“I swear, Papa.” He sighed, which caused him to wince in pain and hold his side with his elbow.
“So he did this to you?” Inga asked incredulously.
“The battalion commander?” Hans Otto exclaimed in surprise. “Oh, heavens no. He just assigned our platoon to clean toilets for a week.” He shook his head. “Not just me. He punished the whole platoon.”
“And they punished you,” his father said, seeing it instantly.
“Exactly. The night after we finished our last day of latrine duty, I was sound asleep. We were all exhausted. Suddenly I woke up with a blanket over my head. Hands were grabbing at me. They lifted me up and took me out behind the barracks. And then everyone either took a punch at me or kicked me.” He touched his side. “The doctor thinks I’ve got a cracked rib. They kept yelling at me and calling me a pig, a maggot, a filthy dog, and every other horrible name they could think of. Fortunately, they also kept yelling at each other not to hurt my face.” His voice was filled with bitterness. “They didn’t want anyone to see what they had done to me.”
“That’s horrible,” Inga cried. “Did you tell your sergeant?”
Hans Otto laughed bitterly. “I didn’t have to. He knew. The next morning when he saw me hobbling down to the latrine, he sneered at me and asked how I had slept.”
“He probably put them up to it,” his father said. “It’s the army way. Deal with your own problems.”
“That’s not the only thing, Mama. There are so many other things I could tell you. But . . .” He looked at his father. “But I’m not going back. I’ve come to say good-bye. I’m going to catch the next train to Austria and—”
His father exploded. “You will not!”
“Papa.” He was pleading now. “Remember how they promised they would assign me to an engineering battalion? Well, guess what. When I finish basic training I get to be a truck driver.”
“Then be a truck driver,” his father roared. “There’s no shame in that. But don’t you quit. Don’t you turn tail and run like some back alley cat slinking away in the night.”
“You can’t make me stay, Papa,” Hans Otto cried. “I don’t need your permission.”
“Hans,” Inga snapped. “You will not talk to your father like that.”
“I don’t, Mama. I’m eighteen now. I don’t need his permission for anything.”
His father took a step closer, raised a finger, and shook it in his face. “If you do this, if you make that choice, then we will never—”
Inga quickly stepped between father and son, but she was looking up at her husband. “Before you say that, Hans, may I speak to our son for a moment?”
His eyes were spitting fire. “No, Inga. You’ve spoiled him enough. It’s time he faced up to his responsibility and—”
“I’ve spoiled him?” she cried in disbelief. “Am I the one who gave him lavish birthday presents his whole life? Was I the one who sent him to Oberammergau to a special school? Was I the one who decided he needed private tutoring? Was I the one who refused to punish him when he did wrong, saying that he was cute, or he was adorable, or he was just being a boy? No, Hans. That wasn’t me. That was you.”
She caught her breath, glad to see that she had shocked him into silence. “Oh, I’m part of it too. I went along. Cooked his favorite foods. Made his bed for him until he went off to the academy. But now our chickens have come home to roost. Now we reap the consequences. And therefore, I have a right to speak as much as you do.”
His chest was rising and falling and his face was livid. “Don’t you stand against me on this, Inga,” he hissed. “I’m warning you.”
She reached out and took both of his hands. He tried to jerk them away, but she refused to let go. “Perhaps if you will let me speak, you might learn that I don’t stand against you on this, Hans. Perhaps you will see that I stand firmly with you.”
He searched her eyes for a long moment, not convinced. But he was swayed by her intensity. “All right,” he finally said. “You may speak.”
She turned to her son, who had watched this exchange with growing dismay. “Mama,” he said, “I am so sorry that it’s come to this.”
“No, Hans. Sorry is a word that means nothing coming from you right now. It is the same word you used when we caught you lying about that girl. It is the same word you used when you came home and told us you had joined the army. You refused to seek our counsel then, because you knew what we would say. Have you learned nothing from that? Oh, no. You come having already decided to become a deserter. You’re not here for counsel, you are here to seek our blessing.”
Her voice went very quiet. “But I cannot give you my blessing, and neither can your father. You cannot escape the consequences of your foolishness. You want us to say that it’s all right for you to become a deserter? An outcast? A runaway?”
“But, Mama, I—”
“No,” she cried. “How could you ask our blessing—my blessing—when you dishonor our family, our name, and yourself?” She turned away, fighting to keep her voice steady. “I am so ashamed of you at this moment. I’m not even sure I can call you my son any longer.”
His head dropped and he started to cry. “No, Mama. Please. Don’t say that.”
She stepped back and looked up at her husband. He was staring at her in astonishment. Then he reached out and took her hand and kissed it softly. “Thank you, my dearest wife. I am sorry that I doubted you.”
Then he turned to Hans Otto. “Here is what you are going to do. You are going to get on the train and go back to the base. You will tell everyone that you had a wonderful visit with your family on your three-day pass but that you are anxious to finish your training.”
“Papa, I . . .” One look from his father and he dropped his head again.
“And you will become a truck driver, the best truck driver in your unit. And if necessary, you will drive all over France, or Belgium, or Holland. You will serve in the Imperial Army. You will do your duty to the Fatherland, and you will make us proud.”
