Sasha’s Sacrifice

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Author's Note: This story was written for the Owl Canyon Press Hackathon #4. If you're unfamiliar with these contests, the main premise is that you are given the opening paragraph and closing paragraph and then need to write a story that uses these pieces while following other rules around paragraph length, paragraph count, and so forth.

For this story, I drew on a few different elements from my own background. First, I was driving down the Outer Banks of North Carolina when I wrote it, so I already wanted to draw on this location as the setting while it was fresh in my mind.

Second, I have always loved The Keeper's Son, a book by Homer Hickam that is set in the same location. The novel chronicles the early days of America's involvement in World War 2 when German submarines rampaged off our shores largely unopposed. Hickam tells the story through the eyes of a U.S. Coast Guard commander and a German U-boat captain as well as a huge ensemble of unique and endearing characters. I happened to be listening to the book on tape as I took the ferry from Ocracoke.

Naturally, I drew on both my surroundings and the subject matter of one of my favorite books to craft this tale. Let me segue into the narrative by confirming that, while the story itself is fictionalized, the historical moment it's set in and the place these events took place are both very real.

Sasha's Sacrifice

It was an odd sized casket, too small for a man, too big for a child. A flag was draped over it, a smallish one. It was carried by four men in uniform, though it was hard to tell for sure from a distance what uniform it was, or even if they were all men. There wasn't room for the usual six pallbearers due to the small size of the casket since it would have made for a comical service to have all six jammed together, shoulder-to-shoulder, crowding around an under-sized coffin. So the extra pallbearers were in the ranks of many others in uniform standing beside a small open grave. The officiant wore a robe instead of a uniform and must have said something because there was a long silence, then a burst of laughter.

From my spot in the crowd of mourners, I thought back on that tumultuous day. It was early in 1942, and the cold January winds blew all along the Outer Banks from Bodie Light down to Cape Lookout. I and the rest of the crew of Oyster listened to the gale outside the walls of the Lifesaving Station and thanked our lucky stars we were not aboard the rescue boat in such chop and chill as we sipped coffee from warm mugs. Then the call came in from a merchantman, The Pride of Kansas City, that she was sinking in the gale.

We scrambled into our foul-weather gear and launched Oyster in record time. Though neither I nor my friends in the engine room had much enthusiasm for the beating we were about to take, we were Coast Guard men, and that meant we had a duty to all sailors in trouble.

Oyster motored out of Oregon Inlet and her cozy berth. As soon as we rounded the point, it began. Five-foot waves bashed against the bow, sending our ship on a rodeo ride with twenty riders clad in ponchos instead of one leather-booted cowboy. The full might of the Atlantic seemed to be challenging Oyster, but she was a tough little ship for only being eighty-three feet in length. It helped that her designers had such midnight sorties in mind.

Her twin props continued the charge down the coast as we approached Cape Hatteras and the last reported position of The Pride of Kansas City. Out in the chop, a flare rose up and confirmed she had not gone under yet. But would the storm leave enough time to close the gap?

As Oyster approached through a punishing crosswind, we found The Pride lit up by another flare, but the flare lingered too long. Flames, I thought, wiping the sea spray and rain from my eyes. In over a dozen rescues, I could never recall a ship being on fire. Even more unusual in this savage downpour.

The time for puzzling passed as Captain Neiman ordered us to the starboard side to retrieve survivors. Backlit by the fire on the stern of the sinking merchant trawler, we could see the crew attempting to launch their lifeboats, but the wind and waves clawed at them eagerly and one broke free from its lines. A second overturned in the savage surf. Several men cut off by the flames or simply losing all sense at the sight of our ship leaped into the waves.

We all stood by to throw lines to any who came within reach, but with the prevailing wind, I doubted many of the swimmers would clear the gap before the current grabbed hold of them. My mates had the same thought as they started to shift aft and watch the crewmen struggling in the surf, lines still in hand.

Still, one figure proved more resilient than the others and reached the side of Oyster. I reached down into the boiling sea to help the man out and was shocked to find I had grabbed hold of a leg covered in fur. I lifted the hound out of the water as she panted from paddling through the chop. After a moment, she shook her brown fur off onto the stunned faces of all the crewmen who had gathered around and then licked my hand.

