Das Boot

  The control-room mate is fiddling about among the flooding and bailing distributors. I can see that he’s straining to hear. He can’t catch complete sentences either, but such fragments as we manage to pick up are sufficient tidings of salvation. I’m just surprised that I don’t go to pieces and fall flat on my face.

  “The one chance—all right!” mutters the Old Man. Then he looks at his watch, pauses, and his voice is steady. “In ten minutes we take her up!” It comes out like any casual announcement.

  “We take her up.” The four words repeat themselves in my brain like a mantra. I take the rubber mouthpiece out of my mouth again. The thread of saliva breaks and then forms again.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “We take her up”!—it’s enough to drive you mad.

  I climb back into the Officers’ Mess. The Second Watch Officer is lying in his bunk.

  “Hey, Second Watch Officer!” I don’t recognize my own voice. Somewhere between a croak and a sob.

  He barely moves.

  I try a second time. “Hey!” This time it sounds a bit better.

  He feels with both hands for the tube of his mouthpiece, clasps it like a baby with its bottle. He obviously doesn’t want to wake up. Doesn’t want to lose the safety of sleep, wants to hold on to this barrier between him and insanity. I have to seize him by the arm and shake him. “Hey, buddy, wake up!”

  His eyes open for a second, but he still refuses to be wakened. He tries to get away from me, to retreat into unconsciousness.

  “We surface in ten minutes!” I whisper close to his face.

  He blinks distrustfully but takes the snorkel out of his mouth.

  “What?” he asks, bewildered.

  “We’re going to surface!”

  “What did you say?”

  “Yes, in ten minutes!”

  “Honest?”

  “Yes, the Commander…”

  He doesn’t leap to his feet. Not even a look of joy on his face. He simply leans back and closes his eyes again for a moment—but now he’s smiling. He looks like someone who knows that a surprise party is being arranged for him—and who wasn’t supposed to have found out about it yet.

  XI RETURN VOYAGE

  “Prepare to surface!”

  The order echoes through the boat.

  The Commander: “First Watch Officer and navigator after me to the bridge!”

  In the control room the First Watch Officer and the navigator pick out their oilskins, climb into their trousers, staggering as though we were rocking in a heavy sea, and pull their stiff jackets over their heads. They avoid looking at each other. Set faces, like hairdressers’ dummies. The navigator seems to be demonstrating an exercise: He puts his sou’wester on very slowly—like a drillmaster, taking his time. He fastens the strings under his chin with deliberate care.

  I realize for the first time what it is that I’m breathing—a stinking vapor suspended in dense layers throughout the boat, sour and suffocating. My lungs heave as they try to filter enough oxygen out of it.

  Will the boat really come clear? And if she does, what then?

  In answer to this unspoken question, the Old Man orders: “Prepare escape gear!”

  So that’s the idea: up, overboard, and swim for it. In the dark? In that racing current?

  My film! I hurry to my bunk. Everything’s lying ready, the escape gear and the film wrapped in a waterproof package, arranged so that I can hang it around my neck.

  There’s also a more deep-seated fear in me—worse than that of the darkness and the current—enemy fire. If the fingering searchlight from one of their corvettes finds us, we might as well be lying center stage with all the lights up. Then more searchlights will be added, and the heavens will be festooned with star shells. Goddam Christmas trees! And then the machine guns will cut loose.

  But of course we might be lucky. The craziest things happen: Perhaps they won’t find us right away. But if we’re in the water and they miss us at that point, we’ll be swept away anyhow.

  Distress lights! We have no distress blinkers. The Tommies are better equipped; they’re all prepared to go overboard. But a situation like ours had no place in our leaders’ calculations. The escape gear’s our only equipment for disaster at sea.

  I’m not very good at putting mine on. No practice. Never thought I’d have to use the thing. Frenssen helps me. Tentatively I insert the mouthpiece. Another snorkel. No end to them. Cautiously I turn on the oxygen tank and hear it hiss. Good: seems to be working.

  Suddenly there is whispering and movement all around, and the terror subsides.

