Das Boot

The Commander is busy at the chart table and seems to be paying no attention.

  The radioman comes in with the daybook to be signed. Which means two more hours have gone by.

  “Our newspaper,” says the Old Man. “A message for Merkel, nothing special, simply an order to report his position. He sailed the same day we did.”

  The fact that old Merkel, alias Catastrophe Merkel, is still alive amazes us all. His First Watch Officer had told me what he got away with during his last patrol when he met a tanker in an unusually heavy sea. “The tanker had bad luck. She altered course and ran straight in front of our sights. The sea was running so high that we couldn’t get her in our periscope. We had to close right in so that the tanker couldn’t take evasive action after we fired our torpedoes. Merkel ordered a single shot, tube three. We heard the detonation as it hit, immediately followed by another one. The Chief did all he could to keep us at periscope depth, but we still couldn’t get a glimpse of the tanker. It was minutes before the periscope came clear and when it did—there was the side of tanker looming over us. They’d circled. Too late to get away. They rammed us when we were only fifty feet down. Both periscopes in the ashcan, but the pressure hull held—amazing! It really was a matter of inches. We couldn’t surface: our tower hatch was completely jammed shut from the impact of the collision. Not very pleasant if you can’t look around, let alone get out. Disagreeable feeling. Eventually we made it through the galley hatch and opened the tower hatch from outside with a hammer and chisel. But we were in no shape for emergency dives…”

  At the time no one dared ask Merkel how he had managed to make his way back two thousand miles to base with his tower smashed up and his periscope gone. But Merkel’s hair was gray before that anyway.

  While I’m trying to get my cameras ready in the petty officers’ compartment, I run into a noisy conversation among the inhabitants. Despite the closeness of the convoy, they’re back on subject number one.

  “You really should’ve seen his last lady friend. Born in 1870. First you had to sweep the cobwebs out of the way…”

  Zeitler emits a deafening belch that comes from the pit of his stomach.

  “Long-distance record!” says Pilgrim applaudingly.

  I take refuge in the bow compartment. The off-duty lookouts, five or six of them, are sitting under the swaying hammocks on the floor plates, some cross-legged, some sprawled out. All they need is a small campfire.

  I’m besieged. “Well, how does it look?”

  “Everything seems to be going according to schedule.”

  The Gigolo is stirring his teacup with a greasy knife.

  “Godawful bouillon,” Ario grins, “but nourishing.”

  The bridge johnny comes in and pretends amazement. “What kind of a campsite is this supposed to be?”

  Then he tries to find a place in the circle, and Ario promptly loses his temper. “Don’t be so cool about walking off with my bread and butter! You did the same thing yesterday. Next time I’m going to bash your head in!”

  The bridge johnny helps himself to another slice of bread, settles himself comfortably, and addresses the company at large. “Let me tell you a little secret—you’re all simple-minded swine.”

  Nobody takes this amiss.

  Tension keeps me on the move. Back in the petty officers’ quarters I hardly need to listen to know what they’re talking about. Zeitler has the floor. “We had the same sort of a pig on board when I was with the minesweepers.”

  “If by any chance the pig you’re talking about is me, you’re about due for accident compensation!” Frenssen announces. “And fast.”

  “Bullshit, you heinie! Who’s talking about you?”

  “If the shoe fits Pilgrim pipes up.

  I take a look around the room. Rademacher has pulled his curtain shut. Zeitler seems to be acting offended; apparently he’s imitating Frenssen, waiting to be spoken to.

  The door to the galley opens. The one beyond, leading to the engine room, is also open. The noise from the diesels drowns all conversation. “Ten minutes till time!” I hear a voice call. Confusion, complaints, curses: getting ready to change the engine-room watch. It must be 18.00 now.

  Back on to the bridge. Twilight soon. Dark clouds have come up under gray skies.

  The sucking roar of the intake nozzles for the superchargers on both sides of the bridge silences the diesels.

