Any Survivors (2008) (13 page)

‘No, we haven’t,’ I replied.

‘That doesn't matter, Gotthold. Do you remember those manoeuvres in ’37 – the things you managed to do with nail scissors and a 50 pfennig coin? We all know you’re a swine, but in technical matters no one comes close.’

I decided to be humble. Whatever I may have done with or without a pair of scissors, my reputation could only suffer henceforth. It was better to lower expectations. ‘Adalbert,’ I said, for this was the Student's true name, so called when the others were not teasing him. ‘You do realise that everyone can have a bad day and I'm not always at the height of my technical prowess.’ I thought to myself,
Let's wait and see
.

The plank went off at a right angle from the wall of the quay and was getting more and more slippery as it was being increasingly engulfed by the mass of water. I wondered what we were doing. Were we going to walk all the way to England? What would I do if a seagull grabbed me by the collar and led me into the water, realising that I didn't belong here? Would it not be easier to turn back time to the point when the kind Ursel greeted me with such warmth in the stables? I could have whispered in her ear, ‘Dearest, let's flee somewhere where the ground is firm and arable, where there are rooks instead of evil seagulls, where the air smells of burned potato shrubs, not of tar and machine oil.’ But I left it at the thought; I wasn't really going to flee.

I concentrated all my efforts on following my sauntering companion along the slippery plank. In the semi-darkness I could now see a narrow surface protruding, like a sluice surrounded by a narrow enclosure. We stepped onto ribbed steel plates that had excellent grip. I was about to comment that the situation was improving but I was wrong. The Student pushed open a hatch somewhat clumsily on something that looked a bit like a chimney. The next thing I knew he was climbing inside. It was as slippery as if the devil himself had smeared the sides with soft soap. With the smoothness of a letter being posted through a slot, he disappeared with a slight rumbling into the depths. It could not have been very deep after all because I could hear a grunt of pain and shortly afterwards a faint glow appeared. I stepped carefully onto an iron stepladder hoping to avoid an unpleasant landing and admonished my friend.

‘One would think by the way you are carrying on that you have never set foot on a U-boat before,’ I said to him, watching him rub the sore points on his bones, which due to his physique were not well cushioned. I could easily guess where we were. On every bucket and every box I could make out the significant numbers that had only recently started to play such a role in my life: U-XY. This prison of iron ramps, pipes and iron sheets was the home of the person whose life I was now leading, and it was likely to be (and I shuddered at the thought) my home for the foreseeable future, if not even my grave.

‘Are you going into the torpedo room and I’ll go to the diesel machines?’ my friend enquired, slowly regaining strength after his exertions. That was all I needed, being left to my own devices in this dreadful place.

‘No, my friend. You’re staying here with me! If you get hurt again, I don't even have a cloth to pack your broken bones in.’

Then I made myself a promise: enough of tapping in the dark, literally and otherwise. If I don't find out what's happening here within the next ten minutes, I will ask the Student straight out. I didn't care what he thought of me, but it didn't come to that. My friend no longer wanted to lead the way but left it to me to go ahead. I thought,
Not much can happen, it's not a big ship and the direction should be obvious, not like on Piccadilly Circus or Etoile where there are seven or eight directions that can be taken
. But I couldn't have been more wrong. I was inside a U-boat and still had no idea what it looked like inside. It was pitch-black. First I went to the left to pull aside a slide door and crawled into a very small compartment. There was a wooden floor as well as what appeared to be a wooden ceiling. I pulled on a piece of rope and immediately let go again as it began to run through my hands very quickly giving me rough hands, which was something I couldn't bear. Then my stomach lurched and I went crashing down several levels.

‘Are you at the bottom?’ a frightened voice enquired from three levels above.

‘That's right,’ I replied. ‘You can come down now. I can't see anything without a torch.’ As I heard the Student making his way down step by step, I resolutely and unwaveringly vowed that if the plan was to go to sea in this device, then I would sooner die the death of a traitor at the wall of the barracks or be executed in the whitewashed surroundings of a state prison. Being on a U-boat was bound to be unpleasant enough with everyone in their rightful place and a commander who knew what he was doing, but with a skeleton crew on the wide-open sea, or even underneath, that was a way of ending my life that I was not prepared to accept. Thankfully the conversation turned to going home rather than going out to sea.

