Das Boot

  When dinner time comes and the Commander appears in the Officers’ Mess I can’t believe my eyes—he’s wearing oilskins. The others stare at him as if there’s a stranger on board. We can hardly see anything of his face, he has wrapped himself up so completely.

  “This evening’s dinner dress will be oilskins,” the Old Man murmurs and grins at us from between the collar of his oilskin jacket and the lowered brim of his sou’wester as though through the slit in a visor. “Well, gentlemen?” he asks impatiently. “Not hungry today? Just when the cook has brought off this magnificent coup: soup in this weather!”

  It takes a while for us to rouse ourselves, and then like obedient children we tumble into the control room where the foul-weather gear is hanging. The famous statue of Laocöon conjures itself up before my eyes as I watch the contortions and corkscrew maneuvers the engineers and Watch Officers have to perform to get into their still-wet gear.

  Finally we sit down around the table, looking like carnival figures. The Commander is bursting with mischievous pride.

  Suddenly there’s a crash in the gangway: the steward has landed on his stomach. His hands are above his head, still clutching the soup tureen. Not a drop has been spilled.

  “It’s never got the better of him yet!” says the Commander, unmoved, and the Chief nods in agreement.

  “And no rehearsal—a performance like that first time around—he’s really something!”

  The Second Watch Officer serves the soup—consisting of potatoes, meat, and vegetables—while I hold on to the safety belt under his oilskin jacket. Nevertheless, he’s only got to the second man before he empties a whole ladleful onto the table.

  “Goddammit!”

  Whereupon the Chief lets his half-full plate spill, substantially increasing the pond of soup in front of us. Pale chunks of potato float about in the dark-brown brew between the railings—blocks of ice from a glacier that’s just calved. The next time the boat heels, only the potato is left on the table; the soup has found its way under the railings, slopping into the laps of the Commander and the Chief.

  The Commander casts a triumphant glance around the table. “You see?” He can hardly wait for more soup to overflow.

  The Second Watch Officer’s gurgling laughter is interrupted by a dull crash. The Commander’s grin freezes. Immediately he’s all attention. The Chief springs up to get out of his way as word comes from the control room: “Chart chest overturned.”

  Through the hatch I can see four men struggling to put the heavy iron box back in its place.

  The Commander looks disconcerted, then mutters to himself, “Incredible. That chest has been there since this boat was commissioned and has never moved so much as an inch.”

  “No one at home will believe it,” the Chief remarks. “They simply can’t imagine it. On our next leave we ought to invent a U-boat game. Go without shaving or washing for months. No change of linen, into bed with boots and stinking leather clothes on. Brace your knee against the table while eating, and instead of serving spinach on a plate, plop it down on the table top…”

  The Chief gulps a couple of mouthfuls and goes on elaborating his plan. “And if the telephone rings, yell ‘Alarm!’ like a madman, knock over the table, and rush for the door like greased lightning.”

  Saturday. The gusts have once again become a single prolonged blast that pummels the boat head on.

  The barograph is drawing a steep line downward.

  “I’d just like to know,” says the Old Man, “how the Tommies keep their scows together in such heavenly weather. They can’t make the whole damn convoy heave to. And the boys on those tin can destroyers—they’ll be having quite a time of it!”

  I remember trips on destroyers at force five. That was enough. Full speed was out of the question. At six our destroyers don’t leave the harbor at Brest. Time off. But the British destroyers can’t pick and choose their weather. They have to furnish convoy protection in any storm—even this one.

  In the afternoon I disguise myself as a great seadog and climb the ladder. I wait close under the hatch cover until the water has gushed away, push the lid open, and climb out. Kicking the hatch shut and fastening the snap of my safety belt I do in one motion.

  A wave like the back of a gigantic whale rises obliquely in front of the boat. It gets bigger and bigger, loses its hump and straightens up into a wall. The wall becomes concave, rushes toward us, gleaming glassy-green. And now our bow plunges into it. “No longer—” The Second Watch Officer has hardly begun when the wave crashes against the tower. The boat reels.

