The barrack windows are empty and dark. Battledress trousers[78] are hanging out of a few of them, drying. You look enviously across at the barracks, where the rooms are cool
Oh, you dark and musty platoon huts, with your iron bedsteads, chequered bedding and the tall lockers with those stools in front of them! Even you can turn into objects of longing; seen from out here, you can even take on some of the wonderful aura of home, you great rooms, so full of the smells of stale food, sleep, smoke and clothes!
Katczinsky describes them in glowing colours and with great fervour. What would we not give to be able to go back to those rooms. We dont dare to think any further than that
You rifle drills, first thing in the morning! How do you break down a standard-issue rifle?[79] You PT sessions in the afternoon! Fall out anyone who can play the piano! Right turn! Report to the kitchens for spud bashing[80]!
We wallow in our memories. Then Kropp laughs suddenly and says, Change at Lohne!
That was Corporal Himmelstosss favourite game. Lohne is a station where you have to change trains, and so that anyone going on leave[81] did not get lost when he got there, Himmelstoss used to practise changing platforms with us in the barracks. We were supposed to learn that you reach the connecting train in Lohne by way of an underpass. Our beds represented the underpass and everyone had to stand to attention on the left-hand side. Then came the order Change at Lohne! and everyone had to scramble as quickly as possible under the bed and out the other side. We practised that for hours on end
Meanwhile the German plane has been shot down. It plummets, with a trail of smoke behind it like a comet. Kropp has lost a bottle of beer on it, and pays up with ill grace.
Im sure Himmelstoss is quite a quiet chap as a postman, I say, once Kropp has got over his disappointment. So how come he is such a bastard as a drill corporal?
The question gets Kropp going again. It isnt just Himmelstoss, there are loads of them. As soon as they get a couple of stripes or a pip or two they turn into entirely different people and start behaving as if they chew iron bars for breakfast.
So its the uniform that does that? I ask.
More or less, says Kat, and settles himself down to develop the point. But the real reasons are a bit different. Look, if you train a dog so that it only eats potatoes, and then after a while you offer it a chunk of meat, itll still grab it because its in its nature. And if you offer a man a bit of power, the same thing happens; hell grab it. Its instinctive, because when it comes down to it, a man is basically a beast, and its only later that a bit of decency gets smeared on top, the way you can spread dripping on your bread. The main thing about the army is that there is always somebody with the power to give orders to the rest. The bad thing is that theyve all got far too much power: a corporal can harass a private, a lieutenant can harass an NCO or a captain can harass a lieutenant so badly that it can drive him mad. And because every one of them knows it, they all get used to the idea. Just take the simplest example: were on our way back from the parade-ground and were dog tired. Then comes the order to sing. Well, the singing isnt too lively because were all happy if we can still carry our rifles without dropping them. And the next thing we know, the company is about-turned and we have an hours punishment drill. On the march back we get the order to sing again, and this time we sing. Whats the point of the whole thing? The man in command has got his way, because hes got the power to do so. Nobodys going to blame him quite the reverse he gets a reputation for being strict. And thats just a trivial thing there are plenty of other ways for them to mess you about. So I ask you: whatever a man is in civilian life, what sort of job could he possibly find where he could get away with that sort of behaviour without getting a punch on the nose for it? The only place he can do it is in the army. See what I mean it always goes to their heads. And the less they had to say for themselves in civvy street[82], the more it goes to their heads now.
They do say that discipline is necessary Kropp puts in casually.
They can always come up with reasons, growls Kat. And that might be true. But you mustnt mess people about. And you just try and explain it to a locksmith, or a stable lad[83], or a labourer, try and explain it to the poor bloody infantry theyre the majority out here, after all. All they see is that they get messed about, and then they get sent up the line, and they know perfectly well whats necessary and what isnt. I tell you, its amazing that the ordinary soldier sticks it here at the front at all. Its amazing.
Everyone agrees, because we all know that it is not till you are actually in the trenches that parade-ground drill disappears, and that it starts up again before youve gone back a mile behind the lines, no matter how big a piece of nonsense it might be, like saluting or formation marching. Because there is one unbreakable rule: a soldier has to be fully occupied all the time.
But now Tjaden turns up, red in the face. He is so worked up that he is stuttering, but he still gets the words out, grinning all over his face: Himmelstoss is on his way here. Hes been sent to the front.
