Freiburg, Germany — 28 April 1915

Maria sat on a sunny bench in the hospital's garden, and as she ate her lunch, her mind was increasingly filled with thoughts from the lectures.

I must talk with Mama about this. She's told me so much about me, about my body, but never about men. Always told me to ask as soon as I became curious.

Maria shook her head and laughed to herself.

Funny, she asked me again last month if I needed to know more. I didn't then, but I certainly do now. I'll ask her tomorrow.

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Nearly half past noon, David thought as he glanced at his watch after locking his room door. He took off his shoes, wiggled his toes and then massaged his feet. The new shoes were still rather stiff, and he had a red area on the back of his left heel. Not yet a blister, but looking like it wanted to become one shortly.

Have to be more careful; I'm going to need my feet rather seriously for the next while.

On his train trip away from the Front, he had seen many wounded German soldiers, apparently heading home on sick leave like him. Others, the ones with missing feet, hands, legs or arms, some with combinations of these, he hoped were going home on discharge. He was thankful he still had all his parts, most of them still working very well.

Need to keep them that way.

He wondered how many had made it back from the line that night outside Saint-Julien. He had seen so many fall, so many others taken prisoner. If captured by the enemy, your duty is to escape. He repeated to himself the words of the Prisoner-of-War lecture from his initial training.

But I'm not captured by the enemy, and that's another thing I want to keep as it is.

David laid out all his possessions on the narrow bed, unloading his pack of freshly acquired items and unpacking the larger rucksack.

The Fritz uniform has worked superbly until now, and it still has some days of life, but after next Tuesday it becomes a liability.

He turned it in his hands and examined it.

If this uniform fails to show up in the field hospital in Roeselare on the 4th of May, it will be AWL. This is Wednesday afternoon, it still has just under six days of life remaining. Do I still need it for anything? Can it take me anywhere useful from here?

Instead of answering his question, he unfolded and laid out the topographic maps of southern Baden and the Schwarzwald, quilting them together on the floor to give him a sense of the region. It was crisscrossed with hiking trails, most interlinked and assembled as circuits or as through routes. He cross-referenced the maps to the pages in the guidebook, studied the terrain away from the trails and looked at the dozens of small communities scattered throughout the area.

He took his sick leave order from his pocket and examined it. "Need a pen and some black ink," he mumbled to himself. "One with a broad nib."

Pulling out his scissors, he snipped the stitching holding the sleeves into the greatcoat. Then he undid their seams and rolled out the cloth. He snipped the shoulder seams of the coat and laid out the flat pieces of heavy felted wool material, playing with panel placement as he slowly assembled a shape, which with very little cutting was closer to rectangular than anything else. It measured a little under two yards by nearly a yard and a half. He spent over three hours stitching it together with the darning needle and heavy linen thread.

Shortly after three o'clock he took a break and had some lunch. He pulled the core from the bread loaf and sliced pieces off his cheese and washed these down with nearly half of his litre flask of beer. There was a sign in his bathroom warning that the water was not safe to drink.

Spending millions of dollars trying to take over Europe, and they can't even supply safe drinking water to their own people. I need to quench my thirst, but the bottled water is more expensive than the beer. The alcohol addles my mind, maybe that's what's wrong with Fritz.

Eating was a little less painful than he had expected and he was pleased with the progress of his healing. He went back to work, separating the tunic and trousers into their panels and assembling another puzzle. Then he stitched together a second large rectangle.

Need some smaller buttons, he thought as he started stitching a large buttonhole in the wool sheet from the uniform. He hadn't finished it, when he muttered to himself, "Why am I doing it the hard way? Tie tabs will hold the pieces together more easily." He cut strips from the tunic lining, stitched them into ties and attached them to the peripheries of the two large panels of cloth.

He assembled his bedroll and tested it. A heavy felted wool outer and a lighter wool liner.

Wonderful how wool stays warm even when wet.

With the bedroll bundled, he stuffed it into the bottom of the larger rucksack, then he gathered the brass regimental buttons, flashes, badges, pins and the few unused scraps of cloth from the uniform. He removed the brass badge, buckles and top spike from the stiff moulded felt helmet and stomped on it to flatten it. All of these he wrapped in the piece of brown paper which had bundled his guidebook and maps.

Other than this bundle and the bedroll, his Fritz uniform was down to a shirt and a pair of boots.

I think I'll keep both.

After locking his door, he went down to the dining room, where he sat in a back corner quickly devouring a bowl of soup and a stein of beer while waiting to see what would come from the kitchen. He had explained to the fräulein serving him that he couldn't eat anything hard, and she had said she would bring some soft things to eat. David had finished his soup and beer shortly before the beautiful young woman returned with a plate of spätsle and a piece of braised pork which was so tender he was able to mash it with his fork. He ordered another stein of beer.

He enjoyed watching her gracefulness as she approached his table.

Love the way her breasts move at the top of her bodice as she walks. Now as she bends, ready to spill out.

He watched her place the second stein on the table and caught sight of a nipple.

