Gone to Soldiers: A Novel

by Marge Piercy

  On March 8 when their ship the William Eustis, with a load of tanks, trucks, jeeps and half-tracks, had left New York, there had been a hint of spring in the air, a damp southern wind breathing off the Gulf Stream. The twilight had been lavender, a word, a color, he associated with his mother, to whom he had scrawled a brief note before sailing, stuck in a birthday card embossed with heavy paper roses. He had also sent her a bottle of lavender cologne a buddy claimed was the real French stuff. He hoped he had wrapped it okay. He also sent a postcard to Arty and one to the kid, with the Statue of Liberty on it. “I see this coming and going,” he had written on the back. “It looks prettiest when I’m heading into port.”

  In the submarine command post, the makeshift operations room of the Hotel am Steinplatz in Berlin where Admiral Doenitz controlled the tactics of the U-boats, the message came in, the list of boats, their cargoes, their route across the Atlantic. B-Dienst (German intelligence) was on the job reading the BAMS code (British and Allied Merchant Ship code), which they had deciphered years before. Doenitz ordered the twenty-one U-boats of the Raubgraf picket line to meet the two convoys, the slow and the fast. Three hundred and fifty miles ahead of that wolf pack, the twenty-eight submarines of the Stuermer and Draenger groups began to advance west.

  Now the sky was black although the sea was visible enough, a frothy mass that shone from within in its whiteness, alive, a maw of fangs. How the hell were they supposed to see icebergs? The ship would rise on a steep hill of water, hang there on the crest of a wave with icy churning water pouring past and over them and the screws rotating in air, the ship almost shaking apart with the force of the disengaged propeller. Then they would pitch into the trough, landing with a thud that shook his bones loose from their sockets, that slammed the segments of his spine together. Then they would resume that sickening swell up and over, to hang in air and come crashing down. The tanks were the worst, always breaking loose and starting to roll. They had to keep lashing them down and one colored guy had his leg crushed. Deck cargo was a bloody nuisance in a storm.

  The convoy straggled out for miles. There was another ahead of them, a slow convoy. The slow convoys usually made about six knots, and the fast convoys like this one made about nine, although as far as he could tell they could be standing still on the same bloody wave just banging to and fro. Although their convoy was made up of thirty-eight merchant ships and their escort, they could have been alone in the sea gone foul and crazy. They could not see another ship. The merchant ships lacked radar anyhow, but Duvey knew that the escorts who had it couldn’t get any use out of it in this weather because the aerials froze over and sometimes they just broke.

  They had some escort. The other half of his convoy, which had been split into two parts, had got the best of the available defenders. Their own defense was patched together out of what was available, because the escort ships had been taking the same pounding as the merchant ships. Whenever they finished a crossing, they turned right around and shepherded another convoy across. With so many ships broken up in the winter storms, they were using boats that should have been junked. They had two destroyers, Volunteer and Beverley, two little corvettes Anemone and Pennywort, and two ancient class S destroyers that should have been decently retired, The Witherington and The Mansfield.

  He thought whoever in the British Admiralty decided to name corvettes for flowers had a slimy sense of humor. They were rugged little boats that rolled in any sea, even a light one. On his last voyage, he’d seen a Free French corvette ram a sub on the surface and send it down. That time he’d been torpedoed. They hadn’t exploded but had sunk with enough time to lower the boats that hadn’t been stove in. The rescue ship picked them up maybe twenty minutes later. Almost two thirds of the men from his ship had been saved. When the rescue ship had its act together and when it wasn’t torpedoed itself, then a seaman had a chance. But they had no rescue ship in this convoy.

  In Bletchley at Hut 8 the Triton codes of the German Enigma machines used by the U-boats were deciphered, as the code had finally been broken in December. From Bletchley the deciphered messages were transmitted by teletype into the Operational Intelligence Centre and the submarine tracking room. From this charting of the movements of the U-boats, warnings flashed to convoys and their escorts and the headquarters of the antisubmarine services. Every morning there was a conference on a three-way telephone link enabling the staff of the Operational Intelligence Centre, Coastal Command and Western Approaches to devise defense strategies for the convoys.

