Innocent Soldier (9780545355698) (5 page)

Apparently, the crown prince is with the army. But he’s not traveling with our regiment. He’s taking some other route.

If the king sends his son along, then the war’s in the bag. With an army like ours, and with the invincible Napoleon at the helm.

Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to clap eyes on the greatest general in history for myself.

The February sun is getting warmer and more pleasant. The regiments trot and march across the country at
a comfortable pace. The wheels of the cannon and the many baggage and forage carts rut the big roads. Slowly the giant worm of the army winds its way forward. No need to hurry. The strength of horses and men must be conserved for the encounter with the enemy. And the reserves mustn’t fall too far behind.

A town appears on the horizon. The regiment rides past it. It’s the town where my farmer left me just three months ago. I don’t want to think about it.

The regiment stops for the night in a valley. The villages fill up with soldiers from the mounted Jagers. As befits a count, my lieutenant is put up in the castle. Turns out he’s related to the master of the castle. Are there any nobles to whom he
isn’t
related? I trot along after him, to discharge my duties as his officer’s servant. Of course, I’m not quartered in the castle. That wouldn’t be right, and, anyway, I have my place with the horses. The stable is roomy. Most of the officers’ horses and servants end up in there. The horses are given beets, hay, and oats, and the servants plenty of bread and pear juice. I pull off my uniform, burrow down into the hay next to my horses, and sleep contentedly as any weary wanderer who has reached his destination. The war is getting off on the right foot.

Only rarely do I spare a thought for my farmer, his big cow shed, and his vast dung heap.

Usually it’s like this: You think you’ve made it into heaven, and suddenly you drop out of the clouds into the deepest pile of dreck.

It must be the end of February That’s when the thing with heaven and dreck happens to me.

The day doesn’t begin badly I feed the horses. Then I currycomb them till they whinny with rapture. It makes me happy when my lieutenant is happy and it makes him happy when his horses are happy. When they stand there all glossy and healthy.

I wait outside the castle for a window to open. Then I’ll know that my master needs me. He can’t get into his boots alone, and he has trouble with his tight pants as well.

An hour later, the lieutenant is suddenly standing in front of me so sheepish and uncertain, as if he’d gone in
his pants. He can’t look into my eyes, and he tells me in a wobbling, squeaky voice that his father has sent out two replacements for the stable boy who was sent home sick. They are both trusty servants of long years’ standing, but also experienced soldiers, who now must go to war with the lieutenant. And look after him. On orders of the old count. Everything’s been sorted out with the colonel. As is the way among titled gentlemen.

All of which makes me rapidly surplus to requirements. From one moment to the next. His Grace the lieutenant is very sorry. I see he means it. But he can’t use me anymore. Three servants is too many for him. The colonel wouldn’t stand for it.

I am stunned.

I walk away.

And so I fall out of heaven into the middle of the muck. The muck is back at the other end of the regiment. I am quartered on a spill of straw next to a dung pile and a horse. The billet is poor, and the horse is worse. An awful animal. That’s how it goes, apparently. Last come gets the lousiest horse. A beast no one else would look at. In the other corner, to make things worse, are a couple of men from the Jagers. Their glee is written all over their faces. One of them must have seen me once riding the noble Arab. Now he congratulates me on this new mount. “It’s without exception the rottenest nag, the
most ill-tempered monster in the regiment. The devil himself must have created that animal in a fit of rage or delirium.”

But that’s not enough to cause the world to end, I think. Anyway, wisdom comes with time, and I shouldn’t be dissatisfied, because things could have been worse. The horse looks me up and down, a little sadly, but not maliciously. So, for all its ugliness it does have a good nature. I will try to make friends with it, be strict but considerate, and then it will be the devil’s work if I can’t cope with it. At least I’ll make an effort. It’s got to work. Not least on account of the nasty faces around me. Once again, the horse shoots me a not unfriendly look. I stroke it cautiously. It doesn’t resist. Well, there’s a start. After all, a horse isn’t a person, and so it could never be half as malicious.

By the next day, the horse is obeying me. It doesn’t mind me sitting on it. I’m really proud of myself, and the horsemen around me are suddenly full of respect, and don’t tease me anymore.

