The Cruel Sea

by Nicholas Monsarrat

  The two-pounder was beginning to score hits: bright flashes came from the U-boat’s bows, and small yellow mushrooms of cordite smoke followed them: the shells were light, but the repeated blows were ripping through her pressure hull and finding her vitals. As Compass Rose came round again, listing sharply under her full helm, the machine guns on her bridge and her signal deck joined in, with an immense clatter. The U-boat settled a little lower, and men began to clamber and pour out of her conning tower. Most of them ran forward, stumbling over the uneven deck, their hands above their heads, waving and shouting at Compass Rose; but one man, more angry or more valiant than the rest, opened fire with a small gun from the shelter of the conning tower, and a spatter of machine gun bullets hit Compass Rose amidships. Then the counter-firing ceased suddenly, as the brave man with the gun slumped forward over the edge of the conning tower: the rest of the crew started jumping overboard – or falling, for Compass Rose’s guns were still blazing away and still scoring hits on men and steel. Blood overran the U-boat’s wet deck, and sluiced down through the scuppers, darkly and agreeably red against the hated grey hull: she began to slide down, stern first, in a great upheaval of oil and air bubbles and the smoke and smell of cordite. A man climbed halfway out of the conning tower, throwing a weighted sack into the water as he did so: for a moment he wrestled to get his body clear, but the dead gunner must have jammed the escape hatch, for the U-boat disappeared before he could free himself. A final explosion from below drove a cascade of oily water upwards: then there was silence. ‘Cease fire,’ said Ericson, when the sea began to close in again and the surface flattened under a spreading film of oil. ‘Wheel amidships. Stop engines. And stand by with those scrambling nets.’

  The wonderful moment was over.

  For one man aboard Compass Rose it had been over for some little time. A young seaman, one of the victorious pom-pom’s crew, had been killed outright by the lone machine-gunner on the U-boat; the small group of men bending over his body, in compassion and concern, was out of sight behind the gun mounting, but they made a private world of grief none the less authentic for being completely at variance with the rest of the ship. They were, however, truly private: no one else could see them: and no one else had eyes for anything but the remnants of the U-boat’s crew as they swam towards the safety of Compass Rose. Many of these, in an extremity of fear or exhaustion, were gasping and crying for help: still exalted by their triumph, the men aboard Compass Rose began to cheer them ironically, unable to take seriously the plight of people whom they knew instinctively had been, a few minutes before, staunch apostles of total warfare . . . ‘These are my favourite kind of survivors,’ said Morell suddenly, to no one in particular: ‘they invented the whole idea themselves. I want to see how they perform.’

  They performed as did all the other survivors whom Compass Rose had picked out of the water: some cried for help, some swam in sensible silence towards their rescuers, some sank before they could be reached. There was one exception, a notable individualist who might well have sabotaged the whole affair. This was a man who, swimming strongly towards the scrambling net which hung down over the ship’s side, suddenly looked up at his rescuers, raised his right arm, and roared out: ‘Heil Hitler!’ There was a swift and immediate growl of rage from aboard Compass Rose, and a sudden disinclination to put any heart into the heaving and hauling which was necessary to bring the survivors on board. ‘Cocky lot of bastards,’ said Wainwright, the torpedoman, sullenly: ‘we ought to leave them in to soak . . .’

  Lockhart, who was standing on the iron deck overseeing the rescue work, felt a sudden spurt of rage as he watched the incident. He felt like agreeing with Wainwright, out loud: he felt that the Captain would be justified in ringing ‘Full ahead’ and leaving these men to splash around until they sank. But that was only a single impulse of emotion. ‘Hurry up!’ he called out, affecting not to notice the mood of the men round him. ‘We haven’t got all day . . .’ One by one the swimmers were hauled out of the water: the man who had shouted was the last to be lifted out, and he had his bare foot so severely trodden on by Leading-Seaman Tonbridge, not a light-treading character, that he now gave a shout of a very different sort.

