Das Boot

  He collapses in his corner again, panting. I don’t dare ask him what was going on. Ten minutes later I make some inquiries of the control-room mate as offhandedly as possible.

  The Bible Scholar had been working on the knives with polishing sand. This produced an odd gritty sound, and the Chief had been unable to identify it.

  December twenty-fourth. Still afloat. We’ve covered a considerable stretch. As for the weather, we’ve had incredible good luck: Christmas weather. The December storms in Biscay are usually terrifying. But the most we’ve had have been winds of four to five, and sea three. The sea generally does remain one point below the wind. It couldn’t have been better. We’re almost halfway across, the diesel has held out, and we’ve had no pursuit group on our heels. That in itself is enough to provoke a small show of optimism.

  But no! Everyone slouches about looking miserable. Even the Old Man is monosyllabic. This rubs off on the crew. He may simply be sticking to his maxim: “No reception before the church service.” But unless he cheers them up, the crew quickly lapses into black pessimism. A bunch of depressives. I’ll have to take a look in the bow compartment again. Perhaps it’s better there.

  The bow compartment looks appalling: There’s more confusion than ever. Number One probably hasn’t dared give the order to clean ship. The red-shaded lamps have disappeared. No further hint of whorehouse atmosphere. Apathetic, prostrate, the off-duty watch lies slumped on the floor plates, grown-up children with false beards. They hardly speak to one another. General surrender and fatalism seem to have taken hold.

  A few hours later the whole boat has been cleaned up spick and span. The Commander put a rocket under Number One. Christmas house-cleaning.

  “Can’t let sloppiness take over!” he mutters to me.

  A wise decision: Just stick to the ship’s routine—no fuss, keep the tear ducts dry, distract the men from thoughts of home. I dread to think what total surrender to emotion might produce.

  “La Spezia—would have fitted in perfectly,” says the Old Man.

  Dear god, is he off on Christmas again?

  Memories of the orgies of food and drink laid on for the flotilla at the Hotel Majestic: long tables with white cloths, pine twigs instead of green fir for decoration. Everyone had a “fancy platter”—and a stamped-out star-shaped cardboard plate with spice cookies, Russian bread, pralines, a chocolate Saint Nicholas. Christmas carols roared out at full volume. Then the address by the Flotilla Chief—the enduring union of our beating hearts with those of our loved ones at home, the solicitous Führer, the old German Night of Dedication, the Great German Reich, and our splendid Führer über alles! And then, standing: “Sieg Heil—Heil—Heil!” Drunkenness and the descent into maudlin sentimentality, the blabbering and slobbering, the katzenjammer, the howling misery.

  It’s settled: We must try to put in at the nearest reachable base. Which means La Rochelle, not Saint Nazaire and home.

  We’re twenty-four hours away. The Old Man sticks rigidly to normal routine: forty-eight hours before entry into port, whorehouse regulations must be read aloud. This should have been done long ago. It’s really the First Watch Officer’s job, but the Old Man has relieved him—a kind of proof of grace, since this text is really something. It now devolves upon the Second Watch Officer to broadcast it to the crew over the ship’s loudspeaker. Thus, instead of the Gospel according to Saint Luke, the whorehouse ordinance. The Second Watch Officer does it well. His tone of voice has the requisite seriousness for the reading of a flotilla order, while leaving no one in the slightest doubt that he considers the whole thing a piece of sublime lunacy.

  The control-room mate is painting victory pennants. He has already finished one with the number eight thousand on it: That’s for the first big scow in the convoy.

  The First Watch Officer is sitting beside the Chief in the mess, doing paperwork: assignments for the shipyard, calculation of oil consumption, a report on the torpedoes fired. It wouldn’t surprise me if he started pecking away at the typewriter again.

  Almost hourly I sneak a look at the chart, and each time I itch to take a pencil and secretly extend the line that’s inching toward La Rochelle.

  Every mile we put behind us means that much less tension and fear.

