Zentralanstalt – had come as a shock. Although the band was playing, it didn’t offset the fuss the parents were making with their tearful mothers and odd-looking fathers. The poor boys knew they would be teased mercilessly about every aspect of their parents, and everything they did and said within the hearing of their fellow recruits.
Now it was summer, almost eight o’clock, and the sun was very low and blood red in an orange sky. Soon it would be hot, but the morning was cool, and a march to breakfast and back again was almost a pleasure. Crunch, crunch, crunch. Paul had learned to take pride in the precision of their marching. For the boys with years of cadet training already behind them it was all easy, but Paul had had to learn, and he’d learned well enough to be commended and allowed to shout orders to the cadets on one momentous occasion. Halt! There was much stamping of boots while the cadet NCO saluted the lieutenants, and the lieutenants saluted the Studiendirektor. Then, file by file, all two hundred cadets marched into the chapel for morning service.
‘Something has happened,’ whispered Alex. The chapel was gloomy; the only light came through the small stained-glass windows.
‘War?’ said Paul. The darkness and the low, vibrant chords of the organ provided a chance for furtive conversations. There was a clatter of hobnailed boots when one of the seniors stumbled as the back row was filled. Then the doors were closed with a resonant thump.
The boy next to him was a senior – one of the Obertertia, the boys permitted to go to rifle shooting in the afternoons. ‘The Serbs have replied to the Austrian ultimatum.’
‘Everyone knows that,’ whispered a boy behind them, ‘but will the wretched Austrians fight?’
‘Quiet!’ called a cadet NCO. ‘Horner and Winter, report to me after Latin class.’
Paul stiffened and looked down at his hymnbook. It was always like that: the junior year got punished and the senior boys escaped. Was it because their sins were overlooked, or had they become more skilled at talking without moving their lips? Alex kicked Paul in the ankle; Paul glanced at him and grinned. He hoped it would mean nothing worse than being put on half lunch ration – the other boys always helped out and the last time he’d eaten even better on punishment than he normally did – but if he got a three-hour arrest this afternoon he’d be late home, and then he’d have Father to answer to. Paul hated to be in disfavour with his father. His brother, Peter, had always been able to shrug off those fierce paternal admonitions but Paul wanted his father to admire him. He wanted that more than anything in the whole world. And it was Friday: this weekend he’d arranged for Alex Horner to come home with him, and a detention now would mess everything up.
‘Hymn number 103,’ said the chaplain mournfully, but no more mournfully than usual.
Paul and Alex escaped with no more than a fierce reprimand. Luckily their persecutor wasn’t one of their own NCOs but a senior boy who didn’t want to miss his riding lesson. Normally at 4:30 p.m. – after doing two hours of prep – there was drill on the barracks square, but at noon this day the boys were told that they were free until dinner, and that those with weekend passes could go home. It was another sign that something strange was in the air.
And as Alex and Paul went to their train at the Lichterfelde railway station they noticed that civilians deferred to them in a way that was unusual. ‘After you young officers,’ said a well-dressed businessman at the door of the first-class compartment. There was an element of mockery in this politeness, and yet it was not entirely mockery. The ticket inspector touched his hat in salute to them. He’d never done that before.
The boys did not read. They sat erect, conscious of their uniforms, styled like those of the post-1843 Prussian army, rather than the new field-grey ones. Military cap, white gloves, blue tunic, poppy-red cuffs and collar with the double gold braid that marked Lichterfelde cadets, and on the black leather belt a real bayonet.
In the other corner of the compartment, the man who’d ushered them inside sat reading a copy of the daily paper. The big black headline in Gothic type said ‘Russia mobilizes.’
From the Potsdamer railway station they walked through the centre of Berlin: past the big expensive shops of Leipziger Strasse, and then along Friedrichstrasse. Everywhere they saw groups of people standing around as if waiting for something to happen. There were more women on the streets nowadays – shopping, strolling, exercising dogs; the shorter skirts enabled women to be out and about in a way they never had before. The narrow Friedrichstrasse was always busy, of course; here were offices, shops, cafés and clubs, so that it never stopped, night or day. But today it seemed different, and even the wide Unter den Linden was filled with aimless people. At the intersection of the two streets – one of the most popular spots in all Berlin – was the boys’ destination: the Victoria Café and the best ice cream in town.
They got a table outside on the pavement and watched the traffic and the restless crowds. A No. 4 motor bus went past; on its open top deck were half a dozen soldiers. They were flushed of face and singing boisterously. The bus was heading towards the Friedrichstrasse railway station, where there were always military policemen. Alex predicted that they would be in cells within half an hour, and there was little chance that he would be wrong.
Everything was bright green, the lime trees were in full leaf, and the birds were not frightened of the noise, not even of the big new motor buses. Only when the band marched past did the birds fly away. Alex said the band was that of the 3. Garde-Regiment zu Fuss marching back to its barracks at Skalitzer Strasse. They wore white parade trousers and blue tunics and gleaming helmets, and the music sounded fine. Behind them was a company of infantry in field grey. They looked tired and dusty, as if they’d been on a long route march, but when they got to the corner of Friedrichstrasse there were some cheers from civilians standing there, and the soldiers seemed to stiffen up and smile.
The waiter brought the boys the big platter of ice cream they’d so looked forward to on this hot day and they started eating greedily. At the next table two men were arguing about whether Russia had really mobilized or whether it was just another rumour or another way of selling newspapers. New editions of the daily papers were appearing on the streets every hour, and the vendors came calling the new headlines with a desperate urgency.
‘Will they send us to the front?’ Paul asked his friend between mouthfuls of ice cream. Alex’s time at the military prep school and the skills he’d already shown made him an authority on all things military, and Paul always deferred to him.
‘Not right away,’ said Alex, finishing the last of his chocolate ice cream and starting on the raspberry one. ‘But they’ll need officers once the war starts. Perhaps they’ll graduate us quickly.’
‘No one could be commissioned before they were seventeen at least, could they, Alex?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Alex. ‘But if we fight the Russians they’ll need everyone they can get. The Russians have a very big army. My father will have to go: he has a reserve commission in the cavalry. He wants me to go into the cavalry, but I’m going to fly in the army airships.’
‘My father has a factory that builds airship parts,’ said Paul. He wiped a dribble of ice cream from his chin. ‘My brother likes airships, but I wouldn’t much like to fly. I prefer horses.’ In fact, Pauli found the prospect of flying in an airship quite terrifying, but that wasn’t something he’d confide to anyone: not even Alex.
After finishing their ice cream they walked up Unter den Linden, just to see what was happening. From the Victoria Café they went past the cathedral, over the ‘museum island’, and then returned to the enormous block of the Royal Palace. The sentries had been doubled outside the palace, and
