U-181: Part I [KTB154]

In KTB #154 we read part of the story of OTTO GIESE (45-1984) about his time in the merchant navy, and now we read about his entry into the Kriegsmarine and the U-Bootwaffe.

South of the Tuamoto Archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, we met the famous German raider ORION which we supplied with fuel and provisions. Of course we were camouflaged as a Japanese vessel.

U-405 during her commissioning

Rounding the horn of South America we meet mountainous seas. In the South Atlantic our camouflage was changed again to make it look like a Norwegian. We had to be on the lookout for three British Auxiliary Cruisers; ARCHANTURIA, ASTURIAS and QUEEN OF BERMUDA of which we saw the tail end, but we could disappear into rain clouds.

In the North Atlantic we rendezvoused with von Oesten's gallant U-Boat who was to escort us to the Spanish coast.

EDITOR NOTE - OTTO refers to the boat of JURGEN OESTEN (1681-LIFE-1990)

One of the mornings we baked fresh rolls for the U-Boat crew and they gave us some bottles of schnapps via heaving line. When I saw those bearded and happy fellows on the bridge of the boat cutting through the heavy seas, my mind was set to leave the blockade runs and join the U-Boats.

Talking to the commanding Admiral in Bordeaux, South France about my request of transfer, he did everything possible to get me landed on an Atlantic Boat. Beginning of 1942, my great chance had come; U-405, KorvettenKapitan Hopmann. This was a Type VII-C Boat, one of the wolf pack boats.

It was cold and wintry morning when I reported on board as 'Metrosa Asch', in English 'Sailor Asshole' or as we call in the merchant marine, Moses. I brought with me already some decorations for the successful blockade run, some sea legs and some good seafaring experience, but here was a U-Boat ready to go on action into the North Atlantic and the northernmost hunting grounds along the pack ice between Iceland, Jan Mayn and Spitizbergen.

There was about a week's time for me to get introduced into the nature of a U-Boat and into the duty expected of me with the able help of the Chief Watch Officer. He simply ground me, so to say, to death, mentally and physically, and he made me bite the bullet and spit blood in order to be welded into one with the highly trained crew. I wanted to show them that they could not break or reject me, To be one of them was what I wanted to be.

I was made the boss of the bow torpedo room which I was with my twenty eight years of age anyway, judging that the others were between 16 and 18, just kids who would soon become men under fire when the icy breakers of the northern Atlantic were all over the boat and the seas crush them onto there knees on the bridge, often breaking their bones and teeth or when the slurping noises of attacking destroyers, corvettes, frigates, and sloops would prepare them deep down underwater for the incredible and nerve racking detonation of depth charges.

In Kiel, we loaded up with greasy torpedoes on which the men scribbled many a formidable joke. Provisions and stores came on board for eight weeks. They were the best of the best and I may well admit here that I gained on the first two trips, about 17 pounds.

Soon we left, pushing our bow through ice using our electric motors, then we shifted to diesel and passed the liner ST LOUIS from which throngs of people watched our passage. The band played the famous U-Boat song of W.W.I "Den Wir Fahren Gegen Engelland" (Now We Are Sailing Against England)

There was a Hip! Hip! Hip! Hoorays! which our men on deck returned, and soon we were on our trip to the North Sea island, Heligoland for trim and diving trials.

For a short while we called at Trondheim, one of our bases in Norway and off we went on our first trip North and soon we got used to meeting our daily English friend, the CONSOLIDATED.

Life on board meant the crewmen were to bear all privations with humor and to say farewell to even the smallest hygienic essentials like washing hands and face, shaving and brushing teeth etc ..... One just can't escape a certain dirt and filth, and there was no way to take a shower. Once in a while, we washed face and hands in seawater after which we sprinkled a bit of eau de cologne into the face. Our hair got gradually so messy and mean from overcoming seas that no comb in the world could cope with it. Some hair lotion helped to at least make it smell better. Due to the high humidity and due to the constant draft when the boat was aired out, there were always colds and other pains.

One man got angina. Jesus! He soon smelled so bad out of his mouth that we had to heave him on board of a destroyer. Nearly everybody had constipation due to lack of motion and with the good food we actually felt like fattened geese. Of course we swallowed caster oil by the liter. There was only one toilet or head available for the 45 men and one had to be an engineer to service the different levers in order to pump the gold nuggets outboard, which was especially difficult when these were hard as stone which was, with our constipation, usually the case.

