My Lili of the lamplight, my own Lili Marlene.
There was a three-day artillery school, and a twenty-hour course in submarine subjects covering the fundamentals of positive and negative floatation, how to blow and fill the ballast tanks, use of the horizontal rudder, bow fins, diesel engines, and storage batteries. We followed this with training patrols on small minesweepers and U-boats. Tactical instruction on torpedo firing was followed by antisubmarine-warfare lectures and a day spent in a deep-sided, aboveground pool training in the use of escape apparatus to get out of sinking submarines. This expertise explained why Uncle Martin circled the sunken U-boat with a spotlight and a gun in his hands. In the pool we practiced with valves and equalizing pressures, and then moved on to sea survival: how to keep afloat if adrift, and then deal with hypothermia.
I was good at remembering everything and thought, This could be what I become, what I am meant to be—a soldier, a sailor.
After the basics of seafaring, Major Oldif picked me along with several other ensigns to do another round of training. “Our success depends on stealth,” he kept saying. And, “The U-boat is the most successful conveyor of torpedoes.” The main point of the second round was to learn underwater maneuvering. First, we learned the principles on a submerged steering trainer, which led us to go out in real boats. For a while it felt like days swirled into each other, and I’d been smothered by a giant bomb of information. I liked how busy they kept me, as whenever there was downtime, my mind would get caught on the same loop of broken memories. There were days I wouldn’t think of anyone by sheer act of will, but then I’d touch the loose cloth of a curtain or smell the hint of crushed garlic in the air, and it was as if I was standing in the living room of my childhood home, and then I’d have to experience everyone I loved disappearing once more.
The few hours at night I did sleep were spent dodging those images or crawling from my bunk and walking around the base. There were mandatory blackouts at night. Everything was dark. I wished the war would be over and there could be lights burning again, as many as could be made. Lights meant for reading and prayers and families, and the last moments of night before sleep. My father, a good man, could come back to his factory and continue to light Europe and spin thousands of stories under that light.
One night, on a walk with Pauwel, we moved among the shadowy figures of guards on their rounds, the menacing fingers of searchlights snapped on and sliced up the great inky blackness of the sky. We watched as a bomber was caught in a cone of light and flack fire opened up all around it. The tail burst apart and the nose of the plane dipped, and its fiery, orange descent streaked across the air. I thought of Herbert Yarborough, screaming through a spinning terror of a free fall. Three parachutes blossomed white beneath the flame, but they disappeared in the darkness soon after deploying.
“What unlucky bastards,” Pauwel said.
We kept walking around the compound and a feral little dog came running up to us. When I bent down to pet it, Pauwel stepped back and said, “Don’t touch that. It’s filthy.”
“You don’t like dogs?” I asked, petting the little brindle mutt on its matted fur. I missed Fergus very much.
“I hate dogs,” Pauwel said.
“Why, look at this guy, he’s friendly.” The dog had flipped on its back and clawed the air to get me to pet its stomach.
“I never told you my dog story?” Pauwel asked.
“No.”
“When I was a boy, before we went to camp together, my father had this hunting dog he loved, a big rough springer mix. He wanted to have this dog forever, so he got a female for them to have puppies. When the dog gave birth, she kept sitting on the puppies like a chicken and suffocating them. We tried to keep her away from them, and had to stand guard while the puppies nursed. When it was my turn to watch in the garage, I lay down next to the little nest we made them and put my head on a big sack of fresh sawdust and fell asleep. When I woke, the mom was sitting on the last of the pups. A little paw stuck out from under her. The four other pups were all motionless on the ground. I stayed there for a long time before someone came and checked on me. They found me staring at that dog sitting on its dead pup beside the other dead ones.
“‘Did you just keep watch?’ my father had asked, looking at me like I was ill in the head. I’ll carry that look like a disease the rest of my life. It’s a shame I’ll always feel.”
I didn’t say anything to Pauwel then, but his story left a deep impression on me. Not the story of the dogs, exactly, but how he could speak openly about something that made him feel low and weak. His story was a gift to me, a model for release I knew I’d someday need to follow.
During training Major Oldif kept telling my troop that they had special missions for us. We kept practicing steering a straight course under known conditions and with difficulties, overcoming trim-distribution problems, which eventually led to diving maneuvers. Once we had demonstrated the basics of those operations, we took a basic course in hands-on underwater maneuvering.
At dinner, Pauwel and I shared what we learned and ate mush and potatoes. Pauwel had been on the same track, but with the prior recruit class. He was also told there was some special mission awaiting them.
In the morning, general boat knowledge training began with technical motor and engine skills. We started with training diagrams, and charts, then by lunch moved on to cutaway models, and by dinner we worked in a factory on full engines, which we were tasked with diagnosing and repairing. At the far end of the factory, laborers were working with sheet metal at drill presses, engine lathes, milling machines, and grinding wheels.
The next day we studied navigational charts, currents, and then tide charts for the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. Each map was similar to Uncle Martin’s except larger, and less creased.
“We will make several runs in these ships, then you will all be transferred to a naval base in La Rochelle, France.”