  Everyone’s wearing his escape gear, fumbling around with it, pretending to be frantically busy, just to keep from having to look up.

  I catch the Second Watch Officer’s eye. Trying to look calm but not succeeding. He makes a face to conceal his emotion.

  The razor’s edge: The Chief will release the compressed air, and we’ll discover whether blowing the regulator cells and filling the buoyancy cells will provide enough lift to free us from the bottom. We still don’t know whether the exhaust valves of the buoyancy tanks will remain airtight. We have only one shot at it. There will be no second chance.

  In a clear voice the Commander orders: “Blow!” The controlroom mate turns his valves. The compressed air hisses into the tanks. Will it force the water out? We stand there rigid, listening. Is the boat moving?

  I flex my knees so that I can detect the slightest motion.

  Nothing! Held fast. Heavy as lead!

  The compressed air blows and blows.

  Nothing!

  Abandon hope, all ye who… the whole thing’s been in vain! My legs start to wobble…

  But. The boat definitely moved! And now there’s a scraping contact on the outside like the impact of Asdic beams. A screech, shrill as a knife on porcelain, runs through me to the bone, and the needle of the depth manometer trembles.

  There’s a clearly perceptible jerk and the boat frees itself from the bottom. It scrapes groaning along a reef. More screeching and yowling. And then—silence.

  I’m choking with joy.

  I hold fast to the tower hatch ladder, my eyes fixed on the needle. For god’s sake, keep on wobbling. I hypnotize it. It jerks three or four marks backward. The boat is floating, rising—under its own momentum—like a free balloon. We’re actually buoyant.

  I stare over the Commander’s shoulder at the manometer needle. As does everyone else. Very slowly it creeps back over the dial. No movement in the control room. Not a word.

  The needle turns with agonizing slowness. I want to take my hand and push the thing backward, as if that could keep the boat rising.

  “Eight hundred feet!” says the Chief, as if we didn’t all know already.

  “Seven twenty-five!—Six fifty!—Six hundred!”

  Periscope observation is out. Both periscopes wrecked. So the Commander won’t even be able to make sure whether it’s all clear or not. I quickly push this thought aside and concentrate on the depth manometer again. The boat is slowly continuing to rise.

  “Five hundred fifty!”

  The Commander is already under the tower when the indicator reaches the four hundred mark.

  The minutes stretch out like slack elastic.

  We stand around stiffly. I don’t even dare shift my weight from one foot to the other. With his escape gear on over his fur-lined vest, the Old Man looks like a freak.

  When the needle reaches two hundred, he orders the lights in the control room shaded. All that’s left is the pale twilight that comes in from both sides through the open hatches, hardly enough to enable us to distinguish silhouettes.

  We rise as slowly as an elevator being cranked up by hand after a power failure. Now I do shift from foot to foot. Slowly, cautiously. So no one will notice.

  The sound gear is in action: Herrmann. He must be getting a mass of bearings; he’ll only report if something is quite close. But there’s nothing. Apparently we’re in luck.

>   “Seventy feet—fifty feet!”

  The water in the Papenberg column is already sinking. The Commander clambers heavily up the ladder.

  “Tower hatch free!” the Chief reports.

  I swallow. There are tears in my eyes.

  The boat begins to move, rocking gently back and forth. And then a slapping noise: Tschjwumm—tschjwumm! A wave hitting the side.

  Now everything speeds up, as usual. The Chief reports, “Boat’s clear!” And the Old Man shouts down, “Equalize pressure!”

  A sharp bang. The tower hatch has sprung open. So the equalization was not complete. The air falls down on us in a solid mass. My lungs fill painfully, then they stop—the oxygen is too rich for them. I stagger. The pain literally forces me to my knees.

  For god’s sake, what’s going on up there? The glare of parachute flares? Has the Old Man seen something? Why no orders?

  The boat rocks gently back and forth. I hear the splashing of small waves. The boat resounds like a gong.

  Finally the Old Man’s bass voice. “Prepare to blow!”

