[Rockin Robbins]

Let's talk about real interpersonal dynamics in a WWII submarine. On a submarine there were three general groups of people.

There was the officer corps, a group who had some comraderie, however a very stratified one. When the captain made the decision to stay at periscope depth and watch that destroyer try to kill them all, he was god of his boat. Unless he gave specific permission for the XO to make suggestions, that was it. Some captains did reach out to their fellow officers, at least in a way that showed he cared about their well-being. I doubt he spent any time musing about someone's birthday, and he sure wouldn't have called him "Bob." It would have been Lt. Smith. The officers did talk among themselves to have good working relationships, but strict military discipline prevented any normal personal relationships. Captains had to make decisions that got people killed. Anything which interfered with that orderly process could not be tolerated. Officers and enlisted men did not talk outside of issuing and receiving orders. No birthday cards!

Then there were the enlisted men and non-coms. These were the grunts, never consulted for their opinions, drilled constantly to do their jobs automatically while the world flew apart all around them until something killed them. By and large they did just that. Among themselves, the crew were very informal and clannish. Practical jokes were rife and many were on a first-name basis with each other. Generally they resented the unbreachable gulf between the officer-gods and the crew, who often knew better than them what to do with the submarine. Don't believe it? Just ask em! They always have an opinion and they're always swapping scuttlebut. But not to officers: they're scum.

The third group was a group of one: the chief of the boat. He was the only conduit between the officers and the men on board. In reality, the chief of the boat was probably the most powerful man on board, the one who knew his boat best, and the one with the most skills of anyone, officer or enlisted. He moved in both worlds of the submarine, making them function together as a team. He was in charge of training and qualification of crew members for different specialties. If there was a rare time when the officers needed to pay attention to an individual crew memeber, it was the chief of the boat that brought it to their attention. If the officers didn't work well with the chief of the boat, the chief had a thousand ways to make them pay. If the crew revolted against the chief of the boat they'd be better off to cuss out the captain. At least then death would be quick and easy.

If you want to know about interpersonal relations aboard a sub, read "Torpedoman", by Ron Smith. Here is an excerpt from the liner notes:

The story begins with a young American as he prepares for war. As the story unfolds, we follow his personal growth as it was influenced by the ever-present spector of the war. The story moves into the real area of combat unique to submarines with its physical and emotional demands that challenge human endurance--where the desire to perform one's duty is in constant conflict with the desire to live. A near mutiny occurs as the crew struggles with the decision of sacrificing themselves by blindly following orders or disobeying and surviving.

The book is a somewhat fictionalized story of Ron Smith's career as a torpedoman. It is copyright 1990, and bears no publisher information, so this book may just have been distributed at the convention of the US Submarine Veterans of WWII convention of that year. It is inscribed "To Warren Watkins, Best Regards, Ron Smith" and dated 10-1-1999. If you can find it you will understand the crew interactions. They did not involve musing about "Bob's birthday."

We project ourselves and our comparitively utopian lives, motivations and values on men who did not share them. They were much more at home swapping stories about their common experiences with Mary Jane Rottencrotch. These guys had no future. They did not expect to return home. An encounter with Mary Jane and subsequent treatment for unpronounceable diseases caught from her were cause for bragging and laughter, ribbing and horseplay. Navy enlisted sailors are smelly, foul-mouthed, profane, crude, brash and a hell of a lot of fun. When you know you're going to die, nothing is important or meaningful but the moment.

Have you heard of Stateside poker? This was a poker game where all bets were IOU's to be paid when (if) the crew survived to go stateside. The astronomical size of debts owed showed that every man considered himself dead, betting money that would never exist. Every one of them had given up on life, but was continuing anyway. Das Boot was a bit surreal sometimes, but often caught this very real crew dynamic.

Are you sure you would be entertained by all that?