Inga looked up. “Actually, I thank God that you will be driving trucks, Hans. For that means you will not be on the front lines. You will not have to face the actual horrors of war.”
He didn’t look at his mother. His eyes were fixed on his father. “And if I don’t do as you ask?”
For a long moment, his father stared at the ground. When he looked up, tears had filled his eyes. “Then,” he said, very slowly and very softly, “we shall take down your picture from the fireplace. We shall box up the things in your room and give them away. Then we shall go to the land office in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and have your name removed from the deed as our heir. And when we die, the farm will go to another, for you will no longer be our son.”
He lifted his finger and shook it under Hans Otto’s nose. “But none of that will matter, because deserting in wartime is treason. And the penalty for treason is death. You are not clever enough to escape them, Hans Otto. They will find you, and they will shoot you down like a dog.”
Hans looked at his mother. Her eyes held his, but she said nothing more. He spun away, angry that the tears were coming fast now and that his voice was so choked up that he couldn’t speak.
After a moment, Inga went to him and gently turned him around to face her. She laid a hand on his cheek. Then she went up on tiptoes and held him tightly. “The boy that hid in the men’s toilet is no more,” she whispered. “Go back, Hans. Become a man. Then come see us. Your room will be waiting and your picture will still be on the mantle.”
He looked up at his father. To young Hans’s astonishment, he came over and stood beside his wife. There was no anger in him now, just an infinite sadness. He laid a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Come home again, son. And we will never speak of this again. You have my word.”
“Our word,” Inga murmured.
_______________
Chapter Notes
Camp Otto Von Bismarck and its location are not based on any actual military camp in
Germany at that time.
Life in the German army as depicted here is based on personal military experience and research about military life in general. Regardless of what country it is, the experience in basic training is very similar. It is deliberately designed to be demoralizing and dehumanizing in many ways. Its purpose is to crush the independent spirit so that in combat, soldiers obey without hesitation. Most nations expect and demand absolute loyalty to the army during this process, and until the acceptance of their authority becomes automatic, they are not satisfied.
Some of the experiences that Hans undergoes here reflect the author’s basic training experience. One young man there who had failed to clean his rifle and caused his whole platoon to be punished was stuffed into a footlocker and rolled down three flights of stairs. He was in the infirmary for two days but never again failed an inspection.
April 28, 1916—Somewhere in Occupied France
Dearest Mama, Papa and family,
I am so sorry that I haven’t been able to write for almost two months now. There is a major offensive going on and we have been part of that as we drive our trucks day and night to keep our division supplied with food, clothing, and ammunition. It is quite a sight to see a convoy of trucks five or six miles long all going to the front and then returning empty to our rear base.
Let me tell you what our trucks are like. Ours have high sides and are covered with canvas so we can keep the loads we carry dry. As for the cab, this is a big drawback. There is a light framework over the cab that has canvas stretched across. It is open on three sides. The cover supposedly keeps the rain and snow off of us as we drive. This works wonderfully IF (1) the truck is not moving and (2) there is no wind of any kind. Yes, in the winter it is terribly cold and we wear heavy coats, caps, scarves, and gloves and wrap our legs in blankets.
I have decided that this is how I am going to make my fortune after I become an engineer. I will design a truck that is fully enclosed, with glass windows and perhaps even a heater that utilizes the heat from the engine to warm the cab. Fortunately, spring is coming and things will be warmer.
By the way, I am delighted to tell you that the friend I made in basic training, Franck Zolger, was also assigned to be a truck driver. We came here together and are again in the same platoon. We share a tent, and we persuaded our sergeant to let us be a driving team. This is an enormous boost to my morale. We have grown as close as brothers, which is wonderful for me because I never had a brother.
We are now in France. I cannot say where because the censors will only strike it out. Our army is temporarily stopped due to fierce resistance from the French, though I am sure we will soon be on the move again. Once we destroy the French armies, they will have to surrender and the war will be over. Our officers are saying we will be home by fall. But for now, our forces and the French have entrenched themselves, and there is no more movement either forward or backward.
I wish you could see the trenches. On one run, we took ammunition up near the front lines. It was hard to take in once we got down into the trenches. What was once green forest is now a denuded landscape of death and suffering. The earth has been rent by the constant shelling, and large shell holes filled with rainwater are everywhere. The trees are gone, and only burned and blackened stumps remain. Fences made of barbed wire run all across no-man’s-land. You can see dead horses and burned-out tanks. And the smell is unbelievable.
In some ways, the trenches are a marvel. They snake for miles across the desolate landscape. Some are four and five feet wide and the walls are reinforced with wood slats and planking. Those closer to the front are often barely wide enough for two men to pass. In the more established ones, men will make dugouts in the sides to provide places to eat and sleep out of the rain. Command posts are larger rooms with beams overhead and pillars to hold up tin roofs covered with dirt. We heard a report that one of those roofs collapsed and several of our men were buried alive.
Mostly the trenches are a nightmare. With all of the rain, side walls collapse all the time, and the mud can be a foot deep. It rains almost every day now, sometimes in torrents. Everything is wet, and almost every man has some kind of fungus infection on his feet or in his crotch or armpits.
