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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 ishappy. 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?

10
    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