Fire and Steel, Volume 2 Page 6

  As he lifted it to his mouth and licked the gummed strip, a movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned to the window. Through it he could see the sidewalk that led from the main entrance of the hospital out to the street. A woman was coming toward him through the snow. A flash of white skirt showed below the bottom of her overcoat. She was a nurse. Hans leaped to his feet and wiped quickly at the moisture on the glass and peered out. Then he saw that it wasn’t Emilee. He slumped back down into his seat.

  He watched the nurse come inside, wave jauntily to the receptionist, and then turn left and disappear down the hall. As she did so, disappointment turned to annoyance and then to a deep frustration. Then his frustration quickly morphed into self-disgust. You are a stupid fool, Hans Otto Eckhardt. He shook his head. Der Trottel. Yes. Perfect. You are the village idiot.

  He strode back to the table and tore up his third attempt at a letter. Putting his rucksack over one shoulder, he returned the pencil and the sheets of blank paper to the reception desk. “Danke schön.”

  Her eyes lifted. “No letter?”

  “No, just tell her I’ll write sometime.”

  Hans spun on his heel and started for the door. The young nurse moved up beside the older one, her eyes fixed on the soldier. “What was that all about?”

  The older woman just shook her head.

  “Well,” the young one said dreamily, watching him walk away, “you can have my address and phone number anytime you want, Sergeant. Anytime at all.”

  Chapter Notes

  The Pasewalk Military Hospital was an actual military hospital during World War I. That the hospital played an active role in preparing a soldier for his discharge from the army is wholly my own creation.

  One of the conditions of the armistice agreement was the surrender of billions of marks’ worth of railway equipment to the Allies as part of their reparation for the costs of the war that the German Empire had started. The figures given here by the doctor are accurate. “The result was a severe overburdening of the German railways. What this meant for Germany’s economic life and for the people generally became apparent in many ways during the winter, and in none more striking than a fuel shortage which brought much suffering to inhabitants of the larger cities. . . . The coalfields of the Ruhr district required twenty-five thousand cars daily to transport even their diminishing production, but the number dropped below ten thousand” (German Revolution, 190). Similar problems happened with the transportation of food.

  The United States vigorously protested the harshness of the terms but was basically told to butt out because the war hadn’t been fought on their lands and they had entered the war late, not entering until 1917. As pointed out in an endnote in A Generation Rising (volume one of this series), “The victors are rarely either generous or humble. America, through President Woodrow Wilson, tried to convince the Allies not to impose terms on Germany that were so harsh that they would not allow wounds to heal. But Germany and France had been bitter enemies for centuries, and the French, jubilant with victory, were not about to lose their opportunity to ‘stick it’ to their long-time rivals” (265).

  December 2, 1918, 2:38 p.m.—East Railway Station, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg District, Berlin

  When Hans stepped off the train at the East Railway Station in Berlin, his legs felt like frozen sticks. He moved out of the way of the disembarking crowds and hopped back and forth from foot to foot to restore a little of the feeling into them. The trip from Pasewalk to Berlin had been scheduled for two hours and forty-seven minutes. It had taken more than double that. Three different times they had been shunted onto a siding while troop trains transporting military personnel back from the front rumbled past them on the main line. Eight hours to go eighty miles—a man could go almost that fast on a horse.

  But that was the least of Hans’s frustrations. To add misery to his inconvenience, the four passenger cars on their train were not heated. They were old and dilapidated to the point that one could hardly make out the name of the railway painted on the sides of the cars. There was a place at the end of each car where a stove had once sat, but those had long ago been turned into scrap metal for the war effort. One of the windows in Hans’s car had one pane that was completely gone. Someone had taped a thin piece of cardboard across it, but even that had partly shredded. In the toilet, you could look through open cracks in the floor and watch the railroad ties rolling by beneath you.

  Thoroughly frustrated, he started looking for someone to give him directions.

  3:20 p.m.—Ministry of War, Mitte District, Berlin

  As he approached the building that the man had said was the Ministry of War, Hans stopped and gaped at the sight before him. It was ornate, massive, sprawling. Hans had seen large government buildings, of course, in Munich, but this one dwarfed anything he had seen before. It seemed to occupy a full city block and was four stories high.

  Movement at the base of the building caught his eyes. He snorted in disgust when he realized what it was. Men. In uniform. They were two and three deep, some leaning against the building, many more of them seated on the sidewalk and using the building as a backrest. All of them were in uniform, though of various colors and styles. With a groan, Hans realized two things at once. First, he was in the right place. Second, there was no way he was going to get his business done here today.

  Swearing under his breath, he hiked his rucksack higher on his shoulder, waited for the traffic to clear, and ran across the square and moved toward the end of the line. It snaked around the corner and went another hundred feet down the side of the building.

  The men had gathered into small groups to talk. Most were smoking, and the air was blue over their heads. Many were leaning against the building, their eyes closed. Two or three had stretched full out on the sidewalk. Hans counted six men with rifles by their sides as he went by and two with German Lugers strapped to their waists. Deserters, he thought, who had taken their weapons with them.

