The Enemy Below

by D. A. Rayner

  The Captain, on the bridge, was aware of the disaster. It was only the extent of the damage that remained in doubt.

  Followed by the Doctor, he had moved hurriedly to the after end of the bridge, where the long ladders rose in two flights from the main deck thirty feet below. Members of the boiler-room and engine-room crews were already standing between the funnels, and more and more of their mates joined them. Along the rails were many men of the ship’s company, gathered to help the survivors climb aboard. But they were nearly all leaning over to see the damage that was being done to their own ship; and the U-boat’s men, who now poured out of her fore hatch and conning tower and who had expected help to climb aboard the ship that had destroyed their boat, found no help offered. They set about abandoning their vessel in their own yellow rubber dinghies, some of which were already pushing off from the far side.

  From the bridge it was very difficult to find out what was happening below. The Captain was just about to slide down the ladder when he saw the urgent figure of the engineer pushing through the crowd. The Chief paused at the foot of the ladder and, looking up, saw the Captain above him.

  “What chance, Chief?” the Captain called.

  “Without full steam to work the ejectors, absolutely none,

  “How many compartments will flood?”

  “Number two boiler room and the engine room.”

  “We’ll not be able to keep her afloat.”

  “I don’t reckon so, sir. The shell burst the bulkhead between number one and two boiler room, and that will flood too.”

  Dumfounded by the magnitude of the disaster that had overtaken his ship, the Captain beat his mind to think. The engine room was the biggest single compartment in the ship. With it and the two boiler rooms flooded, half her buoyancy would be lost. In ramming the U-boat he had been prepared to lose the small amount of buoyancy represented by the forepeak—and even with the flooding of the forward magazine occasioned by the fire, he had accepted the loss of the former without fear for his ship. But these flooded compartments, added to the loss of boiler and engine rooms, made the end certain.

  “We’ll abandon ship, Chief,” he called down to the upturned face below him. Then, turning back to the front of the bridge: “Get your sick cases on deck, Doctor—port side. I’ll get the motorboat alongside to take them off,” and to the Yeoman: “Tell the motorboat to come alongside port side for the wounded.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Signalman. Take the official publications down to the wireless cabinet. Tell Johnson to make an SOS to Acheron on the emergency set and then abandon ship. Make sure the door of the cabinet is locked when the last man is out.”

  He saw the navigator beside him. “Pilot, have stations for abandoning ship piped, and then get down to the main deck and give a hand getting the lifesaving equipment over the side.”

  For the moment he was alone on the bridge with nothing more to do. He glanced over the side at the U-boat, which was now obviously sinking. His own ship felt heavier and less lively. She wallowed drunkenly in the swell instead of rising delicately over its ridges. The last of the U-boat’s men were leaving her, and already his own men were starting to go over the side.

  He was too tired to feel annoyance. Too tired even to feel any anger against the enemy. Slowly he went down to the main deck.

  THE SEA was full of bobbing heads when both the destroyer and U-boat had sunk beneath the waves. In the center of the crowd the yellow rubber dinghies from the submarine and the gray Carley Floats from the destroyer rose and fell in the seas. The two crews were inextricably mixed, and there were as many Germans in the Carley Floats as there were British seamen in the dinghies. Once the ships had gone, they were no longer Germans and British sailors but common survivors of a similar ordeal. Men of either nation helped each other to clamber into a boat, or swam companionably alongside men whom they had been indirectly trying to slay a moment before.

  The Captain swam to a Carley Float and, half climbing into it, was helped the rest of the way by a sailor who was already there.

  “Hallo, sir,” the man said, “didn’t recognize you at first, sir.”

  “That’s all right, Thomas—filthy stuff, this fuel oil, especially when it’s mixed with the diesel from the U-boat.”

  There were four other men in the raft, three sailors from the destroyer and one German. Another hand appeared, grasping desperately alongside.

  “Get him in,” the Captain said. “He’s got no life jacket.”