  Scraps of conversation echo through the half-open hatch to the bow compartment. The men’s spirits seem to be rising again. I even hear someone in the next compartment ask who’s going to be making out the leave permits. Hard to believe: We still have a whole night ahead of us, we’re a long way from being able to relax in safety, and someone is getting excited about his leave permit.

  Nothing I hear in the bow compartment would surprise me any more. “What kind of cathouses do they have in La Rochelle?”

  The E-mate Pilgrim was apparently stationed there once.

  “How would I know?” is all he says.

  “Shit! It really is impossible to ask you a sensible question!”

  Thank god—not a trace of Christmas spirit!

  Around 01.00 I climb onto the bridge.

  “Roughly another two and a half hours to the escort meeting point,” the navigator reports to the Old Man.

  Escort meeting point? Are we as close as that?

  “Which means we’ll be there nice and early,” says the Old Man. “We’ll tuck ourselves in for the time being and have a look at the traffic.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kaleun,” is all the navigator has to say.

  “Well?” The Old Man turns to me. “No great hurry, I guess—or are you beginning to fidget?”

  I can only sigh. What am I supposed to say?

  The night air is silky. Am I simply imagining things, or does it smell of land—that delicate scent of damp foliage?

  Perhaps we’ll soon see a light from the coast. On second thought, no! La Rochelle, after all, isn’t Lisbon. There’s a blackout here. All along the French coast, the lighthouses were turned off long ago.

  “Another hour’s sleep?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt…”

  I ask the navigator to rout me out when he’s relieved and go below shortly after the Old Man.

  “Sea’s about two—hardly any wind,” the navigator says as he wakes me, shaking me by the arm.

  Once again I beat the Commander to the bridge.

  I squint ahead. The horizon is clear, and the east is brightening already. The First Watch Officer is standing forward on the port side. “To the Commander: Dawn’s breaking!” The Commander comes onto the bridge and silently checks in all directions.

  “Well, it’ll probably be all right for a little while longer,” he says finally. But it doesn’t take me long to sense how uneasy he is. Again and again he lifts his head to glance anxiously at the sky. In the east, a thread of pale yellow lies over the horizon. The darkness is thinning quickly. Another ten minutes and he says, “We must be just about there.”

  The sea is calm. We might as well be on a pond. The sounding gear is at work. Continuous reports from below. “One hundred feet, ninety feet It reaches the seventy-foot mark and stays there.

  “Excellent!” says the Old Man. “Just what we need. All right, navigator, that’ll do for now! We’ll just tuck ourselves in for the time being. It’s getting lighter all the time.”

  “Stand by to dive!” One more survey of the dark silky sea, then we climb down slowly, taking our time.

  “Chief, just try to set us down nice and gently. Shouldn’t be too hard here.”

  The bump when the boat touches bottom is no greater than that of an airplane touching the runway.

  “Good,” says the Old Man. “Now we’ll let the dear Lord take over!”

  “And his good Wife, the dear old white-haired lady… “ That was the Chief. So he’s found his voice again.

  “Tiens, tiens!” The Old Man obviously feels he’s back in France already. I must ask the navigator whether we’re already on good French sandy bottom or whether the seabed here is still international.

  For some time my subconsc
ious has been registering an odd bumping and scraping noise. Now there’s a dull bang, like a fist hitting a wooden door, immediately followed by a second and third. They echo through the boat, the last almost drowned out by a shrill whistling before the bumping and scraping begin again.

  “Hard to believe,” says the Old Man. “That’s quite some current.”

  “And the bottom isn’t exactly all it’s cracked up to be.” The Chief.

  So the bumping is being caused by rocks. We’re not lying fast: We’re being dragged over the bottom.

  “Flood the tanks, Chief.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kaleun!”

  I hear water flowing into our regulator tanks: we’re anchoring ourselves.

  “Good, now let’s hope our direction checks!”

