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Updated: July 31, 2024
Again, a few days later about a dozen fellows were watching a party of Germans, under a Feldwebel Pohlman, digging up an old tunnel which had fallen in near the wire. Everything was quiet and Pohlman was even talking naturally with one of our number, when I noticed him turn and speak a few words to the sergeant of the guard, who turned and entered the guardroom, evidently in a hurry.
Kuester soon found the young Feldwebel; and the Hauptmann of his company when he heard the state of the case, smiled a grim but kindly smile, and gave him leave for two days with the proviso, that if any hostile action should be taken in the interval he should rejoin the colours immediately and without notice.
Men, take this animal away and feed it!" The men obeyed, enjoying the joke. At last the magic meal was topped off with smoking hot black coffee, a thimbleful of brandy, and a cigar! Tobacco and cognac may have been cheap, but they made the feldwebel feel as if he had died and gone to heaven.
If he is not near when the hole is full, the Feldwebel who commands the party bares his head, and mutters, "In the name of God, Amen," as he strews the first handful of mould on the dead it may be on friends as well as on foes.
They had come from Silesia on rather a strange tryst. Little Minna Vogt had for her Braeutigam a young Feldwebel of the second battalion of the Hohenzollerns, a native of Saarlouis.
"No fear of that!" was Eckenstein's reply with a significant down glance at his sword; and then, after a cheery "good-night" to the hardy bivouackers, we visitors started in triumph on our return to the Hagen, the young Feldwebel in our midst It was good to see the unrestraint with which Minna she of the apple face and frank eyes threw herself round the neck of her betrothed as she met him on the steps of the Hagen, and his modest manly blush as he returned the embrace.
The thing happened some time ago, before the "liveliness" died down along this secteur. One spring day, in a rainy fog like a gray curtain, a strange pair of legs appeared, prowling alongside a French trench. They were not French legs; but instantly two pairs of French arms darted out under the stage-drop of fog to jerk them in. Down came a feldwebel on top of them, squealing desolately "Kamerad!"
At last, in a sitting posture, his back against a hawthorn tree in one of the grassy ravines, I saw one whom I thought I recognised. "Eckenstein!" I cried as I ran forward; for the posture was so natural that I could not but think he was alive. Alas! no answer came; the gallant young Feldwebel was dead, shot through the throat.
The sort of feeling you have when you wake on a prairie, where you have come across ‘Indian sign;’ on outpost-duty, when your feldwebel plucks gently at your cloak. You know what I mean. “I was on my feet at once. As I said, the light in the carriage was very dim, and the shadow was deepest where Lucille lay. I looked there instinctively.
It may be recognised by the wooden cross bearing the rude inscription: "Hier ruhen in Gott 2 Officiere, 1 Feldwebel, 40ste Hohenzol. Fus. Regt."
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