Hans van Zyl, and, together with a group of comrades from the Stormjaers, they swear an oath of loyalty and commit themselves to their mission of subterfuge. Meantime, U-68 continues south, and on orders from Admiral Dönitz’s headquarters, prepares to attack shipping in Table Bay – then still a relatively unprotected harbour.
The story then follows the exploits of U-68 and others in the U-boat wolf pack as they try to torpedo Allied vessels sailing in convoy around the Cape Coast – describing some of the horrors experienced by the crews of sinking Allied ships (which, according to historical records, totalled 158, or 910 638 tons, over the course of the war). Inevitably, Brandt and his crew on U-68 come up against a determined Jack Pembroke on the Gannet and her sister ships tasked with escorting Allied convoys. A deadly cat and mouse game ensues in which U-68 dives to untenable depths, deftly manoeuvring to evade the minesweepers’ ASDIC technology (which uses sound waves to locate submarines) and the subsequent rain of depth charges.
Jack Pembroke is a more nuanced character than the fearless action hero of the more traditional naval adventure novels. He appears to suffer from what today would be known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from action he endured earlier in the European theatre of war. This contributes to him doubting some of his decisions in the heat of battle. Jack is also shown to have a complicated relationship with his father, the highly decorated Admiral Pembroke of the Royal Navy, also based in Simon’s Town and with overall command of the Allied southern Atlantic fleet. Their interactions are both tender and respectful, but Jack battles with a deep-seated need to prove himself and live up to his father’s expectations and the fabled achievements of his naval forebears. These personal struggles provide motivation for the protagonist’s dogged pursuit of the enemy.
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The action scenes and literary descriptions of the ocean with all its vicissitudes are vivid – from the perspectives of both a submariner and a sailor on a surface vessel.
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The writing of The wolf hunt demonstrates an excellent sense of place, and captures the unique landscape, sights, sounds and smells of Simon’s Town and the greater Cape Peninsula. The action scenes and literary descriptions of the ocean with all its vicissitudes are vivid – from the perspectives of both a submariner and a sailor on a surface vessel. The text is replete with historical references and technical details of life on board, and is aided by a glossary of naval terms at the beginning of the book.
The story is a mixture of fact and fiction. The overall backdrop is descriptive of the history of South Africa at war; many of the scenes allude to or are adapted from actual events, but are dramatised for the story, and others are purely fictional. The character Gerhardus Kruger, for example, is clearly based on that of the figure of Robey Leibbrandt (ie, the former Olympic boxer and policeman recruited by the Abwehr as leader of Operation Weissdorn to stage a coup d’état in South Africa, but caught in December 1942 near Pretoria after a cat and mouse game with the authorities, and tried for treason). Kruger, however, is delivered to the west coast by a U-Boat (U-68), whereas the historical Leibbrandt came via an open boat. Likewise, the names of some of the ships described in the story are fictitious (eg, HMSAS Southern Gannet and HMSAS Southern Belle), while others are historical (eg, the County-class cruiser HMS Dorsetshire). The combined effect provides a good overall insight into the sweep of this important part of South Africa’s war effort, the challenges faced by the authorities, and the experiences of its citizens, bringing to life a period of history previously neglected as the National Party government suppressed information implicating some of its leaders (eg, Prime Minister John Vorster) in the anti-war movement.
Review by Ian Sutherland, author of the novels Subversion and Catastrophe.