[The following takes place on a German U-boat, U-405, in the North Sea during 1941.]
On board they concentrated on a “sport” called Kreisen (circling). I and another greenhorn [rookie] who had signed on at Danzig were quickly initiated into this critical procedure. Two orders made a submarine disappear from the surface within seconds, “Alarm” and “Duck.” One day First Watch Officer Lieutenant Horst Willner called the two of us onto the conning tower while several petty officers posted themselves at various positions in the boat and on deck. We stood there harmless and ignorant, with hammering hearts, sensing something bad. The officer, smiling, had a stopwatch in his hand and was looking somewhere up in the sky. Suddenly he yelled in a high-pitched voice, “Alarrrrm!” and when we looked at him in deep surprise, wondering if he had seen something terrible coming down or fallen sick, he yelled at us, “Down there through the round hatch, you idiots, get moving!”
Well, we thought, an order is an order but he could have told us in a calm voice. So down we went, one after the other, taking care not to kick each other’s head, clinging to the handrail on the sides of the stepladder as we made our way to the central room. We arrived, panting in our heavy coats. We thought that we had done quite well. Full of pride, we nodded to the waiting petty officer and wondered why he and the others around laughed so much. Lieutenant Willner appeared through the hatch several yards above us. “Excellent, gentlemen. Now come up here again and we’ll do it once more, only a bit faster this time, please!”
We clambered up to the conning tower, where we politely saluted and reported back to the lieutenant. He looked us over from top to bottom, smiling sarcastically. Alright, I thought to myself, this time we’ll please you and do it a bit faster, but don’t get so excited yelling this bloody alarm, it only makes us nervous. Say it calmly and you’ll see how fast we sink down through this narrow hatch of yours.
”Gentlemen,” said Lieutenant Willner, “you seem to think that this is all a great joke [I did not at all]. But imagine there are five to six men on the conning tower who would like to get into the boat when an enemy plane or destroyer suddenly appears from nowhere. And, naturally, this enemy politely waits, pulling the trigger of his machine guns or the release of his bombs until all of us have gradually climbed down, closed the hatch cover, and brought the boat into the cellar. No, gentlemen!” He raised his voice threateningly. “The enemy will start shooting us from afar because he knows that we will be down within seconds!”
It was hard to believe that someone could get down two narrow hatches into the central room faster than we had and be followed by several more men without hurting one another. I looked down the hatch again.
We were told to watch the performance of a particular petty officer. When the alarm bell rang out a second later, there was a hiss where the officer had been, followed instantly by a thud as he landed on the deck below, then a short shuffling of feet. Seconds later someone tapped my shoulder, and thinking it was the other greenhorn, I said, “Yes, that petty officer sure must have hurt himself. Serves him right for showing off!” Again, the tap on my shoulder.
“You’d better turn around Giese. I hope you saw how I did it.”
I hadn’t, nor could I figure out how he had made it back up to the conning tower so fast.
Source:
Giese, Otto, and James E. Wise. “Life Aboard the U-405.” Shooting the War: The Memoir and Photographs of a U-Boat Officer in World War II. Naval Institute, 2003. 120-21. Print.
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