  On 8 March, a signal was decoded at Bletchley indicating that the Triton code (the Enigma code for submarines) was about to change to one involving a fourth rotor, thus multiplying the possibilities astronomically. By March 11, Bletchley had no ears into the U-boats and submarine tracking was blind.

  They imagined that the wolf pack Raubgraf was still located four hundred miles north of where Doenitz, whose eyes and ears of intelligence were still working, had relocated it.

  Finally the seas began to settle to a thumping swell. Snow squalls swept down on them. The superstructure of the ship was thick with ice they had to hack away as best they could. Their elderly escorts were buzzing around the convoy trying to shepherd the stragglers back in. They called it falling out of bed when a ship got left behind; the life of a lone ship was not long. An occasional merchantman might have a gun fitted in her bow, but most had nothing on board but a casual assortment of small arms. They passed into the Black Pit—that’s what the seamen had begun to call the Greenland air gap.

  March 15. During the storm the convoy passed right through the Raubgraf line without being sighted. They were now between one line of U-boats and the next. There would have been no air gap had there been long-range bombers in Newfoundland, the famous Liberators the seamen loved to see coming over, but Admiral King would release none to protect the convoys. His eyes were on the Pacific. Europe was the Army’s war. Churchill’s scientific advisor reported to the British War Cabinet that they were consuming three quarters of a million tons more of essential war supplies than they were importing and in two months would run far, far short. The Navy looked westward, but in the Pacific the Japanese submarines did not attack merchant ships, for they held there was no glory in such easy prey, and warships should fight warships.

  March 15 they sailed under a low grey sky. Twice the sun lanced out and blindingly lit the icebergs they passed among. The bergs looked grizzled, ancient. He knew they were mostly underwater, but he could never quite imagine it. Some looked like dirty islands, but one they passed near, too near, Duvey thought, was blue and pocked with caves. Seen from their stinking ship, those caves of ice looked almost inviting, clean and private.

  The fuel below had sloshed around so much in the heavy weather that the food reeked and even tasted of oil; the air itself belowdecks felt oily. Everything had got sodden with the seas churning in and over. Now at least they could get warm when they came off watch. They could begin to dry out their clothes. The convoy re-formed neatly and was moving off at a good pace. In spite of the storm, they were signaled they had made good progress. They were right on schedule, closing on the slower convoy still some hundred miles in advance. Duvey mended his sweater, torn on a half-track in the storm.

  By the third day in the Black Pit, Duvey was feeling brisk. After heavy seas and being pounded like that, he was glad just to stand upright with a deck under his feet. This ship was a sturdy one. Some of the others had reported damage, and The Witherington had to hove to with low fuel and storm damage. A newer destroyer was on the way to catching them, out of St. John’s, where it had been worked on after the last crossing and the last storm. Tanks and half-tracks were safer cargo than all those tons of fuel in a tanker just waiting to mount into a torch. He had always managed to stay off the ammo ships; they scared him worse than the tankers. If oil exploded, it was by accident, but what was ammunition for but to blow up everybody in sight?

  No, this was the berth to get, a middle-aged ship built in th
e twenties and decently kept up, with a smart skipper and officers who knew what they were doing. Sometimes he signed on a ship and knew in the first two hours it was going to be a hellhole, the food rotten, the discipline nervous or too lax to run the ship. He could smell disaster like rat turds. A dirty ship was often a dangerous ship. A guy he knew died when some bozo set off a snowflake rocket by accident, tipping off a U-boat to the convoy’s passage, and that was the end of all of them, bye-bye, just because it was a sloppy ship and nothing tidied away in its place.

