Free Black May by Michael Gannon

critical business of adjusting the boat’s weight and tilting movement. This he did by pumping water by the hundreds of kilograms fore or aft between trim tanks at the extreme bow and stern. Maintaining trim was crucial, lest in an emergency dive the boat either plunge to the seabed or broach the surface, bow-or stern-first. Meanwhile, the Helmsman (
Rudergänger
), stationed on the forward starboard side bulkhead, steered the boat by compass, using brass rudder buttons for “port” and “starboard,” and the Navigator
(Obersteuermann)
at his high table plotted the boat’s position.
    Just forward of the amidships control room, and reached through a watertight circular hatch offset to port, were the Commander’s felt-curtainedbunk and desk space on the port side of a narrow fore-and-aft gangway, and, on the starboard side opposite, the wireless (
Funkraum)
and hydrophone (
Horchraum
) rooms. Continuing forward, one came upon the bunk-long accommodation of the I.W.O., II.W.O., and L.I. (
Offizierraum
), where a mess and worktable along the port side enabled this compartment to serve as a wardroom. Beyond, through another hatch, was bunk space for four men of Chief Petty Officer rank (
Oberfeldwebel
), though U-659 carried only three, and, farther still, past a portside head, one reached the forward torpedo room
(Bugtorpedoraum),
home not only to the four bow torpedo tubes but also to the majority of the ratings, popularly called “Lords”
(Pairs).
    Here the hull narrowed markedly, accentuating the cramped interior of the smaller Type VIIC boat, made all the more confined by the conditions attendant to a just-commenced
Feindfahrt:
two of the room’s spare torpedoes, hung by hoist rings suspended from an I-beam, displaced sleeping bunks; food crates, sacks, and cans occupied every nook and cranny of floor space; while overhead hammocks bulged low with hams, sausages, fruits, and
Kommissbrot,
the hard navy black bread. The only way to get about was by hands and knees. Every man yearned for early attack successes, so that the two spare “eels” in the bunk areas could be placed inside the white-painted tubes, and the lashed-up bunks, with their blue-and-white-checked gingham sheets and pillowcases, could be brought down for sleeping and sitting.
    None of the Lords would be nearly as anxious, however, about getting rid of the brow-bruising fresh food hammocks. They knew that once the perishable fresh food was consumed they would have only tinned food to eat, and that by the time that exchange came to pass, every bucket of food hauled down the passageway from the galley would take on a taste compounded of the boat’s accumulated vapors of stale, humid air, diesel oil, battery gas, bilges, oven fumes, soiled trousers, unbrushed teeth, urine, vomit, semen, smegma, and Colibri cologne. By then, too, the gingham sheets and pillowcases of the “hot bunks”—so-called because they would be constantly occupied day and night by seamen and technicians coming off their various watches— would be making their own gamy contributions to the putrescent atmosphere.
    Returning to the control room through the constricted steel cylinder (though not a perfect cylinder for its whole length) that was the VIIC’s pressure hull, one walked over a storage area almost as large as the working and living space above. Beneath the floor plates were lead-acid storage battery arrays whose dead weight counterbalanced the diesel engines and a second battery compartment in the after section of the boat. Here, too, was stored ammunition for the deck and anti-aircraft (
flak)
guns.
    The rolled galvanized sheet steel skin that formed the pressure hull itself thickened as one approached the control room, from 1.6 cm at the bow and stern to 1.85 cm amidships, and to 2.2 cm where the conning tower joined the hull. Passing through the control room, which was 6.2 meters (20⅓ feet) across the beam, one came to a circular hatch that led into the Petty