  Silence in the boat. Only the ping-ping of condensation. The offduty watch have long since stretched themselves out on their bunks. As soon as it’s really light, the Old Man will take us up to periscope depth—forty-five feet. He’s not telling us what he’ll do next. Approaching the coast without a boom-breaker and an escort will be a ticklish business. Impossible by day and extremely difficult by night.

  Just as I lift my right leg to clamber through the after hatch, there’s another bump.

  “Goddammit to hell,” mutters the Old Man. “We can’t be lying parallel to the current. We’ll have to try to reposition her.”

  With half an ear, I hear the blowing. Then another bump that echoes through the whole boat. Then an order first for the motors, then the hydroplane.

  Hinrich is at the sound gear. His voice seems to come from a great distance. “Engine noises bearing three hundred degrees. Growing louder!”

  The Old Man raises his eyebrows theatrically. He’s standing in the middle of the control room, listening; the Chief is half concealed behind him. I don’t dare make a move.

  The Old Man swallows. I can see his Adam’s apple jerking up and down.

  “Piston engines!” the sound man reports.

  The Old Man squats down in the gangway beside the sound room and puts on the headset. His rounded back is toward us. The sound man sticks his head out.

  A mutter from the Old Man: “If that’s not a submarine diesel I’ll eat my hat.”

  He gives the headset back to the sound man, who listens for a couple of minutes, while the Old Man remains beside him. “Well, Hinrich?”

  “Submarine diesels for sure!”

  “German or English—that’s the question. Get moving, First Watch Officer, ready with the recognition pistol. We’ll surface and you fire at once. What’s the bearing now?”

  “Bearing remains two hundred seventy degrees.”

  “Stand by anti-aircraft guns! First Watch Officer, on the bridge immediately after me!” Instantly the control room is filled with turmoil. Someone opens the munitions locker. We’re going to put on a fireworks display right outside our own front door? And throw in the machine guns just for good measure?

  The Old Man already has his hand on a rung of the ladder. “All clear?”

  “Jawohl, Herr Kaleun!”

  “Surface!”

  “Blow the tanks!”

  I’m standing directly under the hatch when the recognition pistol goes off above me. Men are still climbing, so I only catch an occasional glimpse, between a thigh and the rim of the hatch, of the red and white magnesium flares. Pretty Christmas stars. Very appropriate. I wait, holding my breath.

  “Fine!” That’s the Old Man. “Signal returned. Take her closer, First Watch Officer. Let’s have a look at our colleague.”

  “Incredible!” the Chief says behind me.

  “Permission to come on the bridge?” I ask.

  “Come ahead!”

  It takes me a while to spot the other boat on the dark water. She’s head on; you could mistake her for a floating barrel.

  “Quick! Up with the signal light—move it! Now Zeitler, introduce us with all the proper courtesies!”

  Zeitler directs the signal lamp at the other boat and taps away at his message.

  From the other boat a light flashes out: message acknowledged. Then I hear our signal lamp again and the navigator reads off what’s coming from over there: “UXW Oberleutnant Bremer.”

  “That’s fantastic!” says the Old Man. “Someone has to be expecting them. All we need to do is follow them in!”

  The navigator beams. A load off his mind: He’s the one who would’ve had to figure out how to pilot us into La Rochelle.

  “Now all we have to do is wait for their escort. Just ask them what time it’s supposed to turn up.”

  The bosun’s mate presses the key of the signal lamp; the answer comes in a matter of seconds. They must have a first-rate signal man. “08.00!”

  “Now signal: ‘We’ll join you!’ That’ll give them a riddle to solve: How come we’re turning up as unexpected guests? They must be wondering why we’re putting in at another flotilla’s home port—and today of all days.”

  The Old Man appears to have no intention of enlightening them.

  During the exchange of signals we’ve moved closer together—within hailing distance. A loudspeaker booms: “What happened to your cannon?”

  We gape at each other. The Old Man hesitates. Even I take a while to realize that the others can see us just as clearly as we can them, and that something has altered our silhouette.

  “Damnfool question!” snarls the navigator.