  ‘Less noise there!’ said Lockhart curtly, his face expressionless. ‘You’re out of danger now . . . Fall them in,’ he added to Tonbridge, and the prisoners were marshalled into an untidy line. There were fourteen of them, with one dead man lying at their feet: the crew of Compass Rose stood around in a rough semicircle, staring at their captives. They seemed an insignificant and unexciting lot: water dripped from their hands and feet on to the deck, and above their nondescript and sodden clothes their faces were at once woebegone and relieved, like very bad comedians who have at least got through their act without violence from the audience. No heroes, these: deprived of their ship, they were indeed hardly men at all. The crew of Compass Rose felt disappointed, almost tricked, by the quality of those whom they had first defeated and then salvaged from defeat. Was this, they thought, really all that was meant by a U-boat’s crew?

  But there was still something about them, something which attacked the senses and spread discomfort and unease, like an infected limb in a sound body . . . They were strangers, and their presence on board was disgusting, like the appearance of the U-boat on the surface of the sea. They were people from another and infinitely abhorrent world – not just Germans, but U-boat Germans, doubly revolting. As quickly as possible, they were searched, and listed, and hidden below.

  Ericson had ordered the German captain, who was among the prisoners, to be put in his own cabin, with a sentry on the door as a formal precaution; and later that morning, when they were within sight of the convoy and steaming up to report to Viperous, he went below to meet his opposite number. That was how he phrased it, in his mood of triumph and satisfaction: Compass Rose had really done very well, she had brought off something which had cost two years of hard effort, and he was ready to meet anyone halfway, in the interests of good humour. But after the testing excitement of the morning, his mood was a matter of careful balance: he was not prepared for the sort of man he found in his cabin, and he experienced, during the interview, the swiftest change of feeling he had ever known.

  The German captain was standing in the middle of the cabin, peering somewhat forlornly out of the porthole: he turned as Ericson came in, and seemed to collect himself into some accustomed pattern, the only one that the world deserved to see . . . He was tall, dead blond, and young – nearly young enough to be Ericson’s son; but thank God he was not, thought Ericson suddenly, noting the pale and slightly mad eyes, the contempt that twitched his lips and nostrils, the sneer against life and the hatred of his capture by an inferior. He was young, but his face was old with some derivative disease of power. There’s nothing we can do with these people, thought Ericson with sombre insight: they are not curable. We can only shoot them, and hope for a better crop next time.

  ‘Heil Hitler!’ began the German crisply. ‘I wish to—’

  ‘No,’ said Ericson grimly, ‘I don’t think we’ll start like that. What’s your name?’

  The German glared. ‘Von Hellmuth. Kapitän-Leutnant von Hellmuth. You are also the Captain? What is yours?’

  ‘Ericson.’

  ‘Ah, a good German name!’ exclaimed von Hellmuth, raising his yellow eyebrows, as to some evidence of gentility in a tramp.

  ‘Certainly not!’ snapped Ericson. ‘And stop throwing your weight about. You’re a prisoner. You’re confined here. Just behave yourself.’

  The German frowned at this breach of decorum: there was bitter hostility in his whole expression, even in the set of his shoulders. ‘You took my ship by surprise, Captain,’ he said sourly. ‘Otherwise . . .’

  His tone hinted at treachery, unfair tactics, a course of conduct outrageous to German honour: suitable only for Englishmen, Poles, Negroes. And what the hell have you been doing all these months, Ericson thought, except taking people by surprise, stalking them
, giving them no chance. But that idea would not have registered. Instead he smiled ironically, and said: ‘It is war. I am sorry if it is too hard for you.’

  Von Hellmuth gave him a furious glance, but he did not answer the remark: he saw, too late, that by complaining of his method of defeat he had confessed to weakness. His glance went round the cabin, and changed to a sneer.

  ‘This is a poor cabin,’ he said. ‘I am not accustomed—’

  Ericson stepped up to him, suddenly shaking with anger. In the back of his mind he thought: if I had a revolver I’d shoot you here and now. That was what these bloody people did to you: that was how the evil disease multiplied and bred in the heart . . . When he spoke his voice was clipped and violent.

  ‘Be quiet!’ he snapped out. ‘If you say another word, I shall have you put down in one of the provision lockers . . .’ He turned suddenly towards the door. ‘Sentry!’

  The leading-seaman on duty, a revolver in his belt, appeared in the doorway. ‘Sir?’

  ‘This prisoner is dangerous,’ said Ericson tautly. ‘If he makes any sort of move to leave the cabin, shoot him.’

  The man’s face was expressionless: only his eyes, moving suddenly from the Captain to von Hellmuth, gave a startled flicker of interest. ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ He disappeared again.