  “—any use,” the Second Watch Officer completes his sentence a minute later.

  I know of times when the whole deck crew has been torn out of a bridge cockpit by an oversized wave, without anyone in the boat knowing a thing about it. Such murderous waves are created at random from the piling of one swell upon another. Against a giant of that kind no safety belt holds.

  What must it feel like to lie there in the water, in your sodden gear, and see the boat moving away—smaller and smaller, hidden momentarily behind the waves and then gone for good. You’re done for, fini. And the expression on the face of the first man to discover that the whole bridge watch has disappeared, that the boat is wandering blindly through the seas…

  We’re making slow speed; more would be dangerous. The boat could dive involuntarily. There have been instances of boats running too fast in a heavy sea and being driven at an angle down one mountainous wave and into the next, like a dowel, carried by their own momentum to a depth of a hundred feet or more, The bridge watch came close to being drowned. And if too much water were to pour in through the diesel intake pipes, a boat could actually sink.

  The Second Watch Officer turns his red face toward me. “I’d like to know how much progress we’re really making!”

  Suddenly he shouts, “Heads down!”

  Which means: duck and hold your breath.

  I just have time to see the open-mouthed Officer, the green mountain that’s rising to the left in front of our tower, and the great white paw that extends from it hesitating. Then it strikes with thundering force on the side of the foreship. The boat sags way over under the blow. Down with your head! A boiling surge hisses over the bridge, submerges it. We no longer have a ship under our feet.

  But now the same wave lifts the boat up. The bow extends clean out of water and hangs for a while in midair until the wave lets the boat fall. Water rushes off through the scuppers and the open afterend of the cockpit. Foaming whirlpools tear at our legs.

  “Too damn much,” growls the Second Watch Officer. Then just as the next wave is running through under the boat he has the hatch opened and word passed down. “To the Commander: Visibility much impaired by breaking waves. Request alteration of course three hundred degrees.”

  For a moment radio music rises from the open tower hatch. Then a voice from below. “Three hundred degrees course authorized.”

  “Alter course to three hundred degrees,” the Second Watch Officer orders the helmsman. Slowly the boat turns until the waves are coming obliquely from astern. Now it will perform like a rocking horse.

  “Heading three hundred degrees,” comes the voice of the helmsman from below. The tower hatch is closed again.

  My face burns if I rub my sleeve over it. I’ve no idea how often I’ve been caught by the whiplashes. I’m only surprised that my eyes aren’t swollen shut. Every blink is painful. My eyelids seem to have puffed up double. My god, what punishment!

  I nod wordlessly to the Second Watch Officer, wait for a swirling whirlpool to subside, pull open the hatch, and disappear below.

  Bottomless depression overwhelms me. This martyrdom is a test of endurance, an exercise to determine the limits of our capacity for pain.

  The radioman picks up SOS calls from several ships.

  “The cargo hatches on the freighters must be getting smashed, and the holds filling with water. The waves’ll be making matchwood of the lifeboats too.”


  The Old Man describes various kinds of storm damage that can afflict an ordinary ship. “If the steering mechanism breaks down on one of those barges or they lose a screw, there’s nothing the crew can do but pray.”

  The roar of the water, the rattling of spray, and the hissing of the bilge form background music to the dull resounding thump of the waves on the foreship.

  I can only marvel that this wild upheaval hasn’t rent our seams, that the boat hasn’t begun to buckle. Some dishes and a few bottles of apple juice are all that have been broken so far. It seems that the waves can do nothing to the ship itself. But they are forcing us gradually to our knees. The machines hold up—only we mere men are poorly constructed for such torment.

  I can tell by the paucity of radio activity how unsuccessful the U-boats are being. Requests for position reports, routine signals, test transmissions—that’s all.

