me what you can do," I say. And they say: “What’s the matter with you? Who are you trying to forget?" And I say: "I've already forgotten whoever I wanted to forget."
But it isn't true. I can't forget. However hard they try, no one comes up to Marion. With Marion everything's always so easy. Nothing is ever awkward or goes wrong. I come to her and there she is. I want to make love to her and she's ready for me.
Then I am promoted second lieutenant. When I come home Marion is waiting at the station. She comes up and stands in front of me and looks at me. “Marion," I say,” will you marry me?" “Yes, you idiot," she says, " I've always wanted to, Even as a child I wanted to."
I married Marion Michalski in the spring of 1939. At the beginning of the war I was given a company and after the campaign in France was promoted first lieutenant. After being wounded in January 1943 I was made a captain and was posted to No. 5 Officers' Training School. Decorations: Knight's Cross, etc.
Death appears on the scene, physical hardships increase, everything grows more and more unpleasant, but otherwise war brings little change. The methods remain the same. That's the mistake. Because no war follows the same pattern as the previous one. I get my company across the bridge over the Marne. I rally the remnants of two other companies whose officers have been killed. I secure the hill on the far side of the river. “Withdraw all forces immediately," radios the divisional commander. I radio back: "A withdrawal is tactically senseless and could only be carried out with heavy casualties." "I order you to withdraw your troops at once on pain of court martial," radios the General. And I radio back: “Strong radio interference, staying put." The next day the divisional commander is in a towering rage. Every other word is "court martial." The day after that I'm awarded the Knight's Cross. “You haven't deserved it!" says the General. “But I've got it all the same," I reply.
My leave with Marion, my wife, is one long ecstasy. We only have one room, and we hardly ever leave it. We lie in bed together far into the morning and get back again in the early afternoon. The fourteen days race by. “I’ll always love you," I say. And Marion says: “I’ll never forget what it's like to be with you—it's wonderful." “But when I'm gone, Marion?" “I’ll never forget what it's like!"
The M.O. stands in front of my bed and asks: “Well, and how are we today, Captain?" “What’s the matter with me?" I ask him. “Please tell me quite honestly—what is the matter with me?" “Well," says the M.O., “at any rate you're lucky. You'll get over your wound, it could have been much worse." “Please don't keep anything from me, Doctor; I want to know the truth." “It’s quite simple," says the other finally. “In a few weeks' time everything will be more or less normal for you—you'll be able to skip about like a two-year-old, except for one small detail. But believe me, my dear fellow; it's a loss which becomes more and more tolerable with the years.
7. THE MAJOR'S WIFE IS INDIGNANT
“Everyone here toes the line sooner or later, Lieutenant Krafft,” said Captain Feders. “Either from cowardice, discernment or plain adaptability.”
He and his newly appointed section officer were making their way together out of barracks and down the hill towards Wildlingen.
“I’m not much of a games player, I'm afraid, Captain. I've never been very good at toeing the line.”
“But you'll learn,” said Captain Feders with conviction.
Major Frey, the officer commanding Number 2 Course, had issued invitations to a “modest little dinner for a small circle of friends.” Now it's true that his dinners were always modest, but the point here was the “small circle of friends.” For Frey had a wife, and she had ambitions as a hostess, though what exactly these were remained obscure.
“She must have read about an officer's social obligations in some novel or other,” said Captain Feders. “But she must also have overlooked the fact that that particular piece of trash was written in the days of the Kaiser.”
“I don't find anything very remarkable about that, Captain. The Kaiser's days are after all half-way to modern times. When I was at the front I had a regimental commander who behaved like Attila, King of the Huns.”
This man Lieutenant Krafft began to interest Captain Feders. He seemed a decent, solid sort of fellow. But the question one couldn't help asking oneself at once was: How long would he manage to survive at the training school? Feders felt sure that the first stick was about to be broken over Krafft's back this very evening. He knew the Major's wife only too well.
“My dear Krafft,” said Captain Feders with a certain amusement. “What is the heat of battle compared with the hatching of social intrigues at home? In battle a man's life is snuffed out like a candle, and that's that. But here one is roasted over a slow wood fire to a beautiful golden brown. With kind words considerately lavished on one into the bargain.”
“And is everyone a potential victim for these primitive rites? Is no one safe?”
“Really, my dear Krafft,” said Captain Feders flippantly,” you must try not to confuse your terms. There's nothing primitive about this, it's a question of tradition.”
“Sometimes the same thing, isn't it, Captain?”
“Of course, my dear fellow, it can be. Tradition is, among other things, the finest excuse in the world for the lazy-minded, a blank cheque for those half-wits who conceal their own incompetence under the dead weight of all that's been handed down to them. But you shouldn't underestimate these people, above all in terms of numbers. Quite a lot of our educational methods date back to Frederick the Great. Clausewitz is regarded as a modern author and Schlieffen as a model of genius. And if the worst comes to the worst, even the experiences of the last war will come into their own—the war, that is, in which they say we weren't beaten, but which we indisputably lost. As for a great part of our accepted social conventions, they go back to the turn of the century!”
They kept in step as they walked along. The barracks lay behind them in the pale light of evening: a broad, bulky shadow dominating the horizon. The houses of the town looked tiny by contrast, like formations of coral that had attached themselves to a rock. The fact that the town had been there several centuries before the barracks was no longer evident. Mountains of cement had desecrated the landscape, and the modern concrete piles of a number of business houses and blocks of flats were beginning to destroy the lovable old face of Wildlingen-am-Main.
“Tell me, my dear Krafft, you're quite a dab at the hand kiss, I expect?” said Captain Feders.
“Is this a military training school or a dancing academy?” asked Krafft.
“You are naïve, my dear fellow,” said Feders with a smile. “You don't seem to realize why Major Frey, our officer commanding Number Two Course, has invited you.”
“Well, not to give any pleasure to me, I'm sure of that. But perhaps he merely wanted to fulfill his social obligations.”
“Hell!” said Feders. “The man just wants to put you through your paces, that's all.”
“And for this purpose he introduces me to his wife?”
“Exactly. He wants, among other things, to test your manners as an officer. Because in the Major's view it is only officers with impeccable manners who are fit to instruct officers