  The man was hauled into the boat. The two and a half gold stripes and the star on his cuffs told their own tale. The two Captains were in the same raft.

  At the moment when the Captain recognized the still panting German, he was himself identified. The newcomer struggled to his feet as the British Captain sat down.

  “Korvettenkapitän Peter von Stolberg,” the Kapitän announced. The raft rolled as it passed over the top of the swell, and von Stolberg nearly went over the side.

  “It is surprising how big the sea is when you take to it in a raft,” the Captain said.

  “That is so. You are the Captain?”

  “Yes, I am the Captain.”

  The Kapitän made sure of his balance and placed his legs far apart.

  “We have sunk ourselves,” he announced.

  “More correctly, I sank you, and then was fool enough to let my ship be driven into yours.”

  The German shrugged.

  “Won’t you sit down?”

  “I do not yet know your name, Herr Captain.”

  The Captain tried again. “Do sit down.”

  “I prefer to stand.”

  “You’ve kept me awake for the last two nights. Excuse me if I do not join you.”

  Finally, despite himself, von Stolberg sat down on the opposite side of the raft. As it rocked over the waves, the two Captains adjusted their balance, first one—then the other. They had the ludicrous appearance of a couple of mandarins bowing to each other alternately.

  “We must discuss business,” the Kapitän said.

  “Business? Perhaps so, but may I ask you some questions? What I really want to know is where you went yesterday morning. Did you double back and then make a big circle to the southeast before you returned to your course of two-one-oh?”

  “Herr Captain”—the German drew himself up stiffly—“you know my course?”

  “I’ve come a long enough way with you! Over two hundred miles. Where exactly were you going?”

  “I do not think, Herr Captain, that I can answer your questions. The circumstances, you will agree, are very peculiar.”

  “I should say that they were unique. But I don’t see why we can’t discuss what we’ve been trying to do to each other for the past forty hours.”

  “I prefer not to talk about the duties of my ship.”

  “Well, I suppose that is the absolutely correct attitude to adopt. Though it does seem a pity. When we hauled you aboard, I’d hoped we might have enjoyed a sort of nineteenth hole.”

  Von Stolberg raised his eyebrows. “I do not understand.”

  “Don’t you play golf? I thought you Continentals played a lot.”

  The Captain took fresh stock of his ex-enemy, whom he now felt that he should treat as a guest. However he had to admit that, as host, he had so far been unable to make a breach in the German’s reserve. Von Stolberg was obviously recovering from the exertion of his swim, and the Captain could only hope that, when he had fully recovered, he would prove a more congenial companion.

  “Herr Captain,” von Stolberg began again. “We have business to discuss.”

  “Oh, not really! All I expect from you is that you will keep discipline among your men, and I’ll look after mine. Not that any of them look as if they’re going to cause trouble.” The Captain glanced round at the mixed nationalities that bobbed and floated all around. “But I do wish you’d tell me where you were going. I promised my Doctor that I’d ask you that.”

  “Herr Captain.
I have arrived.”

  “Congratulations! You know, I said to my navigator only this morning, when we got our morning stars, that I thought you might have done so. Of course I forgot—you couldn’t take any yourself. However, you might like to know that your dead reckoning was exactly right—”

  The German, speaking sharply, interrupted him. “Herr Captain. Your ship’s name, if you please?”

  “My ship is—was—His Majesty’s Destroyer Hecate. And the number of your U-boat?” the Captain asked, supposing that he must overlook the peremptory tone of the German’s question.

  “Herr Captain, I am not at liberty to disclose the number of my U-boat.”

  The Englishman was genuinely puzzled by this apparently discourteous and unreasonable reply. He tried again. “You know, von Stolberg, you are adopting a peculiar attitude. I’ve told you the name of my ship, and I don’t see why you can’t tell me the number of yours.”

  “Herr Captain. I think you overlook something.”

  “I don’t see what. We’re both survivors. Surely we can be civil to each other?”

