The third patrol - Max Fernzür

[Ula Jolly]

He was Austrian as well, that new ensign. Just arrived from 5th Flotilla, with medium grades. Was this some sort of message from Fregkpt. Cohausz? Surely not, Max thought to himself as he observed an auxilliary warship go from dock, and leave to the western outlet. Four nautical miles from Bergen, the western outlet split into a northern and a southern.

The warship was hardly anything meant to scare anyone. Near the stern stood an anti-aircraft gun, manned by two Germans. Most of the superstructure was wooden, because the ship was low in the water. The skipper and rest of the crew were Norwegians, more than probably forced into service by men that practically held a gun to their head. Some German guards made a jump in the boat five seconds before the ropes were all tossed, and the forty feet long boat cruised into the afternoon.
Max looked to his watch, and let out a weak but audible "Scheisse". It was the sixth of August, and the sun was hardly showing signs of retreat, even though the clock was nearing six in the evening. He had said goodbye to Austrian sunsets many years ago, but Norway was proving worse than he imagined it.

The sound of feet marching to the sub pens was distinctively wet. The rain had lasted for many, many days, and only now was it clearing up. Max straightened his jacket and hat before he made entrance. The greeting in the moist and dark pen was on vacation; apart from some dozen workers, all or most of his crew had remained in the sub. He was the only one that needed the last bits of air, but he didn't worry much. It gave him time to be alone, and with spending so much time alone in a tube with fifty men, solitude was sometimes desired.
His eyes ventured again over his tube. His tube. And his men. A radar had recently been installed, and so he had needed an additional man on his crew to operate it. He didn't have much faith in it, but would allow it to make an attempt. It didn't look very good on the boat, but certainly added some... character? Certainly distinct. And maybe it would provide for some protection for his watchcrew during air attack.

Could he have disappointed the flotilla's commander? Four months... no, five months had passed since he arrived, two patrols had he completed. Neither was very successful. Only five torpedos had been fired, and none except one had hit. In return, that hit was a fairly good one. If only the ship had been something of more importance than a minelayer. An empty minelayer, even. Upon spotting an empty minelayer heading home, one better think thrice about where to put one's feet.

Greetings and salutes were passed to and from Max and different members of the crew. He had been out for only half an hour, but now they all knew the departure was nigh. Max looked only briefly to the Austrian, Franz Bülow. The young man gave a nod, and started the process of taking them out of the zig-zagging straits with aid from their navigator. They would go north from Bergen, between Asköy and Meland further north and straight west from there. They would make a detour north of Scapa and north of the Hebrides, before their patrol zone near Iceland was reached.
The captain had two novices with him that were being trained for helmsmen, and one officer to watch them both. The officer was named Ulrich Friedburg, and was only waiting for his own boat. A skilled man in gunnery, who would be likely to leave them within a few more patrols. The two novices were truly novices. He had found they lacked even some basic knowledge, but that could be blamed on the lack of quality in personell trained in Kiel. He himself had received training in Hamburg, after having served on a torpedo boat and two destroyers.
The day would pass, no faster nor any slower than any other day on patrol. The next day peaked only with a message from BdU, reporting a task force heading for the Irish Sea, far beyond their patrol zone. They were being sent towards Iceland, sector AE75.
Very few on board the U-431 suspected that the journey there would be hellish, and that they would never make it to their zone.

(To be continued :))

[Ula Jolly]

Walter had just gotten up on the bridge, bringing with him the third watchcrew. Max wathced as the wet shapes of the four men climbed down the ladder, one dripping more than the other. He raised his cup of coffee, which was difficult to drink due to the rolling in the heavy seas. His eyes were only on duty for another three hours, and then he would sleep. Friedburg could take over after that - he might as well earn his boat.
Max's left hand left the periscope to rub over his face as to stiffle a yawn. He wetted his lips with his tongue, and turned to the stern quarters. All the doors from the command room back to the diesel room had been opened, and so the temperature was higher than normal. "Herr Kaleun!" came the response from the resting men as he entered. Max's eyes focused on the person in the far end of the room.
"Ulrich!" he called, and made a beckoning motion with his left index finger. The two officers went through the commando room and followed the trace of seawater left by the watchcrew. The men that were not sleeping gave their captain a quick salutation, as Fernzür and Friedburg went through the bow quarters. The latter delayed his question until they had arrived in the torpedo room, where men were resting.
"Ja, herr Kaleun?" he said, assuming a steady stand on the deck. Max thought to himself that this man could hardly feel the waves at all.
"This torpedo..." the captain started, after a slight delay, "might be faulty."
He wasn't all that pleased that this officer had a much better training and chance of promotion than himself.
"Collect the tools you need, and perform a check on it." he continued, pointing to several places on the structure.
"The torpedo officer has complained on cracks - you see them here." He collected an understanding nod from the officer, and a look that just about assured him this problem would be dealt with as if Ulrich had been born to the task. Max left with a short pat on the officer's shoulder; they both knew how important the extremely boring work was. It was mainly for keeping them from going nuts - cardgames could only be played for so long before you felt bored beyond existance. The torpedo was an acoustic homing, and so the whole patrol was likely to pass without there ever being a need for it.

