The faces of the teachers all seem the same to me because their mouths all go up and down in the same sort of way. The words all sound very smooth and polished and all get written down at one time or another. Their hands, too, all seem the same; their fingers are mostly curled round a piece of chalk, a fountain-pen, a ruler or a cane. Only one of them is different. His name is Schenkenfeind. He knows a lot of poetry by heart and I learn everything he recites. And some more besides. I don't find this particularly difficult and Schenkenfeind is liberal with his praise. I even learn a poem about the Battle of Leuthen which has fifty-two verses. And Schenkenfeind says “A fine poem!" And I believe him because he seems so sure about it. He actually wrote the poem himself.
There's a schoolmistress called Scharf who comes and sits beside me on the bench. She is soft and warm and her limbs seem made of rubber and I am overwhelmed by a desire to seize hold of these limbs to find out whether they're really made of rubber or not. But I don't—because she's close to me and I can smell her. I move away from her, feeling sick. “It’s stuffy in here," I say, “there’s a nasty smell." She gets up abruptly and never looks at me again. This suits me fine because I don't like her at all.
Some days later I catch sight of her one evening in the park, while I'm trying to trap glowworms. But this woman Scharf is lying on a bench in the dark with the teacher called Schenkenfeind, the man who writes such vast long moving poems. But the things he's saying now sound very different. He is saying the sort of things that Meerkatz the man who drives the beer dray says to his mare. Anyway I no longer want to learn from him anymore.
“Man must learn if he is to hold his place in life," says this fellow Schenkenfeind. “I don't want to learn," I tell him. “No," says the teacher, " you'd rather go sniffing round the place, creeping about the park and spying on the lovers there —I saw you! You have nasty dirty thoughts, but I'll soon drive them out of you. As a punishment you'll write out ten times the beautiful poem 'on Eternal Constancy.' And what's more you'll go and apologize to your teacher Fräulein Scharf at once." But I don't go and apologize.
When I left my primary school in 1930 I went first to a commercial school in Stettin. After that I worked in the estate office of the big Varsen estate at Pöhlitz, where I was mainly concerned with the pay-roll and the issuing of supplies.
The old woman who lives in one of the attics above us passes me on the stairs, goes on down, and then suddenly stops. She stops, and collapses as if her legs had snapped like matchsticks. She lies there without moving, like a bundle of rags. Slowly I go up to her, stand in front of her, bend over her and kneel down and look at her. Her eyes are yellow and staring; her thin mouth, with its dry, cracked lips embedded in a web of wrinkles, is twisted open and a thread of saliva runs down on to the dirty floor. She is no longer breathing. I put my hand over her shriveled breast at the place where the heart should be, but it is no longer beating.
Giebelmeier, the head of the post office, gives Father a dressing down in front of everyone in the middle of the post office, because of some express letter which hasn't arrived quickly enough. Quite by chance I happen to be standing there behind a pillar. And Giebelmeier roars and gesticulates and goes purple in the face. But Father never says a word; he simply stands there, small, hunched and trembling. Rigidly at attention. He looks up rather shiftily at Giebelmeier, who stands stiffly and proudly in front of him, roaring his head off. Because of some express letter or other. And Father remains silent, abject.
That evening Father sits there silent as ever, and asks for a beer, which he drinks in silence. He asks for another beer. And then another. “Karl," my father then says to me, “a real man must have pride, a sense of honor. Honor is the all-important thing. One must always defend one's honor." “Oh, yes," I say,” but sometimes one has to remain silent and accept abuse for the sake of a quiet life." “Never," says my father indignantly. “Never, do you hear? Take me, for example, my son. To-day in the post office I had a row with the head, this fellow Giebelmeier. He started shouting at me! But he came out of it badly. I told him off. Gave him a regular trouncing!" “Well done, Father," I say, and leave the room, because I feel ashamed for him.
I hold my friend Heinz's hand, which is cold as ice. I raise his head and turn it round slightly and see the rent in the skull and the watery blood and brains running out, all yellow and grey. Gently, I lay my friend's head back again and my hands are sticky with blood. And then I look at the weapon on the ground, a .98 rifle, the end of the bullet filed off. He hadn't wanted to live. What has to happen to make a man not want to live like that, I wonder. And I can't get rid of the thought.
The girl snuggles up to me; I feel her body through the cloth of my suit. All I can see is the gleam in her eyes, but I feel her breath on my face and the moistness of her lips, and my hands slide down her back, brushing the boards of the fence against which I'm pushing her. A wave of passion comes over me, and I no longer know what I am doing. Then I have a great feeling of exhaustion and hear a voice asking me: “What’s your name?"
“It was two hundred hundredweight of potatoes," I tell the accountant in the estate office. But he doesn't look at me and simply repeats: "It was one hundred hundredweight. Do you follow me?" “No, I don't," I say. “We delivered two hundred hundredweight." “But only a hundred are being entered up," says the accountant. “And we enter up what I say. Is that clear? Perhaps you've heard something about the crisis in agriculture, Krafft? It may have occurred to you to wonder how we keep our heads above water? And here you are wanting to let the State—a State like this, I ask you!—wanting to let the State swallow up all our hard-earned cash! It's suicide. Put it down, then: one hundred hundredweight! Enter that up." “Enter it up yourself," I tell him, pushing the books towards him,” and kindly keep that crisis-in-agriculture stuff to yourself in future!" “Krafft," the accountant then says, “I’m afraid you're not really cut out for this profession. You can't take orders from people. You don't co-operate." “I’m not going to make any false entries," I say. “Look here," says the accountant, “are you trying to accuse me of fraud? Just look here, will you—what's written down here? What have I written? Two hundred! There you are, you see. I only wanted to test you. And of course I'm not going to stand for it if you're going to start suspecting me and accusing me of dishonesty. You're not a person one can work with. I'll have to draw my own conclusions!"
One evening my uncle says to my father: “Your son Karl doesn't seem to have understood the signs of the times. He goes to church too little and makes no preparations for a family. As a result he's beginning to get ideas into his head. He'd better be sent into the army. They'll soon knock some sense into him there."
I began my military service in 1937. When my two years were up I was made a corporal and released, only to be called up again shortly afterwards in the summer of 1939. I was with the colors at the outbreak of war, promoted sergeant after the Polish campaign, and commissioned as a second lieutenant after the campaign in France. During the campaign in Russia I was given command of a company, was promoted lieutenant, and then at the beginning of January 1944 was posted to the officers' training school. I hold the following decorations: Iron Cross First Class, Iron Cross Second Class, the Close-Combat Clasp in silver, and the Wound Badge in black.
Corporal Reinshagen, who's in charge of my training as a recruit, has many fine qualities and is a born soldier. He's a fine upstanding fellow, full of drive and possessed of an iron will, but not exactly a pillar of the Church. Thus for example he knows all the relevant military regulations backwards, but no others. However, I also take care to be well informed on various aspects of military regulations, particularly those sections dealing with the treatment of subordinates and their right to lodge complaints. Sometimes I quote these at him and he doesn't like it. One day I turn my knowledge to practical advantage, and hand him a comprehensive and carefully worded complaint. About himself! To be passed on to higher authority. At first he simply bellows at me. Then he grows noticeably milder, and even displays certain friendliness. “You can't do this to me," he says disarmingly. “All you've got to do is to behave decently," I reply. And he promises that he will.
Girls in the few hours we're allowed off duty—mostly picked up in