by Ludwig Renn
A young man and his wife came out of a room and invited us pleasantly into a large parlor, in which mattresses and blankets lay on the floor.
I immediately took off my boot and examined my foot. The scar on the ball of my foot was sensitive. We had already been marching for three weeks. I went into the kitchen and asked for some warm water.
“Blesse?” the man asked and pointed at my foot.
“Oui, monsieur.”
He immediately got up. His wife brought a bucket and a stool so that I could immediately let my foot hang in the water. Then I sat on my stool and them at the stove. The moon was shining outside, cold on the slope of the meadow. It had probably already frozen again. Both people appeared to be healthy. They were reserved and content. Why would anyone want to chatter away to discover what someone else knows?
I was happy in the house.
XIV
As we fell in the next morning Ssymank and Hanfstengel were complaining about the loathsome people in the village. They had been billeted with the preacher and he had refused them water to wash themselves and anything else he could. As they had engaged him in discussion about it he had talked about barbarians and Boche that should be beaten to death. Ssymank had become so enraged that he had wanted to attack the priest. Hanfstengel, however, had held him back.
At that point Ssymank turned to the priest in his rage. He said, “You are a swine!” and marched out.
We marched smartly into the gloomy day. My foot had become much better. Today we were supposed to cross the German border.
In the early afternoon there was a stoppage in the march. For some reason we pushed forward a few steps at a time toward a village.
Everyone in the company was in a good mood.
“One more time the length of a wagon—a spring!” they called in chorus. Then they began to sing:
“Then this field train
Is not a fast train
Wipe away your tears
With sandpaper.”
After two or three hours we reached the village and a fork in the road. An unfamiliar division was coming down the left fork and onto the same road with our column. Our regimental commander was halted there on his horse and tried to bring his regiment forward. There was a general there from the unfamiliar division. He stood next to his auto, which was halted on the square in front of a cafe. People from every arm of the service were there sitting on the curb stones and on chairs and blowing on coffee, which in the metal cups, had to cool enough for them to bring their lips to it. Others were tipping a glass of Schnapps. Mehling had already pushed himself through the crowd into the café. I knew there were still over ten kilometers to go before we reached the border and after that there was still a distance to march. I sat down on the edge of the street in order to spare my foot.
Not until the evening twilight did our column begin moving again. We were tired from all the waiting. As another stoppage began, after an hour and a half, they began yelling again:
“One more time the length of a wagon—a spring!”
Then they sang again:
“In Hamburg, I have been,
Wrapped in silks and satins.
My name, I am not allowed to give;
For I am a maiden for money.”
They sang it stretched out and with melancholy in the night. Some had sat down. An artillery Unteroffizier came along on a horse: “Clear the street!”
They stood up hurriedly.
An auto came along with a general.
“He can walk just like me!”
The march began to move again.
Again we were overtaken by an auto.
“Clear the street!” There were four men from the flying corps in it with cocked caps.
“Why are they allowed to ride?”
“Foot draggers!” called one of them contemptuously from the auto.
“Drag them out! Those are rear area pigs!” A number of people began pushing toward the auto. However, it rushed without regard among the people ahead of us. They sprang to the side. “Lights out!” yelled someone threateningly. The auto disappeared.
We continued on haltingly. The call, “lights out,” grew more frequent.
We neared the rumble of moving wagons.
“We’re coming to the border road,” said Hanfstengel.
“How much further is it, Herr Leutnant?”
“I estimate another hour and a half, if we can march freely.”
“I can’t keep going, Herr Leutnant!” complained an Unteroffizier.
“We don’t need you either,” laughed Mehling. “Just lay down in the roadside ditch. In the meantime we will find ourselves better quarters.”
Someone laughed. The Unteroffizier mumbled something.
The rumbling was already close. Now I recognized the street, which ran crossways to us. From the right, in two rows, came heavy cannons.
We approached the street very slowly.
“Herr Leutnant!” called someone, who because of the darkness and confusion of men, horses, and wagons, could not be identified. “The Herr Major says the companies should move forward single file in the roadside ditch.”
Now we moved, sometimes slowly, sometimes half running, one after the other along the uneven ground of the roadside ditch. My foot began to hurt. I tried to set it down evenly and certain, but that just made my ankle tired.