It was still the fourth day, the ninth of August. Yet another task force report rolled in before the end of the it. Ulrich and the torpedo officer had deemed the torpedo unusable. Max trusted the two that the tube of explosives wouldn't pose any threat. His eyes slipped down to a drawing he had made on a piece of paper, for a more efficient layout of the torpedo room. He hoped to present the idea to the flotilla commander, but it would probably end up being tossed in the ocean. A sharp thunk and a muffled yell came from the conning tower, and within a minute came a limping sailor down the ladder.
"Hurt yourself, Matros?" Max asked the sailor, who nodded in return, and held his face in pain as he desired the help of a warrant officer to get himself to bed and the doctor. A dark raincoat came to sight, and wearing that came another sailor who soon went up the ladder and into the rain. Max took a few steps on the ladder, and looked into the complete darkness.
"Leutnant!" he called, and received no answer.
"Herr Forstner!!" came the second, considerably more audible call.
"Ja?" came the sound from above, and in a few seconds a face appeared in the opening.
"How is the fog?" asked Max, who did not need any update on the sea state. The fresh stench from the stern quarters told its tale.
"Aaah... heavy!" came the reply. Max was allowed a final decision before he set his mind and body to the bed. The weather had been bad lately, and should be better further south. It was near enough, so they might as well take a tiny detour to investigate the task force!

"Bülow."
"Ja, herr Kaleun?"
"Talk to herr Kühn, set a course for interception with that task force."
"Jawohl, herr Kaleun." came the response from both the helmsman and navigator. Max lay in bed, and would have over eight hours of comfortable sleep before August Kilimann would wake him up again.

[kiwi_2005]

I remeber a mod that came out for SH2 well wasn't a mod but a script for the patrol report you get on everystart of a mission in the campaign. The writer had changed it so he was writing a letter to his wife each time. And each time the letter got sadder, the last letter he was telling his wife he might not make it back on this patrol. The way he did it made the game complelty different, there was that hint of sadness everytime you made it back you couldn't wait to read what he had wrote in the next report.

It was like reading a War and Peace novel while playing SH2

[Trav_R]

Excellent writing Ula Jolly :up:

That mod sounds like something I'd like to see for SHIII. I've tried keeping patrol logs, but I suck at writing, my logs lack any kind of emotion. They end up being something like a string of events, like something official that you would submit to BdU upon returning to port.

[Laughing Swordfish]

Me too. That's great writing, Ula Jolly, thanks and keep it going.
You have a great sense of detail that put's us in the boat there with you
Please let's hear more

RdB, U-46

[Ula Jolly]

(Thanks :D I was starting to believe there wasn't any real interest)


The tenth of August offered the captain of the U-431 a warm cup of coffee.
"Danke, Matros." the twenty three-year old captain growled back, though in not too threatening a tone. He reached for something that would support him in his quest to rise, and found a long, wooden edge somewhere above the ceiling of his bedspace. A tired, wet cough came from his throat, before his eyes reluctantly opened all the way. A quick look to both the radio and sonar officer told him they had nothing to report. The morning had brought the captain out of his rest, but he wouldn't have been able to keep sleeping. His officers needed to be checked upon, he assured himself, and went to treat his sanitary needs.

Ulrich made yet another thoughtful face. A scritching sound could be heard from where his palm rubbed his face. There was nothing in the periscope, nothing on the listening device, and no further reports about the task force or other targets in the Atlantic. The navigator was certain they were in the sector AM14 now, in the very spot that he had predicted the ships would be. If they had followed a straight line.
"Herr Kaleun." came the mutter from Ulrich, as Max's face entered the corner of his eye.
"Guten Morgen, Herr Oberleutnant." His officer turned to salute him, choking a yawn to its death.
"Nothing new?" Max asked, and received a short "Nein". Ulrich was sent to his bed, and Max resumed command over his boat.

