command you, as your superior officer: Stand up!”
“Anything else you would like?” asks Tjaden.
“Will you obey my order or not?”
Tjaden replies, without knowing it, in the well-known classical phrase.
At the same time he ventilates his backside.
“I’ll have you court-martialled,” storms Himmelstoss.
We watch him disappear in the direction of the Orderly Room. Haie and Tjaden burst into a regular peat-digger’s bellow. Haie laughs so much that he dislocates his jaw, and suddenly stands there helpless with his mouth wide open. Albert has to put it back again by giving it a blow with his fist.
Kat is troubled: “If he reports you, it’ll be pretty serious.”
“Do you think he will?” asks Tjaden.
“Sure to,” I say.
“The least you’ll get will be five days close arrest,” says Kat.
That doesn’t worry Tjaden. “Five days clink are five days rest.”
“And if they send you to the Fortress?” urges the thoroughgoing Müller.
“Well, for the time being the war will be over so far as I am concerned.”
Tjaden is a cheerful soul. There aren’t any wor-
83
