Das Boot

  The weather is obviously worrying the Commander. “Lows of this sort sometimes move at one to two hundred miles an hour, which means severe disturbances and oscillations between subtropical and polar air,” he explains. “They create violent turbulence—the wind can go completely crazy.”

  “You’re in for a treat,” the Chief says tauntingly, grinning at me. The Old Man bends over the chart, the navigator peering over his shoulder.

  “These North Atlantic storm fronts are no joke. There’ll be cold air behind the retreating low. It’ll probably bring squalls and, with any luck, better visibility. Of course we could go farther north, but then we’d get deeper into the eye of the squall. And dodging south is unfortunately out on tactical grounds. Well, Kriechbaum; only one thing to do—praise the Lord and go slap through the middle. Too bad we’ve got the sea dead on our port beam.”

  “It’s going to be a real rodeo,” says the navigator hollowly.

  A few of the off-duty seamen are busy using light lines to lash down the provision chests. Otherwise there isn’t much to do: none of the storm preparations you get on a surface vessel. The Old Man can be comfortable, his big hands resting idly on his thighs.

  At lunch we have to put up the plate rails; even so, we spend our time trying to keep the soup from slopping over.

  All at once the Chief says casually to the Second Engineer, “What’s with your eyelashes and eyebrows? You ought to show that to the doc.”

  After the two Watch Officers and the Second Engineer have departed, he says—just as casually—“Crablice.”

  “What—how’s that again?” snaps the Old Man.

  “What the Second Engineer’s got in his eyebrows and the roots of his eyelashes.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Seriously. When they start breeding there, things have gone pretty far.”

  The Old Man inhales violently through his nose and stares at the Chief—disconcerted, forehead a washboard of wrinkles, mouth half open.

  “With all due respect to the range of your knowledge, is that supposed to mean your successor is… ?”

  “Tsch—perhaps one oughtn’t to assume the worst straight off!”

  There is a cynical grin on the Chief’s face. The Commander shakes his head as if to test his vertebrae. Finally he says, “The Second Engineer has just gone up in my estimation. I’m curious to see what he’ll do next.”

  Now it’s the Chief’s turn to gape in astonishment.

  The boat gradually goes quiet. You can hear the humming of the ventilators. Only when the door to the bow compartment opens for a few instants do we hear snatches of song and the gabble of voices. I get up and make my way forward.

  “Great ruckus in the cable locker,” says the navigator with an approving nod as I pass through the Quarters. The bow compartment is even murkier than usual.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Jubilation and riot!” a chorus of voices shouts back at me. The men off-watch are squatting close together tailor-fashion on the floor plates. It looks like an impromptu version of the robber scene from Carmen, with amazingly tattered costumes improvised out of oil-smeared drill jackets and streaked sweaters that they’ve dug out of some rummage heap.

  The boat suddenly heels sharply. Leather jackets and oilskins swing out from the wall. We have to hold fast to the bunk ropes. Sharp curses from the depths of the compartment. I peer into the darkness between the heads and the hammocks. Someone is dancing about naked.

  “The bridge johnny! He’s keeping his precious body fit,” is the explanation I get from Little Benjamin. “Does it all the time. He’s mad about himself.”

  Mournful singing comes from the forward bunks and one of the hammocks. Little Benjamin gets his harmonica out, ceremoniously empties it by tapping it in his palm, slides it back and forth a couple of times across his tightened lips, holding it in the hollow of his hand, and finally strikes up a melody to which he adds a light tremolo, with soft, quick taps of his free hand. Hagen hums in tune. One after another the seamen join in. Bockstiegel leads the chorus.

  She took the train to Hamburg

  Her mood was black as black.

  At Flensburg Junction out she got

  And lay upon the track.

  The engineer, he spied the girl

  And took the brake in hand.

  Alas, the train sped blithely on.

  A head rolls in the sand.

  “Hell and damnation, it’s ten to, already!” Fackler announces suddenly. “What a life. You no sooner sit down than you have to get up again. Shit!” Cursing, he leaves the group.