  He went over his gear and dried his socks, worked on a too-stiff zipper. He hadn’t sent a postcard to Ruthie because he was still pissed at her. He hadn’t meant any harm with the kid. Naomi was too young to fuck and in his mother’s house? Did Ruthie think his brains were fried? He was just fooling around with the kid, and why not, when it felt kind of sweet to do it. She was just that age when they ripen weekly and he knew he was the first ever to put a hand on her. She wasn’t going to be a beauty, exactly, but she was going to be something special. She had a nice body already and a heart-shaped face like a kitten, big green-brown eyes and that air of being easy and tough at once that only working-class women ever genuinely have, in her cheap and slightly outgrown sweaters and skirts. She wasn’t Mama’s little girl, the way Ruthie had been.

  Okay, she was too young now, and Ruthie was an asshole not to figure out he knew that too. It had been a cute game, playing with her when she came in in the morning, her a little scared but wanting to please too. When he jerked off, he didn’t remember the girl he’d met in a bar on Canal Street and shacked up with for two days and the way she’d blown him. What he remembered was how much fun it had been to push the kid a little further, never knowing just how far she would go or what would happen, knowing nothing could or should, but still enjoying that funny power. The way she would look at him, as if puzzled at what he was doing.

  U-653 was on its way back to France for engine repairs, away from the rest of its pack and picket line. The convoy had changed course northwards. U-653 was traveling on the surface, since subs could only make way slowly underwater on batteries. The lookout was posted on the conning tower, watching for enemy boats, since in the air gap they expected no planes. The lookout saw the masts of the convoy. U-653 signaled its sighting report home, “Beta Beta BD1491 Geleitzug Kurs 70.” The sighting signals were special short messages in a highly compressed code, always beginning with Greek letters. Back in the operations room in the Hotel am Steinplatz, the U-boat command was pleased to alert the nearest Raubgraf boats and those of the Stuermer Group. By early that afternoon they were shadowing the convoy, waiting for dark to attack.

  It was a cold night with the moon laying down a wake of light on the wave crests when it skipped out of the clouds. Duvey came off duty and had a cup of coffee, even though he meant to go right to bed, because he was so cold he wanted something hot and he figured he was too tired for anything to keep him awake. He was standing there with the cup in his mitt when he felt the thud, not in their own boat, but nearby. He followed the others on deck. It was a Norwegian freighter, the Elin K. She went down in a matter of minutes, while the snowflake rockets tried to illuminate the U-boats, who had to be on the surface to attack.

  The poor old destroyers and the little corvettes went dashing out on contacts, either from their radar or their huffduff—the radio direction-finding equipment they used to pinpoint the position of subs when they radioed sighting or other reports. The U-boat commanders were, fortunately, a talkative lot. Tonight the escorts seemed unable to catch any of the U-boats. They were out there, but nobody knew where. The captain ordered them to sleep in their life preservers.

  Mike told him a story about being sunk in the Pacific, attacked by a Jap plane, and floating in an open boat for ten days among basking sharks. The Germans called the coordinated attack of the subs a wolf pack, but he thought of it as a feeding frenzy of sharks. The U-boats looked like sharks to him when he saw them, usually when they were under attack. Otherwise you never saw the sub that got you. Once he caught sight of a periscope and reported it. Then he was not sure whether he had really seen anything, or only a trick of the moonlight and the water.

  The moon was setting, two hours later, when he felt that same impact through the water and the ship next to theirs burst into flame. It was maybe two thousand yards away but he could feel the heat on his face when suddenly he fell to his knees. He felt as if a great fist had just slammed him into a wall. His eardrums screeched with pain and his body felt half smashed, as if he had fallen a long ways. Then everything went pitching sharply, violently forward. He grasped the bulkhead in front of him and turned to see that the ship had broken in two. The aft section was upended. No point trying to get to his boat station, no time. He was scrambling up the bow section hand over hand trying to get high enough to jump. They were being sucked under fast. He realized he could not get any higher and so he clambered over the rail and tried to thrust himself through the air as far from the ship as he could.