  The German rose solemnly to his feet. The raft gave a vicious lurch and von Stolberg again nearly went overboard. Recovering himself and placing his legs well apart, he began to speak.

  “Herr Captain, I must make myself plain. You are my prisoner.”

  “I am your what?” The Captain was shocked into sitting bolt upright.

  “You are my prisoner. The German Armed Cruiser Cecilie meets me here at noon today. Already she has many Allied prisoners. You and your men will join them.”

  The Captain flogged his tired brain to think. He was longing to tell this piece of Junkerdom that if the Cecilie had been invited to a party in 5 North, 32 Degrees West, he also had asked three guests of his own to attend. As he fought back the temptation to do so, he noticed that the German looked at his watch. “I hope yours has stopped—mine has,” he said with venom.

  The German was not amused. “I ask you to give me your parole.”

  “Look, if you want a fight, you can have one. If I were to tell my lads to wade in and chuck the whole lot of your forty-odd men into the ditch—they’d do it. I don’t want that to happen, but if I have one more word about my being your prisoner—I’ll slap your ears back myself. Now sit down before I knock you down.”

  Sustained by duty, succoured by confidence in the early arrival of the Cecilie, and quite unable to envisage the resumption of any form of warfare, von Stolberg, his speech slowed by incredulity, answered: “But, Herr Captain, you are going to be my—”

  “I’m going to be your—what?”

  “My prisoner.”

  “Come and get me then.” The Captain had not felt so physically angry since he had left school. He rose to his feet.

  Leading Seaman Thomas rose with him.

  “No—no, Thomas. He’s my bird. I’m going to dust his pants for him.” The Captain put his hand on the sailor’s shoulder and forced him to sit again.

  “You would not strike me? You, an officer, to fight like a peasant?”

  “I’m a survivor and you’re another—one that I particularly do not like.”

  “Sock ‘im hard, sir. Don’t waste time on the bastard.” Thomas sounded gleeful.

  The Captain did so. The German stumbled on the rocking raft and came back madly like a bull.

  Whether or not the British sailors would have left the two to fight it out alone, no one will ever know; because in the next raft Kunz seized a paddle and flung it heavily across the intervening stretch of water. It caught the British Captain between the shoulder blades.

  At the same moment as Kunz threw it, Stoker Bradley who sat next to him, and who only a moment before had offered the German a cigarette, whipped out his monkey wrench and smashed in the young Nazi’s head.

  What the moment before had been a party of shipwrecked sailors bobbing companionably over the swell was now a waving sea of arms and legs as the occupants of each frail craft locked in deadly combat.

  The rumpus had gone on for ten minutes when it was brought to a sudden panting hush. The Hecates, whose numbers were gradually prevailing in each raft, raised their eyes to the source of the sound.

  “And what the hell is going on here?” the unmistakably English voice had asked. Then again from the destroyer’s bridge the loud-hailer blared as, with engines churning in reverse, she lay stopped in the swell. “HMS Marabout, at your service. Now look lively there, and get aboard as quickly as you can. Acheron and Mastiff are sinking a German raider just over the horizon. We want to see the fun too.”

  COMMANDER D.A. RAYNER, D.S.C, V.R.D., R.N.V.R., has had a consuming passion for the sea ever since, as an eight-year-old London schoolboy in World War I, he was punished for drawing exploding U-boats in the margin of his geometry book.

  Rejected by the Navy for medical reasons, he managed, against stiff competition, to get into the Volunteer Reserve in 1925. By the time World War II broke out, he was so knowledgeable that he became the first Volunteer Reserve officer in British Naval history to command destroyers, working up from a trawler to a corvette and, finally, to command of a destroyer group.

  Commander Rayner now lives with his wife and three children on a large, working farm in Berkshire, marketing thousands of turkeys, chickens and pigs a year.

  He has published an account of his wartime experiences, Escort, and is at work on a novel about a classic naval battle during the Napoleonic Wars.