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5 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPO Boy Soldier zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYX T HE WAR BEGAN IN 1939 when I was eleven years old, a student of thezyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Tertia, my third year at the Grofie Schule, and as yet a rather unenthusiastic Pimpf of the Wolfenbiittel Jungvolk. The smoke signals I had seen a year ago and whose message I did not want to discuss in class now revealed their truth in every newspaper headline. During the next few years, however, as the war intensified I became more involved in Jungvolk activities and rose gradually through the ranks until, by the time the declaration of total war closed the Grofle Schule in 1944 and I left home for other war duties, I led a Fahnlein of a hundred boys. These years as Jungvolk leader were for me a most exhilarating time. The Jungvolk, I told myself, was my real school, the school that prepared me for my future career as an army officer. It gave me responsibility at a young age and taught me what it meant to become a leader of men. It was the comradeship of us boys and the awareness of the duties the war imposed upon us that sustained my enthusiasm and made life meaningful. Throughout these years, too, there remained the memory of the Morgensterns and their son Albert, a memory I tried to banish as much as possible, because it made me uneasy and unsure, but which I could not totally repress. It accompanied my life as boy-soldier like a far-off, dimly heard dirge that was drowned out most of the time by the martial music of blaring horns and thundering kettle drums. For me the war began in late August of 1939 when my father, a reserve lieutenant, was called to duty with the 17th Braunschweig Infantry Regiment for "an extended military exercise." I remember my mother wondering just what that meant, "extended military exercise," and asking a neighbor, who only shrugged his shoulders and said: 81 Boy Soldier zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPO "We'll be lucky if it does not mean war." My father came home once more for an overnight stay on the weekend. He wore what I thought was the most splendid army officer's uniform I had ever seen. A few days later, after he had left again, we received word that his unit was to embark for service at the Polish border, and we could wave him off at the railroad freight station. As an eleven-year-old I was excited by the prospect of seeing my father at the head of his company marching to the station. In my imagination he would be preceded by the regimental band and flag, and crowds of people would shower him and his men with flowers. That's how it was supposed to be, I thought, when soldiers moved out to maneuvers; that's how it had been when World War I began, and that's what I myself had seen a year earlier when the Wolfenbiittel anti-aircraft garrison had returned to town from their occupation of Austria. The soldiers in their blue uniforms with their red rank ensignia on their coats were sitting stiffly on their half-tracks, their helmets polished and glistening in the sun, and slowly rolled down the Braunschweig trunk highway. The trucks pulled 88-millimeter antiaircraft guns, four-wheeled search lights, and generators. Interspersed between them soldiers drove heavy motorcycles, goggles over their eyes, and carbines with flowers stuck in their barrels slung across their backs. Every tenth or so cycle had a sidecar with an officer sitting behind a plastic windshield, the officer smiling and every now and then waving toward the crowd on the sidewalk. We boys, standing at the curb, held small paper swastika flags in our hands that we flung madly up and down, and the girls threw flowers on the trucks and cycles. I expected something similar of my father's regiment, although I knew that his men wore field gray uniforms and, being infantry soldiers, would march rather than sit on trucks. But nothing of the sort happened. The departure of the Braunschweig regiment showed little of the enthusiasm and the waving crowds I had expected. It was an August afternoon without a cloud in the sky; the temperature was in the nineties; and there was no flag-waving and music-blaring parade. By the time my mother and I reached the railroad yard my father's regiment had already arrived. The soldiers were busy around the...

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