  I’m suddenly reminded of a passage in Joseph Conrad’s Youth, when the bark Judea, with a cargo of coal for Bangkok, runs into an Atlantic winter storm which little by little destroys the ship: the bulwark, the stays, the lifeboats, the ventilators, the deckhouse, along with the galley and the crew’s quarters! And how they man the pumps, from captain down to cabin boy, slaving for their lives, lashed to the mast—day and night. The sentence, “We had forgotten what it was like to feel dry,” remains in my mind.

  This memory brings me comfort now: The sea cannot drown us. No other kind of ship is as seaworthy as this one.

  Sunday. Before taking even the most trivial action I have to struggle with myself. Should I even bother—or would it be just as well not to?

  It’s the lack of sleep that undermines our strength most of all. The only real peace comes when there’s no visibility at all and the Commander orders a dive. Once the boat is balanced, you rarely hear so much as a raised voice, Decks of playing cards lie idle. During the hour or two that we’re underwater, everyone tries to get some sleep.

  The quiet in the submerged boat disconcerts me every time. When all the men are lying in their bunks or on the floor overcome by exhaustion, it’s as though the boat had been deserted by her crew.

  Monday. I summon up enough energy to note in my diary: “Impossible to serve meals. Whole thing meaningless. Dive shortly before two o’clock. Marvelous: We stay down. More and more inflammations. Carbuncles of the worst kind. Inflamed scabs. Icthyol ointment on everything.”

  Tuesday. The Commander writes up the day just past in the war log:

  13.00 Both engines turning over fast enough to achieve half speed. But we remain almost stationary.

  13.55 Dive on account of bad weather.

  20.00 Surface. Still heavy sea. Use of weapons limited.

  22.00 Proceeding submerged because of weather conditions.

  01.31 Surface. Heavy seas. Limited visibility.

  02.15 Boat hove to because of very heavy seas.

  Wednesday. The wind shifts to the southeast. Its strength has increased again to eleven. “Very heavy seas from east to southeast. Barometer falling sharply.”

  In the control room the navigator is braced with spread legs against the chart table. As I try to look over his shoulder he glances up moodily and growls, “Ten days with no fixed bearing. And these crazy waves and winds must have pushed us miles off course.”

  Thursday. In the half-light of dawn the navigator decides to try his luck once more. Visibility has in fact somewhat improved. Here and there the sky is torn open to reveal a few stars. The horizon can be glimpsed when it’s not being cut off by the humps of wandering waves. Then it looks like a straight furrow interrupted by large hummocks.

  But whenever the navigator gets ready and has located a known star, spray comes shooting over the bridge and makes the sextant unusable. He has to hand the instrument down to the control room and wait for it to be dried and handed up again. After a quarter of an hour he gives up. “An inaccurate navigational reading is just as bad as none at all!” he says as he climbs down. He’ll try again at dusk.

  Friday. “A shitty life!” the Chief announces at breakfast.

  “Our search methods,” I tell the Old Man, “remind me of certain fishing techniques they use in Italy.” I pause for effect the way he does after tossing out one of his lures. Not until he says, “Really?” do I go on. “I’ve seen fishermen around Venice let down huge square nets from the piers over a kind of framework of poles. They wait a while and then hoist the nets up by pulleys—in the hope that some fish or other will be dimwitted enough to stick around,”

  “That sounds like criticism of the High Command!” the Chief breaks in.

  “Clear case of undermining military discipline!” remarks the Old Man. And the Chief announces, “What we need is brains in the right places. Out with those clowns in High Command and let’s have you on the Staff instead to get things done!”

  “And we can install the Chief in the National Museum!” I’m able to shout after him just as he disappears into the control room.

  Saturday. It’s six forty in the morning when a vessel is reported on our port quarter. Wind eight to nine, sea eight. Visibility wretched. It’s remarkable that the bridge watch was able to make the ship out so soon in the uniformly gray pea soup. Probably a lone vessel tacking sharply.

  We’re in luck. We’re ahead of this dark shadow that rises momentarily from behind a foaming sea and then disappears for long minutes at a stretch as though by magic.

