Lt. Schmenk continues his tale:

The airplane was gone. Our crew worked fast removing the life rafts from the casing. The sea was calm and people kept popping out of the hatches.
The stern was below the surface and water reached the conning tower. Our ship was going down.
Two people lifted me and placed me in a raft as water reached the forward hatch.

I didn´t know if I was the senior officer surviving. The glow of phosphorense indicated the spot where U-123 had stood. The sea was deadly still, only the gurgle of bubbles broke the silence of the night.

"Roll call," I ordered.
The bosun, who knew the crew list by heart, started calling out names.

With great sadness, I remembered the excentricities of our captain. His tea cozies, his music, his unrestrained ego.
"Zwei Matrosen confirmed as dead. Only our Komandant is missing," the bosun said after the roll call.

"Am I missing something? Besides my boat, my tea cozy collection and my fine Habana cigars?" Balz said from another raft. "Now, tie our rafts together, make an inventory of the supplies in each raft, Sanitater, check or injured people. Choir, be ready to perform at sunrise."

With an oar, the Sanitater fixed a splint for my leg. Morphine eased the pain and I could start thinking clearly.

By 10:30 the sun was beating hard on our pale-faced crew.
"Shiff gesichted," one of our duty lookouts announced.
On the horizon, a number of smoke smudges appeared.

"It's a convoy," someone said.

Stay tuned for more Balz. :cool:

Balz Lives!

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/pict...pictureid=2295

:woot::()1:

Might even be Somali Pirates :DL

"Shall I plot an intercept course?" Bernard asked.
"Ja, you do that," Balz said while studying the convoy with binoculars. "Then start rowing into attack position." He removed his smoking jacket and tea cozy. "We don´t want those buggers to see us."
"Being taken prisoner by the Brits is a better option than dying on a life raft," I said.
"Surrender to the Brits?" :O: Balz made a farting sound. "That lacks hoochie woochie. Even in the wretched state we are in, I am the great Balz and still armed and dangerous." He waved a P-38 pistol.

For a while, we could see the mast of a corvette, then we were again alone, a spot of black rafts in the huge immensity of the ocean.

That night we got soaked by a tropical shower. It got cold but we were able to collect water. The predominant wind was easterly and each hour it pushed us further away from the African coast. People would say we died a heroic death. not slowly like miserable castaways. A simple signal rocket would have saved us when that convoy was nearby.

If I could only take that pistol away from Balz...


Stay tuned for the next exciting Balz episode. :cool:

Perhaps someone got off an SOS before the U-boat went down?

I see Balz is going back to his pirate days:D

BLAM!

"Oops. Somebody see to Eberhard."

Wouldn't he shoot Bernard first, or is he too vital for this story:har:

No, my version was meant to be an accident, and Bernard would never be that unlucky.

What he means is that no one would ever shoot Bernard... by accident. :O:

He'd probably miss Bernard and the round would ricochet through the tea cosy - and that would never be good :nope:.

More, Brag, More... :D

If nothing else has been proven by this story and all the "legends" of Bernard thru the many many moons of Subsim - you CAN'T kill th' bloody bugger! No matter HOW many times you dive while he is still outside, shoot him, poison him, leave him to the tender mercies of the good Frau - he will somehow still turn up in the very next episode.

We al are Bernards.. they live to tell the tale!

I've gotten through 3 out of the 4 pages of Balz stories, enjoyable reading!!

But nobody seemed to pick up the fact that Bernard is actually the Fuhrer's nephew! That's why he always gets to be on a sub, because it's his dream to eventually command his own U-boat, even though, his one attempt (so far) at command led them to almost crashing into the minesweeper escort!

Brag's writing has made this a very enjoyable read! I have even picked up his Kingmaker novel solely based on the Balz works! :D

There was a web site that collected all the Balz stories into one lump, what happened to it? I can't seem to access it.