ship, study these plans for a few days, make some suggestions and supervise the draftsman in drawing up plans for refurbishment work.
‘At present we don’t have that luxury. With thousands of barges to convert, I need to make rapid decisions based upon instinct and experience so that repairs and modifications can be completed quickly.’
‘And if you get it wrong the boat sinks?’ Marc asked.
‘Hopefully not.’ Kuefer smiled. ‘But with four naval architects converting thousands of barges in the space of a few months, there’s always a chance that things will go wrong.
‘Now,’ Kuefer continued, as he leaned over the completed drawing. ‘My task is to turn this barge, which looks like it was designed for towing lumber along a river, into something that’s seaworthy, capable of rapid embarkation and disembarkation and of carrying heavy equipment such as tanks and artillery pieces.’
As Kuefer slid a set of drawing instruments from his leather coat, the bearded draftsman pulled tracing paper over the drawing and cut it from a roll before clamping it in place with bulldog clips.
‘Decisions,’ Kuefer said, as his pencil hovered over the paper. ‘So Marc, this is a nice sized barge, designed for lumber. It’s wide and metal hulled, so it’s basically seaworthy. It might catch the wind and capsize in a gale of force eight, but there’s nothing you can do about that. The barge floor is wood and any tracked vehicle or even a truck is likely to splinter it. In an ideal world, we’d lay aluminium over the whole deck, but the aviation industry has dibs on the entire supply.
‘That leaves me with two options – either a thin layer of tar … actually, how much tar is available at present?’
Marc opened his mouth to translate, but Louis understood and Marc only had to translate the answer.
‘He said we have enough for wooden hull repairs and deck patching, but it’ll be weeks before there’s enough supply to lay over the floor of eleven barges.’
‘As I expected,’ Kuefer murmured. ‘Which means we have to go with a concrete floor. Concrete weighs twice as much and takes a full week to set. But it’s all we have.’
As Kuefer explained, his hands were a whirl – jotting marks, lines and comments on the tracing paper. He drew crosses where anchor points should be set in the concrete. These would hold chains to strap down vehicles or cargo, or else they’d be threaded with ropes for soldiers to hang on to.
‘Finally the ramp,’ Kuefer said dramatically, before giving Marc a smile. ‘Ideally, every self-powered barge would have the front chopped off. We’d install a drop-down ramp that would enable tanks and troops to run on to a beach and start fighting. Unfortunately we have no chains or gears and we certainly don’t have electric winches or the welders and electricians we’d need to make them work efficiently. So we have this.’
Kuefer used a ruler to draw a pair of metal ramps with a hinge at their centre. One end was welded to the floor of the boat, while the hinged parts swung out over the front of the barge, enabling vehicles or men to run down the ramps on to the landing beach.
‘Voilà!’ Kuefer said, as he signed off his drawing and smiled at Marc. ‘One Belgian lumber barge, expertly converted into a state of the art landing ship.’
Louis spoke in Marc’s ear and Marc translated for Kuefer.
‘He says the army have been rejecting a lot of barges as unstable and that four centimetres of concrete across the whole deck might be too heavy. He suggests strips on either side where tracks and tyres would run, leaving the centre of the deck as wood.’
‘Obviously,’ Kuefer roared. ‘That’s what I meant. Why would you lay concrete across the whole deck?’ever
Marc got the impression that Kuefer hadn’t meant that at all, but didn’t like being told he was wrong by a mere draftsman.
‘Tell him to show me the next one,’ Kuefer said sourly. ‘The only food around here is army swill and I want to be back in Calais in time to get a decent table for lunch at Heuringhem’s.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A week after starting work with Kuefer, Marc was fed up with his boss. When the Kommodore was in a good mood he’d take time explaining how things worked, reminisce about childhood and speak fondly of his previous role designing gun turrets for cruisers and battleships. But he was under huge pressure from Berlin to convert thousands of barges with limited material