No one knows, of course. Himmelstoss glowers at us wrathfully. "You know very well. You won't say, that's the fact of the matter. Out with it!" Fatty looks round enquiringly; but Tjaden is not to be seen. He tries another way. "Tjaden will report at the Orderly Room in ten minutes." Then he steams off with Himmelstoss in his wake. "I have a feeling that next time we go up wiring I'll be letting a bundle of wire fall on Himmelstoss's leg," hints Kropp. "We'll have quite a lot of jokes with him," laughs Müller.-- That is our sole ambition: to knock the conceit out of a postman.-- I go into the hut and put Tjaden wise. He disappears. Then we change our possy and lie down again to play cards. We know how to do that: to play cards, to swear, and to fight. Not much for twenty years;--and yet too much for twenty years. Half an hour later Himmelstoss is back again. Nobody pays any attention to him. He asks for Tjaden. We shrug our shoulders. "Then you'd better find him," he persists. "Haven't you been to look for him?" Kropp lies back in the grass and says: "Have you ever been out here before?" "That's none of your business," retorts Himmelstoss. "I expect an answer." "Very good," says Kropp, getting up. "See up there where those little white clouds are. Those are anti-aircraft. We were over there yesterday. Five dead and eight wounded. It was a lot of fun. Next time, when you go up with us, before they die the fellows will come up to you, click their heels, and ask stiffly: 'Please may I go? Please may I hop it? We've been waiting here a long time for someone like you.'" He sits down again and Himmelstoss disappears like a comet. "Three days C.B.," Kat conjectures. "Next time I'll let fly," I say to Albert. But that is the end. The case comes up for trial in the evening. In the Orderly Room sits our Lieutenant, Bertink, and calls us in one after another. I have to appear as a witness and explain the reason of Tjaden's insubordination. The story of the bed-wetting makes an impression. Himmelstoss is recalled and I repeat my statement. "Is that right?" Bertink asks Himmelstoss. He tries to evade the question, but in the end has to confess, for Kropp tells the same story. "Why didn't someone report the matter, then?" asks Bertink. We are silent: he must know himself how much use it is reporting such things in the army. It isn't usual to make complaints in the army. He understands it all right though, and lectures Himmelstoss, making it plain to him that the front isn't a parade-ground. Then comes Tjaden's turn, who gets a long sermon and three days open arrest. He gives Kropp a wink and one day's open arrest. "It can't be helped," he says to him regretfully. He is a decent fellow. Open arrest is quite pleasant. The clink was once a fowl-house; there we can visit the prisoners, we know how to manage it. Close arrest would have meant the cellar.