  Still darkness in the circle of the hatch. “Stand by to ventilate!” And then, “Diesel room, remain ready to dive!”

  Diesel room ready to dive? But this gulp of air belongs to me. And this one too. Wet, dark, night air! I expand my ribcage, breathe my fill.

  Again the splashing of the waves: a Kyrie eleison. I could hug the Chief.

  Then from above, “Ready with the diesel!” I pass on the order, shouting louder than I have to.

  The call goes from mouth to mouth to the engine room. The escape gas doors for the working diesel, the compressed-air cylinders, the test valves are now being opened; they’re finding out whether the diesel has taken water, and putting it in gear on the driving shaft.

  The engine room reports ready—and it’s the Old Man again. “Port diesel half speed ahead!” The helmsman in the tower echoes the command; I shout it toward the stern.

  The blowers snarl. The first shaking pulse runs through our frame.

  The diesel sucks fresh air down into the boat in great waves. All the doors stand open so that it can reach into every corner.

  The noise envelops me. I want to block my ears. They must be able to hear us from Africa to Spain. And the whole area must be crawling with lookouts. But what’s the Old Man to do? We have no choice. We can’t tiptoe.

  If only I knew what it looked like up there!

  The Old Man orders the navigator to the bridge. The First Watch Officer is beside me, also staring upward. He’s holding onto a rung of the ladder with his right hand, I with my left. My mirror image.

  Three, four orders to the helmsman in quick succession—then a counter-order. “Belay hard a-port! Continue to steer two hundred fifty degrees!”

  The helmsman no longer acknowledges the orders properly; he’s getting muddled. But there’s no rebuke.

  “Well, well, well!” is all I hear from the Commander; the last “well” long drawn out. Not exactly a superfluity of information, but enough to tell us that we’ve just missed hitting something.

  Clench your teeth. Hope the Old Man knows what he’s doing. He’s had practice, after all: mocking the enemy, flitting about right under their noses, showing them our narrow silhouette, always staying against a dark background, always according to the rules of the game.

  The First Watch Officer sniffs hard, then breathes through his wide-open mouth. He might at least say something. Following his rules we’d have been up the creek. What the Old Man’s doing isn’t something you learn in training courses. He got us in this far on our quiet motors; now he has to use one racketing diesel and sneak us out again. The breakthrough into the Mediterranean has failed.

  I seem to be sniffling too. We’ve all caught cold a little. I put my left foot on the lowest rung, using it like a bar rail. The First Watch Officer does the same with his right.

  Once more the navigator’s voice is too low. I can’t catch more than half his reports. “Object… degrees!—object bearing thirty—edging our way—”

  “Seems to be as much traffic here as on the Wannsee,” from behind me. The Second Watch Officer! Our baby! He can play as tough as he likes, but he can’t fool me. I’ll always see him crouched in the corner of the bunk: out for the count, the straw dog in his arms.

  He’s moved very close: I can hear him breathing.

  A crowd seems to be collecting in the control room. Understandable that the off-duty watch no longer feels like staying in their quarters. Too remote. Everyone who can find an excuse to be close to the tower is here. Fortunately no one notices them in the darkness. Despite the roar of the diesel I can clearly hear the hissing of compressed air from one of the little steel cylinders in the escape gear—and another one. Two men at least are now in position to go overboard.

  My heart beats in my throat. Supposing they spot us—we can’t dive.

  A bewildering series of orders to the helmsman: “Port—starboard—midships—as she goes—hard a-port—” The Old Man’s making the boat weave along like a snake.

  I can’t believe that we’re still undetected—that the Tommies haven’t raised a general alarm, that we’re not being attacked on all sides by everything they’ve got. Someone must have heard us or seen us. They can’t all be asleep. Or can the noise of the diesel actually be protecting us? Do the men on lookout take us for a British boat? But Tommy boats have different towers. Yes, I tell myself, that may be true, seen from the side, but from the front with a small silhouette, there certainly can’t be much difference.

  Again the short sharp hiss of an oxygen tank in the safety gear. If only we don’t have to go overboard.

