We, the Drowned - Carsten Jensen [293]
There were rules for sailing in a convoy. A meeting was held ashore before departure, and each time the order from the convoy's commodore was the same: maintain speed and course. Every ship had her position, which she must stick to at all costs. And another order would come to balloon in their consciousness like a tumor: never go to the aid of a stricken ship; do not stop to pick up survivors. A ship that was stationary even for a moment would become a target for U-boats and bombers, and risk losing cargo essential to the war effort. They sailed to deliver that cargo, not to rescue drowning sailors.
This rule sprang from bitter necessity. Although Knud Erik recognized this, he still felt it was an assault on his whole identity. It wouldn't be a torpedo that destroyed him, he suspected, but an order that forced him to ignore drowning men crying out for help.
Escort vessels sailing at the rear of the convoy were tasked with picking up survivors, but they were often prevented from doing so by the wrath of the bombers or forced to divert their course to avoid torpedoes. Then the shipwrecked men would drift behind and disappear on the vast sea. The last trace of them would be the red distress lights on their life jackets.
They were the lucky ones. As their body temperature dropped, they'd drift into sleep, and then death. Or they'd give up, undo their life jackets, and let themselves slip into the darkness that was awaiting them. The red lights glowed on for a while longer. Then they too went out one by one.
When a ship was torpedoed, the destroyers would speed over to the attacking submarine and drop their depth charges. Any survivors in the water would implode from the enormous pressure, strong enough to rip away the U-boat's armored steel plates, or be propelled into the air on a powerful geyser of water, with their lungs forced out through their mouths: tattered human remains of which not even a scream was left.
He'd seen it happen on the voyage back to Halifax.
They had orders not to deviate from course because the danger of colliding with the other ships in the convoy was greatest when they sailed at top steam while attempting to flee the U-boats. He'd stood on the bridge, his hands on the wheel, and sailed right into a whole poppy field of red distress lights in front of the Nimbus's bow. He'd heard the frantic pummeling against the ship when the life-jacketed survivors drifted alongside and desperately tried to push off, so as not to be caught by the screw propeller. The ship's wake foamed red with blood from the severed body parts being churned around, while he stood on the bridge wing, looking back.
Don't look back was the rule for moments like this. Having done it once, he never did it again. But something inside him still watched what a moment ago had been men, and it kept watching until it turned to stone. No one, no one willingly did this to another human being. And yet he'd done it. Treat other people the way you'd like them to treat you. If he couldn't believe in that, what was he left with?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
He counted the little red lights from his captain's cabin. Their glow stripped him bare. He'd lost his last point of reference. He'd got his cargo to its destination. Yet he was doing the wrong thing. He'd done damage to others and in doing so, did damage to himself. He felt that close