The following are excerpts from U-BOAT WARS by Lothar-Gunther Buchheim:
The earth encourages man's belief that it will treasure
the traces of his existence for all time. The sea offers no such
illusion: before our very eyes it wipes away our footprints.
Upon our Hunched Backs
The storm comes racing in a sudden assault
from a bad weather front straight ahead, tearing
strips of white and green skin off the waves.
There's a hissing and a roaring, as though water-
falls were being sent hurtling down the sides of
tapped blast furnaces. The breakers are running
higher and higher, gaining force all the time.
The boat shoots up the slopes, projects it bow
searchingly into the void, and immediately
dives back into the green flesh of the sea.
Another wall of water approaches, higher than
any that have gone before. The wall turns trans-
parent until it is gleaming like sheer green glass.
Bearing its crown of foam, it is advancing directly
to meet us. And now the bow pierces the wall
and shatters it - and it comes crashing down upon
our hunched backs and buries the entire boat.
Gleaming and Rippling of Silver
When the moon breaks
momentarily through the headlong rush of clouds,
wispy braids of silver ripple across the dark waters.
As the moonlight flickers, the waves are transformed
from jagged silhouettes into silver-veined slopes of
astonishing plasticity, strewn with moon currents,
moon glitter, furrows of moon shadow. This gleaming,
streaming, and rippling of silver is quite incomparable.
It is not of this world. Our rush and roar and thunder
provide a worthy accompaniment - the sounds, too,
are unearthly.
The following morning, a wall of clouds bars the
horizon. It climbs higher and higher into the sky,
halfway toward the zenith, at which point it disinte-
grates into puffballs which scatter across the whole
of the westerly sky.
Soon it is getting noticeably darker again. The suction
and friction of gusting winds ruffle the water greedily.
The roar of the sea gains in volume until it is one
single vibrating sound mingling with
the wailing of the wind.
As a 23-year-old artist, Buchheim's part 'in reporting the war was to produce suitable paintings and drawings'.
Original photos LGB
Copied by GH
Link to more WW2: Ten Poignant Stories (3)
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