[Kaleun Cook]

Okay, so here we go a bit further.

What then happened could be called "irony of fate": the television replaced the american part of the capital. WDR and SDR (announcement by the poster: two german tv channels; Westdeutscher and Süddeutscher Rundfunk) ordered a six episodes version for the year 1985. But at that time Pertersen who had his assignment was already workin on it. All I could do was to backtrack and grudge. In those days the gossip about the most expensive film ever made in Germany already had begun.

And there were sensational reports about the film making process: once in a test drive on the Starnberger See the eleven meter boat ran backwards due to a "wrong" radio signal and rammed a yacht, some other time it even sank in the Chiemsee. Later the deck replication - after all 67 meters long - broke over night when it hit its buoy in a bay of the Ile de Ré. The forecastle sank, the rest was washed ashore. A heavy setback. The boat then was cobbled together in a dockyard in La Pallice. Two million ruined: the insurancy was only effected for a total loss.

Finally the crew was casted: 18 actors, 23 extra - no stars. The star in this movie is the boat. when I got back into this boat - into this replication of the hull of a uboat type VIIC - in Geiselgasteig for the first time after 35 years it hit me like a shock. I thought they would built everything for the movie from styrofoam, from papier-mâché and plywood. But when I recognized that one could touch every handwheel, every valve as well as the knobs for the depth control, that I was encircled by the same manometers like I had been back in those days, I was torn: on such a uboat I had taken part in a hellish ride, in such a central, the heart of the uboat. That was in Straits of Gibraltar, namely after our boat had been hit by a british aircraft bomb. Such a central is not a funny interieur. There is nothing but valves, manometers, handwheels, pipings, glasses showing the waterlevel - everything closely built into the steel casing of the hull of the type VIIC, which beared the brunt during the battle of the Atlantik in the Second World War. On this ship there is no partition of rooms for charge, engines and living. The whole ship is one perfect tool for warfare. There was barely place for nature's call. Everything that was not made of steel seemed to be out of place. In the density of this diving tube 50 men had to be on duty. And not only that: provision, reserve ammunition, clothes - everything had to be dammed into the tube.

Uboats are called "iron coffins". What they used to call "Blutzoll" back in those days, in other words the casualty rate, was higher among the uboat men than in any other branch. From the 40000 uboat men 30000 staid in the Atlantik. Many of them were not even men - in fact they were half kids: the whole uboat orlog was a giant crusade of kids. We had 16 years olds on board, at the end of the war there were 19 years old Leitende Ingenieure and 20 years old Commanders, made ready for the front in some kind of quickly breeding process, only to pass from life to death in one of the most cruel ways. I always refused that in the casualty reports about uboat men it has been said they were fallen. They drowned, were drowned like surplus cats in a sack.

One has to indulge the veterans that like to meet to glorify their memories in the smell of the box of the mutual closeness: Noone has come through that hell without damage. In fact we are all war-damaged, even if we still have arms and legs on our bodies. We will never get rid of the traumata we suffered. When it was possible I did not visit the film sites because everything I saw attacked me too heavily: my past was resurrected there. Also, I was haunted by the divergence between the visions of my memory and the attitudes of the actors in the re-enacted scenes. My alter ego, the war reporter lieutenant, which I didn not want to be in the film, was made up by regisseur Peterson to an important character. It has become fatal. I could not look into the mirror if I had behaved on board like this batch is required to. This man acts the most absurd in a scene fabricated by the regisseur - if for god sake he would not fabricate scenes -: there is this jack-in-thebox-war-reporter taking pictures in the engines room and gets an oil-soaked rag thrown in the face by someone. Mister war reporter fakes inner convulsion and rushes out of the room. There is no consequence for the person that has thrown the rag. To get a rag in the face - that should have happened to me! I asked Petersen, why he was interested in my story. "For the first time I had the feeling that here is told what war is like", he said, "I have always been curious for that because I did not experience war myself." That's it: Petersen has not experienced war. Can one repeat the uboat war in pictures if one has never experienced the uboat war?