by John R Burns
‘So that’s good Schultz. That’s what you should want,’ Franz said back to him as they marched briskly across the parade square that fronted the classroom block.
‘But I’m not sure if just wanting it is enough. Somehow I have to make it happen.’
Franz knew his pretence was working. He was still waiting to feel that becoming an officer was a possibility. So far everything was a challenge to him.
‘If you could I’d....I’d like you to point out things, anything that might help. You’re going to make it Brucker. That’s obvious.’
‘Hurry up gentlemen!’ one of the sergeants was calling, ‘Colonel Mannheim has already left his office.’
All the recruits started jogging towards the central block as the lowering of the flag detail marched past them in the opposite direction towards the commander’s house.
The new recruits hardly ever came across the second years except to see them coming back from the assault course or marching on parade. They were already the elite, a different category of soldier.
‘Look at the bastards,’ Frumm said as they had watched a second year parade from their dormitory window, ‘They think they rule the world.’
‘They will do soon,’ Steiner answered.
‘Yes,’ Schultz had agreed, leaning over the other two to get a better view.
‘They’ll be taking their oath next week,’ Franz thought out loud.
‘Pledging their lives.’
‘To the Fuhrer and the Fatherland,’ Schultz added.
‘Can you do it?’ Steiner asked him.
‘I’d do it right now if I could.’
‘Only twenty months to go.’
Schultz frowned at Frumm’s remark and said, ‘If I’m still here.’
‘You will be.’
The second years crunched in precise time across the parade ground.
‘It’s such a process,’ Schultz said as he went to sit on his bed, ‘We have to be somebody we weren’t four months ago. I just wish I could stop thinking about how to be that person and get on with it.’
‘If you’d stop moaning it might help,’ was Frumm’s suggestion.
‘There should be no doubts, none at all,’ Franz said strongly, as though he really wanted to believe this, ‘No doubts about your potential. It has to be right for an officer of the Reich.’
‘Fuck off Brucker.’
‘No, he’s right,’ Schultz tried.
‘Who cares if he’s right? Stop sounding such an arrogant bastard.’
‘That’s what we have to be, isn’t it?’
‘Not you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because you really are an arrogant swine.’
Franz stared back at him and then smiled, ‘We will see Frumm. Like you said, there are twenty months to go. That’s a long time.’
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In the night he lay with the wind cutting through the high pine trees on the other side of the parade ground.
Frumm was snoring as Schultz shifted about. Only Steiner seemed to sleep as though absolved from the world.
‘Everything is a journey,’ granny had once told him, ‘Before we’re alive, after we’re gone, new journeys, new places.’
‘Where will you go granny?’ he had asked.
‘On a train, a very expensive train with crimson painted carriages, winding through the mountains in the winter and all the people I used to know will be with me.’
‘And grandpapa?’
‘He will be the driver,’ she had smiled, ‘He always wanted to drive a train.’
Franz remembered his father opening his bedroom door one night and standing in the doorway. He had pretended to be asleep. For a long time his father had stood there, something he had never done before. There had been tension in the silence between them, darkness, confusion, wanting his father to say something. The man’s breaths had been short and fast as Franz had listened and waited. Finally the door had closed and his footsteps had gone along the landing. Nothing had been said and Franz knew it never would be.
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‘So tell us, tell us,’ his mother demanded on his first visit home.
‘He will, in his own time.’
Father’s voice was restrained, held into the usual reticence.
‘Let me look at you again,’ was aunt Hildegaard, ‘Just look at him, so sharp in his uniform, a proper soldier. On God’s blessing your uncle would have loved to have seen you like this.’
In the evening after dinner his father asked Franz into his study.
‘Would you like a drink?’ was a question that had never been asked by him before.
‘No thank you sir,’ was Franz already irritated.
When they sat facing each other in front of the study’s small log fire it was some time before his father spoke.
‘And do they make it hard? I mean the discipline.’
Franz had to force himself to respond, ‘I know what you mean father.’
Then there was nothing to say again, time for the son to analyse the father, the yellow bags under his eyes, the veins ridged on the back of his hands, the way he stooped his shoulders when he was sitting down, the sound of his quick breaths.
‘I suppose that is the only way.’
‘Yes,’ Franz muttered.
‘That is if the country is to be as strong as we are promised.’
It seemed he would soon melt in front of the burning logs, becoming a viscous pool slithering off the chair.
‘The Fuhrer tells us so.’
‘And you believe him.’
‘Of course father.’
‘To make Germany great again, to repair all the damage.’
‘That will happen.’
‘And you will be part of it.’
‘Yes father.’
