During summer school holidays, his mother sent him to stay with grandfather in Frankfurt-Oberrad. Walter did not mind being at the old man's home; he had a way dealing with Opa Mittler. When he turned very grumpy, Walter would simply tickle him around the cheek area. That would do the trick. Opa would then smile and sometimes laugh. He enjoyed early retirement because of an accident while working for the railroad company. His right upper torso had become caught between two rail-car bumpers and was crushed, leaving a deep disfigurement and gap in the right breast area. Whenever Opa Mittler cleaned himself in front of the kitchen sink, Walter could see his naked, upper body and would stare at the deep hole the railroad carriage bumper had left.
There was no time to lament, however, because of Oma Mittler, a loving, compassionate woman and gardener by birth. Her whole family owned gardens and properties in Oberrad on which they cultivated vegetables, fruit trees, and bushes.
One time, seeing that Walter was bored, she asked him, “Why don't you come with me? Let's break gooseberries.” Breaking meant picking the berries from the bushes.
So it happened that Walter spent a lot of time with Oma's side of the family in the fields and gardens. At the end of the day, Oma would sit in the kitchen and peel hulls of string beans, taking off the top with the attached thread to prepare them for the preservation process.
One night, Opa, Oma, and Walter went to the movies. A local pub-and-restaurant owner sometimes set up a movie projector and presented a film. That night it was a scary thriller with Gert Froebe acting the lead role of a killer in the woods. Walter became very scared, could not fall sleep, and cuddled up with Opa and Oma.
Then one day, when Frau Mueller appeared on Opa and Oma's doorsteps to pick him up, Walter discovered the reason why he had spent such an extraordinarily long time with his grandparents. Frau Mueller told him they would go on a long journey by tram and then by bus to his new residence. When the two arrived at the main train station, they took a bus to Walter's new hometown: Bad Homburg, about thirteen miles from Frankfurt.
The new house had a massive hardwood entrance door with an iron handlebar. Inside the door, they walked into a lobby area, followed by a very dark staircase and another open door. Walter entered alone into a large, gloomy space. He recognized three thick, wide iron structures embedded in the opposite wall. Through a window high up on the left, covered by bushes outside, daylight seeped. Walter slowly moved down three steps of stairs, and then the hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up.
When he stepped onto the stone floor, it made a creaky, grating sound. It was covered by two inches of compacted black cockroaches, some alive, most of them rotting. When he stepped on them unintentionally, their bodies disintegrated. The embedded wall structures on the other side of the room were black, narrow iron doors, three levels high.
Walter must have heard noises, because he became aware of his parents, who had returned and realized that Walter was in shock. The Herzogs tried to explain. “This is the new bakery, our new home, and we shall be living here from now on.”
When Walter was alone for a moment, he stood in the doorway to his new home and looked outside. To the left and right, he surveyed a narrow lane, perhaps nine feet wide, and a fence, behind which some grass grew in what appeared to be a garden. A bridge loomed overhead, and the underpass seemed almost like a tunnel. For the first time in his life, Walter felt like a stranger in a strange land. Hinter den Rahmen, beyond the weaving looms, with nine feet of paved, blue basalt cobblestone, did not reflect any leniency.
As it turned out, the bakery did not do well because of its location below the bridge. Additionally, there were two competitive bakeries in the immediate neighborhood. The Ritter-von-Marx Bridge with pedestrian traffic might as well have been in a different country. The bakery's entrance was located underneath. Only few neighborhood locals became genuine regular customers. Someone walking on the bridge who wanted to visit the shop had to make a detour around the block.
The property was located in the old part of Bad Homburg—old meaning established in 782 AD. History could be found all over town. Medieval times left their mark, especially the Dark Ages, when executors of the established order burned promiscuous women alive. Later there was talk of the Homburg witch-hunt craziness. Stone towers and high walls were everywhere. Walter passed one witch tower every day on his way to school.
He did not have to wait too long for the new school year to start; it happened sooner than he expected. The classroom was filled with yelling, squealing, shrieking kids of both genders. The first day he sat, crying, on the lap of a compassionate, welcoming teacher. She explained to the other kids that Walter was a little afraid and new in town. She smiled at him, pressing him close to her heart, and told him there was no need to be scared. Walter loved her immediately.
