Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

Haircut. That’s in the swimming pool, it’s empty so the hair can be swept up. A couple of surly soldiers wield the rattling electric clippers. Conk down! Keep still! Beside each stool there’s a so-called ‘standard noddle’ stuck in a flag-holder on a broom handle. The standard noddle is a grinning papier mâché private’s head with the hairline drawn by a felt tip. So I didn’t need to go to Wiener’s before I left. Breck, who also rooms with me, screams. ’s only a wart, dogface, the Comrade Barber says, taking a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic out of a tin of Carlsbad wafers and slapping it on the bleeding spot.

Next stop the photographer, right next door. We go behind a headless dummy that’s been sawn open vertically and has a dress uniform with epaulettes, shirt and tie stuck on the front. Stand inside the dummy, your neck in its neck! Photo. Proceed! At the Med Centre we get a tetanus jab in the upper arm. The medical orderlies can hardly keep up with the crush and groan that these batches of cadets that keep coming every six months ought to be gassed. Back to the company. By now it’s a quarter to six. By the time we’ve washed, put on our pyjamas and dropped into bed it’s four minutes to six. At six Inca whistles. Company Four — rise and shine! End of night-time rest! That was the first day. Today is Sunday, we have some free time.

Love, Christian.

TC Q/Schwanenberg, 12.11.84

Dear Parents, The package with my civvies ought to have arrived by now? Please check the outside wrapping paper, there’s a note hidden in the folds.

Today was our ‘beginning of Carnival’. We were woken at 5, followed by the usual 10 minutes for washing, dressing, putting things away, falling in. Marched off, destination unknown. We marched along a road at speed, suddenly the order, ‘Gas!’ was given. (Masks on, and they stayed on for 3 km.) We were loaded down from head to toe with: rifle, belt (loaded with a belt, oh yes, Pa, didn’t you tell me not to exaggerate, it was un-Dresdenish? Herr Orré also taught us that, ask Ezzo), water bottle, bayonet, combat pack, ammunition pouch. After the 3 km some simply keeled over. But that was only the start of the exercise; it was followed by 1: moving on the field of battle — we spent one and a half hours elbowing, crawling and jumping our way across muddy ploughed fields (there was drizzle all day) and were frozen through, chatterchatter. Then came 2: camouflage. That meant we had to burn a newspaper to smear ash all over our face and neck, a filthy business. And elbowing, crawling etc. etc. as well. I had intense pain in my joints from the constant contact with the ground. (It’s no longer constant, the contact with the ground, I mean.) And my face nice and black. Our clothes were as cold as the Heart of Stone and truly impregnated with dirt. But then came 3: digging out a battle station. While lying down we had to dig out a hole, 1.80 m by 60 cm and 50 cm deep in 30 minutes; and it has to have a specific shape. No picnic with the heavy baggage. Digging out a firing hollow made me think that being a gravedigger’s not an easy job.

The afternoon was entirely occupied with cleaning our rifles, drying and brushing the mud out of our things as well as the usual being hustled to and fro. Now I’m sitting writing by the light of my pocket torch (it’s night-time rest); my room-mates are doing that too. Night-time rest is the only time during the whole day when the whistle doesn’t go. Unfortunately it’s all too short: 3,000 m in full uniform is already on the horizon. At the moment I’m constantly getting a pain in my heart and dizziness. I might be imagining it though. When we’re ordered to wear our steel helmets I quickly get a headache from the hulking great thing. But then I just think it away (you don’t have to think much while marching).

13.11. Some easy diver training for us, Company 4. At the double, march! to the facility swimming pool (as they call it here); we got undressed, sat for four hours in the cold on the edge of the pool. Then we had a breathing mask and a heavy, sopping-wet uniform put on and had to walk round the pool for a quarter of an hour, completely wrapped up in that revolting stuff. It was a quarter of an hour of gasping for breath. Then into the water, that was icy cold. If you let some water get into the breathing tube (you only needed to smile), you could even die, despite the safety line, for the clothes were heavy, moreover we had lead plates on our feet so that the instructors wouldn’t have been able to pull us out that quickly (it was about 6 m deep). Well, perhaps we wouldn’t have drowned. The sight of us under water was grotesque, hopping round on the bottom of the pool like big, black embryos on long umbilical cords; I felt like a puppy that was being trained to do some trick retrieving things.

How’s Robert doing at the senior high? How did his German homework assignment go? Has Reglinde got into music school for organist/choirmaster? There’s an MTO here (Military Trading Outlet that’s open for cadets on Sundays); I saw some roofing felt there, you can tell the Tietzes. Didn’t Niklas want to seal the leak over the music room? If I’m to send some, he’ll have to send me packaging that’s big enough to take it, since there isn’t any here. By the way, I get 225 marks a month. With love from Christian.

TC Q/Schwanenberg, 15.11.84

Dear Parents, Many thanks for your parcel that arrived yesterday. It was just at the right time, we couldn’t have lunch because we were in training. The apples above all were important, we’ve already made quite an impression on them (sometimes I think of ‘Tired and lame, I sought an inn, my host was wondrous kind’, but no one here reads Uhland). We only rarely get vegetables and no fruit at all, but otherwise life here is very healthy (lots of sporting activity). So if you should be sending another parcel at some time, Ma, then if possible just apples, carrots, a bit of soap, a salt cellar. And please don’t let Barbara send me a radio (I was going to write to her but I’ve only time for one letter), radios are forbidden in our rooms. I could perhaps find another way of compensating for the lack of music — in the company copy of the regulations for internal service I have found none that forbids a cello. But it would have to shrink, the problem’s the small locker and even in the tank the cello would stick out of the hatch. However, if I could put the tank hood on Mr Violin Cell0 and teach him to salute, he could easily pass for me since I’m sure he could manage the grunting and mumbling to the tank mike.

Today we marched for 6 hours, exercise training, everything in the ‘rococo style’ (we have to stretch our legs out and lift them at least 30 cm above the ground and make very, very little loops). Right about turn, left about turn, get on with it, hey, Gunner Arsehole in the last rank, lift up your trotters. After that we were on fatigue duty, from 1 in the afternoon until 9 in the evening scrubbing, painting tanks, scraping off rust, the corporal standing behind the cadet whistling on his whistle. The area round the facility is particularly beautiful, bare as a Cossack’s head, no trees growing, cranes on the horizon, factory chimneys, shed-like structures. Here are the words of our marching song that we have to learn, because it’s our song, the ‘Song of the Tankers’: ‘Bright shines pink the Tankers’ colour, / I so proudly bear. / Pink too is a dress of yours / I love to see you wear. // From the fields pale hands are waving, / one is waved for me. / In my thoughts I fondly kiss you, / together soon we’ll be. // Oh the joy that now awaits us / at the dance tonight. / You the fairest of them all, / pink dress shining bright. // REFRAIN: Through the little village march, / the Tankers two by two. / Nevermore will I forget / the path that leads to you.’