The Diary of a U-boat Commander - Sir King-Hall Stephen (best novels to read txt) 📗

realize that I don’t care if they do shoot me?

In the Mess, people avoid me. What do I care? Not one of them is worthy to stand on the same soil that holds her beloved body. They have buried her in the Castle grounds. In accordance with her wishes, I have arranged for flowers. Perhaps one day when all this is over I may be able to live here and tend the place where she sleeps, free at last from all her cares.

 

*

 

At the Court of Inquiry they tried to cross-examine me on our life together. Dolts! what do they aim at proving? That I loved you? I hardly listened. When they finished the evidence, the President asked me if I had anything to say! Anything to say! I felt like telling them they were cogs in the most monstrous machine for manufacturing sorrow and destruction that mankind had ever devised. I could have shaken my fist in their solemn faces and shouted “Beasts! you murdered her! You destroyed that most wonderful woman who lowered herself to love me.”

Actually there was a long silence, and then the Vice-President, Captain Fruhlingsohn, said, “Speak; we wish you well.”

It was the first touch of sympathy, the only sign of humanity I had received in all these awful days, and it touched my stubborn heart and the longed-for tears flowed at last.

I murmured: “Gentlemen, I am no traitor; but I loved her as my own soul.”

“Dissolve the Court. Remove the prisoner.” Like the clash of iron gates, officialdom came into its own again.

 

*

 

So I am not to be shot! Not even imprisoned! “Don’t fall in love with enemy agents again!”—that summarized their verdict.

Ha! Ha! Ha! It is all horribly funny. The real reason is that they need me. I am a trained and skilful slaughterer on the seas; I am an essential part of the great machine. And they haven’t got any spares! I was in the Mess yesterday when the English papers we get from Amsterdam arrived. Oh! a pretty surprise awaited the first man who opened The Times. These English had published the names of 150 U-boat commanders they had caught. There they all were. Christian names and all complete. The only thing missing was a blank space in which to fill in our names when the time comes.

Dinner was a silent meal last night, and next morning some rat of a Belgian had posted the list on the gatepost of the Mess. The machine has offered five hundred marks for his apprehension—how foolish; as if by shooting him they would take any names off the long list.

 

*

 

I am to sail at dawn tomorrow. I shall not be sorry to get away for a space from this place with its mingled memories of delight and death.

 

*

 

Back again, and I haven’t written a word for three weeks.

My billet last trip was off Finisterre. I sighted two convoys, but there were destroyers there; they are so black and swift I don’t go near them.

I don’t want to die in a U-boat. It’s not worth while. It is easy to avoid these convoys. I dive and make a great fuss of attacking, then I steer divergently. Nobody knows where the enemy is except me; I am the only one who looks through the periscope—I take good care of that. And then how I curse and swear when I announce that the convoy has altered course, and there is no chance of getting in to attack. None of them are so disappointed as I am!

The mines get on my nerves, there is no way of dodging them, and Lord! how they sprout on the Flanders coast.

I am to go out in six days. It is very little rest. I believe they want to kill me. But I won’t die! Not I.

I went to her grave yesterday for the first time. I had thought I should weep, but I did not; in fact it left me quite unmoved. I feel she’s not really dead; she comes to me sometimes, always at night when I am alone and when we are at sea. There’s nothing very tangible, but I catch an echo of her voice in the surge of the sea along the casing, or the sound of the breeze as it plays along the aerial. And so I will not die until she calls me, for up to the present her messages have told me to live and endure.

 

*

 

A very awkward incident took place last night. We were off the Naze and saw a steamer some distance away.

We dived to attack. When we were about a mile away I had a look at her, and something about her put me off. I half thought she was a decoy ship, and I privately determined I would not attack. I steered a course which brought me well on her quarter, and as soon as I saw that it was impossible to get into position to fire I increased speed on the engines and shook the whole boat in efforts which were ostensibly directed to getting her into position. At length I eased speed and bitterly exclaimed that my luck was out.

The First Lieutenant suggested that we should give her gunfire, but I pointed out that I had good reason to suspect her of being a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and as he had not seen her he could hardly question my judgment. I was going forward, when I accidentally overheard the Navigator and the Engineer talking in the wardroom. I listened.

The Engineer said: “The Captain doesn’t seem to have the luck he used to command.”

“Or else he has lost skill!” replied Ebert. “We never fired a torpedo at all last trip, and it looks as if we are following that precedent this time.”

