The U-19's Last Kill

by Jack Finney

  Once more Frank Lauffnauer climbed into the conning tower, leaned over the open hatch and very cautiously inhaled, the rest of us watching, Rosa too, now. He paused as though listening, then got down on his knees, and we could hear him inhale deeply. A moment later we heard the small clatter of his feet on the inside rungs and the drag of the extension cord he took with him. Then, faint and muffled, we heard his voice inside the sub.

  “Gott,” we heard him mutter, his voice awed, “Mein Gott, mein Gott.”

  Then we heard Lauffnauer’s shoes on the rungs, and a moment later his face appeared over the edge of the lower, while and staring. We swarmed aboard then, and climbed down the ladder.

  The hundred-watt bulb glared in my eyes as we all crowded, shoulder bumping shoulder, into the little control room, Then as my eyes accustomed themselves to the light, I stood, as we all did, looking around me, and now I muttered in English what Frank had said in German. “My God,” I said softly, staring at the figure of a man sitting as he had forty years before when he’d taken his last dying look at the world he was leaving.

  One look at him answered the question of how dry the submarine had remained; a hand still resting on the periscope housing, he sat before the housed scope on a padded leather seat, held erect by a shoulder pressed against the brass housing, head slumped on his chest, the face invisible. The hand was skeletal—an ivory-yellow claw enclosed in tight-fitting parchment, on the back of which, in dark blue and faded red, lay the tattooed and wrinkled image of the Imperial German eagle. “Kapitänleutnant Keller,” Lauffnauer said gently. “He was dying, and we left him here, at his own orders. It was he who filled the ballast tanks, then sat staring through the periscope as the sub slowly sank; then he lowered the scope and sat waiting to die. And now, for him, it is only one moment later; he does not even know we lost the war.”

  One at a time then we stepped over the hatch coamings, forward into the next compartment, and for a moment I was astonished—it was the only forward compartment, and we were in the torpedo room, its bulkheads covered with the moisture absorbent that Frank had described. Any submarine is complex; almost every square inch of every bulkhead is crammed with valves, or dials, levers, wheels, piping, cables, or something. Nevertheless, this submarine was primitive; everything we saw was crude and rudimentary by every standard we’d known. At each side of the compartment were two spare torpedoes, lashed into their racks with chains, one above the other, and they were little by comparison with those I knew—eighteen-inchers, I imagined; I’d never seen one before. Overhead, mounted on a simple trolley, hung an ordinary chain hoist, the trolley leading to the two forward torpedo tubes—the only tubes in the ship. And this whole section, the entire forward hair of the ship, was hardly larger than the mess-room in a World War II ordinary S-type sub. The inside of the sub seemed dry, though there was rust to be seen, but it was surface rust only. We were all grinning, happy and excited, and Frank said it for all of us. “The test, after forty years, is finished,” he said. “I hardly dared hope for it, but the boat is dry.” Then he glanced up at a hammock strung over the spare torpedoes at about shoulder height, walked over to it and stood looking into it.

  Then I looked too. Dressed in blues with a wide, white collar, a man lay on his back in the hammock—a boy, really; the beardless skeletal face was young, or had been. His hands lay clasped on his stomach, the eyes closed, us though he were taking a nap. Frank glanced up at us, “Rudi Koeppler,” he murmured. “Still young; still seventeen.”

  A man lay in the other hammock, on his side, his back to us, his knees drawn up, a rumpled blanket over his legs. “Donner,” Lauffnauer said quietly, “I put that blanket there, just as it lies now—when I was fifteen years old.” Frank shook his head.

  This was also the forward battery compartment, and now Linc walked ahead, then stooped to lift the hatch cover. Squatting on the deck, he stared down at the batteries, and Vic and Moreno edged past to join him. Moreno said, “Now, if they’ll only take a charge,” but I wasn’t interested just then.

  I touched Lauffnauer’s shoulder, and I said quietly. “Tell me about this, Frank.” gesturing around me at the boat. “Or maybe you’d rather not,” I added quickly. “Or don’t remember too well.”