  But the Old Man puts the megaphone to his mouth and shouts, “I’ll give you three guesses!”—then turns to the navigator and says in a normal voice: “He’d do better to make sure his own anti-aircraft guns are ready. It looks damned nasty to me around here!”

  The navigator takes this as a direct injunction to shout at the bridge lookouts. “Keep your eyes peeled, men, for god’s sake!”

  Suddenly a violent, muffled explosion runs through the boat. I feel it as a blow to the back of my knees. Battery? Motors? Something gone wrong with the diesel? Hell, what was it?

  The Old Man shouts down through the hatch. “Report! I want a report!”

  Nothing from below. Questioning glances between the Old Man and the navigator. The Old Man raises his voice to a roar. “Report! Report at once!”

  The Chief’s face appears in the hatchway. “Nothing—nothing to report, Herr Kaleun!”

  The Commander stares. Have we all gone crazy? There’s just been an explosion—and a big one at that!

  Then the signal lamp flashes out from the other boat. Three mouths spell out the message simultaneously: H-a-v-e-s-t-r-u-c-k-m-I-n-e.

  “Move! Let’s go closer!”

  Mine, mine, mine. So we’re dawdling over a minefield. They never come singly.

  I focus my binoculars on the other boat. Nothing noticeable. She’s simply lying a little stern heavy, as if badly trimmed. I had always pictured a mine casualty as looking quite different.

  Our bow swings slowly round. The other boat is signaling again. “Read it out!” the Commander orders.

  It’s Zeitler who responds: H-I-t-I-n-s-t-e-r-n-m-a-k-I-n-g-w-a-t-e-r- f-a-s-t-u-n-a-b-l-e-t-o-d-I-v-e.

  “One of those damned magnetic mines,” says the Old Man. “Probably dropped by an aerial night patrol.”

  “And certainly not the only one the navigator says calmly.

  “We can’t change that, navigator. We have to stay on the surface and provide anti-aircraft protection.”

  And drift slowly through the minefield.

  The navigator has nothing to say. His binoculars are trained on the other boat and he betrays not the slightest emotion.

  “Just shout across, ‘Will stay on surface and provide anti-aircraft protection!’”

  The navigator puts the megaphone to his mouth. From the other side the message is acknowledged with a brief “Thanks!”

  “Navigator, take a report: ‘06.15 hours. UXW hit by mine.’ Tell the radioman to try again. Perhaps we’ll be in luck. Have him send this message: ‘Emergency. Emergency. UXW hit by mine. Una
ble to dive. All systems inoperative. Request immediate escort. Remaining at point of explosion—UA.’”

  There’s nothing left to do but wait and watch as it gets lighter.

  “Seems to have bent their drive shaft,” says the Old Man harshly. “If it had been the diesels, the motors would still be good for something, or vice versa.”

  I notice from the brightness behind us that the tide must have turned us around: we now have the east at our back. We all look gray in the pale morning light, as if smeared with ashes.

  No engine noises, no motion, no vibration in the boat. We drift along like flotsam. The fear… and the silence. I hardly dare clear my throat. If only our diesel were running again—I’d give a lot to hear the noise.

  “Ship’s time?”

  “07.10 hours!”

  Fear. We avoid looking at one another, as though to intercept a glance would trigger a fatal explosion.

  “Airplane! One hundred twenty degrees!”

  “Ready anti-aircraft guns! Move it! Height?”

  “Eight hundred! Looks like a Halifax!”

  I disappear from the bridge, reach for ammunition, hand it on up. Our anti-aircraft gun is already blazing away. We’re giving it everything we’ve got. But we’re lying still. Playing target. Through the racket of our gun I hear a great explosion. Then sudden silence.

  I rush onto the bridge and look around. Where in god’s name is the other U-boat? Nothing but flat, opalescent sea. Only a couple of dark blobs drifting off our port beam.

  Our bow swings toward them. Finally the navigator says, “Direct hit—just forward of the tower!”