The Student limped towards me; his previous fall must have been quite bad. ‘You’re a funny man, Gotthold. You’ll break your neck one day with your dare-devilry. Why on earth did you have to take the munitions lift? You didn't know whether the harbour engineer had taken out any of the parts to fix or replace. What would I have done if you had crashed and left me to fend for myself?’ His words were almost endearing but didn't remain so for long. ‘Any idea what the time is?’ he asked, since his watch had shattered in the fall and I had no pockets in my work trousers. ‘We must get back before someone else takes over from Anton, then we really will be in trouble.’ Those were the magic words. Then we both said at the same time, ‘Let's get to work!’

Sadly I still had no idea what the work entailed but I was content again. If work was required of me and I was given the right tools, I was happy to tackle anything, even if it meant planting a bed of seeds.

My mate was now ahead of me, leading the way unsteadily with the faint light of his torch towards the torpedo room. Slowly I began to revise my preconceived opinion of U-boats. Once you were used to the atmosphere it was all quite neutral and factual, a bit like being in a power station where the master builder has had to employ space-saving devices. The room had an off-putting name: TORPEDOANSTOSSRAUM, but from appearances could just as well have been a little bakery or suchlike, only that the two large openings housed torpedoes rather than loaves of bread.

As the torch cast its faint glow towards the wall I could make out the round dials sunk into the wall, and next to these handles there were bolts and massive steering wheels. This is where my friend had ended up. I couldn't quite see what he was turning. I could just detect that he was trying to aim the light of the torch at one of the dials which was now twitching furiously. Judging by the unnatural position of my companion's head I presumed he had either lost or forgotten to take his glasses or they had broken at some point along the journey. In short, they weren't there and his naked eye was incapable of making out the reading of the flickering dial with the insufficient lighting available.

Feeling that I ought to be doing something, I grabbed the nearest handle and turned it to the left. As quick as I could, I turned it back to its original position because there was now an ear-splitting screech from the area above us. The light of the torch was now aimed squarely at my face and the Student remarked in a voice that sounded like he had lost his belief in God.

‘You rotten piece of carrion! If the devil sniffed your soul he would recoil and reject you. You would rather let us both die than pass the opportunity of frightening a friend.’

An icy silence ensued. The Student carried on trying to read the dial but appeared to have lost all faith in life and his surroundings. My heart was softening. In the kind of situation we were in, where each of us was reliant upon the other, it seemed foolish to bear grudges even if the insults he had bestowed on me weighed heavy. I crept up towards my friend and he said, with no further introduction or apology, ‘Here, read this. I must have something in my eye. I'm having trouble focusing.’

‘342,’ I read out, but only a few seconds later I could see my reading was wrong. It was in fact 542 but I didn't want to correct myself for fear of losing face.

‘342,’ he repeated as his mood swung from subdued to joyful ecstasy. ‘What do you know!’ he exclaimed. ‘I was right! Did I not point out during the last attack that something wasn't right and we were losing pressure? How long do you think it will take to rectify? Do you think it will take fourteen days? That would really save us some efforts.’

‘At least fourteen days,’ I responded with great conviction. What on earth was going to take fourteen days I hadn't the foggiest idea but my friend's enthusiasm about the change in plans was infectious. Our ‘work’ was now no longer necessary and we could go back. I soon realised that our efforts were, in a judicial sense, tantamount to sabotage. That I was let off the hook so easily without having to resort to dynamite or even a screwdriver could only be seen as a great success.

As we headed back over the slippery planks, I prepared to console myself that the excursion had been hard work but most instructive. We had just reached the end of the walkway, stepping onto the drier stone steps and thinking how well I would be able to sleep after a brisk walk with lots of fresh sea air, when suddenly all hell broke loose.

