One evening, Straub and I and a bunch of other guys were in the mess, just off the dogwatch, waiting for dinner. The ocean was calm for once, so the cooks were able to muster up a real hot meal for us, and one that we’d all get to hold down since nobody was seasick. And since the ship wasn’t getting bounced around on choppy seas, we didn’t have to worry about everything sliding off the tables, even with the fiddle boards up. It had gotten warmer out, too, temperatures in the fifties, where just a couple of days before we were practically in the middle of an ice storm.

On the downside, we were all pretty much falling asleep just sitting there waiting on the chow to be ready. I felt a thud on my forehead and woke right up—and realized I’d slumped so far forward that my head had hit the table.

“Good thing there wasn’t a fork sticking up there,” Straub said, though I wasn’t sure how he could have seen what just happened with his eyes opened to a couple of narrow slits.

I lifted my cup of cold coffee and drank some to wake myself up. “Wonder how Woody’s doing,” I said.

“Yeah, I wonder, too,” said Straub. “Haven’t seen him in probably three whole days. You think he’s all right?”

“I guess so,” I said. “All those snipes down there in the engine room, they’re all pretty tight with one another. Especially since Big Carrot got killed.”

“They didn’t get a replacement for him, either. Just promoted a guy. So they’re all pulling extra duty,” Straub said. “I don’t think they mind, though.”

The cooks brought out steaming pots of, well, something we decided was supposed to be beef stew. There did seem to be chunks of meat floating around in there, bumping into the occasional canned pea or carrot. And there was a lot of green stuff that could have been seaweed. Or colored moss. But we ate it, grateful for a calm ocean, and washed it down with more coffee.

“Want to go see him?” I asked Straub when we finished.

“Who, Woody?” he said. “They’d throw us right out of there. They don’t like anybody invading their cave. You know that.”

“Maybe it’s more relaxed with the new chief motor machinist’s mate,” I said.

Straub shrugged. “Worth a shot. I mean, I’d hate for Woody to think we’re not still his pals and all.”

So we made our way back through the bowels of the ship to the engine room, and, as it turned out, nobody said anything to us. They just stared at us when we came in, as if we were aliens from another planet. Maybe it was the deafening noise of all the machinery necessary to turn and control the two giant screws that worked the propellers. Maybe it was the fact that most of the snipes hadn’t seen daylight, or anybody besides their fellow grease-smeared snipes, for a couple of days. Or maybe they were just as tired as the rest of us, as desperate for a good, long sleep, and knew they weren’t going to get it for weeks to come.

Straub and I waved, taking the friendly approach, and then we went looking for Woody in their sleeping quarters, which was where we found him, asleep in his bunk, snoring, though we could barely hear him over the din from the main engine room on the other side of the bulkhead.

We were just about to wake him when the squawk box blasted the call to general quarters. Woody sat up so fast that he bonked his head on the bunk above him, like in a cartoon. It should have been triced up since nobody was in it, but apparently they were looser about those sorts of things in the engine room.

We shouted hi and good-bye to Woody, who seemed confused to see us, or maybe it was from hitting his head, then we turned to race back to our stations. But something stopped me. I turned to look at Woody again. He was rubbing his head but grinning at me, which struck me as odd.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, sure,” Woody said. “This isn’t anything. Down here, you hit your head all the time on stuff. Gotta have a hard head to get by.”

I should have already been gone. We must have spotted a U-boat and were about to give chase, but I still held back. “Why were you grinning like that?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Woody said, looking sheepish. “I just saw that you and Straub came down to visit, and it occurred to me that I ain’t ever had friends like you guys before. That’s all.”

I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.” And then I took off for my duty station and Woody took off for the engine room.

I turned to wave to him for some reason, but I was too late. He was already gone.

