Steel Grey (Short story for school)

This was a piece I wrote for the creative writing section of my Trial HSC paper for English (Area of Study). The overarching theme of the course was the physical journey and how it influences people, and the question asked us to write a short piece relating to the physical journey with special attention paid to the idea that 'what we carry with us describes who we are.'

It's probably a little short, but it's optimised to be handwritten in 40-45 minutes.

*

Sunlight, sickly and pale in the fog, clung to the Sachsenwald in the chill silence of the morning as it lumbered eastward through the waves. Astern were five wretched figures, huddled in blankets and nursing mugs of hot chocolate in trembling hands. Words had been unable to escape from blue lips for an eternity, but behind eyes half-closed from cold and fatigue was the collective mantra of minds: 'All we brought were our hopes, dreams and trust, and where are they now? It could not, it should not, and it did not happen!'

The waters trailed behind, the sea's countenance steely-grey. 'You came, you saw, but I conquered,' it seemed to mock them.

What ill fortune could befall twenty-one hundred souls who plied the waves! They had come as nobody, bringing nothing but the hope that they would return as heroes.

They were alone save for a time when a bearded Aryan face came to say, 'Here - more drink against your suffering.'

'How blind we were,' whispered one, his voice a spectre of defeat.

'Would that we had chosen a different path,' lamented another, who had lost his eyes.

'It was not our decisions which damned us,' said a man whose eyes burned with fervour yet, though his body curled under the blanket like a newborn. 'It is ill fortune which carries the burden of blame for our blindness, nothing more.'

Yes, they all saw it: that shell from the Norfolk which destroyed the forward radar.

'Was it an act of justice that ill fortune should have visited us?' wondered the blind man.

'For what crime?' demanded the fiery one. 'We shot no albatrosses nor wore any about our necks. Justice is a watchman standing by the gates in our path; it is ill fortune which is a highwayman, striking as it pleases.'

'Can ill fortune not also be a vigilante?'

Perhaps, and they all saw it: the Hood erupting in flames and splitting asunder, damning fifteen hundred souls to the deep.

'No,' came the rebuke, 'for what was our guilt? One might as well incriminate birds for taking wing. We brought no guilt with us aboard, only oaths to serve the glory of the Fatherland.'

'Supposing we had taken a different course -'

'What is the sense in looking back? The past cannot be changed by sulking in regret. It is not man's burden to change or challenge decisions already made. It is forward that we must look, for it is ahead that we always go.'

'It was only ahead that we went given that our choices had been removed from us.'

'No. It is always forward that we go. Turn the tiller to port, and still we move forward. Come about, and the helmsman still faces the bow.'

'How do we know that it was the right direction?'

'Where Lindemann said to go - that is the right course to take.'

At this, they all felt a pang of grief, for they all saw it: the salvo from the Norfolk, that devil which had blinded them before, annihilate the forward command post.

'Lindemann could have elected not to take the path we were forced upon. He would still be with us if, after the rudder was destroyed -'

They all heard it: the tortured scream of metal and the mocking noise of the torpedo plane's engines as it flew away with all they possessed: hope.

'- he surrendered.'

'And what?' the fiery one rounded on his blind compatriot. 'Damn us all to be the crew of van der Decken, unable to return home for shame? No, Lindemann captained the Bismarck, not the Dutchman.'

'Aye,' agreed another sailor, whose teeth chattered incessantly. 'He even delayed our progress to allow the Prinz Eugen to escape.'

'Always forward,' repeated the fiery sailor.

'Did you never look back?' came the challenge from the blind man.

They all had, and saw it: the might of Britain's navy, hunting them like so many hounds chase an unfortunate fox.

'No,' the fiery one denied. 'I kept my trust in Lindemann.'

'Must one's choices in life be governed by the decisions of others?' the blind man asked him.

'Would you have all hands be the helmsman, for a ship or a country?' came the rebuttal.

'Yet we scuttled her! We killed her!'

They all saw it: the sleek, beautiful body slipping beneath the waves.

'Scuttling the Bismarck was the hardest decision for us all. It was the only way forward, and we took it - and here we still live.'

Ahead of the Sachsenwald, the sun pierced the fog like a blade, flaring golden against the prow.

Behind, beneath the broken sailors whose only possessions - pride, hope and courage - had been stolen from them, the Atlantic stretched away in shadow, its waves flecked with white, and the immutable steel-grey of the past.