  “I wouldn’t care to be their convoy commander when our pack hits,” the Old Man says in a loud voice from under his binoculars. “They’re going at a crawl! After all, they can’t move any faster then the slowest steamer. And no chance to maneuver. Some of the captains are bound to be real dummies—and trying to follow a fixed tacking system with a mob like that—oh my god! They’re all used to steering straight ahead, and to hell with the regulations for avoiding collisions at sea…”

  After a while he begins again. “Anyone who ships on one of those gasoline tankers must be either superhuman—or subnormal. Spending weeks on end crawling along with a shipful of gasoline, just waiting for the torpedoes to hit! No thank you!”

  For a good while he stares silently through his glasses. “They’re tough fellows,” he growls eventually. “I heard about one man who’d been fished out of the drink for the fourth time by the crew of a destroyer. He’d been sunk three times, rescued three times, and he shipped out again for the fourth—that’s really something. Of course, they get lots of cash—love of country plus a fat paycheck—maybe that’s the best mix of soil for breeding heroes.” Then he adds dryly, “Sometimes the booze is enough.”

  The loop antenna has been up for some time. We’re now sending directional signals for the other boats in the area. The flag pushers at Command Headquarters in Kernével are also getting short signals sent out at hourly intervals, prearranged combinations of letters from which they can deduce all they need to know about the convoy: position, course, speed, number of ships, escort system, our own fuel situation, and even the weather. Our changes in course allow them to form a picture of the convoy’s movement too. We are forbidden to attack until more boats have been brought up.

  The mood in the boat has changed. It’s remarkably quiet in the compartments. The excitement seems to have subsided. Most of the men are lying down, trying to get some sleep during these last few hours before we attack.

  In the control room all systems have long since been made ready, the connections tested again and again. Now there’s nothing further for the control-room mates to do. One of them is working on a crossword puzzle and asks me whether I know a city in France that begins with Ly—”

  “Lyon.”

  “Thanks. Perfect.”

  The Chief appears from aft. “Well, how do things look?” he asks.

  “Good, as far as I can tell.”

  The Chief seems to have no pressing problems aside from his concern about fuel. He has weasled his way around the boat to his own satisfaction, so he sits down on the chart chest to chat for a bit. “Looks as if all that calculating’s paid off: I’d stopped believing in it. Dear god, the shitty times we have to put up with nowadays! Used to be veni, vidi, vici: In the old days you could take a position right on course and sit there until someone came along. Now Their Highnesses make themselves scarce—quite right, of course, from their point of view.”

  19.00. The optical system for the night direction-finder lies ready in the control room with three men bustling around it: The torpedo-firing mechanism is being inspected.

  I’m vaguely aware of someone saying, “A whole string of tubs—we have to get some of them!”

  Up on the bridge again. Now it’s 19.30 hours. All the officers are assembled except for the apprentice engineer. The Chief is sitting on the TBT column like a hunter in his tree blind. Our course is 180 degrees. Behind the trails of smoke the sky has separated into blood-red horizontal stripes. It looks like a huge marquee. The sun has sunk away behind the clouds. The red fades slowly into a pale silky green. A few clouds with tattered edges drift c
lose to the horizon, still tinged with the afterglow. Moving slowly, bathed and flecked with rose, they look like some exotic species of fantailed goldfish. Their scales catch the light, sparkle and gleam, then fade again. Dark patches suddenly appear on them like fingerprints.

  Night is now rising in the east. Stretch after stretch of the sky is overrun by the darkness we have been awaiting so eagerly.

  “Navigator, write down: 19.30 hours—twilight—horizon somewhat closer—convoy formation clearly discernible in four columns—intend to attack by night.’ That way we have something ready for the war log.”

  The Old Man gives an order to the engine room. The roar of the diesels immediately fades and falters. Back to the sound of that interminable frigging around. The white mane of our wake collapses and turns into a bright green trail behind us.

  Now we’re far enough ahead of the convoy. The idea is that despite the rapidly decreasing visibility we should have time to register their every change of course and adjust our own accordingly so as to keep the superstructures of the steamers low on the horizon.

  The sky is already hung with the chalky-white disk of the moon, which gradually begins to glow.