  “No,” he said gently, “it’s all right, Hugh. And there is much I remember very well. But there is much also that I myself do not know.” Walking forward, he beckoned, and I followed, Rosa just behind me. Edging past the others at the open battery hatch, Frank stepped up to a small steel locker and opened it. On a shelf lay three large books, bound in lead covers, and Frank glanced at the wordings on their spines. “The signal, code and log books,” he said, and smiled. “We should have jettisoned them, but forgot.” Then he pulled out one of the books, opened it and glanced up at me. “You wish to know all that happened here on this ship? Forty years ago? Well, let the ship’s log tell you.”

  Frank began speaking slowly, his eyes rapidly scanning the loose-leaf page, his forefinger following the words. “June third, nineteen eighteen,” he said, and raised his eyes momentarily to add, “I remember.” His eyes dropped to the page again. “We sailed from Bremerhaven at six-oh-four A.M. on an ebb tide, leaving shorthanded.” Scanning the text again, he continued, “There are only nine seamen on the roster, an Unteroffizier, a Leutnant—Lieutenant j.g.—who was executive officer, and the Kapitänleutnant, which is lieutenant commander.

  “At eleven-oh-nine A.M. a destroyer is sighted in the North Sea, off the English coast; presumably it is English or American. Poor judgment,” Lauffnauer murmured, “we are heading for the English Channel. We submerged to periscope depth, surfacing one hour later. Change of course. Karl Hauptmann, seaman, relieved of first watch, and confined to hammock with slight fever and headache. Ship is dry.”

  Frank glanced around at us. “We did not know or even suspect this, of course, but now the ship is doomed. June fourth.” he read then, “nineteen eighteen. We enter the channel, traveling surfaced, but—in the American phrase—riding the vents, ready to dive. Course remains steady all day; no sightings, Ship remains dry; Recharged at midnight,” he continued from the log, “Karl Hauptmann, seaman, delirious with fever, and the captain writes, ‘Ich glaube das—I believe he has grippe, and have ordered him sponged hourly until fever reduces.’ And now at four P.M., Willi Strang, seaman, reports sick with headache, chills and fever, ‘I expect this to spread through the crew,’ writes the captain, ‘and trust the first to take sick will recover before the last of them catch it.’ ”

  Again he turned a page, then another, “Well, we kept on,” he said. “Kept a rendezvous with a Deutsche sub tender off Iceland, finally, and refueled and reprovisioned at night. The food was very poor,” he said, glancing up at us. “Worse, even, than the provisions we took on in Germany. And now”—he returned to the log—“the seaman died, Hauptmann, and was buried at sea. Strang recovered. Very weak, after—able to perform some duties. And—here it comes, now. The Unteroffizier, the chief, is sick. Has fever, but—continues his duties. ‘Inspiration to men,’ writes the captain. Two others are sick; one delirious, one not so bad. We are shorthanded at the refueling, and the captain of the sub tender urges our captain to return to Germany. But Keller says no; brave and foolish.

  “Here it is,” Frank said quietly. “And this is new to me, for I was by now delirious with fever. For the first time the captain refers to the sickness in his ship as influenza; we are caught, he understands now, in the influenza epidemic of 1918, which is killing millions of others throughout the world. The chief has collapsed. He is carried to his hammock unconscious. We are off Newfoundland now, some distance yet from the beginning of our operation. Seaman Strang is fully recovered. The captain himself, he says, is well, but—very tired.” Lauffnauer looked up, “It is showing in his handwriting now; he is sick, too, but does not know it or will not admit it. Seamen Koeppler, Donner and Wurtz are still well. The other four are sick, and also the Leutnant; the chief is dying.”

&nbs
p; He flipped a page. “Off Halifax, now. Four men are dead, and buried at sea. All but Strang and Donner are sick now. The others, including the captain, get up from our hammocks when we can, to go on as long as we are able, then collapsing into hammocks again.” He shook his head. “I was better soon, but very weak. We ran only on the surface, helpless against any sighting; diving was too much for us.” Frank pointed to the black script in the book he held. “The handwriting has changed now—it is Strang’s; the captain is dictating the log.

