We had a few-hour course in ship identification, simple navigation, and the absolute basics in training for meteorology, astronomical navigation, and flag and light signaling. The information was thrown repeatedly at us as we were needed; every last body was needed for something.
“My head is going to explode,” Pauwel told me. He didn’t often talk about details from home life, nor did we talk about our early camp days. We discussed what we had learned and tried to help each other through all the information. We rehashed the language we had been fed in the classes, speaking of enemy warships and merchant marine vessels by acronym names and based on tonnage. The language was cold. It was all the operational terms that dealt with machinery, and that is how we thought of it, as we went through a flip chart to identify the kinds of ships at sea and the flags they flew. It was all only metal—all machinery—nothing animate.
On the morning of February 24, Pauwel’s and my entire cadet classes transferred by bus farther north of Kiel, to a small port camp along the water.
Us ensigns marched off the buses into the port compound. The tents had mesh over them, and anything that could let out light was blacked out or had a cover over it so it could go dark in case of air raids. We marched into a small meeting tent, where we waited for further instructions. We sat in silence for several moments until Major Oldif came and stood in front of us.
“It is because of your extra efforts and abilities that you have been selected for this assignment. We are about to launch a new weapon that you will each be in charge of. You are bestowed with the opportunity to turn the tide of the war at sea.” He held up his pointer finger and tapped it into the dent at his temple. Then he nodded to several soldiers who had come into the tent with him. Each soldier had a box and started handing out folders from the box to everyone sitting down. Inside my folder was a diagram of a miniature submarine.
“What you have in front of you is the layout of our new model of midget submarine, the ‘Negro.’ They are one-person vessels capable of delivering one torpedo strike, and you will be our first wave of captains.”
Major Oldif went through the folder with us. Then he walked us all across the compound to a warehouse. Inside there were several Negro subs propped up on large cast-iron sawhorses. For the rest of the day, engineers described the subs, their purpose, and their capabilities.
The following morning we met at the pier where groups of five were assigned to work with one of the subs, which was already in the water. The Negro sub was nicknamed “Human Torpedo,” and was nine meters long, displaced five tons of water, and had both an electric motor and a gas engine that gave it a top speed of twelve knots. The entire thing was the same shape and size of the torpedo latched underneath it. The only visible difference between the two was the glass dome of the cockpit. In the cockpit of the sub, the waterline was at my shoulders, and the glass cover over my head was tinted black to decrease the reflection.
“Grab that seat with your asshole,” one of the engineers told me, “and focus on these controls and gauges here.”
Space onboard was limited to the basic equipment: a tiny cockpit, the life support systems, fuel, the propulsion system and the equipment needed to run it. When it was my turn to take the Negro out for my first pilot run in the harbor, it was uncomfortable being in such a confined space. My legs were too long. They were growing into my father’s legs. The iron walls adjusting to the pressure of the water let out soft groans that rose up through my bones. My knees barely slipped under the steering column, but there was enough room behind the seat for extra gear. The tube felt like a coffin that was ready to be pounded into the ground or to sink to the sea floor, holding me there until nothing of who I was remained. By the end of the first full run of test trips, many of the crew got sick from the waves and vomited in the bilges. The hatches couldn’t be conveniently opened while under way at sea so they had to steer with their own foul odor doubling their nausea. On the third day, one of the Negro subs floated out of the harbor and by the time it was towed back to shore the ensign inside was dead. It wasn’t until later that night that the engineers figured out carbon monoxide poisoning had caused the drowsiness and nausea and the death of the lone sailor.
“I hate those things,” Pauwel whispered across the dinner table to me. “I’m claustrophobic in them, and the visibility is shit. I feel like a lab rat.”
At the end of the first week of training with the midget subs, our forty-nine-member crew was put on a low-fiber diet and issued food tablets for twenty-four hours and then energy tablets for the duration of our time before shipping out, to prevent us from needing to use the bathroom on our deployments.
“Due to lack of toilet facilities, a regular diet would cause you extreme discomfort,” Major Oldif told us.
As the major gave us our first orders, Pauwel leaned over to me with the diet pills in his hand and whispered, “Do you feel like a rat now?”
16
In the mini-submarine at night, skirting along the black edge of the world, the thinnest cloud covering created a perfect inky darkness that rolled in and away with the waves. I forgot about my old life. Being in the submarine, it was as if I had no past. My life simply started as a sailor, and that sufficed. In the open water during training exercises, I thought about throttle levers and current strengths, and never about what life was like before coming to Kiel. Being on the water was an empty slate.
When my fuel levels and time chart told me it was time to return to the base at Kiel, I turned the Negro back to shore. At the base, the Negros sat moored side by side along the pier, like giant cast-iron water slugs.
Major Oldif’s fierce eyes moved from the boats to me walking down the pier. His pupils seemed to grow and his brow furrowed. He put his head down and read something on his clipboard and walked toward me, moving to the dock as if feeling his way with a pair of antennae.
“Ensign Koopman,” he said, “your training run went well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. You keep this up and you may be a credit to the Dutch.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Another Negro was docking, and after the sailors roped it off, I saw it was Pauwel’s sub.
“It’s hotter than a snake’s asshole in here,” Pauwel said from the seat of his boat. He was coated in sweat and his face was drained of color, but he bit off a short smile and pushed the glass dome open higher so he could get out.
“Good god, I hate that thing,” he said to me as we walked down the pier. “Those are going to be the end of us.”
After our training exercises, which consisted of taking our subs out for a cruise of the harbor where we stayed on the surface, and then another that included a brief submersion, the Negros were loaded onto a battleship by a flat crane mounted on a hopper barge. Major Oldif had given us our orders.