But it’s too early to draw breath. My plunge has hardly begun.

The mounted Jagers don’t want to keep me. The regiment can’t have a man over, all of a sudden. Too few, yes, that happens all the time. But not one over. That’s never happened. The Jagers remember where they got me
from, and they make inquiries. Yes, of course, we’re missing transport corps soldier Bayh, the horse artillery says. A certain Sergeant Krauter is missing me badly. So badly that the Russian war cannot be won without me. The guns need me. Desperately.

I could tear myself to pieces with rage and fear. The battery is in the next village. I have to walk. A long walk. Should I make a break for it? Not possible, in the green uniform. A child could tell from a mile off that I’m a mounted Jager, and not some peasant. I’d have to run naked. Can’t do that, either. Partly from shame, and partly because it’s still too cold.

Sergeant Krauter takes immediate receipt of me. His glee comes puffing out of both nostrils. He admires my pretty green uniform. With a smile, he promises me that he’ll have it as brown as dung in the space of a few days. As brown as my last blue one had been. “Inside and out,” he promises me with a sneer.

Now I’m back in the transport corps, in charge of two huge horses, and responsible for getting them harnessed up with others to the heavy seven-pound howitzers. The sergeant torments me every chance he gets, and he makes up for everything he missed during my absence. Because it’s war and he can’t keep me marching through puddles, he’s had a few new ideas. For instance, he makes me walk along behind the seven-pound gun, always just
me. “You’re responsible for seeing nothing gets lost!” Because I don’t get enough sleep, I stumble along in the wake of the cannon. No sooner has the horse artillery reached the day’s destination after a long march than I am sent out on sentry duty. It’s no wonder I’m so tired, the spoon falls from my hand. While the others are asleep, I stagger along reeling with exhaustion among the cannons and the horses. And in between I polish the bronze cannons. At all times of day and night I am ordered to wipe them down. I have a feeling I scrub them so much, they’re getting smaller.

The war isn’t what it was. Krauter’s gone and spoiled it. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, my toes are bleeding into my boots. One morning my good boots that fit me weren’t there. In their place, two downtrodden foot holders. When I wear them, I slither around and my toes and heels keep hitting their tough edges.

Who stole my boots? Who would do such a thing? The sergeant? What sort of war is it where your enemy isn’t any Russian, but the sergeant of your own company?

By now, it must have gotten to be March. More and more men and horses are streaming up out of the south. We all congregate in the Hohenlohe. Marching troops, splendid horsemen on light and heavy horses, guns and wagons. And the magnificent uniforms! In every color, blue and green and yellow and red. I’m sure God is
happy. He can see the colorful royal army going by at His feet, as beautiful as a flowery meadow.

My feet, though, are bloody.

One dull morning, the Wurttemburg regiments are drawn up on parade. There’s a large castle in the mist. “It belongs to the count of Hohenlohe!” someone says. Everyone gets to polishing and brushing and currycomb-ing. Is it a battle coming? No, of course not. Before a battle, you don’t brush up cannons, and anyway, we’re still in our own country. It’s a long way yet to Russia. Hundred times as far. It’s bound to be a thousand miles and more.

Then the rumor goes like wildfire through the regiments.

“The king’s coming!”

“He wants to bid his soldiers good luck as they leave the country.”

“What a good king!”

In a long, broad field he’s standing with his crown prince and various generals and people from the court. All of them mounted, naturally. To make them look powerful and important. The regiments gallop past. It’s the first time I don’t have to march. I’m allowed to sit up next to the cannon. The heavy howitzers skip fast over the uneven turf. The king doesn’t have much time. Apparently. He wants to see all his men as they move out to war and say good-bye to them.

I don’t see much myself. Really just the powerful horse on which the king is sitting. What a big beast. A heavy special order from nature. The king needs it, too. So there’s enough space for his hanging guts, and so his weight doesn’t crush the horse.

The whole hullabaloo is over quickly.

Afterward there’s a lot of talk about it. Secretly of course, and so quietly you can hear next to nothing. So the wrong person doesn’t see or hear anything. The nice-looking young man with the fat king is apparently his bosom friend, a Count Dillen.