  Von Hellmuth’s expression hovered between contempt and anxiety. ‘I am an officer of the German Navy—’ he began.

  ‘You’re a bastard in any language,’ Ericson interrupted curtly. He felt another violent surge of anger. I could do it, he thought, in amazement at his wild feeling: I could do it now, as easily as snapping my fingers . . . ‘I’m not particularly interested in getting you back to England,’ he said, slowly and carefully. ‘We could bury you this afternoon, if I felt like it . . . Just watch it, that’s all – just watch it!’

  He turned and strode from the cabin. Outside, he wondered why he was not ashamed of himself.

  11

  The two bodies lay side by side on the quarterdeck, neatly tucked in under the two ensigns. Ericson, clearing his throat to start reading the burial service, found his eye held almost hypnotically by the twin splashes of colour. There are two sailors under there, he thought: they lie there indistinguishable, except that ours was killed outright and theirs died of wounds and exhaustion: and there’s not much to choose between the two flags either, in the use they are now put to – though perhaps the boldly-marked swastika made a smarter shroud than the White Ensign . . . He cleared his throat again, irritated and surprised at his thoughts.

  ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live,’ he began, hardly looking at the book: he knew the service by heart. But the gentle words affected him: as he read, he thought of the dead, and of the young seaman who was Compass Rose’s first casualty. He found that sad: and the German captain, standing free of escort a yard from him, found his own role sad also. His proud face was working, he was emotionally shocked out of the arrogant mould: he admitted bereavement . . . It was probably the swastika, Ericson reflected: the dead sailor from his crew would not bother him, but the ‘gesture of honour’ implied by the burial party and the enemy ensign would knock him out.

  At Lockhart’s signal to the bridge, the engine stopped; Compass Rose fell silent, save for the water sucking and gurgling under her counter. ‘We do now commit their bodies to the deep,’ said Ericson, and paused. The pipes shrilled, the planks tipped, the neat canvas parcels slid from under the ensigns and went over the side, disappearing without trace. Close by him, he heard and felt the German captain tremble. Yes, thought Ericson, it is sad, after all.

  He put on his cap, and saluted. The German captain, watching him, did the same. When they faced each other, Ericson saw tears glittering in the pale eyes. He nodded, and looked away.

  ‘Thank you, Captain,’ said the German. ‘I appreciate all you have done.’ He held out his hand awkwardly. ‘I would like—’

  Ericson shook his hand without saying anything. He was shy of his emotion, and of the thirty-odd members of Compass Rose’s crew who must be watching them.

  The German captain said suddenly: ‘Comrades of the sea . . .’ Did he mean the two men they had just buried, Ericson wondered, or themselves, the two captains who were sharing the same experience? Perhaps it did not matter . . . He nodded again, and began to walk forward, leaving Lockhart to see to the prisoner.

  But as he walked, he lost the mood of emotion and sorrow: it suddenly became false. This was no special occasion: there had been so many burials from Compass Rose: eighteen in one day was the record so far – eighteen before breakfast. Two was nothing; two was hardly worth turning out for . . . Those bloody Germans! he thought as he began the climb up to the bridge: first they made you lose your temper, then they made you cry. It was unsettling, it was spurious; there was something totally wrong in having them on board. One lost strength and virtue through the mere association. Prisoners are a mistake, he thought crudely: we should have used them for target practice in the water, we should have steamed away and left them whining. They would spoil any ship, destroy any settled habit of mind . . .

  Subconsciously he knew that even this atrocious thought – the shooting of survivors in the water – had its origin in the presence of the prisoners on board, in the way in which von Hellmuth had twice thrown him off balance.

  He sat down in his chair on the bridge, and began a conscious effort to get back to normal. He realised that he was very tired.

  12

  The tiredness and the revulsion of feeling meant that he hardly talked at all about the sinking of the U-boat: after the first excitement, he became taciturn, and Lockhart, who suggested a drink in the wardroom to celebrate, found himself virtually snubbed when Ericson said: ‘I don’t think we ought to start drinking at sea.’ But Ericson was hugging close to him his pride and pleasure in their triumph: indeed, it was the first time he had ever understood this phrase ‘hugging close’, and he found that it brought almost physical warmth. He did not share in the immense and uproarious excitement which pervaded the whole ship and which could initiate a ragged burst of cheering from the mess decks at any hour of the day; but in the back of his mind, as in the minds of every man on board, was a clear sense of achievement – achievement crowning 1941, crowning two whole years of trial and effort, and making up for every hated minute of them. They had worked very hard for that U-boat, they had endured every extreme of fatigue, boredom, eye strain, cold, and crude discomfort: now, at a stroke, the slate seemed to be wiped clean, the account squared. But for Ericson, it was a private account: he did not want to share his new solvency with anyone.

