Some crew members took the BdU Zug, an express train reserved for U-boatmen that ran from Nantes through Le Mans and on to the German cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Flensburg, and would be home within two days. Those who chose to remain in France were sent to the U-bootsweiden, luxury hotels or chateaux that had been commandeered to be used as rest camps. These safe havens were far from the ports targeted by Allied bombers, where people were routinely forced to seek shelter, either from bombs or from falling debris from downed planes, whose pirouetting wings seemed as harmless as falling
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