Tjaden really detests Himmelstoss, because Himmelstoss decided to teach him a lesson in his own special way back in the barracks. Tjaden wets the bed when he is asleep at night it just happens. Himmelstoss insisted that it was pure laziness, and wouldnt be persuaded otherwise, so he came up with a method of curing Tjaden that was really typical of the man.
Tjaden really detests Himmelstoss, because Himmelstoss decided to teach him a lesson in his own special way back in the barracks. Tjaden wets the bed when he is asleep at night it just happens. Himmelstoss insisted that it was pure laziness, and wouldnt be persuaded otherwise, so he came up with a method of curing Tjaden that was really typical of the man.
He hunted out another bed-wetter from one of the other barracks, a man called Kindervater, and put him in with Tjaden. The barracks where we did our training had the usual arrangement of bunks, one bed above the other, with the bottom part of each bed made of wire-mesh. Himmelstoss arranged things so that the pair of them were together, one on the top and the other on the bottom bunk. The one underneath, of course, had a really raw deal[84]. To compensate, they had to change places for the next night, so that the one from the bottom bunk got the top bunk, and could get his revenge. That was Himmelstosss idea of self-help.
It was mean-minded, but logically it was sound. Unfortunately it didnt work, because the basic premisses were wrong: it wasnt laziness that made either of the two men do it. Anyone could see that by looking at their sickly complexions. The whole business ended with them taking it in turns to sleep on the floor. The one doing that could easily have caught his death of cold
Meanwhile Haie has come and sat down beside us. He gives me a glance with his eyes twinkling, and rubs his great paws thoughtfully. He and I shared the best day of our army career. It was the night before we had to go off to the front. We had been assigned to one of the newly formed regiments, but before that we had been ordered back to the garrison for kitting out, not to the recruiting depot though, but one of the other barracks. The morning after that we would be leaving very early. That evening we set out to get even with Himmelstoss. We had sworn weeks before that we would. Kropp had even gone so far as to declare that after the war he would try for an administrative job in the postal service, so that later on, when Himmelstoss was a postman again, he could get to be his boss. He painted a rosy picture of how he would clobber him. That was the real reason that Himmelstoss never managed to grind us down: we always counted on the fact that wed get him sometime, by the end of the war at the latest.
Meanwhile we wanted to give him a damned good hiding. What could they do to us if he didnt recognize us and if we were off early next morning anyway?
We knew what bar he spent his evenings in. To get from the bar back to the barracks he had to go down a dark lane without any buildings. We lay in wait for him there, hiding behind a pile of rocks. I had a quilt-cover with me. We were trembling with anticipation, wondering if he would be on his own. At last we heard his footsteps that was a sound we knew very well indeed, wed heard him often enough in the mornings, when the door would fly open and he would bellow, Out of bed!
On his own? whispered Kropp.
On his own. Tjaden and I crept round the pile of rocks.
We could already see the light reflected off his belt-buckle. Himmelstoss seemed to be a bit tipsy and he was singing. He went past without noticing a thing.
We got a firm grip on the quilt-cover, moved forward quietly, slipped it over his head from behind and pulled it downwards, so that he stood there as if in a white sack, unable to move his arms. The singing died away.
The next moment Haie Westhus was there. He pushed us aside with his arms spread out, just so that he could have the first go. With great delight he took up a stance, raised his arm like a railway signal, his hand as big as a shovel, and gave the white sack a wallop that would have felled an ox.
Himmelstoss lost his balance, rolled half-a-dozen yards and started to yell. Wed thought of that as well, and brought a pillow with us. Haie squatted down, put the pillow on his knee, grabbed at where he guessed Himmelstosss head to be and shoved it into the pillow. The noise was stifled right away. Haie let him take a breath from time to time, and what came from his throat then was a wonderful, high-pitched shriek that soon got cut off.
Now Tjaden unbuttoned Himmelstosss braces and pulled his trousers down. Meanwhile, he held a cane carpet-beater[85] between his teeth. Then he stood up and moved into action.
It was a wonderful sight: Himmelstoss on the ground, Haie bending over him, holding the mans head on his knees, with a fiendish grin on his face, his mouth wide open with delight, and then the twitching striped underpants, and the knock-kneed pair of legs which, trousers around the ankles, were performing spectacular movements with every blow that fell; and Tjaden, who showed no signs of tiring, standing over him like a woodcutter. In the end we literally had to pull him away, so that we could have our turns.