“I don’t believe we will,” I said with confidence. “Here near the mine fields I think there are few ships sailing. So far as that goes, we are really safer here. The scouting will be on the other side of the fields.”
Exactly one hour before the ebb tide we reached those sections where the enemy, according to the reports from other U-boats, believed that they had effectively blocked the passage with a mine field that stretched for several miles. I say “believed,” because the mines, as before stated, were showing above the surface during the ebb tide and one could easily steer through the lanes between them. The blocking of this important passage was therefore for the enemy an assuring but somewhat expensive illusion. It was not quite so easy as I had expected from the stories and reports of my fellow submarine commanders to slip between the mines.
“Well, sirs, here it goes!” I said to both officers, who, like me, had crawled into their thick oil-skins and had exchanged their caps, embroidered with gold oak leaves, for the practical southwester. “Now, we’ll see who spots the first mine.”
In a drizzle of foam and spray we were standing side by side and gazed at the sea several hundred meters ahead of us. The ocean had within the last few hours become still heavier and stormier, and the wind came from the southwest and consequently straight toward us so that there was danger of discovering the mines too late, as they would be concealed from our sight with every roll of the sea.
Suddenly we all three looked at one another and then quickly at the sea again. There they were! Heavens, what a bunch! In all directions as far as the eye could see were the devilish dark globes, washed with the breakers’ snow-white foam. We were so overwhelmed by the sight of all these mines that we started to swear and kept it up for some time without any interruption.
“It’s outrageous! It’s unheard of! It’s terrible! Such a mass! And such a people call themselves Christian seafarers—a bunch of murderers, that’s what they are, who can put out such dirty traps!”
With reduced speed we went toward the “caviar sandwich,” as Petersen called the dark spotted surface before us. Now it was “up to” us skilfully to steer the boat between the irregularly spread mines and see carefully to it that we did not get into a blind alley. If only our boat did not hit one of those devilish things! It would be the end of us! But surely if we kept calm, we should get through all right. Certainly we would. We had a warhelmsman who was a wonder in his line, boatswain’s mate Lohmann. He could thank his skill as a helmsman for his long career in the navy. If he was up to some deviltry—which, it is said, rather often happened in former days—it was always mentioned as an extenuating circumstance—“but he’s such an able helmsman.”
Lohmann, when he put his mind to it, could certainly steer. He could hit a floating cork with the prow. He was standing with feet apart in the tower and grinning so that his mouth reached from ear to ear. He always grinned when he stood at the wheel. But now that he had become the most important person on board, he was radiating joy and pride to such an extent that his little square figure took on a superior pose of careless daring. With his right hand he spun the wheel playfully, just as if he were experimenting. He had shoved the other deep down into the large pocket of his seaman’s trousers clear up to his elbow.
Then we were pounding into the mine field. Lohmann squinted together his small gray eyes to a couple of narrow slits, spat first in his right hand, and then in a long semi-circle towards the first mine which we were just passing on the port side. He, thereupon, hitched his slipping trousers, lit his nose-warmer—a pipe broken off close to the bowl—spat once more into his right hand, and began a series of artistic curvings and twistings to weave his way through the narrow lanes. And he was as calm and confident as if he had done nothing all his life except steer U-boats through mine fields. I could leave him in charge of it.
After ten minutes we had passed the mine field. We estimated we had sifted through about eight hundred mines.