  Schwalle gets up too, methodically tightening his belt, and disappears through the door, saying, “Off to work!”

  “Give it my love!” Bockstiegel shouts after him.

  The Chief is still sitting in the Officers’ Mess. He looks at me expectantly and asks, “What does the glazier do when he’s got no glass?”

  My look of bewilderment does me no good. No mercy to be had.

  “He drinks out of the bottle.”

  Wearily I ignore the joke.

  From the control room the sound of water gushing through the hatch is like a cloudburst. Occasionally a gigantic fist rises and strikes the hull. The rumble is so loud it makes me jump. The Commander grins. “Just the sea elephants trying to rub their spawn off on the boat!”

  More dull rumbling. The Chief gets up, braces himself carefully, lifts one of the floor plates, and motions me toward him. “There goes one of them now!”

  I stick my head through the hole and in the light of a flashlight see a small car suspended from two rails. There’s a man lying on it all twisted up.

  “He’s testing the acid concentration in the batteries.”

  “Nice job in this kind of sea!”

  “You can say that again.”

  I reach for a book but soon discover that I’m much too weary and bruised to concentrate. The only thing now would be to tie one on—go on a real bender—put myself an entire world away from this wretched sense of suffocation and living death. Beck’s beer—Pilsner Urquell, good Münchner Lowenbrau—Martell—Hennessy, the fine three-star stuff!

  Suddenly I notice that the Chief is looking intently at me. He jeers. “Abstracted—that’s the word. Our abstracted ship’s poet!”

  At this I whirl around, bare my teeth, and snarl like a wild animal. This pleases the Chief. He keeps on grinning for quite a while.

  Saturday. I’m on morning watch with the navigator. The wind has whipped the groundswell into foaming crests and swift green valleys. High mat ridges, their sides dull like slabs of slate. Luckily we no longer have the sea abeam but directly head on. Who knows what circumstance we have to thank for this overnight change of course.

  We might as well be standing still, as the mountains of water beat down on us in closed ranks, one after the other.

  About halfway through the watch a wall appears directly ahead of us, looking like gray-black plaster. It reaches from the horizon right into the sky. Gradually it stirs into life. Arms grow out of it and slowly extend over half the visible heavens, until they extinguish the last pale radiance of the sun. The air becomes heavier and heavier with brute pressure. The hiss and roar of the waves sounds all the louder because there is a sudden lull in the howling of the wind.

  And now the storm is upon us. It advances in a sudden assault, racing toward us out of the wall ahead, ripping away the greenishwhite skin from the waves as it comes.

  The air is a slab of unbroken mouse-gray. Only the occasional dark fleck betrays the fact that the whole sky is in wild flight.

  From time to time, individual waves rise above the rest, but the storm challenges them instantly with searing blasts, and whips the high-tossed water backward.

  The piping of the net guard cable grows steadily shriller.

  The storm tries out all its possible voices, and at every possible strength: shrieking, yowling, groaning. Whenever the bow plunges downward and the net guard goes un
derwater, the whining ceases momentarily. But as soon as the bow springs clear of the mottled green whirlpool, it resounds again. The banner of water hanging from the net guard is ripped and torn to rags by the wind—in seconds it’s gone.

  I brace my back against the periscope housing and inch my way upward to look over the bulwark of the bridge at the whole length of the foreship. Screaming blasts of wind instantly strike my head. This is no longer air—no volatile element—but a solid, tangible mass that forces itself between my jaws whenever I open my mouth.

  The storm! I want to roar aloud with delight. I screw up my eyes in concentration, taking mental snapshots of the action of the waves, instant home movies of the origin of the world.

  The flying spray forces me into the protection of the bulwark. My eyelids are swollen. My seaboots full of water. Poorly designed: The water forces its way into them from the top. The gloves are no good either. They were completely soaked through, so I handed them down some time ago. The knuckles of my hands are dead white—washerwoman’s hands.

  We are enveloped in sheets of foam, and I don’t dare straighten up for minutes at a time.

