The Ocean Liner

HMS Tisiphone

Altogether, HMS Tisiphone picked up five survivors of U-113, including Todt, Hufnagel and Krupp. The five of them had all been in the control room, and had managed to make their escape through the conning tower hatch in the first few minutes as the U-boat went down. It was Krupp who had ensured Hufnagel’s survival, taking precious moments to fit him with a life jacket at the risk of his own life.

The rest of the crew, including the men in the stern of the boat, where the torpedo had struck, those who had rushed into the forward compartment, those in the engine room and those in the sickbay, had all perished with the submarine. Forty-three men were dead. Hufnagel tried to absorb this as his injuries were treated by a well-meaning but clumsy British petty officer.

Almost everyone he had known aboard U-113, a small world, but a world nevertheless, was gone. He would never see any of them again. It was a thing almost impossible to comprehend. Most of them had been barely over twenty. He himself was only a few years older than that, and nothing in his life had prepared him for these past weeks. He felt altered in vital ways, a man apart, as though he had in reality gone down with the iron coffin, and a stranger had been put in his place.

The well-meaning officer gave him a swig of scotch from a bottle, to fortify him against the pain of the crude stitches with which he was trying to hold together Hufnagel’s torn and bleeding arm. It was a mistake. The raw alcohol made Hufnagel confused and then violently ill. The bed which he had borrowed from a British sailor had to be changed.

The British crew, fresh out of port, were clean and groomed. He and the other four survivors had been dirty and unkempt even before U-113 had been sunk. They were far worse now, covered in oil and filth. The only emotion he was able to feel at first was a vague shame at his own appearance and that of his fellow Germans.

The British skipper, Cottrell, was inquisitive. He was eager to talk, and looked in on Hufnagel now and then as they waited to rendezvous with the destroyer which would take charge of the captured Germans. He was a pink-cheeked, gingery man who affected a pipe, and seemed to Hufnagel like the cartoon of a typical Englishman.

‘May I ask,’ he enquired during one of his visits, ‘what you were up to with the Manhattan?’

‘Our captain got it into his head that he was going to torpedo her.’

‘Didn’t you see the American flags painted on her sides?’

‘Yes. We had a disagreement about that.’

‘And that’s when this so-called mutiny took place?’

‘It had started some time earlier, I think.’

‘But this is when he shot you?’

‘Yes.’

Cottrell puffed on his unlit pipe, producing a whistling sound which apparently give him as much satisfaction as real tobacco smoke. ‘I don’t mean to interrogate you. They’ll do that when you get to England. But it seems you saved a lot of innocent lives. You’re not a Nazi, I take it?’

Hufnagel couldn’t think of an answer which would explain his feelings without seeming disloyal to his country. ‘I am a German.’

‘Yes, of course you are. The reason I ask is because your skipper’s still Heil-Hitlering and raving about you.’

‘Yes, I hear him.’ Todt was perfectly audible a few bunks away, accusing Hufnagel of treason.

‘He seems awfully cut up. I suppose the fact that you were all so busy arguing about the Manhattan explains how we were able to surprise you.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Did you serve in the last war, old chap?’ Cottrell asked innocently.

Hufnagel realised he must look very decrepit indeed. ‘I wasn’t born yet when it started.’

‘Oh, I see. So you’re about the same age as me. Well, the closest I’d been to battle was breaking a tooth on some buckshot in a roast pheasant. Your boat was our first kill.’

‘I congratulate you,’ Hufnagel said dryly.

‘Thank you.’ Cottrell champed on his innocuous pipe. ‘I’m glad you survived. Sorry about your crew.’

‘You didn’t start the war.’

‘Neither of us started the war. There’s not much point in worrying about it, is there?’

‘No. If you worry about it, you won’t last very long. Like Hamlet.’

‘Oh, you’ve heard of Hamlet?’

‘We read Shakespeare at school.’

‘Odd, that.’

Hufnagel, weak with pain and loss of blood, found himself wishing Cottrell would go away and leave him alone. ‘What is odd?’

‘Our two countries being at war again.’

‘You always start it.’

‘Not exactly.’ Cottrell opened his mouth to launch on a defence, but seeing Hufnagel’s drained face, thought better of it, and drew the curtain again.