Towards eleven o’clock, while wagons and cannons continued to rumble on our right, dark factories began to appear to the left of the street. We halted.
“Why don’t we keep moving? We want to get into quarters!”
Lieutenant Schubring stood stiff as a poker and looked at the fore-bye rattling wagons.
“We can also get along without a leader!”
“Hold your tongues!” called Hoehle. “Herr Leutnant can’t conjure up the billeting officers. Does anyone have any idea where we are supposed to go?”
We waited. Even the beloved Hanfstengel was abused by his people.
Mehling said to me secretly, “If the Herr Feldwebel will take my rifle I will go in search of the billeting officers. They are surely standing somewhere along the street and one only needs to yell every twenty paces.”
I went to my platoon and told them that Mehling was searching.
“What a pile of crap!”
“They should have learned in the war where to place billeting officers!”
“When are we going to be released, Herr Feldwebel?” asked a thin voice.
“That I don’t know,” I said.
“You will never be released! The crap keeps going on. We will just have to walk away!”
It became quite cold.
Finally, after one and a half hours, Schubring located the billeting officers. He had become quite coarse with them and they had screamed at him, “If you would just do your crap in an orderly fashion!”
Mehling was missing.
We marched by the light of the moon along a street that led off to the side and on which we were alone. The fields to the right and left appeared black. It did us good to be marching again with a good street under us. However, my foot was very painful.
After midnight we entered a small village. There towered a mighty building. The door opened. Reddish light shone from within. A man stood in the door.
“Where do we go?” asked someone coarsely.
Suddenly Mehling appeared. “Behave yourselves! The owner of this mill has had coffee prepared and we have a heated hall.”
“Come on in.” said the man pleasantly. “It is up the steps there! I can’t go as quickly as you all.”
Straw sacks lay in the hall upstairs. The mill owner went among us and asked if we had enough water. “There is a toilet, just outside to the right.”
“Shall we play slap the ham?” asked one young fellow.
“You’re out of your mind! I am totally done in from the march.”
Our field kitchen and the other wagons didn’t arrive until around noon. They immediately took the lid off the
pot and passed out coffee.
“Always on the embankment?” asked Hoehle.
“We don’t belong to that rabble with the other wagons, which were never on the front and now run their mouths!”
“Are they making themselves mousy?”
“But lousy!” said the other cook. “And with that they have nothing to say, they’re just half-people, half blind, half deaf, or with heart conditions. And I don’t believe in one of their conditions! They just didn’t want to go to the front!”
“They are all just trash!” said the kitchen driver and led the large horses into the stall.
“If they get too fresh,” said Hoehle, “then just say so. We would love to give them something to think about!”
“There’s no need for that,” said the weaker of the two cooks. “I’ll take that crowd on alone. And Max, he was a member of the athletic club in Dessau and they were amazed!”
In the afternoon we marched off and as darkness approached arrived at Aachen. All the houses were decked with flags. Our band played a ways ahead of us and the rolling of the drums bounced off the houses from which people were watching. Crowds accompanied our march.
We were the last German troops before the advancing Belgians and French.
——————————
The next day we moved to the train station and waited in pouring rain for the train. It was long after dark when it came. They were all cattle cars with sliding doors. We didn’t know where we were goingjust that it would not be directly home.
About the Author
Michael L. Sanders, Sr. was born at Cowpens, South Carolina, and grew up in the town of Gaffney. After high school he enlisted in the United States Army and served three years of active duty. Following his military service he served two and a half years as a missionary in Germany, where he learned to speak the language and developed a love for the people.
After returning home he enrolled at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and graduated in 1969 with a degree in Communications. He moved back to South Carolina, where he taught school for eleven years, but in 1986 returned to Utah with his family. He presently resides in the city of Orem with his wife, Herta, formally of Reutlingen, Germany. They have seven children and eight grandchildren.
Mr. Sanders served a total of thirty-one years in both the Army and Army National Guard. In the Utah National Guard he served as a German/Dutch Linguist and Counterintelligence Agent.
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[a] Translator’s note: The word Zifferblatt is used here, which translates as dial or clock face. It is a slang expression for one’s face.
[b] Translator’s note: Iron portions were canned rations that were carried into combat. The soldiers just called them iron portions.