*   *   *

Good weather and ocean for eating in the mess was bad weather and ocean for eluding the wolf pack. Once we made it to our stations, Straub and I joined everybody else scanning the horizon for ships on fire. Sonar had picked up something that might’ve been a U-boat and we were racing toward the spot, practically flying over the waveless sea. It was night, but there was a half-moon and enough light to see the shape of a couple of the cargo ships lumbering forward off to starboard.

We’d had a run of false soundings on sonar the past couple of days and I was beginning to think this might be one more, but then the order came to prepare the depth charges, and the PC slowed. Straub and his depth charge crew went to work, while I helped with shells for the deck gun. I wished I was on the observation platform instead, because while I trusted the other guys, I was pretty sure I was better at spotting U-boats in open water, or even sometimes just having a feeling, a sense, for where one might be, even if there was nothing to actually see.

Lieutenant Talley ordered them to launch the depth charges, and we all braced ourselves for the aftershock. Spouts of water shot up and caught the moonlight. For a second it was actually beautiful. And then the concussion jolted us up out of the water and slammed us back down. Guys staggered, slammed into rails, fell on the deck. The usual. And then another depth charge went off even deeper and it happened again. And then a third depth charge even deeper.

I was picking myself up and back into position by the forward gun when the water next to the ship started frothing and churning. An oil slick formed nearby, coming from below the surface where we’d either hit a U-boat or they were trying to convince us we had. Lieutenant Talley ordered the engine room to back the ship off a little way, and we trained the forward gun at the still-churning water.

We didn’t have to wait long before the bow of a U-boat broke through, and then the forward deck, then their deck gun, obviously damaged and half off the mount, then the tower, also damaged. Only half the sub managed to surface. So we’d hit it after all! Guys on our ship cheered until Chief Kerr ordered everybody to shut up and grab small arms.

We kept the forward gun aimed at the U-boat tower. Guys with weapons crouched behind cover with their guns aimed there, too, where the Germans would climb out—if they were still alive, and if they were going to surrender.

So we waited like that. Hardly breathing. Minutes passing. Knowing we couldn’t stay like that long because another U-boat in the wolf pack could be lining up to fire a torpedo at us at any time.

“How long you think Lieutenant Talley’s gonna wait?” the guy next to me asked.

“I say we go ahead and open fire. Sink this U-boat and get the heck out of here,” said another guy.

“But they could still be alive in there. Some of them probably are. Wouldn’t you think?” asked the first guy.

“So what if they are?” said the second guy. “What are we going to do with them? We can’t take on any prisoners, can we? Can’t slow down the convoy just for something like that.”

Nobody answered him, because nobody could know the answer.

*   *   *

After five more long minutes that felt like an hour, a German climbed out of the tower and down onto the sloping deck of the U-boat. Another followed. Then several more. They pulled an inflatable raft out with them, looking at us nervously the whole time.

“They’re probably waiting for us to start shooting,” somebody said. “The way they’d do it to us if the situation was reversed.”

We kept guns aimed at the U-boat. Lieutenant Talley and the other officers were on the bridge. He shouted something to the German submariners, but none of them answered. They inflated their boat, still keeping one eye on us to see what we would do, but not asking permission for anything, not saying anything, and then they climbed on board and began paddling away—away from the U-boat and away from our PC.

“What the heck is this?” Straub asked. I hadn’t seen him come over to where I was stationed. “We’re just letting them get away?”

“It’s not like they can do anything,” I said. “Except wait to be rescued by another U-boat.”

“I say we start shooting,” a guy in the forward gun crew snarled.

“Nah,” somebody else said. “Lieutenant Talley’s going to let them get far enough away, and then he’s going to sink their sub. And anybody else on board who didn’t come out.”

“You gotta figure they’re all dead down there, or they’d have come out, too,” Straub said.

“I hope that’s it,” I said. I didn’t want to think about men still alive on the U-boat when we fired on it, if that’s what Lieutenant Talley was actually planning.

We never got the chance to find out, though, because suddenly the whole world was ripped apart by an enormous explosion—and we were in the middle of it, thrown off our feet, our ship swallowed up in flames.