  “May take a while yet,” the Old Man says to me. He’s hardly finished speaking when the stern starboard lookout reports, “Masthead astern!” Our glasses all swing in the same direction. I find nothing. “Goddammit!” the Old Man mutters.

  I glance sideways to see where his glasses are pointing. Then I aim my binoculars at the horizon and move them slowly along it to the left, trying to find his angle. The horizon is barely distinguishable from the evening sky. I keep searching—there! A real mast! Hair-thin! No plume of smoke—has to be an escort vessel. Corvette? Destroyer? A sweeper making its big evening swing to clear the neighborhood before nightfall?

  Have they spotted us already? They always have their best men in the crow’s nest!

  Anyway, they have us straight in front of them in the west, where it’s nowhere near dark enough yet. We’re silhouetted much too clearly against the horizon.

  Why doesn’t the Old Man take action? He’s crouching like a harpooner waiting behind his cannon for the whale to blow again. Without putting down his glasses he orders “Both engines full ahead!”

  No hydroplane orders. No order to dive.

  The blowers roar. The boat leaps forward. My god, this seething white wake is bound to betray us to the Tommies! Our hull of course is camouflaged gray, but the white trail and the blue cloud of exhaust gas over it… The diesels are now pouring out as many fumes as a defective tractor. Blotted out by this thick banner of gas, the horizon disappears completely astern, together with the needle-thin mast. I can’t see whether it’s growing taller or shrinking.

  If we can’t see him, I think, perhaps he can’t see us either.

  The noise of the diesels is infernal. They’re really eating into the Chief’s fuel supply.

  The Chief, I notice, has disappeared from the bridge. The Old Man keeps his glasses pointed astern. We haven’t varied from our course by so much as one degree. The navigator is staring off along with him.

  After a while the Old Man orders both diesels slow speed ahead. The wake dwindles. Gradually the blue haze lifts. Intently the Old Man and the navigator search the horizon. I do the same, inch by inch. Nothing.

  “Hm,” says the Old Man. The navigator is silent. He’s got his binoculars balanced between outstretched thumbs and middle fingers. Finally he says, “Nothing, Herr Kaleun!”

  “Have you a record of when she came in sight?”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kaleun, 19.52 hours!”

  The Old Man steps over to the hatch and calls down, “For the record: ‘19.52 hours. Escort vessel in sight.’ Have you got that? ‘Evasive action using maximum speed on surface—escort fails to spot us through cover of our exhaust gas’—have you got that?—’Through cover of our exhaust gas.”

  So that was it. The Old Man was using the fumes deliberately.

  My heart is pounding.

  “Exciting, isn’t it?” he says. Then there’s a new shock. In the west a rocket bursts high above the horizon; it hangs there for a while, then describes a curve like the crook of a cane as it falls and is extinguished.

  The Commander is the first to set down his glasses. “What’s that all about?”

  “They’re changing course!” says the navigator.

  “Maybe—and maybe they’re calling up destroyers,” the Commander growls. “We don’t want them peering down our necks right now. Eyes peeled, gentlemen, no daydreaming.” And after a while, “A rocket—they must be out of their minds!”

  The navigator calls down? “For the record: ‘Light rocket over convoy at ten degrees’—add the time!”

  “Funny!” mutters the Old Man again. Then he turns his face to the moon. “Let’s hope we get rid of that bastard before long!” I’m standing close to him, following the direction of his glance. The moon shows a man’s face: fat, round, baldheaded. “Just like a contented old customer in a whorehouse,” remarks the Second Watch Officer.

  “Two men contemplating the moon,” I murmur to myself.

  “How’s that?”

  “Oh—nothing. The title of a picture by Friedrich,”

  “What Friedrich’s that?”

  “Caspar David Friedrich—German romantic painter.”

  “I get it! A nature-lover…”

  “Mastheads higher!” reports the navigator.

  The convoy must have tacked toward us.

  “Veer away again!”

  The new rudder setting is reported from below. “Bearing two hundred degrees!”

  The moon adorns itself with a wide rainbow halo.

