Making a Scene at the Movies

For this little story, you need to know (or be reminded of) two facts

I used to be somewhat involved with the Navy's efforts to track and locate Russian submarines, and I am Jewish.

With that in mind, we step into the Wayback Machine and go back to 1982. One of the movies in the theaters that year was Das Boot. If you have not seen the movie, it is a look at the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II from the point of view of a German submarine crew during one cruise.

So there I am, with some friends, watching the movie. A scene soon comes where the U-boat makes an attack on a convoy, is driven deep by the destroyers escorting the convoy and then subjected to a depth charge attack.

Everyone else in the theater is watching this, clearly sympathetic to what the crew of the U-boat is going through as the depth charges detonate and shake the boat.

And there I am, cheering on the destroyers, saying: "Yeah! Yeah! Kill the Krauts! Sink `em!"

People were not amused. I didn't care.