Das Boot

  The gangway is pushed out. It slants sharply upward: We’re united once more with solid earth.

  Even before I hear the buzz, I can feel it as part of the very air I breathe: planes!

  The sound is coming from the ocean: the swarm we’ve been expecting. All heads are raised. The humming grows louder, deepens into a steady thunder. Already the flak is cutting loose. There—out over the sea—tiny white clouds like wads of cotton hang in the sky. A flash of light: the wing of a plane. Now I can see black dots: five—six bombers. Seven. It’s an armada!

  A piercing snarl suddenly cuts into the furious barking of a four-barrel anti-aircraft gun. Shadows flit across the storehouses. Things fly apart.

  The Old Man is shouting. “Quick, get out of here! Head for the bunker!” His voice cracks.

  Already a hail of bullets is tearing into the paving stones, splintering them in all directions—pursuit planes!

  They’re not after us.

  They’re trying to silence the anti-aircraft posts. It’s a combined attack by fighters and bombers.

  Here and there the pier explodes into fountains of rubble. Fragments of stone sail through the air with a strange deliberation.

  I’m still almost two hundred feet from the armored door of the bunker, which the people inside have pulled shut, leaving the narrowest possible entrance. I leap forward, my knees buckle again, I feel a sharp pain in my thighs. Legs like wobbly stilts that I can’t control. I seem to have forgotten how to run.

  Screams, little white puffs of cloud in the sky, howling sirens, the rattle and snap of machine-gun fire, and the sudden barking of the medium-sized flak, salvo after salvo crashing out in unending succession. Every kind of explosion following its own rhythm in a single, appalling cacophony. Smoke, mushrooms of dust, and in between the gray bodies of aircraft. Which are ours, which are the Tommies’? I recognize a double-tailed Lightning, and high up a hornet swarm of bombers.

  I hear the sharp yapping of light flak, the clatter of machine guns, the chirping whine of splinters. Planes roar and scream. Farther off, the heavy flak rumbles at them like some mighty earthquake. They’re coming in at every height.

  In front of me is a grotesque ballet, choreographed by some madman on a paved stage with the mammoth structure of the U-boat bunker as a backdrop: figures throwing themselves to the ground, running zigzag, dropping to their knees, whirling into the air, sweeping together in tight formation, only to fly apart again, surging this way and that. One man throws his arms into the air, spins in a pirouette, and sinks down in a deep, court curtsy, his palms outstretched in reverence.

  Again the roaring sweeps past. An invisible fist strikes me in the back of the knees. Slammed down on the paving stones, I try convulsively to make a word out of the only fragment in my brain: atro—atro… Renewed howling. A blast of air pins me to the ground as plane after plane roars over. Atrophy!

  A bomber disintegrates in the sky. Fragments of wings tumble down. The tail lands with a crash behind the bunker. I can hardly breathe for dust and smoke. Arms flailing, I reach the concrete wall, squeeze through the slit in the bunker door, fall over someone lying on the floor, hit my forehead, roll to one side.

  The rattle of gunfire sounds duller. I run my hand over my forehead, am not surprised at the sticky feel of blood. The man beside me is groaning and holding his stomach. As my eyes accustom themselves to the half-darkness I recognize him: gray oil-smeared clothes—must be from our boat—Zeitler.

  Someone takes me under the shoulders from behind and tries to lift me to my feet.

  “I’m all right, thanks!”

  I stand up, stagger, eyes fogged, still supported by the man behind. The fog clears. I can stand alone. Then there is an enormous boom that almost shatters my eardrums. The whole bunker is one titanic, reverberating drum. The floor shakes under me. From the roof above the first of the flood docks—which I can just see into—huge lumps of concrete rain down, splash into the water, and pound the boat that’s lying at the pier. Suddenly a brilliant light breaks through a hole in the bunker roof.

  Light! I prop myself up.

  The hole is a good ten feet by ten. Iron matting with thick lumps of concrete caught in it is left hanging where the roof once was. The matting moves, showering down more slabs of concrete.

  The water in the dock continues to break against the piers. My god, twenty-four feet of solid concrete blasted into nothing! It’s never happened before. Cries, orders. As much running about inside the bunker as there was outside.

  Bunker roofs were supposed to be safe against bombs of any size.

  Where’s all the steam coming from?

  Outside, the furious shooting and rolling thunder continue unabated, like some mighty, distant storm.

  A huge cloud of dust settles. I have a furry taste on my tongue. No more air. A racking cough. I have to lean against the wall, my head resting on my forearm.

  Air! All I want is air! I’m smothering. I force my way back to the armored door through a solid wall of humanity, knock aside two shipyard workers who try to bar my path, and push my way through the narrow opening. Nothing but black, oily smoke: something must have scored a hit on a fuel tank.

  I’m wrong: The whole harbor basin is ablaze. Only the cranes rise unmoved out of the billowing clouds of fiery smoke. There’s a sharp crackling and the wail of a steam siren that will not stop.

  I look to the right, in the direction of the lock. The sky is clearer here. I see torn warehouse roofs, houses bombed to piles of rubble. Bent wires and jagged strips of iron tear at my feet. I almost fall into a crater that I failed to see in the smoke. A man lying wounded raises himself up at me, madness in his eyes. Groans and whimpers everywhere. There must be hundreds more like him, hidden by the dust and smoke.

  The boat! What has happened to the boat?

  A gust of wind lifts the curtain of smoke. I climb through railings bent into hoops, swerve around two dead men, run past ruins of redpainted iron. A smoking pile of rocks slides into the water in front of me. God, that was the pier! And the boat? Where is it? I suddenly see a slab of steel towering out of the water like a gigantic plowshare—and attached to it a net guard. The bow! Wooden debris bobs about in the water. Water? It’s oil! And the black lumps moving about in there: three—four—more—are all human beings. These strange water creatures in among the bursting bubbles must all be men from our boat. And the Old Man? What’s happened to him? A banner of smoke streams across the scene. Shouts from behind me: a long, ragged line of soldiers and dockworkers is heading my way. Two trucks, sirens screaming, are racing toward me, swerving along between the craters in a mad slalom.

  And there in the haze I see the Old Man, streaming with blood, his sweater and shirt torn to shreds. His eyes, which were always narrowed, are wide, wide open. At almost the same moment we sink to our knees, bracing our arms on the splintered stones, and face each other like two Sumo wrestlers. The Old Man opens his mouth as though to let loose a great shout. But all that gushes from his lips is blood.

  Copyright 1975 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York.

  Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

  Originally published in West Germany as Das Boot by R. Piper & Co. Verlag, Munich.

  Copyright © 1973 by R. Piper & Co. Verlag.