Of the hundreds of German submarines that were in service during World War II, only a few returned. Klaus Willmann's account is based on the memories of a crew member and the war diary of U 188. The crew of the submarine undertook a dangerous and arduous journey from France to Malaysia. The very personal report of sailor Anton Staller vividly portrays not only the everyday life on the boat, with its oppressive confinement and the constant threat of depth charges and air raids, but also the thoughts and feelings of the soldiers at sea: the eternal contradiction between a sense of duty and doubts, the awareness and destructive consequences of their actions, and ultimately the realization that they were being driven into deadly adventures for a meaningless and hopeless cause.