Franz as a child knew because of his father his family was the richest in their village. They had the biggest house and owned a car. He loved his village. Rarely had he been outside the valley in which the village was situated with its towering Alpine mountains on all sides, although he had always known that at some time in the future he would have to leave. The plans had always been there for him to board in Schunenberg, the nearest large town and attend High School before going onto a military academy.
‘We want you to do well Franz.’
‘Yes sir,’ he had replied, thankful that the discussion with his father seemed to be over.
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When he got back to school there were orders to prepare for manoeuvres. The next day all the recruits were on a train going north to join up with other recruits from other schools. These major manoeuvres would include the support of the Luftwaffe as well as tanks and artillery.
For all of them this was their first opportunity to put some of what they had learnt into action.
For the first time they were to experience live ammunition. They were told the night before the battle games began. The recruits were in large sixteen men tents in lines on the edge of the heath that was covered with low mist.
‘Brucker. Can...can you come over here a minute?’ was Schultz from his bunk bed in their tent.
‘You’re needed,’ Frumm muttered.
Most of the other recruits were laid out trying to get some rest.
Franz glanced over at Steiner who was propped up against his pillow reading a novel.
‘What is it?’ he asked when he sat next to Schultz.
‘I just....just wondered....just wondered.....’
‘Yes. I am scared. Yes I’m not sure how I’m going to manage. No I didn’t know there was going to be live ammunition to ensure we keep our heads down. That’s all you have to do Schultz, keep your head down and look as if you know what you’re doing.’
‘Now you’re angry with me.’
‘Not at all, I’m agreeing with you.’
‘But I haven’t said anything yet.’
‘And I agree with that as well.’
Frumm started laughing as Steiner looked over the edge of his book and said, ‘You have a friend Schultz who you should listen to.’
‘I do.’
‘And does it help?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You mean he’s wasting his time,’ Steiner continued.
‘No, not at all, he’s right. Brucker is right.’
‘Of course he is, absolutely right.’
Franz glanced at the smiling Steiner.
‘They’re speeding things up,’ was Frumm’s opinion, ‘That’s what they’re doing. Our Fuhrer is becoming impatient.’
By the middle of the next morning Franz found himself in a ditch half full of black water with other recruits on either side of him as planes came in from the south bombing a target in front of them.
It was when the artillery opened up that he started shaking. It began in his shoulders and down his back. Within seconds as explosions ripped their sounds through the air his whole body was in trauma. He had no idea what was happening. Quickly he glanced from side to side to see if anybody had noticed, but the other recruits had moved forward into the mist and smoke leaving him unable to get out of the ditch.
He was appalled. Every muscle was quivering and there was nothing he could do. Whatever he tried he could not control the shaking. Planes droned low overhead and the artillery was sending a constant barrage over his position, shells whining through the air and detonating with a massive sound that shook right through him.
A whistle blew as his trembling body slipped further into the ditch. Somebody was shouting commands as a group of recruits appeared out of the smoke and then went on forward. Quickly they disappeared leaving him with his legs thrashing around in the peat dark water and his hands trying to grasp hold of the muddy side of the ditch.
‘It’s only when it starts will you know what your reactions are going to be. The good soldier is often scared. It’s that fear that creates the greater need to overcome it, to be strong in your resolve. Fear creates the right kind of anger. To begin with the enemy is that fear. Defeat it and you become capable of anything.’
He pressed his face into the wet peat. The shaking was becoming worse. His mind was exhorting himself to get control. His body was in spasm, his teeth chattering, and icy water numbing his legs. When the next artillery barrage started he let go of his rifle and started crying in frustration. There was nothing he could do. This was worse than anything he had imagined. Part of his consciousness was screaming with horror at what was happening. In flashes he could see himself, this sobbing, writhing spectacle, an end of everything, of all his hopes, his dreams to become so much stronger.
The wet earth was filling his nostrils. He was momentarily aware that he had filled his pants, that he could no longer feel his legs, that his upper body was twisting and still shaking, his head gyrating until his teeth had cut into his gums, breathing in the blood and peaty soil so he was suffocating and could do nothing.
It was then in a split moment he was aware of the sound of the shell. There was something different about the noise it was making. In that moment he had shut his eyes, gulped in another mess of blood and soil, pressed his trembling body further down into the ditch at the sound of the approaching shell before its explosion ripped through all his senses in a sudden wave of silence and darkness.
The first thing when he became conscious was the sensation of his legs. It felt as though they had melted.
Franz stared along the ditch as muffled sounds echoed around him. He could not move his head. When he tried to explore his face with the hand that still had some sensation all he found was a piece of warm metal stuck into his right cheek and a smaller piece embedded in his neck.
Through his dimming awareness a voice was talking as the pains began to throb and his thirst was unbearable and he felt himself drifting back into the darkness where he wanted to be.