  The breath was knocked out of him as he hit the water, but he kept his life jacket. The little light went on okay. He swam as hard as he could toward the sound of the next ship, to get himself beyond the suction of his own. He could not see over the waves, swimming hand over hand in a rough crawl in the icy, oily water. God, it was cold, it was cold. Let me make it, let me make it, he begged. He could feel another explosion in the water and it got bright. The waters pulled him around and down but he fought free. He was still afloat.

  He could feel the boilers explode behind and beneath him as his ship sank. Ahead of him he could hear somebody softly cursing and splashing. It was so fucking cold he already couldn’t feel his feet. His legs were heavy and pulling him down. He kept struggling forward. Somebody should be launching a boat to pick them up soon, they had to come. The sea was full of drowning men. He bumped against a body buoyed up by its jacket. A keg was floating near him and he held on to it for a moment to rest, but it kept rolling over and thrusting him beneath the waves, so he let it go. Come on, you bastards, come on. Where are you? Are you going to let us die? The fucking ships looked like they were all changing course, and he thought one of them was going to cut right over him. It didn’t, it veered off. Still they didn’t pick him up. He screamed, swallowing icy salt water, but he knew they couldn’t hear him over the propellers.

  Where were the boats? His mouth filled with water and he choked and coughed his lungs clear and tried to begin swimming again, but his legs weren’t working and he was getting covered with oil. Everything was heavy, heavy and he was cold all through.

  A boat from the destroyer Volunteer put out, rowing among the wreckage. At first they collected all the bodies, but then they had too many. They could hardly row and had no room for survivors.

  Finally the ensign who had taken out the boat decided they should collect every body, look into each face and try to see if the man looked alive. His men’s hands were too numb with the cold and rowing to feel for a pulse, so they had to go by the look of the seaman’s face, if his eyes seemed to see them. What else could they do? If he seemed to be alive, they kept him; if he seemed dead, they looked for his papers and then tossed him back over. When they found David Siegal, he was in shock and in a state of hypothermia. When they let his body slide back in, he landed face in the water.

  Dark in here. Must be in bed. Warmer now. Mama, I can’t get my breath. Can anybody hear me? Mama, did you like the cologne? Mama nodded, reaching out for him. She was speaking but at first he could not hear her. She was saying that he should have sent Ruthie a postcard too.

  RUTHIE 4

  Everybody Needs Somebody to Hate

  When Mama let out that geshrei and fell to the floor, Ruthie was sleeping. At first she had no idea what had disturbed her. Then she heard her mother’s voice rising again and Sharon’s voice beating around her mother’s like a little dog, helpless, circling a disaster.

  As she stumbled out of bed, her first thought was that somethi
ng had happened to one of the little ones, and now Mama and Sharon would be in trouble. That was not the tenor of her mother’s voice as she homed in on it, following that keening to the living room. It was a cry of grief. Something had happened to Tata? With everybody working six days a week and overtime, with so many inexperienced workers, with the speedup and pressure always growing, accidents happened every day. Ruthie ran.

  Rose lay on the floor clutching a telegram. “Who is it?” Ruthie asked, not of her mother but of Sharon. She did not step into the living room, afraid to press forward.

  “It’s Duvey,” Sharon said, shaking her head as if ridding herself of something loose. “They say it’s Duvey,” she repeated, turning to Mama, who lay on the floor pale and gasping. Her eyes stared. She was not weeping but once a minute one of those noises tore from her, the cry of a huge bird, an eagle in extremis. Boston Blackie lay belly to the floor having crept near Mama, terrified. All the little children began to cry.

  Ruthie knelt over her mother and tried to hold her, but Rose could not see her, could not respond. In the meantime the children cried louder. Ruthie got up to deal with them. She was still half asleep and stepped on a box of animal crackers Sharon had put down.

  Ruthie never got back to bed, which meant that when she finished work, she was dangerously exhausted and had to cut classes. At home, Mama wanted to sit shivah but Sharon and Arty persuaded her they could not suspend the nursery for all the little ones whose mothers couldn’t stay home until the period of mourning was past. In truth, as Sharon said privately, it was better for Mama to keep busy with the children or she might collapse.