Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

Only Kubeš cannot get to sleep. He wonders what the mysterious beauty that he so fatefully met in Prague at the last moment might be up to. And what about his ex-girlfriend whom he left the day he came back drunk from the Riga tavern? Or did she leave him?

Kubeš feels as if he has spent at least a week here, not just two days. “I’ll make it,” he thinks. “I have to,” says a second voice. “I have to be better than the others. The very best.” He falls asleep with these thoughts and wakes up in the morning to the ringing of his alarm clock.

The days come and go, one after the other. After a week the strenuous drill no longer seems so unbearable. Their bodies overcome the first attacks of muscle fever and demand high doses of exertion. First Lieutenant Buzina no longer takes morning exercises: the leader is always one of them, whoever’s on the rota. Similarly, morning drill, an important part of any disciplined army, reverts to a reasonable level and now the trainees issue their own orders for their regular drill hour.

For specialised training, after the first lectures for everybody, they are divided into two separate teams, depending whether they are meant to become warrant officers or chief engineers.

Part of the warrant officers’ simulated training is a commercial computer game Silent Hunter 2 , whose software has been modified to transfer all its data to displays on the bridge. The same goes for controlling the directional and depth steering mechanism, flooding and clearing the submersion tanks, controlling the periscope, and every other submarine control. All sounds in the computer game are amplified, so the sound experience is a realistic rendering of a diesel engine, the buzz of electric motors, the noise of a destroyer passing above the submarine, the hull cracking under pressure in very deep water, or exploding depth charges. In training the trainees learn various tactics for evading surface vessels if they are identified and consequently pursued. These are all defensive tactics: none of them is offensive.

“This is what your real combat mission will be like,” explains Sosna. “You won’t have any effective means of defence. No torpedoes. Only a double-barrelled 88mm cannon on the deck, just in case. So you’ll depend above all on your cunning and ingenuity. Your victory will consist not in sinking your opponent, but in successfully evading him.”

Nevertheless, Sosna kindly allows them occasionally, at the end of a demanding training day in the simulator, to fire torpedoes and sink a few virtual enemy vessels.

“That’s only for fun, of course,” he never omits to mention. “And as a kind of reward, since you’ve done particularly well today. You were sunk only three times after lunch and managed to escape eight times. You seem to be getting better, gentlemen. So let’s have another go and this time with torpedoes. Show that destroyer who’s boss!”

But it isn’t only specialised training that turns them into soldiers. In parallel they get classical army training, centred on reconnaissance and diversionary tactics. Their instructor is paratroops Major Dvořák.

“The fact that you’re submariners,” he tells them at the first meeting “doesn’t mean that you’ll be stuck in a submarine all the time, even though it’s the best place to be. A submarine crew has to be able to survive for some time under combat conditions off-board, too, in the real world, if you’re reconnoitring unknown terrain, freeing and rescuing prisoners or hostages, transferring military material, or even — touch wood! — dealing with a submarine wreck and recovering the crew on foreign soil. Briefly, my aim is to teach you how to fight away from your fighting ship, on dry land with a gun, a knife, and your bare hands. You’ve all been through the training and know what I’m talking about. So, gentlemen, let’s not waste any more time and get down to it. We don’t have much time.”

There is little time and even less free time. Reckless pub crawls, downing endless glasses of beer, are now only a fantasy. They’re all glad, when, after the order of the day, they can throw their tired bodies on a bunk and rest.

Only a small core, notably Kubeš and Libáň, regularly change their clothes after their day’s work: they put on track suits and say they’re going for a run, but take off along the forest path over a hill called Polygon to the pub in Lešany where Kubeš asked for directions two weeks ago.

Their long hair and moustaches arouse no suspicions among the pub’s patrons, who take them for weekend chalet owners from Prague on holiday. After two or three glasses of beer, they run back and refresh themselves with sleep before another demanding day.

Naturally, the men constantly ask themselves questions about the real nature of their mission. They try to work it out from the training they get. If a mystery hangs in the air, various guesses and hypotheses are inevitable.

But Sosna is silent. Smiling, he refuses to say a thing.

“You’ll know everything in good time,” is his invariable response.

The following days continue the tough training, and the lectures on the submarine navigation, tactics, and missions. The trainees are quite unaware how quickly two months have passed.

Then comes the time when Sosna, at the order of the day, announces the two best trainees who will be submarine captains: one is Kubeš; the other Kylar. Both are immediately promoted to the rank of lieutenant commander. Libáň and Drličiak are named first warrant officers with the rank of lieutenant commander. Skopšík and Machovský are second warrant officers. Kraus and Bílek are third warrant officers. The engineering trainees are given ranks according to their scores.

“From now on, you are Crew A and Crew B,” says Sosna. “On board you’ll find detailed instructions. You will report from tomorrow accordingly. In a few days, your warrant officers and non-commissioned officers will join you and will be attached to your crews. You will pass on to them all that you’ve learned over these two months. Of course, we’ll be here to help you. But the men will be only as good as you make them.”

After this assembly, a mass migration of people takes place. Officers from Crew B move to the first floor, while officers of Crew A take the ground floor. Each submarine commander has his own room with a desk and a safe built into the wall. Similarly, warrant officers and engineers now live in their own three-bed rooms. In the evening a small celebration, with all the instructors present, takes place in the officer’s mess. Although the next day is Saturday, the first real free day since the beginning of the intensive course, nobody stays up late. Over the last two months even the biggest party animals have learned the value of sleep.

The next day Kubeš wakes up at six, unconsciously expecting reveille. It doesn’t come. They’re all catching up on lost sleep.

Kubeš gets up, changes from his canary-yellow pyjamas into a tracksuit and goes for a run to the Polygon. At the edge of the wood he runs uphill and then slows as he climbs the path. His nose takes in the autumnal forest’s fragrance. Looking at the tall yellow grass Kubeš remembers a tactical exercise they underwent with Major Dvořák, his mouth full of dust and sand, and his lungs fighting for a breath of fresh air. You could have wrung their uniforms out, they were so wet.

At the top, at the highest point of the Polygon that is unnamed point 360, Kubeš stops to catch his breath. He looks back. The military base and the museum are below him, in the beautiful Sázava valley. The encroaching autumn has stripped the surrounding woods of foliage, and the buildings are all clearly visible. In the distance, on the other side of the river, above the railway, you can see a quarry; to its right is a hunting castle and the slope of Priest Mountain. The Sázava valley is beautiful country, and in autumn it is the most beautiful place in the world.