Author Description

It was the custom of the German Naval Command in the Second World War to name Allied convoys after the U-Boat commander who made the first sighting report. Johan Kleber sighted convoy JW137 as it battered its way through the freezing storms and gloom of an Arctic winter; and so Kleber's Convoy it became. The U-Boat's signals were intercepted by the Admiralty in London and passed back to the commanders of the British escort vessels; notably to Lieutenant-Commander Redman. The name of the U-Boat commander was for him a painful shock—years before a Hans Kleber had saved his life on a Swiss ski-slope, he had fallen in love with the German's sister and still reproached himself for her accidental death. Could this be the same man? Was the relationship between these two friends and enemies to provide a haunting counterpart to the savage naval battle?