The night air reverberated with a single shrill tone. It was the unmistakable sound of an air-raid warning that we all knew and feared. We took each other's hand and ran up the remaining steps. The maritime harbour had turned into a madhouse. All those not directly involved in air defence were confronted with a mass that were keen to prove their merits otherwise. Dozens of those in their lookout positions had been waiting eagerly for this historic moment to bark commands and control the masses. Voices shouted from the darkness: ‘Lights out! This way to the air-raid shelter! Down with you! Take cover! What are you doing just standing there, clear the passages!’

‘Run, Gotthold!’ the Student ordered.

I threw my arms around the shoulders of my limping comrade and said, ‘I won't leave you now in your hour of need.’

He pushed me away. ‘Are you being thick? Don't you realise that Anton has instigated this? Why did I not foresee that the unlucky soul would sound the warning sirens? The mains go through the courtyard; he must have put a nail through the wires to create a short circuit and warn us. If only he had let us be then the captain might have found us and we might have had the excuse that we were just checking everything was in order.’

That was typical of the Student. Instead of positive action he dwelled and moaned about the past and things we could no longer change. He should have pulled himself together and tried to disguise his limp. One young man in Hitler Youth uniform, who was holding watch on the harbour, had discovered us as he was surveying the walls of the quay with his torch. He shouted: ‘An injured party, this way!’ He was the first to discover someone wounded and was not about to let go of this triumph. The boy was already envisaging a decoration – a Knight's Cross of goodness knows which order. There was nothing we could do.

‘It's late! At least you get the hell out of here. If they ask, say we haven't seen each other since last night.’

That was all I heard him say. From all sides the emergency units were approaching, carrying stretchers. ‘This is our wounded man,’ the first unit called out, ‘and we saw him first!’

‘Out of our way!’ the second unit responded. ‘This is our patch, you have the north-eastern side of the harbour. Let us through or we will report you.’

I wasn't able to see how it ended.
Why don't you all start fighting each other?
I thought to myself,
Then at least units 3 and 4 can make full use of their stretchers
. I fled as quickly as I could.

One good thing that came out of the alarm was that the way back proved far easier than the way out. All gates were wide open – three cars could have fit through. I walked as slowly as I could towards one of the gates sealing off the harbour, but it appeared that in this situation no one was allowed out on their own.

I was pulled aside by someone very big and strong, aiming a torch at my face such that I couldn't see him. I was pushed into a row of four, being formed by the dockworkers. He was instructing the adjutants: ‘We only have a six-minute march to the shelter, so one minute to go until we close the exits. We have been informed by a secure source within the regime that the alarm is sounded exactly 12½ minutes before the air raids. This leaves us exactly one minute to group ourselves in the correct formations.’

It was typically German how he trusted the official source; such a shame that he would be let down in this instance. I waited the full one minute, marched with them for a few hundred metres and then broke away from the formation. It was a good thing they were not armed. They might have shot at me in the darkness. It was now two o’clock in the morning. There were very few people on the streets, apart from the armies of air-raid wardens. Their number made my chances of escape slim; I was sure to be picked up and brought to shelter. I did not think that wandering aimlessly into the darkness would bear success either. I would probably encounter patrols, and then the question was what was going to be more resilient, my nasal bone or the many lamp posts I was likely to walk into? On the other side of the road the air-raid wardens were rounding up a group of people that had been in a nightclub, so they could be herded towards the nearest shelter. I could hear a female voice, deep and clear as a bell, inspiring confidence: ‘How romantic. We’re being led into a shelter. And when the enemy has given up, we can come back and continue where we left off. Don't you think the wine will keep flowing, so cheer up old boy!’ The voice stirred me deeply. It could only be Christine.

I crossed the street and bumped straight into her. The impact of the collision was softened by the curves of her bosom. She recognised me too as I clutched her hands and whispered, ‘Christ!’ I put my arms around her hips and pulled her away from the group. Trembling with joy, she was having trouble orienting herself because she had only just come out of the brightly lit premises into the darkness.