Uwe Tellkamp - The Tower

armed forces rate/Schwanenberg, 4.12.84

dear pa, birthday greetings+++unfortunately couldn’t get present+++moving out to camp+++letter follows+++love christian

TC Q/Schwanenberg, 16.12.84

Dear Parents, Today you will have lit three candles and I’m writing you the promised letter. Many thanks for yours that was delivered to me out in the field camp. Dear Ma — I wasn’t thinking, please excuse me. I should have realized what would be going through your mind when you saw the telegram boy at the door. But I wanted to wish Pa a happy birthday and didn’t have time for a letter.

It could well be that they read our letters but I don’t care. I know it’s forbidden to write so openly about things here. If you complain and are asked where you got the information I would probably get into trouble. As if thousands didn’t go through the same thing and talk about it at home some time or other.

Field camp. It started on the 4th at 3.30 a.m. with ‘Action stations’. Whistles, shouts, people rushing all over the place. Be ready to move off within a set time, grey blanket lengthwise over the bed. Proceed to a designated assembly point, where we wait. Suddenly Fish orders, Division — about turn! We do a 180-degree turn. Fish comes and stands alongside us, points to the horizon: Just look at that sunrise — something like that’s rare. You may never see such a magnificent one again! When the duty officer appears, the company is divided up into groups. Irrgang, Breck and I are part of the ammunition group. Off we go to the technical depot, 60 tanks, approaching from Godknowswhere, are to be shelled up. Lugging cases of ammunition. When in action, one tank has a complement of 43 shells, each weighing 50 kg. 43 × 50 = 2,150 kg. There are ten of us, so 2,150 × 60 ÷ 10 = 12,900 kg of shells for each of us to lug to the tanks. The shells have to be thrown to the tanks ‘in chain’ where a driver fits them into the racks. After that exercise I caught myself doing ‘straight-ahead-staring’, what they call ‘breathing’. You stand there and breathe. Nothing else.

The tanks that are to go to the field camp with us are loaded onto wagons at the goods depot. We travel in cattle trucks, where the Mongol allows us to lie down on the chopped straw, in the direction of Cottbus, spend hours shunted into a siding, then continue on towards Frankfurt/Oder. The field camp is in the vicinity of the Polish border, the Oder isn’t far away — as we marched into the camp we could hear the ice floes drifting down the river. The camp’s in the woods, 20 railway carriages from the war years arranged in a square, behind them a stone building for the driving instructors and the officers; the wagons are for us. In them are one table, one stove (all with the stovepipe missing); we sleep on planks of wood across both ends. There are 16 of us, 4 on top, 4 below, the same at the other end, a bare 1 metre space for each one. Where I was to sleep there was a dead stag beetle (female), unfortunately I had nothing to keep it in and didn’t know what to do with it and couldn’t put it in the letter (it would get damaged when they stamp it). Irrgang said, Give it to me, at least it’s a bit of protein and who knows, we might be dining on just Komplekte here. Frozen dust everywhere, it’s hanging down from the ceiling like a forest of dirty crocheting needles. At least there’s electricity, 1 bulb casts 1 circle of light. First of all we put our kit away, then dig the company latrine. Every year’s intake has to do it again. For washing there’s an outside tap, frozen, of course, but the driving instructors have thought of that and unfreeze it with a flame-thrower. The water is pumped out of the forest floor (and is naturally not drinking water). So washing is a true pleasure: every morning we line up in gym shorts, otherwise naked apart from our boots, in a refreshingly cool winter wind, and move off at the double: march! through the powder snow to wash in the troughs, in which the water is naturally frozen, chop away the ice with the tank axe and enjoy the plunge. What is the difference between a skunk and an army cadet after a few days at the field camp? The cadet doesn’t have any eau de Cologne. Every morning we’re woken at 5, then 10 minutes for washing, 10 minutes to put the room in order, breakfast: ‘O-tins’ (O for operations). Then march off for training, it lasts from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Shooting practice with the barrel inset (it’s stuck into the tank gun so it can take smaller-calibre shells), with the tank MG. Practise with live hand grenades. We march off with the ‘lemons’, as they’re called, in the pockets on our trouser legs to a burnt-out T34 here in the forest, climb in, pull the ring on the grenade, briefly emerge from cover and throw the grenade at a class enemy made out of sawn-off pines and already in a bad way from the lemon effect. Irrgang asks, What do I do, Comrade Corp’ral, ’f the grenade drops on my paw? — ’ve y’ already pulled the ring? Corporal Glücklich asks. — Think so, Comrade Corp’ral. — So what’re y’worryin’ about. Y’won’t have to wash it again.