  “Let’s hope they leave us alone,” the Commander mutters testily. Aloud, he inquires about fuel consumption.

  The Chief appears so quickly he must have been lying in wait. He reports, “We checked everything out at 18.00, Herr Kaleun. Up to now, given the high rate of speed, we’ve used about fourteen hundred gallons. We’ve practically no reserves left!”

  “Number One still has a supply of cooking oil,” jeers the Old Man. “And if there’s nothing else to do, we’ll just have to sail home.”

  I sit down on a spray-damp ledge beside the platform for the anti-aircraft gun. White foam streaks past beneath me in constantly changing patterns. The moon’s reflection in the wake is shattered. The myriad tiny splinters are shaken together into a kaleidoscope of new formations. The sea is transparent, illuminated from within by tiny greenish dots. The shape of the boat’s hull shows clearly against the glimmer: plankton. The iron bars of the railing throw stark shadows along the gratings, cutting across the lines of black between the individual bars to form a sharply defined pattern of diamonds. The pattern moves. The shadows of the railing fall across my boots: the boat must be turning in the direction of the convoy.

  All at once thin clusters of rays, fan-shaped and pale-green, shoot across the sky.

  “Northern lights!—On top of everything else!” from the Commander.

  A curtain of glittering glass rods like the ones that hung from our lamp at home is now suspended across the sky. Brilliant greenish-white light sweeps through the glass curtain in waves. Gleaming lances shoot up in bursts from beyond the horizon, die, blaze up again, dim a little, grow longer as they brighten. The water around the boat sparkles as if studded with fireflies. Our wake becomes a glittering train.

  “Quite a fireworks display,” says the Commander. “Pretty, but not what we wanted.”

  From the brief exchanges between Commander and navigator I gather that they’re debating whether or not to have us charge into the midst of the convoy from a forward position. The navigator swings his head thoughtfully from right to left and back again. The Old Man seems equally uncertain.

  “Better not!” he says finally, and turns toward the moon. It’s an almost circular hole punched in the inky cloth of the sky, a splendid blaze of white that falls like gaslight, chalky but extraordinarily
luminous. A few clouds drift across the horizon like gray lumps of ice. As soon as they cross the path of the moon they light up; in places they sparkle as if covered with sapphires.

  Under the moon the sea becomes a huge plane of crumpled silver paper, gleaming and sparkling, mirroring the lunar radiance a thousand times over. It’s as if the sea had jelled into immobility in the moonlight. No waves—only this frozen brilliance. I’m suddenly reminded of the scene in the Bar Royal on the night of our departure—Thomsen. Don’t think about that now.

  Despite the moonlight the Old Man tries to edge a little closer to the convoy, trusting to our dark background and probably also relying on the lack of watchfulness among the sailors in the convoy.

  Of course we show very little above the water, and we haven’t much of a bow wave at this speed. If only we could present our narrow silhouette, bow or stern, to the enemy, we would be almost invisible. This, however, is impossible right now: we have to pursue a course parallel to—and slightly in advance of—the convoy’s.

  Why doesn’t a convoy this size have more of an outlying escort? I ask myself. Was that one ship all the Tommies were able to provide by way of protection for their flanks? Or are we already between the outer ring and the convoy itself?

  The Old Man will know what to do. This isn’t his first convoy. He has a thorough knowledge of enemy tactics. Once he even used his periscope to observe a depth bomb pursuit aimed at himself. The commander of the destroyer had presumed that the boat was lying deep in an estimated position that the Old Man had long since abandoned. The Old Man had all motors stopped, suspended the boat from the periscope, and watched the destroyer making its runs and laying down a whole carpet of depth charges. He’s even said to have played at being a sports commentator, giving a running commentary on the proceedings so that the men could share in the fun.

  Right now he’s silent. “Four columns,” is all he says in the course of the next fifteen minutes.

  Our high-speed escape from the picket boat has apparently brought us too far ahead of the convoy, which explains why we’ve been running at slow speed for some time. Headquarters will no doubt have summoned a number of other boats that haven’t yet arrived. For the time being, our job is to keep signaling the course of the convoy.