The next three years went by fast. Walter did well in school and then wanted to attend high school, which was supported by his good grades and the encouragement of well-intentioned teachers.
Although he was able to walk to grammar school through the old town, he now used a secondhand bicycle his parents had obtained for him. The route was four miles, but led through the spa area with its manicured gardens and beautiful trees, some of them imported from exotic places. He passed large park meadows, golf courses, and the famous casino, the Spielbank. At the end of the trip, up a little hill, was the elite school Kaiser Friedrich Gymnasium. Mostly the well-to-do and the nobility sent their offspring to it. Walter, from the blue-collar old town with a shared water closet on the public staircase, had been unaware of these differences until now, though he still did not understand the connection between money, status, and support system.
He innocently began a time of learning and suffering. His first four years in school had passed in a playful way. Now, the demands, schedule, and pace of new subjects, along with his personal limits, made it difficult for him to keep track of what was taught. His parents paid for an afternoon homework group where Walter could get his assignments done by someone else. After time, however, it became obvious in class that young Walter was simply overwhelmed by the prerequisites that he could not deliver.
He started eating during lectures because his stomach hurt when empty, which caused teachers to record him frequently in the class register. The form teacher did not ignore any opportunity to expose Walter's weakness in front of the class. He called him a dreamer and sleepyhead. Walter's world turned into a place of torment in which he suffered a lot of pain and humiliation afflicted by a neo-Nazi assistant teacher.
To top it off, his mother followed the habit of listening to and commiserating with strangers who would complain about her son. Walter could not recall a single instance when his mother defended him in any situation. This time she listened to the blond, blue-eyed, young teacher. Frau Herzog had several choices about what to do with her son: let Walter repeat one class, let him switch to middle school, or alternatively, simply send him back to elementary school—, which she did.
Walter's mother allowed him to purchase a guitar and take lessons with Herr Brandt, a private music teacher. What he wanted to learn was how to play like they did on the rock-and-roll records. Herr Brandt gave him Salem-brand cigarettes without filters or let Walter smoke his own when he had some. During rehearsals, Walter's talent triggered Brandt's passion of talking about the old philosophers Nietzsche, Hegel, Kant, and Schopenhauer. He would also play a classical piece on the piano for him—all of which shortened the time he had to count the beat, transmit a note from a page through his brain into his fingers, and then find the right spot on the fret board.
Walter returned to his former grammar school. His class was boys only, and he realized instantly that he looked at an endless four years. For various reasons, many of the youngsters had been demoted for the second and even third time. They were two, three, and more years older than the rest. Coming from a disciplined high school, Walter was in absolute shock for some time. It appeared as though none of the teachers cared what happened behind those closed classroom doors.
Only the religious education teacher, Merkel, enforced strict rules and habits in the Protestant section that Walter attended. Merkel's specialty was to enter the classroom, pull out his used, large, cotton handkerchief, and blow his nose with a lot of force until the tissue was drenched. Satisfied, he then decorated the hot radiator with it.
Merkel would ask, “Where did we stop last time?”, and when somebody told him, he would order, “Weitermachen!” (“Continue!”).
One of the boys would begin to read aloud stories from the Protestant religion schoolbook. Merkel would place his head between both hands and close his eyes: forty-five minutes of peace, sometimes interrupted by snoring. The boy who was able to keep reading became somewhat of a hero because of the valuable time he gained for the group. In this way, Walter, a proficient reader, secured his entrance into the circle of hard-core boys; now they needed him. He could read flowingly without mistakes and had just the right tone of voice that rocked Merkel into sleep. The boys' main concern was that someone keeps on reading; keep the flow going, no matter what, because when Merkel found out that something else had gone on, he sought extreme countermeasures, such as hitting fingertips with a wooden ruler or cane stick.