Now both, just sitting there. So close. Oh, God! Must tell her she's beautiful.

He moved his eyes to her face and smiled as she straightened up, and he said, "Du bist sehr schön." She smiled and winked, blushing lightly as she thanked him, then headed toward a waving arm across the room.

Her blond hair, with a slight tinge of red in it, was twisted in a loose tail twined with thin pink and red ribbons. He smiled as he watched it. Sometimes it trailed down her back and other times she wore it draped over a shoulder to tease the top of her breasts as she moved.

I would love to be doing that.

He shuddered lightly and continued to watch her.

She seems interested in me. Her movements, her air. Daren't do anything to risk compromising my precarious position.

It was a tough decision, particularly with the second stein of beer. He hadn't been with a woman since the week before he had left the Salisbury Plains in early February.

Maybe just sympathetic about my wounds. Her body movements and that wink tell me it's more than that. Could be simply I'm the only young man left in town. Young men are scarce. If they're fit and healthy, they're off to the Front. My God! She's so beautiful.

After rearranging himself under the table, he got up, thanked her and went back up the stairs to his room. He undressed, lay on his bed and did something he hadn't had the privacy to do in a very long while. Relieved and relaxed, he cleaned up and fell asleep.

He slept comfortably, in a real bed for the first time since the end of his short leave in January. In the morning, he soaked in the bathtub, another luxury he had missed. He swelled at the thought of the fräulein and enjoyed himself again.

Living in cramped tents with dozens of others leaves no opportunity to do this. God, she's gorgeous.

After a breakfast of scrambled eggs and several cups of coffee, he took his small pack and went out walking, trying to break in the heel of his left shoe. He had rubbed linseed oil into it and placed an oil-soaked remnant of cloth on it overnight. It was a bit softer, but he thought his own heel still needed more. In a tuchladen, he bought some remnants. One, a very soft piece labelled Flanell and another slippery one labelled Seidenatlas, which reminded him of one of his mother's silk-satin dresses.

Farther along the street, in the Badischer Wanderungen Ausrüster just off the Hauptstraße, he found a pair of heavy wool trousers with a placard indicating they had been made of the same weave of wool that Roald Amundsen had worn to the South Pole in 1911 and that Ernest Shackleton had taken to the Antarctic in 1914.

He looked for a long time at a carbide lamp and a metal box of crystals, but in the end, he opted for a folding candle lamp and a paper bundle of seven squat beeswax candles.

At Freiberger Schreibwarenladen he was pleased to find a broad-nibbed Waterman pen identical to the one he used at university. After adding a bottle of black ink and a small notebook to his purchase, he headed out to find lunch. He paused at a patio table in Münsterplatz and sat admiring the intricately carved red sandstone of the Gothic cathedral. The daily street market was winding down, and waggons were being loaded.

He sat and enjoyed the scene and ordered a stein of beer. His jaw was feeling a little less tender, and he could open his mouth a bit wider without too much pain. He described his eating predicament to the frau when she arrived with the beer. She said the Oberländer is tender and knöpfl need little chewing.

The sausages were delicious, and he taught himself some new ways to eat without causing too much pain.

These knöpfl are like the little squiggles of fried pasta that the beautiful blond had called spätsle last night.

He felt himself stirring.

My God, she's so gorgeous.

He pictured her in his mind and encouraged the swelling to continue down his thigh under the table, enjoying the feel of his trousers as he slowly moved his leg side-to-side.

What a captivating essence she exudes.

He enjoyed the sun and his thoughts, and although the food was very tender, he took a long time eating and had a second stein of beer to help quench another of his thirsts.

The church bell struck two shortly before he arrived back at the gasthaus. He went upstairs to his room and pulled out his new pen and ink and loaded the reservoir with the eyedropper.

Inside the front cover of his new notebook was a calendar for 1915. He underlined 25 April, the Sunday evening he had left the trench. He stroked out the days which had passed using his memories of their nights. Sunday night unconscious in no-man's-land, Monday night on a hard train station bench, Tuesday night on a hillside above the Swiss border, Wednesday night in a proper bed.

Today's Thursday, 29 April. One more comfortable sleep, then...

He started writing a diary — cryptic notes written in truncated and abbreviated German, with no need for grammar or even spelling.

Comfortable with how the pen writes, he changed the end date on his sick leave chit from 3 May to 13, giving him an additional ten days. He couldn't see any easy way to change the date on his orders to report to the field hospital in Roeselare on the 4th. There wasn't enough space in front of the four, so he tore the paper into tiny pieces and tucked them into the bundle with the remnants from the uniform.

Now he had an altered sick leave chit in someone else's name. That person was due back in Belgium on the 4th. He had no identification papers, but he did have the hundemarke to match the regimental number on the chit.

So funny they call them dog marks –dog-tags. Looks like we're not the only ones who think they're curs. Have to hope anyone who stops me for identification is stupid.

He looked again at the chit.

But this whole war is stupid. What's it about? Why are we maiming and killing each other? So incredibly stupid.

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