We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [12]
The evacuation had picked up pace. Fishing boats set off from the beach to rescue the crew from the battleship that only a few hours earlier had been bombarding them, while the ship's own main launch shuttled continuously between ship and beach. Laurids leaned over the rail and spotted the roaring fire leaping out of the stern cannon ports. It was only a matter of time.
Smoke was pouring out of every hatch, making it just as difficult to breathe above deck as below. Once again he rushed down to the sickbay but was soon forced to abandon the idea: the smoke was now so dense and suffocating that it seemed impossible that anyone might have survived.
"Is anyone here?" he called out, but there was no reply.
The smoke seared his lungs and a fit of coughing sent tears streaming down his cheeks. He hurtled back up to the deck, squeezing his burning eyes shut in pain, temporarily smoke-blinded. He slipped and fell on the deck, slick from human excretions and spilled organs. His hand touched something soft and wet, and he shot to his feet, rubbing his palm on his soiled trousers in terror. He couldn't bear the thought that he'd touched another human being's blood and guts. It felt as though his soul had been scalded.
He staggered to the rail, where the smoke was thinner, and tried to regain his vision. Through a mist of tears he made out the launch, which had run aground on a sandbank, forcing the crew to jump into the water and wade ashore, where the enemy soldiers were waiting for them. Then the launch came unstuck and immediately set course for the Christian the Eighth, while several of the fishing boats close to the ship started heading back to the shore. The launch too turned around. Howls of protest erupted from the open gangway.
Laurids stepped back from the rail into the billowing clouds of smoke.
"I SAW LAURIDS," Ejnar would always say later. "I swear I saw him."
Ejnar was standing on the beach when the Christian the Eighth blew's up. He'd been taken ashore from the Gefion under guard and grouped with the other survivors from the frigate, waiting to be led off. The German soldiers seemed taken aback by their own victory and looked as if they had no idea of what to do with us. Our numbers kept swelling as men from the two vanquished battleships filled the shore.
Then the warning cry rang out across the water.
Most of us, tired and disheartened, had been sitting on the beach with our eyes fixed on the sand as the soldiers pointed their bayonets at us with hands that trembled. But now we looked up. At the stern of the ship-of-the-line, a pillar of fire shot up with a deafening boom. Then more: column after column of flame broke through the deck as the powder magazines ignited. In seconds, the masts and yards were reduced to charcoal, while the sails fluttered off in huge flakes of ash and the great oak hull became a weightless toy in the brutal hands of the blaze. But the worst was yet to come. The immense heat had set off the vanquished ship's cannons, which at the moment of capitulation had been loaded. Now, simultaneously, they discharged their deadly contents toward the shore.
Screams of horror rose from the crammed beach when the cannonballs started crashing down on us. Death was arbitrary. Burning debris rained from the heavens, wreaking destruction wherever it landed, so that the hour of victory was marked only by the sound of men screaming. This, then, was the dying ship's final salute to the victors and the vanquished: a murderous broadside that attacked both friend and foe alike. War showed its true face out there in the fire shower on Eckernförde Fjord.
***
For a moment it looked as if everyone on the beach had been killed. Bodies were strewn everywhere and not a single man was standing. Many were lying face-down with their arms outstretched as if they were