One day a classmate brought a selection of soft pornographic pictures, and all the boys peeked at them. They may have been ripped-out pages of a fashion magazine. All the adolescents in the classroom had been in various stages of puberty for some time already, and hormones in their bodies caused turmoil. Walter, on a reading break, suddenly noticed the wild eyes and red face of the oldest and most bullish one of class. The boy had his huge penis in one hand and was masturbating wildly while staring at the pictures. Then he ejaculated a colossal amount of semen onto the color picture page. When Merkel suddenly woke up due to some involuntary noise or an energy blow-up of sorts, he used the cane stick on fingertips again.
In the old-town building where the Herzog family rented two small rooms on the second floor, a separate apartment became available. They let go of the two small rooms, which they had used as bedrooms for the parents and for Walter, whose room was also used as a bathroom with a zinc bathtub. The family moved into the vacant apartment next door, which had a living room and two bedrooms, a real bathtub alongside running cold and hot water, heated by the bakery oven below.
Soon after the move, Frau Herzog decided to sleep on the new couch in the living room. Her explanation was that she could not tolerate her husband's loud snoring anymore. After trying the second bedroom for a while, Walter decided to use his mother's empty bed next to Friedrich. The separate room that he could use had a window high up in the wall and hence had no view and very little daylight. As it developed, the son sleeping with the father in the marital beds became a constant element of the Herzogs' family life.
Different people moved into the space next door. Although the city owned the building, it both subsidized the rent and leased it to welfare recipients or city workers. The first new renter who appeared one day was a woman with an extremely deformed body and slurred speech. Walter was shocked and afraid the first time he saw her, and that never changed until she moved out. The woman was not friendly, but rather grumpy and antagonistic. Even to the young Walter, she never uttered a kind word. Because of her contorted mouth and facial areas, it was very difficult to understand what she said. On top of her scaring him whenever Walter met her in the hallway, the Herzogs had to share the toilet with her. Walter dreaded the times when either he opened the toilet door and the woman was sitting on it or she had left a piece of feces behind on the wooden toilet seat.
After the woman moved out, a middle-aged man and woman came to be the new neighbors. He labored in the garbage-disposal department, and his girlfriend worked various jobs. Both were blessed with family members from previous relationships who visited them frequently. There was a lot of coming and going next door, and the couple owned a television.
Occasionally Walter had been able to watch TV at a friend's home, but the friend's father became too erratic and dangerous; there were many tears and fights in that family, and his friend asked him to stay away. One night Walter collected all the courage he could and knocked on the door of the new neighbors. When a man opened, Walter asked, “Would it be OK if I watch some television with you?”
“Yes, of course, come in,” said the man, who had a large hooknose and thick eyeglasses.
Walter had found his new locale to watch shows such as the American TV series 77 Sunset Strip and Lassie. Sometimes, five to seven people were in the small room, all of them smoking cheap, sweet-smelling cigarettes. When that occurred, without an open window, it was almost impossible to see the TV set because of the smoke. The neighbors did not mind that Walter smoked as well.
First Love
Elisabeth was a bubbly brunette with big breasts who allowed Walter to kiss her and touch her full bosom from the outside of her blouse. She had cherry-red lips, was the sweetest thing, and was the daughter of the neighborhood pub owner. Walter's father frequented the pub almost every night after the long day's work to drink a few beers, smoke cigarettes, and sometimes play a game of skat. The regulars had their reserved table. On weekend nights, the pub owner organized entertainment with a trio or just music from the jukebox. Sometimes Elisabeth and Walter, who came with his father, sneaked out into a dark corner to kiss and touch. Soon Walter found out that he was not the only one who enjoyed this pleasure. It was only a matter of time until Elisabeth became pregnant, and then he did not see her anymore.
When Walter met Evelyn in the classroom, he became familiar with the intensity and madness of young love. Evelyn drove him crazy. He rode at least once a day about five miles on his bike just to catch a glimpse, have a few words with her, and perhaps catch a kiss with mouth shut. Those deep-blue eyes! She was the first and most intense love he ever encountered in his life. Evelyn's parents were very Catholic and raised her according to the rules of the holy book and of her draconic father. An important rule was that nobody, not even Walter, could touch her breasts. She had perfect breasts, not too small and not too large. He was allowed to kiss her with slightly opened lips, and that was it. It was a painful experience for Walter, because once he kissed her—and she was a good kisser—he really became quite excited. She had an inviting, intense look in her blue eyes that promised a lot but gave no satisfaction.