The room was small and hot. If you did not pump hard and long enough, the gold nuggets would jump right back into your face, Some boys were smart enough and snuck out unseen and when the next customer was ready to open the inner valve, he was just blessed with his and his forerunners attributes. Since then everybody had to sign his name into a booklet with the time and condition, and soon this booklet was a treasure of humorous verses and drawings, also the head was used to push out boulders.

As far as I can remember, there had to five about 25 men in the bow torpedo room with always two men to one bunk. In other words, when one man left, the other man slid in the still warm blankets and candid odor. It was a way of U-Boat life and we felt good about it. Because when you had been on each watch four hours with heavy seas over the bridge, you was wet to the bone! Wet heavy underwear, wet woolen socks, wet heavy felt padded leather boots, wet woolen pullovers and wet leather jackets and pants, wet plastic jacket and pants and sou'wester and wet neckerchief All this did not dry much within the next eight hours of course and then you had to put that still moist and stinky garbage on, only to again to get wet by the icy waters.

Life in the bowroom was a happy one though. At the beginning of the trips and when still all torpedoes were on board, those torps resting on the floor in the bowroom were covered with large wooden boards which were evened, same height with the lower bunks leaving not much head space which was usually absorbed by hammocks in which the torpedo mechanics slept. There were clothes all over. One morning, when all the others still slept, I watched the always witty little Schtepke from Cologne who in that week was our waiter on duty, coming into the bowroom with a full buckase, a bucket-like container of oatmeal porridge. Stooping deep under the hammocks, a woolen sock fell into the hot porridge.

When Schtepke noticed that all were apparently asleep, he quietly fished out the sock and dropped it down between the greasy torpedoes, It so happened of course on that morning I passed on my share of breakfast to somebody else.

In the free time, the men played all sorts of card games especially what they called Seventeen and Four, and wagered for imaginary money to be spent next shore leave. Sometimes games ended in a fight for all, using blankets and pillow wedges as projectiles.

Some imitated auto racers, using nautical and ships technical terms. Others imitated women, singing in their highest voices. Every newcomer of the crew had to make three songs over the intercom. The worse he sang, the more he was liked.

Of course, reading 'hot stuff' was a favorite pastime. There was music from all sorts of records all day long, preferably English Jazz or Western. This however was only part of the free time. One must not forget that potatoes had to be peeled; the entire boat had to be kept as clean as possible and under the circumstances, lessons and studies had to be attended. There were constant fresh up maneuvers and ALARM diving and trim by time where splits of seconds meant the question between life or death.

Real sleep could only be found in good weather on the surface or when the boat was submerged. In heavy weather though the boat was rolling and pitching like mad and the boys were often thrown out of their bunks onto the floorboards and into the bunks on the other side. Sometimes the entire upper bunks unhooked and sailed back and forth over the floorboards like torpedoes. The cases with vegetables, which had been stored up in the bowroom, got loose and landed with a swoop of coffee from the coffeepot in the lower bunks. There was pandemonium, cursing, yelling, constant clatter.

Back at our base at Trondheim, we went skiing with skis which we borrowed from the Norwegian Highland Police against cigarettes and a favorite German bread, which was a full grain bread, a specialty of the German forces which opened all sorts of doors, even those to the sweet Norwegian girls, Also there were often military drills, boat maneuvers, lessons etc.

We were just watching a film show in town when suddenly the film stopped, light went on and a voice said: "All soldiers of feldpost number M35435 to report immediately back to base."

This was at 2200 hours. The same night we loaded up the boat with stores and provisions and before the early rays of the sun were up, we had left the fjord, called shortly at Narvik, and headed back into our northern hunting grounds, boxing against heaviest seas from the spring storms and watched out for floating mines.

Soon we were at the pack ice and the sea got calm under the most brilliant Polar sun. The sudden ALARM dive, dive for destroyer, sent the boat down. Since there were no propeller noise we took a good look at our destroyer and Jesus, our destroyer proved to be miniature iceberg at which we had nearly fired a torpedo.