  These metal bathtubs, open at the back, into which we duck like defensive boxers, don’t deserve the name bridges. They have nothing in common with the bridges of ordinary ships, which extend across the whole superstructure and are properly glassed in, dry and warm: a sure protection from which one can look down on a stormy sea from a height of thirty, forty, fifty feet—as one might from the upper story of a house. Those bridges have rapidly rotating glass disks that retain not a drop of water.

  Our bridge, on the contrary, is nothing more than a big shield, a sort of breastplate. The wind deflectors that are built in around the upper edge of the bulwark are intended to protect us by turning the horizontal force of the wind into an upward current, thus forming a kind of wall of air, but a storm of this strength nullifies any effectiveness they may have. And toward the stern, the bridge offers no protection whatever; our position is entirely exposed and the water floods in continuously.

  I spend most of the watch standing in swirling water that rises around me like a tearing, sucking, raging river. Barely has one whirlpool rushed out astern through the watergates when the Second Watch Officer shouts, “Hold fast!” and the next surge hurls itself onto the bridge. I dodge around this boxing ring, chin pressed down against my chest. But the water has feints of its own. It strikes blows to the face from below, real driving uppercuts.

  So I won’t be swept off my feet, I wedge myself between the TBT post and the wall of the bridge. Brace yourself tight, breathe deep, make yourself heavy! You can’t just rely on the safety belts, however sturdy and solid they may look.

  Still dazed, I have barely raised my head to take a quick glance round the sector when the Second Watch Officers shouts, “Look out!” and another wave roars in. Head down again. Another crack across the back followed by a second blow from underneath. My hands cramp in a desperate hold until the knuckles stand out in ridges. I snatch a quick glance astern: Through the bars of the railing and past the mounting of the anti-aircraft gun the aftership is invisible—buried under a thick blanket of seething foam. The gas exhaust flaps have disappeared, smothered by the whirlpool, as have the air intake valves; the diesels must now be drawing their air from the inside of the boat.

  Within seconds another wave crashes dully against the tower and shoots high in the air like a breaker meeting a cliff. Two tearing, blinding walls of spray converge over the aftership, collide, and shoot roaring upward. Then the water rushes whirling and gurgling over the aftership and the boat’s hull forces its way up again through its smothering burden of foam to shake off every remaining rivulet of water. For a few moments the whole upper deck is free. Then the boiling waves strike again, punching the aftership down. Fight free and dodge away, duck down and up again, in a neverending sequence.

  I can no longer feel a thing as I climb down, soaked. Groaning, I peel off my rubber jacket. Beside me the bridge johnny is cursing. “Whoever designed these togs must have been a real asshole.”

  He continues to gripe as he peels the wet clothes from his body.

  “Complain to Headquarters,” Isenberg needles him. “The C-in-C’s delighted to have suggesions from the fighting forces; you can bet your life on that.”

  “Fairly rough,” is the Old Man’s comment on the sea. He’s sitting at the table leafing through his blue and green notebooks. I want to tell him that the adjective “rough,” for me at least, may serve to describe sandpaper but not this waterbound insanity—but what’s the point? The Old Man seems to have no stronger word to describe it.

  He reads aloud in a grumble. “Unobserved by the enemy, the U-boat can infiltrate any area of the sea in which it wishes to be of military service. Thus it is the most suitable mine-layer for use in direct action against enemy coasts, the mouths of enemy harbors, and estuaries. Here, at the focus point of enemy commerce, the Uboat’s limited load factor is also less of a disadvantage. Likewise, this limited number of mines offers optimal chances of success.”

  He looks up, staring me straight in the face. “Wishes to be of service—mines offer optimal chances! Well, that’s style for you, eh?”

  Soon he finds another passage that provokes him to read aloud. “The U-boat man loves his fighting unit. It proved its daring spirit in the First World War, and to this day the U-boat Command preserves this same determination and daring to the best of its ability.”

  “Pretty, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll say!” says the Old Man and snorts. “The C-in-C’s very own work.”