  He started forward slowly, not sure what was going on. Heads turned to examine him as he started down the line. No one smiled. No one acknowledged him. “Is this the line for getting discharge benefits?” he asked a grizzled-looking man with the stripes of a master sergeant on his arm.

  “Ja,” he grunted. He let loose a stream of tobacco juice that hit the sidewalk not far from Hans’s feet.

  “Danke.” He started on.

  “Ain’t no use going that way,” the man growled.

  Turning back, Hans retraced his steps. “Isn’t that the end of the line?”

  “It is.” Others were listening now, amused with the interchange for some reason.

  But Hans wasn’t a novice to the military culture and the soldier’s ways. “You’re telling me I need to go somewhere else first?”

  “Ja.” The man reached into the breast pocket of his uniform and pulled out a faded, worn card. On it was the number 237. He waved it at Hans.

  “I need one of those?”

  “Ja.”

  Hans decided to play the game. “You interested in selling that one?”

  “Nein.” The man grinned, revealing a mouth full of tobacco-stained teeth.

  “Wanna roll dice for it?”

  The man shook his head again, openly chuckling now.

  “Arm wrestle?”

  The man finally laughed softly and pointed to his right. “There’s a private at the front entrance. He’s giving out the numbers. Can’t get in line without a number.”

  A man about ten down the line from where Hans was standing leaped to his feet and started cursing the men around him. “Why didn’t you guys tell me that before?”

  No one bothered to answer.

  “Much obliged,” Hans said to the master sergeant.

  The man touched his forehead with one fingertip and settled back against the building.

  As Hans walked away, he was shaking his head. There had to be 250 men in line, and it was after three o’clock. Knowing the speed at which the milita
ry functioned, there was no way he was getting finished there tonight. Not unless the Ministry stayed open until midnight.

  As he rounded the corner, a young private looked up and smiled at him. “Just arriving?” he asked.

  “Ja. How long you been here?”

  The kid laughed. “I got here August 21, 1914. Changed my mind about enlisting and got in line here the next day. I figure another month or two and I’ll be done.”

  Hans acknowledge the irony with a smile and then lowered his head and walked swiftly down the line, keeping his eyes to the front.

  The guard was sitting on the lowest step, rifle across his knees, smoking a cigarette and looking very bored. When he saw that Hans was coming toward him, he lumbered to his feet.

  “I understand I need a number so I can get in line.”

  “Not today you don’t.”

  “Oh.” Hans was confused. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the men. “They said I have to have a number.”

  “You do, but not today. The line’s already too long. Numbers are not issued after three o’clock. You’re almost half an hour past time. Come back tomorrow.” The man started to sit down again.

  “Wait!” Hans looked around. Anger welled up, but Hans knew that getting angry at the army was like spitting into a stiff wind. It had a way of coming back and hitting you in the face. “What time does the Ministry open tomorrow?” he asked the guard.

  “Eight o’clock. But the line will start forming at least an hour before then.”

  “Do you happen to know where I could find a cheap room for the night? And a hot meal?”

  The guard took a long drag on his cigarette and then flipped it away. “Nope.” He turned and walked away.

  A short, stocky man near the top of the steps had been watching the interchange. He came down the stairs. “You familiar with Berlin at all?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know where the Brandenburg Gate is?”

  “Ja, I saw a sign as I came in.”

  “Got a pencil?”

  “No. But a good memory.”

  He nodded and gave Hans quick directions to a hotel. “Don’t expect much, but you can get a room for two marks a night. It’s about a twenty-minute walk from here.”

  “Danke schön. Do they serve food?”

  “No, but if you watch, there’s a guy near the Brandenburg Gate who has a frankfurter and sauerkraut cart. Fifty Pfennige to fill your stomach. But he packs up at sundown, so don’t dawdle. On the way to the hotel you’ll also pass some cafés and restaurants. Not fancy stuff, but good food.”

  “Got it. Thanks.” As Hans crossed back over the street, Schnebling’s words echoed in his head. If you’re going to the War Ministry, you’re going to need some luck.

  As the first snowflakes came fluttering down from the sky, Hans pulled his collar up around his neck and started back the way he had come.

  December 3, 1918, 6:13 a.m.—Ministry of War, Mitte District, Berlin

  Though his stomach twisted into hard knots as he smelled the aroma of food, Hans walked swiftly past the few cafés and small restaurants that were open for breakfast as he headed back for the square. One was particularly tempting. He was surprised that he hadn’t noticed it the night before. Too busy munching on his frankfurters and sauerkraut, he supposed. Now, the neon sign in the window glowed a bright pink and read Bayerischer Biergarten. Hans slowed his pace as he approached. A Bavarian beer garden? Here? Bavaria was four hundred miles away.