Captain Neiman barked at us from his station atop the wheelhouse to keep our eyes to the waves, and we all scrambled back to our posts. As I returned to my station on the starboard side, the whole world blossomed into white as an explosion erupted from The Pride’s bow section. The shockwave carried across the water, momentarily flattening the whitecaps between us and the stricken merchantman. Odd for a ship to explode below the waterline, I thought, squinting as the darkness returned. My canine companion’s pointed ears had flattened with the shockwave.

One lifeboat had escaped the blast, and the crew rowed alongside to offload, towing other men who could not fit in the packed hull. As we helped the merchant seamen from the water, I overheard The Pride’s captain speaking with ours. “Wasn’t no accident or storm that sank us, sir. We were torpedoed by a German U-boat. In all this chop, we didn’t even see the first torpedo, but your men all witnessed them finishing the job just now!”

Captain Neiman shook his head, and not having any idea what a U-boat was, I was inclined to agree with his skepticism. Germans off our shores? Unbelievable. And yet, something had caused that explosion. The Pride tilted further to the stern and plunged downward, revealing a jagged hole in its bow as it went. The fire extinguished as the ship slipped beneath the waves, and the storm lightened around us to leave silence and darkness.

Then The Pride’s soaked captain began gesturing at something off the port side. We all turned and watched as the black shape rose between the whitecapped waves, streamlined except for a conning tower extending from the center and a deck gun on the forward section. A submarine—and a well-armed one.

Figures appeared on the top of the conning tower, and the submarine changed course toward Oyster. We were a rescue boat with only a few rifles below to offer any sort of a challenge if the Germans intended to fight, but instead they started to call something across the water. In broken English, they were demanding to know the ship’s name and tonnage that they had sunk. A man descended to the deck and waved a machine gun at us to encourage cooperation.

Nobody answered, except for a growl rising beside my right leg. My newfound friend howled and then leaped off the deck back into the boiling sea before any of us could try to stop her. I watched the brown and black figure strike out for the submarine.

Back aboard the U-boat, the dog had apparently gone unnoticed. Instead, the Germans were growing agitated by our silence, and the captain barked an order down from the conning tower. We all dove to the deck as bullets ripped across the water, but the sailor had aimed the burst over our heads. “Cooperate now, Americans?” their captain shouted.

I stuck my head back above the railing—and watched as the sailor stopped reloading his gun to stare at something emerging from the water. The hound scrambled to the deck of the submarine and turned in one fluid motion, lunging to close her jaws around the German’s neck. His scream followed both of them into the sea behind the U-boat’s hull.

Both American and German crews stood in stunned silence for a moment, then the men atop the U-boat conning tower started shouting and firing pistols into the water where man and hound had vanished. Captain Neiman took advantage of their distraction to start Oyster’s engines and slip away. The last I saw of the submarine was the black conning tower slipping beneath the waves as the storm regained its strength.

Many questions would arise over the coming days as the witnesses to the first confirmed U-boat sighting off our shores, but our minds all kept returning to that singular moment. The rescued crew had told us the dog’s name was Sasha, the mascot of The Pride of Kansas City. That night, Sasha had acted when the rest of us were frozen in fear, and she had paid the ultimate price to fight back against the German raiders out there in the blue-green waters. Every now and again, one of our crewmen would point out that Sasha could still be out there paddling for land, but we all knew better.

In a nation still reeling from the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor and now seeing Nazi submarines rampaging off its other coast, the public was desperate for a story of hope. A hero. So when word reached the higher ups that a dog had struck the first blow against the U-boat menace, the War Department decided that Sasha would serve as a new mascot. Unfortunate that she could not be here for the cameras, but a funeral and posthumous honors would do. Never mind that the body had not been found—no one was going to be looking inside the casket, after all.

The grave wasn’t ready until sunset, so the whole event was rushed and disorganized, except for the very last part. The grave was a massive affair, more of a crater than a grave, and it took until dark to roll the casket down to the bottom. If any prayers were said, they couldn’t be heard over the dull thudding of the clods raining down on the casket far below. It was an odd sized casket, too big for a man, too small for a dream, but just right for a dynasty.