Guenter Grass - Crabwalk

After almost two hours on the surface, the U-boat had accomplished its circumnavigation maneuver. S-13 was now sailing parallel to the enemy vessel, which to the astonishment of the tower crew had running lights lit and was not tacking. Since it had completely stopped snowing, there was a risk that the clouds might part, leaving not only the huge transport and its escort ship exposed in the moonlight but also the U-boat.

Marinesko nonetheless adhered to his decision to launch an above-water attack. An advantage for S-/J, which no one on the submarine could have guessed, was that the U-boat locater on the torpedo boat Löwe was frozen and unable to pick up any echoes. In their account, the English authors Dobson, Miller, and Payne assume that the Soviet commander had been practicing surface attacks for a long time because German submarines had had great success with this method in the Atlantic, and now he wanted a chance to try it out. An above-water attack provides better visibility, as well as greater speed and precision.

Marinesko now gave an order to reduce buoyancy until the body of the boat was underwater, leaving only the tower poking out of the choppy sea. Allegedly a signal flare was seen coming from the bridge of the target vessel shortly before the attack, and light signals were spotted; but none of the German sources — the accounts of the surviving captains — confirm this report.

Thus S-13 approached the port side of the target vessel unimpeded. On instructions from the commander, the four torpedoes in the bow were set to strike at three meters below the surface. The estimated distance to the target was six hundred meters. The periscope had the ships bow in its crosshairs. It was 2304 hours Moscow Time, precisely two hours earlier German Time.

But before Marinesko s order to fire is issued and can no longer be retracted, I must insert into this report a legend that has been passed down. Before S-13 left Hangö Harbor, a crew member by the name of Pichur allegedly took a brush and painted dedications on all the torpedoes, including the four that were now ready to be fired. The first read for the motherland, the torpedo in tube 2 was marked for stalin, and in tubes 3 and 4 the dedications painted onto the eel-smooth surfaces read FOR THE SOVIET PEOPLE and FOR LENINGRAD.

Their significance thus predetermined, when the order was finally issued, three of the four torpedoes — the one dedicated to Stalin stuck in its tube and had to be hastily disarmed — zoomed toward the ship, nameless from Marinesko s point of view, in whose maternity ward Mother was still asleep, lulled by soft music on the radio.

While the three inscribed torpedoes are speeding toward their target, I am tempted to think my way aboard the Gustloff. I have no trouble finding the last group of naval auxiliary girls to embark, who were billeted in the drained swimming pool, also in the adjacent youth hostel area, used originally for members of the Hitler Youth and League of German Girls when they were sent on holiday cruises. The girls sit and lie there, packed in tightly. Their hairdos are still in place. But no more laughter, no more easygoing or sharp-tongued gossip. Some of the girls are seasick. There and throughout the corridors of the other decks, in the former reception rooms and dining rooms, is the smell of vomit. The toilets, in any case far too few for the mass of refugees and navy personnel, are stopped up. The ventilation system is not powerful enough to draw off the stench along with the stale air. Since the ship got under way, all the passengers have had orders to wear the life jackets that were handed out earlier, but because of the increasing heat many people are stripping off their warm underwear and also their life jackets. Old folks and children are whining plaintively. No more announcements over the public address system. All sounds subdued. Resigned sighing and whimpering. What I picture is not a sense of impending doom but its precursor: fear creeping in.

Only on the bridge, with the worst of the conflict resolved, was the mood reportedly somewhat optimistic. The four captains thought that having reached the Stolpe Bank, they had put the greatest danger behind them. In the first officers cabin a meal was being consumed: pea soup with ham. Afterward, Lieutenant Commander Zahn had the steward pour a round of cognac. It seemed appropriate to drink to a voyage on which Fortune was smiling. At his masters feet slept the German shepherd Hassan. Only Captain Weller was on watch on the bridge. Meanwhile time had run out.

From childhood on, I have heard Mothers often repeated formulation: “The first time it went boom I was wide awake, and then it came again, and again…”

The first torpedo hit the bow of the ship far below the waterline, in the area where the crew quarters lay. Any crew member who was off watch, munching a hunk of bread or sleeping in his bunk, and survived the explosion, nonetheless did not escape, because after the first report of damage Captain Weiler ordered the automatic closing of the watertight doors, sealing off the forward part of the ship, to prevent the vessel from sinking rapidly at the bow; an emergency drill in closing the watertight doors had been conducted just before the ship put out to sea. Among the sailors and Croatian volunteers thus sacrificed were many who had been drilled in loading and lowering the lifeboats in an orderly fashion.

What took place — suddenly, gradually, finally — in the closed-off forward portion of the ship no one knows.

Mothers next utterance also made an indelible impression: “At the second boom I fell out of bed, that's how bad it was…” This torpedo from tube 3, whose smooth surface carried the inscription for the soviet people,” exploded beneath the swimming pool on E deck. Only two or three girls from the naval auxiliary survived. Later they spoke of smelling gas, and of seeing girls cut to pieces by glass shards from the mosaic that had adorned the front wall of the pool area and by splintered tiles from the pool itself. As the water rushed in, one could see corpses and body parts floating in it, along with sandwiches and other remains of supper, also empty life jackets. Hardly any screaming. Then the light went out. These two or three naval auxiliaries, of whom I have no passport-sized photos, managed to escape through an emergency exit, behind which a companion-way led steeply up to the higher decks.

And then Mother said, “Not till the third boom” had Dr. Richter turned up to check on the women in the maternity ward. “By that time all hell'd broke loose!” she exclaimed every time her neverending story reached number 3.

The last torpedo hit the engine room amidships, knocking out not only the engines but also the interior lighting on all decks, as well as the ship's other systems. After that everything took place in darkness. Only the emergency lighting that came on a few minutes later provided some sense of orientation amid the chaos, as panic broke out everywhere on the two-hundred-meter-long and ten-story-high ship, which could no longer send out an SOS; the equipment in the radio room had also gone dead. Only from the torpedo boat Löwe did the repeated call go out into the ether: “ Gustloff sinking after three torpedo strikes!” In between, the location of the sinking ship was transmitted over and over, for hours: “Position Stolpmünde, 55.07 degrees north, 17.42 degrees east. Request assistance…”

On S-13, the successful hits and the soon unmistakable sinking of the target gave rise to quiet rejoicing. Captain Marinesko issued an order for the partially pre-flooded submarine to submerge, because he knew that this close to the coast, and especially over the Stolpen Bank, there was little protection from depth charges. First the torpedo stuck in tube 2 had to be disarmed; if it remained sitting there, ready for ignition, with the firing motor running, the slightest vibration could cause it to explode. Fortunately no depth charges were dropped. The torpedo boat Löwe, its engines cut, was sweeping the mortally wounded ship with its searchlights.