Two years later, Evelyn suddenly married because she became pregnant. The lucky guy was at least ten years older and had managed somehow to get between her legs. The couple married in an official wedding in a conservative setting. Walter attended the party. He and Evelyn stayed friends, but her husband, who was a bully with many issues, tried always to cause conflict with Walter. Especially when intoxicated—which was every time they met—he acted extremely jealous. Evelyn and he had a daughter, and when the daughter was three years old, the husband shot himself with his hunting rifle in their living room.
Walter's grammar-school graduation was encouraging and gave Walter some meaning for his future. He enrolled in business school to learn the basics of business management. Evelyn happened to be in the same class.
Rainer was also in the class, and he and Walter liked each other's company immediately. Through Rainer, Walter met Werner Puck, who lived in the same neighborhood as Rainer. In a housing development somewhat outside town, Werner lived with his mother in a two-bedroom apartment. His younger brother was still in a public children's home, where Werner spent time as well. Neither of them had ever known their father, and Walter never found out why the boys spent time in a children's home. Rainer, Werner, and Walter met frequently to have a good time, hang out, and party whenever possible—depending on the available cash. Werner owned a small record player, and the three boys sat in front of it, playing Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and Stevie Wonder's “Fingertips Part Two.” All three of them smoked many cigarettes with the windows closed due to the cold weather or because of the record-player volume.
During their two years of business school, Rainer and Walter slowly turned into the bad boys of the class. Neither was really interested in certain subjects or the way a dreary teacher taught. They did like not having to work already as an apprentice in the office world. They met at someone's home or in a bar, drank beer, and partied as much as possible. Whenever the party was at someone's home, everybody danced the twist or close-up blues. People hugged, kissed, and performed heavy petting, but most of them were virgins. Bad Homburg's youth moved strictly within their own scenes and circles, since it was not a big town.
Walter developed a habit that was not really a habit. It became a necessity for him to eat frequently during class. He tried to hide it, but of course, the teachers caught him every so often, and then Walter was written up in the class-register book. His stomach killed him when empty. When he had just turned fourteen, the doctor diagnosed a duodenal ulcer.
Frequently he and Rainer arrived late to class and left early. On occasion, they ended up drunk in school. As soon as Walter signed an apprenticeship contract with a midsize forwarding agent in Frankfurt, he had no further interest in school.
They all began different apprenticeships, except for Werner Puck, who had not attended a business school and instead had gone straight from eight years of elementary school to Kaufhof, the department store chain in Frankfurt, as apprentice sales clerk in the men's clothing department. The employer required that he always wore a suit and a tie, which he hated. It was unclear why he had chosen to become a sales clerk when he did not like it and it did not fit him.
Werner was a half orphan and spent time in orphanages until his mother was able to support her children. He had to start working as soon as legally possible. All three of the gang—Rainer, Walter, and Werner—did not originate from wealthy backgrounds, but Werner was the least fortunate of them. It took Walter a long time to gain Werner's trust. However, after Werner finally opened up to him, Walter liked the friendship because of Werner's reliability; he was always responsible for himself and kept his appointments.
Werner's one-year experience in Frankfurt turned out to be a valuable advantage. The city's entertainment scene offered the Star Club on Kaiserstrasse and a large swing club near Konstabler Wache. There was also the tiny Jazz House in Kleine Bockenheimer Strasse, as well as a couple of bars and a discotheque. This tiny, narrow alley went through old stone structures that had been built like towers and refuges. One of the bars was the well-known, but at this time objectionable, establishment for gay men.
People entered the Jazz House through a cramped door, and then made a sharp left turn into a small space that included the bar. Two or three coffee tables with small chairs left and right and the short counter made up the first floor. The upstairs was reached by a constricted spiral staircase that turned into a loft with a few more little tables. Any order from upstairs needed to be yelled downstairs to the bartender, who would then fill a basket on a pulley and hoist it up. Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Albert Mangelsdorff, John Lee Hooker, and Roland Kirk on his double horn performed from the stereo. This place became a favorite hangout for Walter and Werner. They would sit at a table, sip on beers, smoke strong, filter-less German or French cigarettes, and listen to Jazz.