  “He probably thinks he’s traveling faster than he is. Can’t be making more than fourteen knots! He’d have to take a huge tack in the wrong direction to get away from us,” says the Old Man. “Let’s edge up a little closer. He certainly can’t see us against the clouds.”

  Not more than ten minutes go by before the Commander orders a dive. The torpedo watch is sent to battle stations.

  Engine-room orders. Hydroplane orders. And then, “Stand by for single shots, tubes one and three!”

  How is the Commander going to attack in this sea? Bet everything on a single card is probably his strategy now—come hell or high water he wants to score.

  The Commander himself gives the firing data without betraying the slightest excitement. “Enemy speed fourteen. Bearing one hundred. Distance three thousand feet.”

  The First Watch Officer reports, “Tubes ready,” almost as casually. But suddenly the Old Man bursts out cursing and orders reduced speed, probably to cut down on periscope vibration.

  The periscope motor hums and hums, stopping only for brief intervals. The Old Man is doing his best to keep the enemy in sight despite the high waves. Apparently he’s now extending the asparagus stalk still farther. In these waves he’s not running much risk. Who aboard the steamer could conceivably guess that a U-boat might attack in this chaos? Experience and theory both teach that in weather like this a U-boat can’t use its weapons. We tumble through the waves.

  The Commander calms down. “Easily ten thousand tons. Has a murderous cannon—aft. Goddam these rain squalls!”

  “No good,” we suddenly hear from the tower. “Surface!” The Chief reacts quickly. The first heavy wave that hits us hurls me straight across the control room, but I’m able to catch hold of the chart table and keep my footing.

  The Commander calls me to the bridge.

  Low-hanging, dark-gray curtains all around us over the raging sea. No trace of the steamer. It has disappeared in the rain squalls.

  “Careful!” the Old Man warns as a bottle-green wave rushes toward us.

  When it’s roared by, he shouts in my face, “They couldn’t possibly have seen us!”

  He orders us to push on in the general direction of the steamer. To do this we have to run at high speed against the waves. The wind lashes our faces. I manage to endure this for barely ten minutes and then go below in a gush of water. The Chief has to bale every few minutes. “Senseless,” he announces shortly. “They’ve got away after all!”

  Despite the dousing spray I venture a sidelong glance into the tower. Little Benjamin is
at the helm. A good man—he has to use every effort to keep the boat on course. Even out of sight of the rolling waves I can feel the bow being constantly forced off course. The hatch is sealed again. The only connection from the bridge to the interior is the speaking tube.

  The Old Man orders us down to listen. He’s determined not to give up. The sonar should reach farther than our sight.

  Dripping wet, with lobster-red faces, the bridge watch comes down.

  We descend to 130 feet. It gets still as death in the boat. Only the bilge slops back and forth, from the groundswell. All of us except the two bridge lookouts sitting at the hydroplane controls have our eyes on the sound man. But no matter how diligently he turns his wheel—nothing! The Old Man orders, “Course sixty degrees!”

  After half an hour he has us surface again. Has he finally given up? I go on deck with the navigator’s watch. The Commander remains below.

  The kind of view we have of the stormy waves is usually reserved for shipwrecked men. We might as well be on a raft.

  “Bone-grinders,” roars the navigator. “Watch out—a lookout on a boat once That’s as far as he gets because there in front of us is a wave preparing to strike. I brace myself diagonally against the bulwark, pressing my chin against my chest.

  The water has barely gurgled away when the navigator goes on in the same hoarse shout. “…he had three ribs broken—safety belt tore—hurled aft—straight onto the machine gun—lucky for him!”

  After the boat has taken on the next three waves he whirls around, removes the stopper from the speaking tube, and shouts down, “To the Commander: No more visibility!”

  The Commander listens to reason. Another dive, another full sonar search, Still nothing.

  Is it worthwhile to peel off our dripping clothes? The hydroplane operators have even kept on their sou’westers. Within half an hour they’re proved right. The Commander has us surface again.