  He saw quickly that this was a poor imitation of the genuine thing, however. But Hans wasn’t in a place to be too choosy. The smells enticed his nostrils as he walked quickly by. Through the window, he could see the traditional breakfast buffet laid out on a round table that allowed customers to easily access it. Compared to beer gardens in Bavaria, the offering here was pretty limited, but then Hans concluded that was probably due more to the food shortages and rationing from the war than the fact that this was northern Germany. It was still enough to make him slow his step. There were no signs of ham, salami, or other salted meats that would have been standard before, and no fish—definitely due to the food shortages. But he saw round loaves of pumpernickel along with other varieties of bread and rolls; little cups of jams, jellies, and honey; boiled eggs; several different cheeses in pie-shaped wedges or small, flat rounds. There was one bowl of what looked like green beans and pots of both coffee and tea with steam coming from their spouts. And all for two marks, a sign in the window announced.

  Only the memory of long lines of men circling halfway around the block drove him on.

  6:34 a.m.

  As Hans hurried across the square toward the looming mass of the Ministry building, he was feeling good. He was almost half an hour earlier than the guard had suggested. But as he came into full view of the building, he swore. There was already a small clot of men near the front entrance, huddled together in the darkness. In front of them was the same sullen guard. If he recognized Hans, he gave no sign. Without a word, he handed Hans a card and pointed to the line. Hans held it up to the light. Number twenty-one. He swore again. An hour and a half early, and there were still twenty people ahead of him. Hugging himself against the bitter cold, he made his way to the back of the line and settled down to wait.

  10:22 a.m.

  Hans glanced up at the clock to his left and then fought back the urge to throw back his head and scream. Or pick up a bench and throw it through the windows.

  They hadn’t actually opened the doors at eight o’clock as promised. Though the building was fully lit and the soldiers could see people moving around inside, the men were kept out until nearly eight-twenty. After being outside that long in the early morning darkness, Hans had decided the cold was as bitter as anything he had experienced in the trenches.

  Once inside the building, they were directed to a room with a sign that read “Discharge and Retirement Benefits.” It was a room large enough to seat about twenty-five people, which meant Hans was in with the first group. Behind him, he heard a woman telling the rest of the men they had to wait in the lobby.

  When he saw that there were six clerk stations with small barred windows along the rear wall, his hopes rose a little. Six clerks would help. But a couple of minutes later when the clerks finally came in and perched on their high stools, there were only two of them. A pretty young blonde took the second window, setting up her name plate—Fräulein Katya Freylitsch—and spreading out pencils and some papers. The second was much older, a crone with a face that reminded Hans of the gargoyles carved into the parapets of great cathedrals. As she set up her name plate—Frau Libussa Hessler—she glared at the assembled men as if they had invaded her home and threatened to rob her.

  Hundreds of men to process and only two clerks? That was the army for you.

  But at least he was inside and warm. Maybe a little too warm. Hans removed his overcoat and then his outer tunic. This helped, but he could still feel sweat prickling on his forehead, in his armpits, and near the small of his back.

  The one thing that was driving Hans mad was that the itching had returned. It had started even before he got out of bed. By the time he was shaving in front of the tiny, cracked mirror in the bathroom shared by all the residents of the second floor of the hotel, he realized that he had several small, circular red welts on his chest and arms. He knew what they were due to long experience in the trenches. Bedbugs. That’s what you got for two marks a night.

  “Number fourteen,” Miss Freylitsch called out. The sailor three seats down from Hans got up and went to the window. Only seven more people to go.

  Hans glanced at the clock, then did a quick calculation. They had started at 8:20. So fourteen people in two hours, an average of seventeen minutes per man for each clerk! Three men per hour for each clerk. The incompetence was mind-boggling. Hans was way past the point of screaming now. He was wondering where he could lay his hands on one of those big railway-mounted battleship guns, the ones the Allied forces called “Big Berthas
.” If he could find one, he’d back it up to the main entrance, lower the barrel, lever in a shell, and blast the building with its masses of mindless civil servants into nonexistence.

  11:28 a.m.

  A soldier walked away from the blonde’s window. She consulted the stack of cards with the numbers on them and then looked up. “Number twenty-one.”

  Finally! Hans got up, taking his form out of his folder, and went to the window. He handed the woman his card.

  “Guten Tag,” she said, glancing at him for only a moment as she took it. Hans was strongly tempted to vent his frustrations on her, but he quickly resisted. Instead, he turned on the charm. “Guten Tag, Fräulein. And how are you on this cold winter’s morning?”

  She looked up in surprise. “I . . . uh . . . I am well, thank you. And you?”

  Ready to throttle you and Frau Hessler. But he only smiled all the more. “Probably better than you.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Oh? And why is that?”

  “I get to leave as soon as we’re done. I’m guessing you’ll be here all day.”

  “Why . . . yes. Yes, we’re here until six.”

  “So ten hours every day? Wow, Katya. That must be hard.”

  His use of her first name made her blush slightly. “It does get tedious,” she admitted.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Hans saw Frau Hessler turn and glare at them, but he pretended not to have seen it. As Katya began her examination of his application, he studied her. Nice face, pleasant light brown eyes, a shapely form beneath her bulky dress. Early twenties, he guessed. Not strikingly beautiful, but one of those faces you just liked. Her fingers were long and slender, and she had a simple band on her right hand, but nothing on her wedding finger. Hans was tempted to flirt a little more but decided not to push his luck.