At this time in Western Germany, a feeling or knowing filled the air, and at the same time, there was a vacuum, as if something constricted the space. A sense of something that had been misplaced, suddenly unavailable, left a void behind. Teachers in school had no real answers. To approach parents made no sense because of what they had been through, what their generation had experienced. Everybody appeared to be in a straitjacket, and something had to give eventually.
Madeleine
On Saturday nights, there were parties to go to, or if not, something had to be organized. Places to hang out, drink a lot of alcohol, and make out. Walter was still a virgin. One Saturday, Werner and Walter went to Frankfurt on the bus to go to a middle-class dance school, which organized a dance party with a live rock-and-roll band. Down in the basement, where the dance party was held, they bought beers and checked out the crowd.
As the two stood on the side of the dance floor and enjoyed the music for a while, Walter noticed the petite girl in black dress and chestnut-colored hair with a French-style haircut. The hair rim had been cut higher up in the back. The girl looked back at him through very blue eyes while dancing with somebody else at the same time. Walter returned her gaze for long time, and when she was available, he asked her to dance with him.
Initially, the band played a couple of fast tunes. Later they segued into a slow dance. The dancers’ bodies came closer and closer. Soon the two were squeezing each other from face to lower torso, and any curve or mold was filled with each other's body parts. There was some initial caressing here and there and then the first gentle touch of lips—and for Walter looking into endless, deep-blue eyes. He had arrived prepared for a situation like this, having done research with more experienced acquaintances. To arouse a woman while dancing with her, he was told, the man needed to breathe deeply and while doing that rub his chest against her breasts. It worked. The girl pressed back, and they started to press and rub against each other more passionately. By then they were also kissing deep in the throat with entwined tongues. The slow dance turned into an extremely exciting and lustful affair.
Walter felt safe and comfortable with her from the start. He fell in love that night. The next day, he talked to Werner about it and confessed that he loved the girl named Madeleine.
This time, when Walter fell in love, he had no doubt that it was real
love. On one level, he felt firmness and excitement within; on the other were fears about whether what occurred was real. The long distance they lived apart presented an obstacle. Madeleine's father owned an apartment building in an upscale neighborhood of a suburb near a small town south of Frankfurt. It was thirty miles and about two hours by bus from Bad Homburg. The family lived in the penthouse of that ten-story building and enjoyed a 360-degree view over forests. When Walter visited Madeleine for the first time, he was very impressed and somewhat cautious about meeting the family. He met them all, including Madeleine's twin sister, and they had dinner together. Everybody appeared to be friendly and interested in the new boyfriend. Questions were asked, and Walter left assured that everything went well. He said good-bye for the long journey home to the old town of Bad Homburg.
It became tough for Walter to see Madeleine. Since he spent the days working in Frankfurt, he was the one who made his way to see her. They met either at her home or for a movie or even the theater or opera in Frankfurt, where Madeleine's parents held season tickets and let the daughters use them. Walter always had to make sure to catch the last bus for home. Only on weekends could he sleep satisfactorily. Love provided him with the endurance to maintain this relationship as time went by.
Every so often, Madeleine took on a baby-sitting job. One Saturday night was
the night. She had given the signal—“do not forget the condoms”—and of course, these condoms occupied Walter's mind for months. With his new driver's license and using his father's car, a red Opel station wagon, freshly bathed and the condoms in his pocket, he drove the thirty miles to the apartment where Madeleine was baby-sitting.
When Walter arrived, the baby was asleep. The couple did not waste any time; it was the first time for both of them. Walter fumbled to roll the condom onto his very virile member. The atmosphere in the apartment surged with hormonal visualizations and exceptionally uninhabited sensations. By applying arduous patience during heightened anticipation, he managed to get the condom on all the way. When Walter finally meant to enter Madeleine, he climaxed and came before he could. That eruption caused most of his semen to squirt onto the black cotton couch's upholstering, because the condom had slithered off his wiener during the short performance. Exhausted but eager, the lovers tried it repeatedly that first night. After a few weeks and months, the young couple's experiments with their love's physical aspect became very effective, and all worked out all right.