I had heard enough, and, without their realizing my presence, I returned to the control room. I considered the situation, and came to the conclusion that they suspected nothing, but it was evident that their minds were running on lines of thought which might be dangerous. I looked at my watch and saw that there was still two hours of daylight left, and then decided to play a trick on them all. I relieved the First Lieutenant at the periscope, and when a decent interval of about half an hour had elapsed I saw a ship. This vessel of my imagination, a veritable Flying Dutchman in fact, I proceeded to attack, and, after about twenty minutes of frequent alterations of speed and course, I electrified the boat by bringing the bow tubes to the ready.

The usual delay was most artistically arranged, and then I fired. With secret amusement I watched the two expensive weapons of war rushing along, but destined to sink ingloriously in the ocean, instead of burying themselves in the vitals of a ship. An oath from myself and an order to take the boat to twenty metres.

With gloomy countenance I curtly remarked: “The port torpedo broke surface and then dived underneath her, the starboard one missed astern.”

So far all had gone well, but ten minutes later I nearly made a fatal error. We had been diving for several hours, the atmosphere was bad, and as it was dusk I decided to come up, ventilate, and put a charge on the batteries. I gave the necessary orders, and was on my way up the conning tower to open the outer hatch. The coxswain had just announced that the boat was on the surface, when a terrible thought paralysed me, and I clung helplessly to the ladder trying to think out the situation.

It had just occurred to me that as soon as the officers and crew came on deck they would naturally look for the steamer we had recently fired at; this ship in the time interval which had elapsed would still be in sight.

As I came down, the First Lieutenant was at the periscope, looking round the horizon. Quickly I thrust the youth from the eyepiece, and, as calmly as I could, said: “I thought I heard propellers.”

Half an hour later we surfaced for the night. I have been wondering ever since whether they suspect, for the three of them were talking in the wardroom after dinner and stopped suddenly when I came in.

I must be careful in future.

 

*

 

I was sent for this morning by the Commodore’s office, and handed my appointment as Senior Lieutenant at the barracks Wilhelmshafen.

No explanation, though I suspected something of the sort was coming, as three days after we got in from my last trip I was examined by the medical board attached to the flotilla.

So I am to leave the U-boat service, and leave it under a cloud! It is a sad come-down from Captain of a U-boat to Lieutenant in barracks, a job reserved for the medically unfit for sea service.

Am I sorry? No, I think I am glad. Life here at Bruges is one long painful episode. No one speaks to me in the Mess. I am left severely alone with my memories. The night before last I found a revolver in my room, and attached to it was a piece of paper bearing the words: “From a friend.”

Perhaps at Wilhelmshafen it will be different, and yet, when I went down to the boat at noon and collected my personal affairs and stepped over her side for the last time, I could not check a feeling of great sadness. We had endured much together, my boat and I, and the parting was hard.

 

At Barracks.

 

As I suspected when I was appointed here, my job is deadly to a degree, and my main duty is to sign leave passes.

Our great effort in France has failed, and now the Allies react furiously. The great war machine is strained to its utmost capacity; can it endure the load?

Our proper move is to paralyse the Allied offensive by striking with all our naval weight at his cross-channel communications. The U-boat war is too slow, and time is not on our side, whilst a hammer blow down the Channel might do great things. But we have no naval imagination, and who am I, that I should advance an opinion?

A discredited Lieutenant in barracks—that’s all.

Worse and worse—there are rumours of troubles in the Fleet taking place under certain conditions.

It is the beginning of the end!

Last night the High Seas Fleet were ordered to weigh at 8 a.m. this morning.

A mutiny broke out in the K�nig and quickly spread.

By 9 a.m. half a dozen ships were flying the red flag, and to-day Wilhelmshafen is being administered by the Council of Soldiers and Sailors.

There has been little disorder; the men have been unanimous in declaring that they would not go to sea for a last useless massacre, a last oblation on the bloodstained altars of war.

Can they be blamed? Of what use would such sacrifice be?

Yet to an officer it is all very sad and disheartening.

I have seen enough to sicken me of the whole German system of making war, and yet if the call came I know I would gladly go forth and die when tout est perdu fors l’honneur.

Such instincts are bred deep into the men of families such as mine.

We approach the culmination of events. To-day Germany has called for an armistice. It has been inevitable since our Allies began falling away from