It had taken Max two hours to decide what to write in his letter home. He had forgotten to send his last letter, so this one would have to be sent as soon as they returned. His eyes followed the lifeless words on the paper, studying them and contemplating changing some of them. He came to the conclusion that he was in no mood to continue writing, and stood up from the bed. The radio and sonar officers were sitting the way they always sat. Remarkably quiet, focused and obedient. Certainly, they must daydream a lot, Max thought to himself. He wouldn't blame them for it, if they did.
Max looked at the watch on his wrist, and made his way back to the command room. The clock was nearly eleven in the evening, and they had to surface. They had been alerted of aircraft with radar, and two boats had already been lost to what was possibly Allied bombers with them. This didn't matter much now, though. They were in the outskirts of the suspected air cover, and in such dark and stormy seas there would be problems finding them anyway. Max corrected his unruly hair and looked to the helmsman.
"Surface, Oberfähnrich. Full ahead." The reply came quickly from the well rested officer. Max sent his eyes to the navigator, who seemed to be fiddling on a piece of paper, perhaps writing a letter home as well.
"Plot a course to our patrol zone, herr Kühn." The reply came just as quickly as from Bülow.

Max's eyes scanned the inside of the conning tower, holding himself firmly by the ladder due to the heavy seas. He did not at all envy the watchcrew. He could hear some talking, but no laughing above him.
"Wetter!" he called through the hole, in the hope of that the weather could have changed within the two hours they had been surfaced.
"Scheisse, herr Kaleun" was the unorthodox and hardly hearable answer he got. It sufficed, and Max was forced to smile. By God, what horrible weather he had experienced. The wet streets of Bergen were beginning to resemble the beaches of southern France, in comparison to this! The rain whipped hard on the metal, creating a very distinct and familiar yet hard to describe sound. This mixed with a faint sound from the gramophone below, where someone were playing a song Max had not heard before. Max stared at the wall, for a few seconds only taking in the impressions he could feel; the rolling, the sounds, the smell, and his hands holding the ladder firmly so he wouldn't be tossed aside. It took him a few seconds, but in time he could find peace in it all, and a harmony in the controlled disaster that was this uboat and this war. This harmony was about as shattered as glass under a hammer as a voice from above called out the word that Max did not want to hear.
"ALAAAAARM!"
The three men Walter Forstner had with him came running down the ladder, nearly expecting to fall in Max's head. Max, however, had already tossed himself out of his relaxed state of mind and hurried down the ladder.
"Flugzeug! Flugzeug!" the sailors shouted as they went to their compartments and posts, Walter coming some ten seconds behind them.
"Gott und Himmel.. FLANK! Emergency dive!" Max shouted out at a helmsman who just found himself regretting he did not join the airforce.

The alarm had within seconds spread to all corners of the submarine, and people rushed ahead to give added weight.
"Report!" Max shouted to Walter as he went past him.
"No idea, herr Kaleun! Engine roar!" Max was in no desire to get further details out of the man, and allowed him to run towards the fore compartments. The commando room became a room filled with anxiety. As the sonar man emitted a terrified call, there was also a not too remote sense of fear.

In the rolling seas, the submarine had only barely begun to sink below the surface. A lack of foam on the waves left the trail of the U-431 quite clear for the three Avengers, who all dropped their bombs simultaneously. They raised the noses of their aircraft after dropping, and were not able to track the submarine by eyesight as they slipped past it. Soon enough, however, the remarkable explosions gave a good impression of where it was.
The thunder that rolled through the boat would be enough to make a grown man piss himself, and several on the boat had already. The effect was truly frightening, and shook the boat around. Max saw an officer run by him to assess any damages. The man returned within fifteen seconds.
"No damage, herr Kaleun!" Ulrich reported. He looked awfully tired, that poor man who had just gotten his peace of mind and body shaken to bits.
"Let us get to seventy meters, herr Bülow!" Max ordered the helmsman. In a matter of seconds, the captain had regained most of his calm exterior, and kept it through a second wave of waterbombs, that were a tad further away. Slowly, men from the bow would return to aft compartments, and they flattened out at seventy meters to hear the boat make a long, deep and whining sound. Max took deep breaths by now, resting his back on the ladder. Very, very faint sounds could be heard as a third wave of waterbombs fell from them.
"Ahead slow!" Max ordered, not long after the tenth of August passed into the eleventh.

[Laughing Swordfish]

Excellent, UJ!

RdB, U-46