A modest circle of friends kept them busy. Sometimes Madeleine visited Walter in Bad Homburg when his parents traveled on a weekend; other times Walter stayed overnight with Madeleine when her parents went on a trip. They managed their relationship according to reality and practicality, and Walter suffered, being so far away from his sweetheart. Considering the distances they traveled, Walter acquired his first car only in his third and last year as an apprentice. Then affairs turned for the better. The lovers met much faster and at various places, such as the drive-in movie theater, which they enjoyed a lot, regardless of what movie was playing. In the backseat of a Volkswagen Beetle with split rear window, or later in a small Fiat 500, they reveled in serious petting with wet fingers, moaning and groaning, and an occasional sperm flow into underwear or onto a skirt. Now and then, friends joined them in a second car parked next to them, and they got busy as well. Everybody shared food and drinks and enjoyed a splendid time.
Once on a Sunday, Walter and Madeleine drove with Walter's father in his station wagon to visit farming relatives in the country. Walter's mother stayed in Frankfurt with Frau Mueller. The ride to the small village took about two hours each way. They spent the day at the ranch of Walter's cousin Fritz, who raised many animals: pigs, cows, chickens, ducks, and horses. In a separate building, he also operated a large machine that distilled schnapps out of potatoes or turnips.
On the way back home, Madeleine and Walter sat together on the backseat, his father driving as it turned dark. It happened slowly that Walter moved toward the left, to Madeleine, who sat behind his father's back. They started kissing and pressing, rubbing and fingering. Walter could feel her dryness turning into wetness very quickly. In addition, while the hugging and pressing intensified, Madeleine rubbed Walter with maximum effort but ample sensitivity, not hurt him. He moved fingers up and down and into her. Her eyes sparkled when a car passed by, she moaned with restraint in his ear. His father lighted another cigarette in the driver's seat.
Summer Holidays
For their annual vacation, Werner and Walter planned a trip to Italy. Madeleine had left with her parents and sister for one of the Greek islands, Rhodes. Thus, one warm summer morning, the two young men headed on foot for the Autobahn entrance ramp outside town, starting off on the holiday. They were extremely lucky that day, getting rides in cars heading south and toward the Alps. For the last tunnel, in Switzerland, they took a train.
Before midnight of the same day, as they stepped out of the train station in Italy, a man with a small Alfa Romeo stopped at the roadside and asked, “Where do you want to go?”
Werner replied, “Alassio.”
“Well, why don't you guys hop in? You are very lucky today, I am going all the way.”
Early next morning, arriving in the little seaside town of Alassio at the Ligurian Sea, across from the islands of Corsica and Elba, they rented a room in a small hotel on the beach. Walter and Werner stayed happy for a whole week, not moving a lot except at night. During the day, they sat under large umbrellas, next to many other umbrellas. At night, they went into the open-air disco or some other bar to have a few drinks.
French-Italian love songs, supported by bombastic sounds, stirred the emotions. Listening and dancing to this passionate music under the stars and the moon sparkling in the Ligurian Sea, a person could get close to another when lucky enough to find a like-minded partner. For Walter, just listening to the music was enough; he missed Madeleine and thought about her a lot. One night two girls from England went with the boys to their room. Werner had arranged this event; he was not in love with a girlfriend at home. Feeling extremely sexy under the circumstances, he had no intention of missing out, and he got lucky that night. Walter, with Madeleine on his mind, was unable to perform with the shy girl next to him in one hotel bed, while Werner and the other British girl were in the other double bed.
Their money ran out after a week. It was not really the kind of trip they had planned, but what the hell—it had been fun and comfortable. Walter actually welcomed going back home to Bad Homburg, back to Madeleine, who was to arrive from Athens any day.
Because the friends had spent less than two weeks on the road, Walter looked forward to one more week of vacation at home alone. With his parents on a trip to Austria and the bakery closed, he could enjoy the apartment without any disruption.