  A bit later he shakes his head and reads something aloud from a newspaper. “Helios surprise tip to win the Cup.” He closes his eyes for a moment, then mutters, “And people think they’ve got troubles.”

  How far away it all seems!

  I realize that we hardly ever think of the mainland. Rarely does anyone talk about home. Sometimes I feel we’ve been on patrol for years. If it weren’t for the radio news, we could imagine we were voyaging the globe as the last specimens of Homo sapiens in existence.

  I play with the notion that High Command might forget us altogether. What would happen then? How far could we get, using all our reserves? Under our feet of course we have the ship that’s known to have the maximum operating range. But what about provisions? Our twilight world could certainly function as a mushroom farm. The climate here on board is ideal—the mold on our bread is proof of that. Or watercress. You’re supposed to be able to grow watercress under electric lights. The bosun could certainly find a place for it, just under the ceiling in the gangway, for example. Watercress gardens overhead, suspended on gimbals.

  Finally, we could catch algae. Algae have a high vitamin C content. Perhaps there’s even a species that would flourish in the bilge, using the grease as a kind of fertilizer.

  Sunday. “There ought to be crisp fresh rolls on the table,” the Chief says at breakfast time. “Smothered in salted butter, melting a little because the rolls are still warm inside—straight from the baker! And a cup of hot cocoa, not sweet—the bitter kind—but hot. That would hit the spot.”

  The Chief raises his eyes ecstatically and dramatically fans the imaginary fragrance toward his nose.

  “You’d make it in burlesque,” says the Old Man. “Now show us a breakfast of powdered scrambled eggs, compliments of the Navy.”

  On cue, the Chief gags and gulps, making his Adam’s apple bob violently up and down; his eyes are bulging, fixed rigidly on a spot before him on the table.

  The Old Man is satisfied. But the First Watch Officer, whose expressionless demonstrations of zeal extend even to mealtimes, where he methodically consumes every last scrap of the rations assigned to him, finds this more than he can bear. He casts a pained expression around the table.

  “Clear away!” the Commander shouts into the control room, and the steward appears with his smelly rag. The First Watch Officer turns up his nose in disgust.


  After breakfast I take myself off again to the petty officers’ quarters. I want to catch up on a little sleep. “We’re still going to get knocked around a bit” is the last thing I hear from the Old Man in the control room.

  However hard I try, whatever new position I experiment with, I cannot wedge my body into the bunk so as not to be rolled and tossed around. I could get used to the rolling if only it had some rhythm to it. But the hard jolts when the bow falls or a heavy wave strikes the foreship drive me to desperation. And there are sinister new sounds. Roaring blows against the tower that carry an unfamiliar accompaniment, a ceaseless rasping, whirring, scraping, scratching, and—whole octaves higher—a threatening, rhythmless drumming, plus a nerve-destroying series of yowlings, screeches, and whistles. Not a minute passes without a violent shuddering running the length of the pressure hull or noises piercing you to the very bone. Against this unending misery, and the orgy of sound, the only defense is dull resignation.

  The hell of it is that the din doesn’t stop at night; as the boat falls quiet, the uproar of the waves seems to increase. At times it sounds as if waterfalls were plummeting into the molten contents of a blast furnace. I lie awake and try to differentiate the sounds that make up the clamor outside: in addition to the rasping and hissing there is lapping, smacking, and chiseling. Then the mighty crashing blows begin again, making the boat resound continuously like a giant drum. Davy Jones! I think—muffled drum and drunken gong. The storm must be sweeping along now at a good sixty-five miles an hour.

  As the bow makes its crashing curtsy, the compartment drops forward, slanting, steeper and steeper. Our clothes stand out from the wall at forty-five degrees. My curtain shoots open of itself, my legs rise helplessly into the air. My head is thrust down—and the room goes around in a circle as the boat tries to free itself sideways. It doesn’t want to stand on its head. From astern our propellers sound as if they’ve spun themselves into a cocoon of cotton wool. The boat shivers feverishly, some iron part rattles violently against some other one: a rolling of drums.