On this trip we battered in the Barents Sea and Kola Bay. We were in contact with a mammoth convoy, but extremely bad weather, constant British destroyers and planes and even Russian bombers pressed us constantly down.

Running west around the north cap at Hammerfest, fierce mountainous seas as high as at Cape Horn, overrode the boat from the stem. For days we stood on the bridge with our heavy belts strapped to the periscope mountings to avoid being washed overboard. It so happened on boats that the entire bridge watch had been washed away without that they knew about it down in the boat. Since then, the officer on watch had to report half-hourly through the speaking tube to the Central Command Room that all was well above or wasn't it?

EDITOR NOTE - On more than one occasion, Allied aircraft had attacked surfaced U-boats where absolutely no personnel were seen topside; obviously all washed overboard and the crew below never knew it.

Again a massive wave crept over the boat. For minutes it seemed we were under a green dome of water. When we finally came up, spitting and cursing, I found my other rear lookout friend down on his knees, wailing: "Where are my teeth.?"

There was blood all over. We sent him down for a check-up. Indeed, all his upper and lower front teeth were gone and upper and lower jawbones broken and bent inwards.

Running into Narvik fjord at high speed, we watched with awe the many wrecks of German destroyers which had gone down in battles with, in numbers, far superior enemy. There were wrecks of ships all over! We took quarters on the STELLA POLARIS, the former yacht of the King of Norway. There was a big welcome party with plenty of liquor, bought papers with funnies about the last trip, excellent for it.

And before we went to our cabins we sailed all the white Commandant caps, which we found on hooks on the Promenade Deck, into the icy waters. Of course, they made us dive overboard and get them back. There were ice floes all around us. We got sober right quick before we took a hot bath in a tub and before we dozed off into deep steep on the flowery white linen.

Who says that U-Boat men don't live like the Gods, in France as we say. There were decorations and a short leave home to the dear ones, unforgettable and beautiful days when the hearts were beating highest. But there were heavy bomb attacks too and they dropped leaflets saying that the life of a U-Boatman lasted only 60 days in average.

There were short stopovers at Bergen and Narvik, Norway before the boat edged us toward Iceland where a mammoth convoy was building up. Day in, out we had our share of thick fog and for four long weeks we did not see any ships. Back we sailed to Narvik.

Several times I went mountaineering, and took part in an expedition to rescue the L.I., (Chief Engineer), of a friend boat who had been overdue. We finally found him at the foot of a steep glacier, dead.

Two weeks we had been already been cruising between Iceland, Spitzbergen, Bear Island and Jan Mayn until we were suddenly notified that another mammoth convoy about 45 ships protected by about thirty units of an aircraft carrier, destroyers, corvettes, sloops etc., had left Reykjavik. This was the famous P. Q. 18.

The diesels roared and pressed the boat toward Iceland. Soon we detected at the horizon, the fine line of many mastheads and made a report to the BdU (U-Boat Headquarters) together with main course and speed which we had ascertained by running parallel to the convoy. Based on our observations, other boats were ordered to join the hunt. The wolves were closing in. Planes and destroyers forced us down for hours. Meantime the convoy was out of sight. Again the diesels roared, following directions given by signals of our heavy planes, BV 138 and JU 99 which had positioned themselves in spite of heaviest flak fire, over the convoy.

The British now hurled their powerful defense towards us. It was impossible to break into the convoy, much as we tried. Far ahead of the convoy, starboard quarter, we suddenly saw row after row of planes rising above the horizon and soon we recognized them as German formations JU 88, HE 111 and HE 115s which threw themselves at the enemy in tight formations, spitting destruction with guns, bombs of various calibers and torpedoes. When they thundered over us, we waved with our caps and they flapped with their wings.

Of course the enemy saw them coming and was ready. It was an inferno when these two forces clashed in the early morning hours. The sky was soon blood red, and black smoke drifted over the battlefield. In our boat we could hear the endless dull detonations. Christ, that was Hell, Destruction and Death. And here were men fighting; men seeing red.

More U-181

U-181: Part I [KTB154]

U-181: Part II [KTB155]

U-181: Part III [KTB156]

Convoy Aftermath
1943 and 1944
Beyond Cape of Good Hope