Posted As Missing

7. Maria

Freiburg, Germany – 28 April 1915

Maria sat on a sunny bench in the hospital garden, and as she ate her lunch, her mind filled more and more 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. Told me to ask as soon as I became curious.

She 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 at breakfast.

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Nearly a quarter 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 as though it soon would be. 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 – those missing feet, hands, legs, or arms, some missing more than one – 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, questions will begin. 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 of them interlinked into circuits or 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. "I need some black ink and a pen," he mumbled to himself. "One with a broad nib."

Pulling out his scissors, he snipped the stitching that held the sleeves to the shoulders of the greatcoat, then cut the seams and rolled out the cloth. After severing the shoulder seams of the coat, he laid out the flattened pieces of heavy felted wool. He played with their placement until he had assembled a shape that, with very little cutting, was roughly rectangular. It measured a little under two yards by nearly a yard and a half. He spent over two and a half hours stitching it together with the darning needle and heavy linen thread.

Shortly before three o'clock, he took a break to have lunch. He pulled the soft interior from the bread loaf, 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. 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.