Tactical training: for that we go to the Tiktak range, for tactics are as refreshing as Tictacs. And everything so near, only a few kilometres through the winter woods. Crawl, pulling ourselves along by the elbows, to the horizon, aim, crawl back, running, creeping, sliding, crawling, hauling, sprawling, oh, aren’t we having fun in mock fights with a wooden gun. Driving practice with tanks. What I was really born for. I’m the son of a time-served metalworker, I’m the son of a trauma surgeon, I’m not a ‘professor’, I tell myself again and again. I’m furniture, a dishcloth, has a dishcloth ever driven a tank badly? Right then: there’s the gas, there’s the brakes, there’s the gears, to start the engine turn up the oil pump, prime with oil then press the starter button, engine up to 500 rev/min, to steer it you have the two steering levers, one on the right, one on the left, to see there’s the observation slit. We practise on an army training course, the tank bounces up and down like a rocking chair, the driving instructor, who’s up in the commander’s hatch, roars over the intercom that’s plugged into your tank hood, Listen to the engine, you dud, put your foot down, can’t you hear it’s labouring? Double-declutch. Brackish water comes in through the hatches, the MG slit is closed, on the end of the barrel the ‘elephant’s condom’, a rubber cap for protection. Russky on the right! the instructor suddenly bawls. Have I misheard? Russky? Aren’t we fighting side by side with our comrades-in-arms of the Warsaw Pact? The tank spins to the right. Rattatatat! the instructor shrieks, he’s had it! After driving there’s cleaning and oiling the tank. Each metal part is rubbed clean and, as is well known, a tank consists entirely of wood. And of course it’s the furniture that does the scrubbing while the instructors gather round a stove drinking coffee.

Guard duty. At night the winter constellations glitter, more beautiful than on Meno’s ten-minute clock. The moon looks like a 1-mark piece, you stand guard for 2 hours, the cold creeping up from your toes to your bottom, your back (I’ve got Gudrun’s belt round my kidneys, it keeps them warm), makes your muscles start quivering, there’s a razor on your nose, and the guards’ urine forms stalagmites sticking out of the snow like bizarre yellow flowers. On the third day there was an SI (‘Special Incident’): Cadet Breck was on guard and became nervous when there was a rustling in the plantation opposite the guard post. When, after he had called out several times, the rustling grew louder (enemy agent! parachutist! NATO advance guard!), Breck raised his Kalashnikov and fired half the magazine of tracer bullets into the plantation. (Normally he should have let off a warning shot into the air first, but before going out on guard duty Cadet Breck had been at the soldier’s comforter, Dur.) Now there was a dead wild boar. Our CC (company commander), Captain Fiedler, swore at this Special Incident — after all, you can’t simply gun down a wild boar in a state forest. But Fish said, Well, since the beast’s dead, we can eat it. — Fiedler: Have you done that before, Comrade First Lieutenant? — Fish: Nah, but there’s bound to be a cook among the cadets. (There wasn’t.) — Sergeant Rehnsen: We sh’d stick it on a spit. — Inca: How? I’ve had a look. Its arsehole’s closed and where’re you goin’ to find a spit? — Rehnsen: We’ll dump it in a cauldron and boil it. — An’ where’re you goin’ to find a boiler? And the pig’s still got its bristles on. Breck, you swine, you’ll scrub the swine, it that clear? And you two, Hoffmann, Irrgang, take those stupid grins off your faces and make some sensible suggestions.