THE LONGEST PATROL; A U-BOAT GUNNER'S WAR

The Longest Patrol
A U-Boat Gunner's War

By Gregory L. Owen
With a Foreword by
Commander Peter G. Chance,
Royal Canadian Navy (Ret.)

Military History and Biography
BISAC: HIS027100
History/Military/World War II

Trade Paperback, 6" x 9"
ISBN: 0-595-39113-3
Publisher: iUniverse

362 pages
50 photographs
Fully footnoted
Glossary
Bibliography
Fully Indexed

Price: U.S. $23.95
Publication Date: June 22, 2006

Fourteen year-old Karl Baumann flees the Ruhr coal mines in 1938 to become a cabin boy on a North Sea fishing
trawler. He joins Adolf Hitler’s Kriegsmarine at age seventeen and volunteers for the vaunted submarine service,
his only opportunity to return to sea. Trained as a U-boat gunner, he sails into the Battle of the Atlantic aboard U-
953, code-named Kater (Tomcat), and experiences the extremes of persistent boredom and abject terror character-
istic of World War II submarine warfare. His war patrols take him to convoy lanes in the open Atlantic and along
the North African coast, into the Bay of Biscay’s U-boat killing zone, and the nearly impenetrable English Channel
to attack the Normandy invasion fleet.

Severely wounded, Karl Baumann is forced to remain hospitalized in the besieged French port of Brest after U-953
becomes one of the last U-boats to escape the surrounded city. Captured by American GIs, he is transported to the
United States and confined in prisoner of war camps in rural Virginia, where he is not a model prisoner by American
standards. He is compelled to provide manual labor for civilian employers, among them Mennonite farmers, and his
life is transformed by the farmers’ pacifist beliefs. He vows to return to Virginia someday to live as a free man, but
first must endure captivity at the Attichy prison camp in France and repatriation to his devastated and destitute
homeland.

The Longest Patrol is Karl Baumann’s story, told in great detail within the context of the wartime events that
surrounded him. Fully researched, an extensive group of primary source materials—including U-953’s daily war
diary and interviews with Baumann, fellow U-boat crewmen, former combatants, and his American captors and
benefactors—paint a vivid and enduring picture of the wartime exploits of one of the few survivors from the German
submarine service. This story defies stereotypes and provides fresh insight into Germany’s fateful U-boat campaign
as well as the U.S. Army’s unprecedented and successful prisoner of war program.

I feel highly honoured to be invited to write a foreword to Gregory L. Owen's The Longest Patrol; A U-Boat
Gunner's War. It is a remarkable account of Karl Baumann's life and a most worthy complement, from a German
sub- mariner's point of view, to the long list of books written about the 1939-1945 war at sea. The author's
thoroughness of the research is compelling in itself. His telling of the story is warm in regard to personal
relationships, complete in the descriptions of the various stages of Karl's life and dramatic, realistic and stark
pertaining to his service at sea.

From a personal standpoint, I found this book astonishing and exciting, especially when I read of U-953's deter-
mined and brave attacks against ships of Escort Group 12 of which HMCS Skeena was one. I was her Navigating
Officer at that time. During the day of 8 June 1944, Gnat homing torpedoes were launched against our four ships.
Thanks to a simple but effective invention dubbed CAT (Canadian Anti Torpedo) gear, we sustained no damage as
the torpedoes were attracted to the frequency of CAT gear above that of our ships' propellers. It was particularly
exciting when U-953's periscope passed in front of our ship's bow. Our Hedgehog ring of bombs was fired toward
the fast disappearing U-boat when at the same time we saw a torpedo pass down our starboard side only to explode
in the CAT gear streamed well astern.

My profound thanks to Karl Baumann for his splendid memoir and to Greg Owen for telling it so brilliantly.

Sidney, British Columbia
23 April 2006