  “He is still occasionally lucid, though, briefly able to give orders. Two more have died.” He looked up. “Those we simply dumped overboard without ceremony. There was no time for anything else; we were desperate now. We were somewhere off the coast of America, but we did not know where; none of us could navigate. We were finally able to submerge to periscope depth.” He nodded down at the book. “It is Strang writing the log now; the captain can no longer dictate. There are no headings, no courses, weather or anything else of the sort. The log is now only a brief, scribbled account or what is happening. At dusk, Strang writes—we had held a council. Strang, Biehler and I—we plan to move in toward shore, anchor, then row to shore in a life raft, surrender and get help for the captain.

  “But we did not.” Frank closed the book. “The coast seemed inhabited, but when we paddled ashore we found the houses unoccupied and unlighted; perhaps there was a blackout. We found no one to surrender to, returned to the submarine and found the captain lucid. He was dying, but was clearheaded again, and he gave us our orders. We must escape to Germany, he said impossible though it might seem, so that our submarine could be recovered to fight again. We were to open the flood valve in the escape hatch, so that the submarine could later be entered and raised. We must then leave immediately; he would stay aboard and submerge. We protested, but he shook his head. He was dying, we could not help him, and those were his orders. We were not to bury the others at sea or the bodies might be found. He ordered us to dress him then, and he dictated his orders into the log and signed them. Then he stood up, we saluted, he returned it, and there we left him, watching us climb out, forty years ago. We left also Koeppler and Donner, who were already dead. From our life raft, we watched the U-19 submerge, its periscope turning.” For a few moments Lauffnauer was silent, his eyes moving slowly over the old sub. “Incredible,” he murmured, “that I should stand here again.”

  I said, “How’d you get off the island, Frank?”

  “We entered one of the unoccupied houses and lived three days on canned food we found there, reconnoitering at night. We discovered that it was an island and that there was a public ferry leaving at night, though few people lived here. We entered a number of houses, searching for money and clothes, and found it—a little money in each of several houses and civilian clothes in abundance. We left on the ferry, walking off it on Long Island. We took the train to New York and separated. I got a job driving a team in Brooklyn.” He smiled a little. “I had no draft card, and no one ever asked for one. I spoke very little English, and with a heavy German accent; no one ever even questioned this.” He shrugged. “I intended to stow away on a ship for Europe, then to somehow make my way back to Germany—an impossibility, I am sure. In any case I never tried it. Each week I would say next week I will act, then suddenly the war was over, and on Armistice Day I cheered on the streets of New York with the Americans. It took me nearly four years to save passage for home; I had no passport, and I had to bribe the mate of a freighter to take me.” Frank opened the logbook again and turned several pages.

  “There is only this one last entry,” he said, “and it is in the captain’s handwriting again, but very shaky; we had to hold the book for him.” He pointed, and we crowded around to look over his shoulders. “Strang wrote out the captain’s final orders, then the captain added this.” There were two scribbled words I could not read, and Lauffnauer said, “They read, ‘Keller, Kapitän.’ ” Then he swung to Moreno. “You had a large, flat crate in back of the house.” he said crisply, and I suddenly knew how he’d sounded commanding his own ship. “It was about six feet by five and a foot deep.”

  “I still got it,” Moreno said, nodding. “I made it to store nets in.”

  “Make another; I want this one. We will bury these men at sea.”

  “Sure.” Moreno nodded.

  We looked through the whole boat then, moving through the control room into the aft battery compartment, which contained provision lockers, a switchboard and mess gear.

  In the rapidly narrowing aft compartment were the main engines, two small diesels, their shafts connected in a straight line to the propellers; behind them were the generator, main motor the air compressor, propeller clutch, and so on. Throughout the ship everything seemed in reasonable order, as far as we could tell, though we knew there was bound to be a good deal of work to be done.