Madeleine called on a Sunday morning, saying, “I missed you so much. Hello, how are you doing? We had a lot of fun.”
He said, “I thought about you all the time. Would you like to come over? My parents are still on their vacation.”
She said yes, and two hours later, he was holding her in his arms and kissing the one he loved so much. She returned these feelings and wanted to demonstrate them whenever possible. It was a sweet and delightful situation—finally together again, alone with each other and nobody to interfere. This time they used his parents' bed. Immediately very randy, they spent hours in the bed. Then Madeleine caught a bus back home because she could not stay away from home overnight.
The couple had one more opportunity like that, and then events began to transform the situation around them. Walter's parents closed down the bakery in Bad Homburg; Lisa Herzog had never liked it anyway. Friedrich Herzog took a position as a warehouse manager in one of the domestic harbors in Frankfurt. Walter moved with his parents into a three-bedroom apartment in the Bockenheim district. Since he worked at the airport, his commute was shorter, and he could see Madeleine after work much faster and more often.
Military
This perfect condition changed drastically when Walter was drafted after his apprenticeship. He joined the military for the mandatory eighteen months. Madeleine moved to Heidelberg after receiving her high-school diploma to attend a language school. Now they were separated farther than ever before. Walter was stationed in bases far away, and it became more difficult to see each other even on weekends.
Madeleine tried hard to keep the connection going, but it happened anyhow. One day, after she returned from a school field trip to France, she confessed via telephone and with tears to Walter that she had slept with a Frenchman. During the ten days she had been away, they had sent each other letters almost every day and phoned many times.
When Walter heard the news, something snapped in him. He broke off the relationship right then, even though Madeleine's mother and sister both tried to mediate.
The same night, on weekend leave from the base, he went by bus back to Bad Homburg and got drunk in a disco club where he knew a few of the people present. A familiar-looking girl sat at the table next to him, and having met before, they started talking. A few years back, her family had been the talk of the town because of the two daughters. They were somewhat branded in town, and gossip about them circulated. Walter was happy to meet her because he had heard the rumors about her suicide attempt and was curious to find out more about it. Walter liked her sincerity and directness while they talked and drank. As he and Denise left the bar, Walter asked her for a ride home, and she said OK.
When they arrived at his parents' apartment, they drank another bottle of alcohol in his room, and then Denise said she had to leave because her work started soon. She worked as a nurse in a hospital about twenty miles north of Frankfurt and lived within the hospital complex.
Walter did not want to be alone and asked, “Can I come with you?”
She said, “Are you sure, it is a long way back to Frankfurt, but why not?”
When he woke up in the morning with a hangover, he was looking into a baby's face next to him.
Denise and Walter tried to sustain a connection that was different from Walter's first experiences with love. The new liaison contained weightiness and fear, which were new to him. It also included a heavy dose of realism because of her baby boy, who had come into the world after her previous relationship had ended. Madeleine's playfulness was replaced by seriousness and skeptical questions from Denise, who feared that her newly found companion would suddenly vanish. She was very eager to please Walter in any way. This became shockingly apparent one day when he found out that Denise had been to the plastic surgeon.
She was on the phone crying. “Please come to me, I am in pain.”
“What happened?” he asked.
Denise answered, “I had nose surgery.”
He found her with bandages across her face. It was extremely swollen and in yellow and blue colors.
Denise told Walter, “You said that I have a hook on my nose—that's why I did it.”
A speechless Walter remembered that they once talked about her nose and that he mentioned the little hook, but it had never been a concern for him. He told her that, and she cried even more. It took a long time until her face healed completely.
Important Decision
After completing boot camp, Walter requested a reassignment from the barracks location, a three-hour drive from the small town in Northern Hessen to Frankfurt. He wanted to be closer to home. He was transferred to a unit located in Giessen, a provincial industrial and military town. A large number of American troops were also stationed within the city limits.