There is a joke the men in the trenches tell. The company commander gathers all of his men together and says, “Men, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, you all get a change of socks. The bad news is, Georg, you change with Heinz. Fritz, you change with Manfred.”
Franck and I are very fortunate. Sometimes we have to sleep in our trucks when we are on the road, but usually we are back to our tents each night. Our tents have wooden slats for floors, so our feet stay mostly dry.
After seeing the front lines, I went back to our base grateful to be a truck driver and not a combat infantry man. Thank you, Mama. Thank you, Papa. I am so ashamed when I think back on that day in Oberammergau. How close I came to making the biggest mistake of my life. Well, the second biggest mistake. The biggest was joining the army instead of going to university.
One more thing, and then I must close. About a week ago, we saw our first gas attack. We had heard that the German Imperial Army had used poison gas against Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front back in January. Now both sides are using it more and more. This is a horrible thing. There are different kinds of gasses—tear gas, chlorine, and phosphine—which are delivered by opening large canisters on the battlefield when the wind is blowing in the right direction or by putting it in artillery shells.
The worst is the mustard gas. Normally it is not fatal, but it is heavier than air and so when a shell explodes, the gas sinks to the ground and drifts downhill into the trenches. And once in the soil, it can remain active for several days. If it gets on your skin, it creates great mustard-colored blisters. If it gets in your eyes, your eyelids stick together and it can cause permanent blindness. The worst is when you breathe it. It sears the throat and the lungs, and they say the pain is excruciating. It can also cause brain damage. Very nasty stuff.
Fortunately, we have been trained what to look for and what to do the instant a gas attack comes. And we always have our gas masks with us, even if we are not on duty. So I don’t want you to worry about this, Mama. We are very careful.
One of the horrible things of war is that when a gas attack occurs, the wind can blow it into nearby villages or towns. The civilians there have no training, and only a very few have gas masks. A few days ago, as we were returning from the front, our trucks were stopped because there had been a gas attack up ahead of us. We were not in danger, so we sat around for a couple of hours playing cards and grabbing a quick nap. When we were finally given the go-ahead, we started again, all wearing our gas masks. About two miles later, we passed through a French village. It was horrible. The village was directly downwind of the attack, so the gas had drifted there. Most of the young men of the village are off to war, so it was mostly old men, women, and children there.
I will not try to describe what we saw, for I do not want you to have these images in your mind. I will only say that it was ghastly beyond anything you can imagine. For some reason, I always thought of war only in terms of the combatants. Now, as I see whole villages turned to rubble, or rich fields of wheat churned into mud by the tracks of the great tanks, or dead bodies lying in the streets, I realize that war affects everyone.
How grateful I am that thus far Germany has not seen war in the Fatherland. I pray that it will always be so until we are victorious.
Well, I must close. Thank you, Mama, for the knitted mittens and scarf. The weather is finally turning warmer, but for weeks I was the envy of my whole outfit. When I saw the box with three dozen cookies in it, I was sorely tempted to keep it hidden and share it only with Franck. But knowing what you would say, especially since you have become a Mormon, I finally shared it with all of my squad. You now have twelve soldiers in northern France who are madly in love with you and beg you for more cookies whenever you can send them.
&
nbsp; My love to all. I miss you more fiercely than I could ever say. I am well. I am safe. And I am where I need to be. Thanks to both of you.
With all my love, your son,
Hans Otto
December 16, 1916—Verdun, France
Hans shifted down, and the engine growled as the truck began to slow. Franck came awake with a start, his arms flailing. His eyes were wild and he looked at Hans as if he were a stranger.
Hans braked to a stop and then pulled up the lever that set the parking brake. He set his cigarette on the floor, careful not to touch the burning end with his gloves, and then reached over and shook his friend hard. “Franck! Wake up.”
Recognition finally dawned. “Hans?”
“Yes. It’s me. You’re all right. You were having a bad dream.”
Franck looked around them. It was bitterly cold, and Hans stuck his hands beneath his armpits to warm them. “Where are we?” Franck asked.
Hans reached down, picked up his cigarette, and drew deeply on it. Then, as he exhaled the smoke through his nose, he handed it to Franck and grinned. “Actually, I have no idea other than I think we are still in France.”
Franck puffed on the cigarette and the end glowed bright red for a moment. “What time is it?”
Hans shrugged. “I’m guessing we’ve got about half an hour until dawn, but with the rain, can’t tell for sure.”
Taking another deep draw, Franck blew smoke out of his nostrils and then flipped the butt away. “I’m serious, Hans. Where are we?” He opened the door, stepped out on the running board, and looked behind them. He gasped and stiffened. “Where is everybody?”
“Somewhere in the night, I got us lost, Franck.”
“You what?” he exploded. “How could you lose a whole convoy?”
Hans shut off the truck’s engine. “It was pouring rain all night. And with the blackout, none of us had our headlights on.” He blew out a long breath. “And I got so cold and tired, I pulled off the road to grab some quick shut-eye.” He glanced at his friend. “I tried to wake you up, but you were like the dead.”
Fire and Steel, Volume 1 Page 19
