[Bosje]

U-1164 was doing her rounds, back and forth, east to west and back again in the search pattern to hunt for ships. They were in their assigned patrol area, north east off the Azores. Days and days of nothing at all to report, bar the usual goings-on. The wind had picked up and the boat danced merrily across the wavetops on her perpetual rounds through an empty sea. Morale was getting slightly lower with each day but that was just the usual boredom of the long war patrol. Commander Hans Bremer kept a close eye on his crew, they were only a week into the patrol and he considered it a highly eventful journey so far, with two kills in the first week alone. Most of the men were simply not accustomed to days with nothing at all to do, except watchduty. That was the problem, keeping a sharp eye on the horizon and sky while nothing ever showed up. The men would learn, in time, but if they missed that single thing which was there to be seen, it could mean the great big end. He almost wished that the RAF would visit them every now and then, just three times a day, for fun, to keep his men occupied, as long as they had their radar sets turned on so he got an early warning off the RWR. The RAF did not oblige, maybe they all had a week off for the holiday season.

Christmas came and went. A relatively luxurious dinner, alcohol for the men as they got off duty and that was it. A few more days of nothing at all and then it was New year's eve in the officer's mess. Nothing impressive. No fireworks because they had nothing to shoot at and it would be wildly irresponsible to send up a couple of flares. The men were cramped around the radio, listening to the German broadcasts and then tuning in to the BBC for another round of the same, even though hardly any of them understood what the comedians and reporters were saying. The second officer lost himself a bit: 'A toast, gentlemen, to 1944, to victory, to the Fuhrer, to the Reich and to the death of...' -the commander cut him off: 'Don't make an arse of yourself, Friedrich, let's toast to our good luck instead.' - 'To good luck!' they all agreed. The staff went up on the bridge to smoke some cigars, hiding the glow by staying down behind the casing and the crew were allowed to join them in groups of four. After that little ritual of disregard for protocol, they allowed themselves the luxury of a slight booze-up while the boat dived to a safe depth, if an enemy ship happened to cross their path that night, the tommies could toast to their own good luck as well.

The commander allowed such liberties, partly because he was rather partial to cigars and booze himself and partly because it was the first day of 1944 and they were in a U-boat out in the Atlantic. That, he thought, would just have to do. Around three in the morning, Hans Bremer went to his cabin, shared some inebriated insights with the boys in the radio room and fell asleep. He dreamed about dozens of ships sailing around them, always just outside of his reach, while his engines wouldn't work and the weather just kept messing up his firing solutions. He woke up four hours later in a hell of a bad mood.

U-1164 continued to do her rounds back and forth across the empty sea. The next day, the commander's dream seemed to have been prophetic, for the wind increased as the clouds came down to embrace the boat and visibility through the rain, fog and high seas was instantly reduced to zero. 'That's just great,' the commander thought. Little did he know that it was only the start of a full month of some of the worst weather the Atlantic could throw at a U-boat.