Das Boot

The U-boats were so brazen they'd anchor near Connecticut and Long Island villages and send English-speaking sailors into town to pick up fresh vegetables and milk.

It was a horrific battle few remember today.   My mother helped run it.  She was a watch commander for the communication center responsible for the western end of the U-boat-convoy war in the North Atlantic.  She recalled the bodies of sailors washed up on the beaches after their ships had been sunk just outside Boston and New York harbors.  Sailors whose ships she'd sent messages that ordered them to their doom.  Boston was so edgy that Mother was given a choice when she carried secret messages between buildings:  learn how shoot a .45 pistol and wear it on your rounds, or be escorted by an armed sailor or marine.   She chose the man with a gun.

When the war started my mother was teaching grammar school.  Substitute teaching actually.  When she had work she'd often end the day in tears, frustrated by boys more interested day dreaming about Captain America than long division.  Some would be just old enough or lie about their ages to make it into the fight at Bastogne or Iwo Jima.  Instead of breaking a leg jumping off  a roof like Captain America, they got blown to smithereens trying to avenge Robert Taylor and George Murphy who died defending the bridge on Bataan.

When I worked in Houston over thirty years ago, I went to see Das Boot's premiere.  The movie told the story of the war from the perspective a U-boat captain and his crew.  Its opening caption said 40,000 German sailors went off to the U-boat war and never came back.  You might have thought that would have evoked an appalled sympathy from the audience, or at least silence.   All was not forgotten or forgiven.   The Texans broke out into wild applause.   There are reports that the caption got the same reaction in other American movie theatres.

Long before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had done everything he could to keep England from surrendering to the Nazis.  This included giving scores of Navy ships to the British to keep their lifeline to America open.  Hitler wasn't happy about this, but he tolerated it since he wanted to keep the Americans at least tacitly on the sidelines.   After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hitler decided to declare war too and go after the soft defenses of America's East Coast.  They were really soft with all the aircraft and ships turned over to the British.

And so it came to pass that my father's cousin Charlie joined the Navy, was given command of a small, lightly armed patrol boat and told to go patrol the waters of Long Island Sound.  "If you see a U-boat, radio for help and run away as fast as you can.  We'll sent out a bomber or big destroyer, if any are available (which they pretty much weren't, most being sent to save the British)."

Early one morning Charlie and his tiny crew sailed off into the fog of Long Island Sound.  They'd been out for awhile, but not long enough for the sun to warm things up and burn off the fog.  Out of the fog slips a U-boat and it sails right up to the startled Charlie and his tiny crew.  Before they can even raise their hands to surrender, the U-boat pulls alongside and its captain growls:  "Are you regular Navy or reserve."  Charlie hesitates and then says "reserve."  (God, I hope that's the right answer.)  The German captain growls back: "lucky for you."   Then the Germans all start laughing and the U-boat slipped away into the fog and was gone.