  Only once did he emerge from his emotional retreat. Later in the voyage, when they were near home, chance took them close alongside Viperous, and the flood of congratulations that came over the loudhailer seemed to release some spring within him, unloosing a boyish sense of well-being and cheerfulness. He picked up the microphone.

  ‘Would you like to see some Germans?’ he asked Viperous, across the twenty yards of water that separated them. ‘They’re just about due for an airing . . . Dig them out, Number One,’ he added aside to Lockhart. ‘Fall them in on the fo’c’sle.’

  Presently the first of the file of prisoners began to mount the ladder.

  ‘They’re a scruffy-looking lot,’ Ericson called out apologetically, as the men shambled into view, peering about them like mice leaving the shelter of the wainscot. ‘I think we ought to win the war, don’t you?’

  PART FOUR

  1942: Fighting

  1

  The old year, triumphant only at its close, had achieved a level of violence and disaster which set the tone for the new. Just before Christmas, two Allied countries had sustained naval losses of shocking dimensions: Britain had lost two great ships – Prince of Wales and Repulse – in a single bombing attack, and America, at Pearl Harbour, had suffered a crippling blow which robbed her of half her effective fleet at one stroke. (‘Proper uproar, it must have been,’ Lo
ckhart overheard someone in the mess decks say, and another anonymous voice answered: ‘Biggest surprise since Ma caught ‘er tits in the mangle . . .’) The attack brought America into the war, an ally coming to the rescue at a most crucial moment: but her principal war was never the Atlantic – that lifeline remained, from beginning to end, the ward of the British and the Canadian navies. America turned her eyes to the Pacific, where she had much to do to stem the furious tide of the Japanese advance: in the Atlantic, the battle of escort against U-boats still saw the same contestants in the ring, now coming up for the fourth round, the bloodiest so far.

  For now the battle was in spate, now the wild and vicious blows of both sides were storming towards a climax. The U-boats had a clear ascendancy, and they used it with the utmost skill and complete ruthlessness. Germany started the year with a total of 260 of them: she added to it at the rate of 20 a month – a swelling fleet which made it possible for her to keep 100 U-boats at sea in the Atlantic at the same time. Spread in a long line across the convoy routes, they intercepted and reported convoys as a matter of the simplest routine: this interception was combined with a perfected system of pack attack, by which 20 or more U-boats were ‘homed’ on to a convoy and fell upon it, as one team, with a series of repeated blows, until its remnants reached safety. In the face of this crushing opposition, the Allied efforts seemed puny, and their countermeasures like the futile gestures of one slow wrestler caged in a ring with a dozen tormenting opponents.

  In the single month of March, 94 ships were sunk: in May, 125: in June, 144 – nearly five a day: the appalling rate of loss continued around the 100 mark, every month for the rest of the year. It was the nadir of the war at sea: it was, in fact, a tempo of destruction which would mean defeat for the Allies within a measurable period of time, if it were allowed to continue. The escorts did their best, aided by new offensive weapons and by the inclusion of small aircraft carriers – converted merchantmen – accompanying the convoys: in addition, they initiated a scheme of ‘support groups’, self-contained striking forces of six or eight escorts which were kept continuously at sea, ready to go to the help of hard-pressed convoys. These combined efforts showed results which were the best of the war so far: in the first seven months of the year, 42 U-boats were sunk, and in the best month of all, November, 16 of them were destroyed: this was double the rate of destruction of the previous year, but then the U-boats were doubling their successes as well . . . On balance, the honours – if that was the right word for so inhuman and treacherous a struggle – were going overwhelmingly to the enemy; unless that tide could be stemmed, and turned backwards, the battle of the Atlantic was going to decide the whole war; and the Allied cause, squeezed and throttled by starvation and the denial of war materials, would collapse in ruins.