"A Time to Die" by Robert Moore

This is the story of the sinking of the Kursk, the Russian submarine that suffered a torpedo explosion while on military games in the Barents Sea in the fall of 2000. The entire crew perished.

The book, written by a Canadian journalist, provides an interesting view of the Russian northeast, the Russian fleet, and the ordinary Russian sailor and family. Following the collapse of the USSR, money was very tight, and the Russian military showed signs of weakness, as the cost of equipment upkeep became too much. Even the cost of military salaries at times was beyond the financial ability of the nation.

During military exercises, a poorly maintained torpedo exploded on the underwater Kursk, a large (500' long) submarine, technologically up to date, killing a larg number of the crew instantaneously, and trapping about thirty others in a rear chamber of the ship, where they were slowly dying due to decreasing oxygen, and then were instantaneously killed by a flash fire. The thought of their several days of waiting for rescue or death is hard to bear.

And rescue was possible, except for two things. First, the Russian rescue equipment was maintained as poorly as the torpedos, and failed to lock on to the submarine to create the necessary seal for a possible rescue. Second, although American, British and Norwegian rescue teams were ready to join the effort (and, belatedly, did), they were hampered by the fear of the Russian military bureaucracy to let the westerners in on the secrets of the Russian submarines for fear their effectiveness would be compromised in time of war. The Russian command was clearly divided, between those who would open up all secrets to the rescuers for the sake of the men and their families, those who eventually welcomed the rescue effort but wanted to cripple the rescuers' abilities by controlling exactly what information they would be given, and those who were adamently opposed to any international help.

For these reasons, delays of days and days were endured, and the rescue effort failed. By the time the submarine was reached, and the bodies removed, all were dead and, at the same time, it was clear that an earlier approach would have saved their lives.

The book is well written and not hard to read. It provides a lot of insight, I thought, into a part of Russian society not normally discussed in the west. The picture of the lives of the sailors and their families in barren northern port cities is depressing. The courage of the men impressive. The obstinancy of the bureaucracy perhaps not surprising, but not always kept in mind.

And, what may be most interesting of all, are the men who rescue others from sunken ships for a living. Nothing would appear to be more dangerous. Why they do this (and of course how they have the skills that they have) is unfathomable. It obviously takes all kinds to make a world. And their kind has very little relationship to folks like me.

Robert Moore, "A Time to Die" was published by Random House, Canada, in 2002.