I wonder what a bosom friend is? Something quite special, I’ll be bound, because the gallant had a general’s uniform on and a splendid spirited horse under him. The sergeants and sergeant majors grin subtly. Maybe they’re just disrespectful, or else they know something I don’t know.

Are you allowed to grin like that about His Majesty, the highest of the high, the king? Without immediate punishment from Heaven?

The following morning, the regiments move off. We carry on in a northerly direction, toward Franconia. I’d never heard of Franconia before. It’s a pity that the only foreign land they taught us about at school was the Holy Land. It was probably the only one the teacher knew about.

There’s supposed to be a royal military paymaster somewhere, the chancellor with a big chest full of money. But where is he? Somewhere behind us? He hasn’t yet got as far forward as us, at any rate. So there’s no wages. And no wine. But the officers always have money. They can go out and get soused every night. If that’s what they want. Mostly, they do. After all, who knows how much longer they’re going to remain alive?

A soldier’s life is a merry life. For the officers, anyway.

Sergeant Krauter doesn’t have any money, but still he drinks wine. He secretly sells off the harness of one of the draft horses. Afterward, he gives me the blame for its disappearance. I was asleep on sentry duty, and the next day the stuff was gone, the harness. Everyone believes the sergeant, no one believes me. After all, he carries a saber and I don’t. Krauter doesn’t seem to be bothered by any sort of conscience. If I had my way, I’d shoot him at the moon with one of the seven-pound howitzers. Now I won’t get a red cent in wages, for months. Until the harness has been paid for.

What a dog’s life! If only the war with the Russians would start soon. So there’s an end to this marching, and Sergeant Krauter has something else to think about other than tormenting me.

Our regiment continues to advance through the beautiful land of Franconia. Such rich country. No little handkerchief fields and stony ground, like we have at home. Everything rich and bountiful. I wish I could take a little pleasure in it myself.

There’s something else I wish for. The sergeant. That bastard. I wish I was shot of him. It should be like the fairy tale my father told me long ago, when I was very little. In it, there was a farmer who had three wishes. I wouldn’t even need three wishes. Just one would be enough for me. What would I use it for? I wouldn’t even
need time to think. Sergeant Krauter to fall off his horse. Drunk, as he always is. He wouldn’t have to break his neck. His arms and legs would be fine by me. I just want him to be invalided out, unfit for service.

These sort of un-Christian thoughts mob my head. I spend the whole day latched on to one of these fantasies. It’s all I think about. Just the busted sergeant. When I’m anywhere near him, I stare at him very hard. My head feels as though it might burst, that’s how hard I’m concentrating on him.

“Knock Sergeant Krauter off his horse!” I beseech some dark powers.

But the sergeant sits firmly in his saddle and continues to tyrannize me.

In the afternoon, though, I almost succeed. In the distance lies the fortress of Coburg. A wonderful, fairytale castle. How beautiful the world is, after all! Or rather, would be, I think. If the sergeant left me in peace. Which he has no notion of doing. I can’t stand it much longer. Before long, I’ll have lost my personal war against him.

A terrible rage takes me. I make an enormous effort, and suddenly it happens.

“Sergeant!” I order him silently, but with supernatural force. “Slip out of your stirrup and fall off! I want a good fall, so you break your collarbone, or a couple of
ribs at least.” I wish so fervently that I feel the veins swell in my temples and start to hurt.

Maybe I happen to blink, or else the sergeant is too drunk — drunkards have a special guardian angel watching over them — or else it’s a strange accident. Anyway, it isn’t Sergeant Krauter who slips out of his stirrups, but the man beside him. He lurches to the side, and off he goes. And then the horse following goes and steps on him, too, which horses usually avoid doing. Nothing at all happens to the sergeant.

I made my supreme effort in vain. I’m only grateful no one realizes that I might be responsible for the accident. It doesn’t even occur to Krauter. He doesn’t suspect that I, transport soldier Bayh, may have such powers.

At any rate, I go on being tyrannized day and night. My curses on him get more and more vicious. But nothing happens anymore. I have no access to my devilish magic powers. Or they don’t exist. I hope the war in Russia will be fairer, and Sergeant Krauter catches a cannonball in the bum.