  The big hand wheels for operating the diving planes and the hand steering gear, for example, were absolutely immovable, and we knew all planes and the rudder were rusted tight. We inspected everything visible throughout the ship; switchboard, bilge pumps, engine clutch, electric range, torpedoes—the tubes each contained a torpedo—the vent valves, Kingstons, the periscope dry-air system, steering engine, the waste locker—which was empty—periscope telescoping gear and motor, and everything else.

  It was noon when we finally left the little sub. Then all of us stood in the dock staring at her, and Lauffnauer said, “Well, what do you think? I think she looks good; as good as we could reasonably expect.”

  Moreno said, “Yeah, on the inside,” then he nodded down at the sub. The tide was very low, and two thirds of the ship was out of water; we could see the concrete blocks on which she rested, just under the surface. And now all the dry surfaces of the ship were a dull orange with rust. “But look at the rust.” Moreno continued. “Can we chip loose all movable parts? And if we do, how far can we trust them, everything half eaten away?”

  Lauffnauer said, “We’ll find out; that’s all we can do. It’s the batteries I worry about . . . Hugh, what about them?”

  After a moment I said, “Well, I’m doubtful; in fact, I don’t have much hope at all. I’m darn sure you couldn’t have washed the elements free of electrolyte; did you, Frank?”

  “It would never have entered our heads,” he said.

  Vic said, “What if they’d been able to wash them?”

  I shook my head. “Even then I don’t think the batteries would be any good after forty years, or anything like it. Occasionally some will hold a charge or take a charge long after you’d think it was impossible. But even under expert care in a laboratory, I don’t think they could be made to last that long.”

  “So, as it is, we’re finished, then,” Linc said. “Before we start. We’ve got to have batteries.”

  “We’re not finished,” Vic said shortly. “Hugh, you’ll think of something. I didn’t bring you into this for nothing.” He smiled. “You’ll figure this out one way or another.”

  I smiled, “Thanks, pal,” I said, though I didn’t know what I could do about it if those batteries were hopelessly dead, as I felt certain they were.

  There is an enormous loss we all of us suffer, growing up—we stop playing. The things adults call play very seldom are. With hardly an exception they’re competitions; even hunting or fishing, even golf all alone. Rarely ever again do we experience pure play—doing something for its own sake completely, utterly absorbed and lost in it, nothing else mattering.

  Now I had to leave our toy; most of us did. Most of us had jobs—no one had quit his till we knew for sure that the old sub could be raised and transported. And now we all but Moreno and Rosa had to go back to New York: to break leases, check out of hotels or leave rooming houses; to quit jobs or resign positions; to sell securities, close out bank accounts, withdraw savings or raise cash at a pawnshop, Moreno had an old jeep in a little shed back of the shack, and, after a last look at the sub, we all walked up the path, climbed into the jeep an
d he drove us to the closest railroad station.

  I was shaving in my hotel room well before two o’clock; then I dressed, wearing a lightweight blue suit and a tie, and packed everything else I owned into my old sea bag. I checked out at the desk downstairs, took a cab to my bank and, while the cab waited, withdrew all the money I had in both a savings and checking account. Then I went to the ferry terminal, checked my bag in a coin locker, and by three-forty I was at my office, stepping out of the elevator, grinning at the receptionist. I had no trouble resigning—summer was coming, slack season for our department and the whole broadcasting industry. And when I suggested giving up the two-week vacation I had coming in exchange for not giving notice, it was O.K. with the boss. He was sorry to lose me, he said; wanted to know what I was going to do. I told him I was going to drive out West somewhere, just for the hell of it.

  In the record department Herb, the big kid in charge or putting records back on the shelves more or less in their proper places, was sitting at his little desk.

  A moment or so later, dusting her hands, Alice Muir walked out, then stopped and stood looking at me; she wore a white linen sleeveless dress, a green jade brooch at the square neckline, and she looked wonderful. “Hello,” she said, frowning a little.