  And if there’s another airplane?

  But that, after all, was no routine flight. We’d been reported. They could figure our course by dead reckoning and be ready at the right time. But nothing has been reported today. So the planes will remain grounded.

  The Second Watch Officer clears his throat. His voice is squeaky. “First we have to get far enough westward, I imagine.”

  The Old Man is silent for a good five minutes. I visualize the chart: Yes, make a large arc toward the west in order to avoid the traffic around Cape Saint Vincent.

  If only I were allowed onto the bridge! TO SEE!

  The sky seems to sympathize: The cloud cover opens and a few stars appear. They move in the circle of the hatch from right to left, left to right. I wonder what their names are. The navigator would know. But he’s above.

  “Port twenty—new course two hundred seventy degrees!”

  A minute, then the helmsman reports, “Two hundred seventy degrees it is.”

  “Ship’s time?” the Commander calls down.

  “21.30 hours!” the helmsman answers from the tower.

  So, about an hour since we surfaced. What speed can we make on one diesel?

  I don’t even know exactly how fast it’s running. With two diesels I would be able to tell from the sound. But I’ve had no practice deducing our speed from just one. And we’re charging with the dynamo as we run. We need all the power we can get. With any luck, our remaining battery cells will store enough to get us through tomorrow. It’s obvious, without anyone actually having to say it, that we’ll have to give up running on the surface by first light. The Chief will have to keep us going at periscope depth, and hope for the best.

  Finally a few fragments from above. “…well-l-l, navigator, he’s going away. I’m sure of it. Just keep an eye on that approaching vessel. Way off—but nasty just the same.”

  After five minutes the Commander asks, “What’s our course?”

  “Two hundred seventy degrees!”

  “Steady as she goes!”

  “How many miles will we make before it gets light?” I ask the First Watch Officer.

  He snorts. “Maybe twenty.”

  “Running quite well.”

  “Yes, seems to be.”

  I feel a hand on my upper arm, and jump.

  “How does it loo
k now?” asks the Chief.

  “Someday I’ll grab you in the dark too!” I blurt out. “Satisfactory is the way it looks—as far as I can tell.”

  “Pardon me, your worship!” says the Chief.

  “And how are things with you, Chief?”

  “Thanks for asking. Comme ci, comme ça!”

  “An exhaustive report!”

  “Just wanted to get a bit of air,” he explains and disappears again.

  “Seems we’re not welcome with the Macaronis,” I hear behind me. That must have been Isenberg. He’s right: La Spezia! I’d forgotten all about our intention to go there. The beautiful blue Mediterranean. Now Rommel will have to figure out a way of getting his supplies across without us. After all, we’re an Atlantic boat. It’s up to the Italians to look out for Mediterranean convoys.

  Are we the only boat? Or were there others they were trying to flog through?

  If we succeed in getting far enough west—what then? One day underwater, at periscope depth, is all very well. But after that? We can’t dive. The boat won’t stand more than periscope depth. Is our transmitter working? There’s been no talk of signaling. How many miles to the next French port? Or will the Old Man park our demolished scow at Vigo again and route-march us home through Spain—the whole crew this time?

  If the weather gets worse, how are we going to get through Biscay? As it is, daylight travel is out of the question. We can no longer elude an airplane, and Biscay is teeming with them. Proceed at night and remain submerged by day? Granted, the nights are long, but will it work?

  “Hold it… steady as she goes!” I hear from above,

  The Old Man has changed course. He’s heading farther south. The old game: he thinks the Tommies think—may think—that if more boats try to break through, they’ll do it by the shortest route. Which is to say that if they’re coming from the north or mid-Atlantic they won’t go below thirty-six degrees. So we should stay south of thirty-six degrees. For the time being, that is.

  If I’ve got it right, we must be in the neighborhood of Cape Spartel again. Or else farther west, but at the same latitude. The navigator hasn’t time for his dead reckoning right now, and there’s no one to take his place. So there’ll be a pretty big hiatus on his course chart.