‘Franz! Brucker! Franz! Come on! Come on Franz! Listen to me! Listen to me Franz.’
He opened his eyes, aware of vomit coming out of his mouth and then settled back again.
There was a sudden terrible pressure on his right arm as low sounds buffeted around him.
‘There will be death. There will be terrible injuries. You will see comrades killed, mutilated. But you go on. You don‘t stop. You go on because that is what you are trained to do. The German soldier never allows anything to obstruct his progress. The goal has to be achieved.’
Waves of sound droned and slipped around him as he began to feel a release.
But there was still the pain. It felt as though his face had become huge in size, a massive lump of pain.
‘Come on Franz!’
This time when he tried to open his eyes they were stuck together, stitched by muddy grass from the side of the ditch and then sealed by his blood.
‘Franz!’
His eyes were shells exploding inwards. This other voice was a fresh artillery attack.
‘Medic! Medic!’ came a call from a huge distance away.
‘Somebody! Somebody fucking help here!’
‘When you are trained you will be physically stronger and fitter than you have ever been. But the enemy will be strong. When you are trained you will be superbly equipped. But the enemy will be equipped. The difference that leads to victory is in the mind. What you are fighting for. Determination. Refusal to back down. The cause. In a soldier’s mind, his will, is where the battle is won and lost.’
His skull was about to split open, his neck severed. There was a cold draft of air and then he was floating towards where everything would end.
CHAPTER 2
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In the hospital his mind wandered through repeated memories. He would watch the nurse at the end of the ward sitting at her desk in a small pool of light from her lamp, listening to the movements of the other patients and then start to remember who he had once been.
‘For goodness sake Franz, you’re old enough to look after your own bits and pieces. But mind that you do. It’s in the little unseen areas where disease can start.’
His boyhood bath was always steaming hot, full of a fragrant solution that bubbled up under the force of the tap water.
Slowly he would lower himself in, gasping at the heat. The bathroom would have disappeared in clouds of steam that filmed over the mirror on which he would draw faces before rubbing a space to watch the process of drying himself.
The bath had been the best place for an erection, the hot water stimulating his penis that he would watch emerging out of the bubbles. He lay there feeling it tighten and harden, all pink except for the end that was a tiny purple dome with its slit and ring of skin like a pulled plastic band.
He would explore every detail, the pulling and caressing, the finger ends up and down with the foreskin sensitively massaging his erection, quick and almost painfully hard and the tightness in his stomach, the phlegm in his throat, the momentary closing of his eyes as he kept his hand in motion, waiting, willing for a release that still would not come. It was his secret, his shame, dreading every bath night’s attempt.
It had been after one of those desperate sessions when his arm ached and his penis had been pulled raw and he had felt sick with the effort that his father had been waiting for him.
Dried, powdered, teeth cleaned, fresh pyjamas, dressing gown on and out onto the landing.
Immediately he knew. It was the usual shock and fear of what was to happen. Then he hated his father. Like his failed masturbation he had not yet the strength to fight back.
‘You know Franz, don’t you?’
‘Yes sir,’ he was forced to mutter.
‘So I would like an account.’
‘Is it about after school?’
‘You tell me.’
He had felt exposed, as though his father had been watchin
g him in the bathroom.
Franz already associated sperm with strength. When he could produce it then he would be able to resist his father. That was the hope.
‘I was asked by mother to go to the baker’s.’
His father already had the belt ready, thick leather with a brass buckle, held in his left hand so most of the belt trailed down to the floor.
‘And what was your response?’
‘It was wrong sir.’
‘Stop it Franz. If you answer too quickly we will have to start again.’
‘I responded in the wrong way. I said I would go later. I said....’
‘You did not say young man. You told. You told your mother.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘And why?’
‘I was finishing my homework.’
‘Have we ever taught you that something is more important than a request from your mother? You’re old enough now to be aware of what you are doing. Do you agree?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘So what is the consequence?’
‘I have to be punished.’
‘And you agree that you have to be punished?’
His penis was tiny and limp in his pyjama bottoms. He could feel the sweat prickling across his forehead, not from the bath, but from the fear of what was going to happen.
‘I agree sir,’ he finally said.
His father had ordered him into his room. This was the worst part, the deliberate part where his father left him waiting. The mind was being punished before the body. Twice it had been so bad he had rushed to the bathroom to vomit into the flush toilet, one of the only ones in the village.
Once he had imagined himself packing his rucksack, running down the stairs out into the village street, out then into the first meadows to take the path that lead through the trees fringing the first line of mountains. Then he would be free. He would never return, never again to feel his buttocks split apart and have the blood dribbling down the back of his legs.
‘Here, put the towel on the floor,’ he had been told.
His father had come into Franz’s bedroom with one of the large family towels neatly folded in his arms.