The main purpose of Walter's new unit was to protect American missile and other warheads hidden somewhere in the German forests—a very cold job. The winter of 1968 was a bitter one; temperatures outside could drop to minus eleven degrees even without a wind chill factor. The soldiers in Walter's company were armed with standard NATO rifles plus four magazines of live ammunition. Their command covered a square of real estate in the middle of nowhere that looked like a concentration camp or prisoner's site in Vietnam or Guantanamo—just colder. Twelve-foot high, double barbed wire fences surrounded it, with a narrow path on which to patrol back and forth. At night, bright floodlights lit up the area. Visible in the center of the region were a number of slanted iron doors covered with soil, grass, snow, and ice. The few Americans on duty stayed invisible and always enjoyed the comfort of a small but heated building.
Duty involved two weeks of mind-numbing routine in the barracks. Occasionally there was a day exercise in the field, but primarily they cleaned equipment and marched within the barracks compound. The extremely tedious duty in town did not prepare them for the next week in the forest compound. Being in the woods, the soldiers felt stressed out and in a horrid space. Small off-duty quarters did not provide any distraction except playing cards. When on duty, they guarded two hours outside and were off duty for four hours to sleep, rest, eat, and play cards. Then again, two hours of guard duty and four hours of rest—repeatedly for a whole week.
Four soldiers had to be on duty at all times, plus a sergeant inside the small guardhouse with heater and communications. Their immediate instructions in case of trouble were to shoot anybody who attacked the fence. Before shooting, however, they were to yell three times a warning: “
Halt stehenbleiben oder ich schiesse!” (“Stand still or I shoot!”) What it really meant was to shoot at potential demonstrators who hit the fences with a stick or throwing stones. The sixties were politically active times and demonstrations a constant in daily life. Anything could happen in the woods around Giessen. At that time, Americans were the main culprits because of their ongoing activities in Vietnam. Many Germans hated that war and expressed their feelings about it. Walter did not like the idea of actually shooting a person.
During one extremely cold and unpleasant night, around three o'clock in the morning, Walter walked up and down the fenced path with a steel helmet on his head and heavily wrapped in winter clothing, the floodlights glaring into the woods. Suddenly he heard a single shot, somewhat muffled, and then screaming followed by whining. After his round of duty, he found out that one of his comrades had shot himself in the calf. He spent some time in the hospital. When he returned, he fell, saying he slipped on an icy spot on the walkway. But everybody knew he just wanted to get out of this misery.
For the Easter holidays, Walter got leave to go home. As he walked outside the barracks toward his ride, he saw a crowd of loud, shouting people with banners, lined up in front of the main entrance, handing out pamphlets. Walter took one of the leaflets and started reading. Suddenly a bright, red light went on in his head with a bang, and he decided to put the paper into his bag. This was the first time a choice he made changed his life.
At home, as soon as matters calmed down, he studied the handout more closely. It was a two-color brochure that explained how to become a war resister and, thus, a conscientious objector. It contained each step, detailing the process for current members of the military: how to file, what to do first, what to write to which military or civilian organization.
Essentially all one had to do was express in one phrase,
“My conscience does not allow me to do any duty in the military.”
After the Easter holidays, reality turned out to be adverse but controllable. Being the first soldier in the whole regiment ever to file to become a conscientious objector, Walter felt like an outcast. People knew about conscientious objectors from the news media, but to meet with a real live war resister was a novelty.
Walter told his officers how they had to treat him according to his new status; he showed them in writing what to do next. They assigned him an office job, where he spent two more months until he became a government-approved conscientious objector. He filled out forms, wrote a letter for his father to sign in which he stated that he had raised his son in a nonviolent environment. This was neither true nor Friedrich's frame of mind, but his own war experience made it sound trustworthy. He had suffered the consequences of war, and he wanted to show that he was a good father and not the old Nazi one might presume, so he signed the letter. As backup, Walter visited a Protestant church official who had made himself a name by serving sometimes as a counselor in conscientious objector court cases. The clergyman consulted with him and appeared in court when the big day arrived, though he never said a word.
In court, Walter had to prove that his conscience was in the right framework to resist the war. He was prepared with numerous customary arguments, primarily from the brochure, but in reality, he explained to the judges that he did not want to shoot any protesting demonstrator who did not like the fence in the forest. The verdict gave him an honorable discharge from the military, under the condition that he spends eight months in civil-service work. Walter was free, and it felt wonderful.
