What needs to be considered.

Worker and Kolkhoz Woman.

Humbly taking a bit of a lead from V.I.Lenin’s “What is to be done”, I would like to frame a conversation around a continuation of debunking of the “LNP/Labor duopoly” bullshit with a debunking of my own around the term : “Working Class”…ie; as a description of a labouring demographic or as a political entity.

For many years, I wasted words and energy writing on so-called “Progressive-left” blogs, trying to instill an ethical base centered on the working -class, as both majority producers / consumers and as the potential absolute political leaders in our society..I failed miserably, not through wont of trying, but rather through a stubborn refusal by so many comfortable situated in those blogs from a secure in both financial and principled middle-class base..so much so that there was obtuse confusion among the bloggers there as to actually WHAT “class” really meant!..not even being aware to which class they belonged or even IF such a thing as “class” even existed!..to the point where the gatekeepers and cabal acolytes of those blogs had me first exiled and then expelled for upsetting their middle-class sensibilities…Now, I see those same bloggers so enthralled with their own intelligent observations about the physical limitations of the current incumbent of office, that they pass their time in such full agreement with each other so that you’d need a three-pronged hydraulic puller to extract them from each other’s rectum…being not confused while doing so as to where their anal sphincter meets their eyebrows!

When one hears the expression ; ” those of the working class”..or ” the working people”..one is conflicted to confuse the labouring for wages / producing population with the world-wide political collective : “The Working Class”. This obfuscation is deliberately encouraged to try to drive division between the several strata of working people by the bourgeois media and management lobby-groups like the Business Council or the IPA. So that “working-class” becomes a amorphous body without direction or principles of agenda.
Let us use our common sense and a bit of logic and reason to differentiate between them.
Anyone who is paid according to an amount of work or product or hourly rate for what they “work” with their hands or physical labour ie; “piece-work”, can obviously be classified as of the working class..be they farmer, labourer, tradesman, classroom teacher, production worker or even in many cases ; armed forces serviceman. If they are paid on an hourly rate, piecemeal, or contract quote for a completed product, even if they are their “own boss” like a self-employed tradie, they are still working class. If they move from the “shop-floor” to become a supplier / contractor / entrepreneur, then they move out of the working class to become part of the managerial middle-class.. ie; “middle-men”, holding that ground “in the middle” between production and distribution of finished product..it’s not rocket science, you know.. It doesn’t matter if they were once solidly of the working class …once they move into profiting off another’s  labour, they move into management, they are of the middle class.

As a matter of fact, there now is rising from the working-class, a new curse of exploitation ; an underclass..ie; that group of working poor on “zero-hour contracts”..the food delivery workers, Uber drivers etc..the closest thing to slavery that we in the twenty-first century first-world society have. The latest morphing of supreme exploitation from the morally degenerate middle-classes.

The political “Working Class” is a world-wide generic term that covers all the above in any consideration of fair pay and conditions for what they produce or the hours they put in. The recent cases for the dairy farmers, family orchardists and other small-family primary producers is an example in point..for while many may consider themselves “above” working class status, however, despite the many hours of hard-labour they put in, they are still fixed in a labour-style negotiated market…even though it is an unfair market..their produce is subject to an unfair discrimination of big-corporate managed investment scheme farming..where massive produce bulk is either shifted away to foreign markets or dumped onto the domestic market to control pricing..for the small “generation farmers”, THEIR  produce and therefor their labour is fixed by corporate management manipulation and so many must now look to support from their cousins in the city working class for political and financial support.

The history of “Working Class” political struggle and confrontation has a honourable pedigree going back to the most ancient of recorded primary source history in the west. From Ancient Greece / Mycenae to Rome and then progressing down through the ages to now. There has never been a pause, not for world war , nor from right-wing political oppression , in the fight against Corporate / Capital greed lunging at the throat of the labouring classes through their political arms..The Fascists of yester-year or today ; the equivalent in the LNP.

The division that the Bourgeois media, be it main-stream or social try to confect is in the confusion of the educated working people / classes with a carefully and strategically placed “Bogan” element of the uneducated working poor. These bogan victims of their own vanity, uneducated and/or too lazy to read and therefor honourably educate themselves like millions of their fellow citizens have, are soft putty in the Machiavellian hands of the strategy managing Middle Class. The honing-in on the simple, the banal, the slogan as a answer to the beautiful and harlequin complexities of Multi-culturalism by gross demeaning and abuse / demonising of minorities demonstrates the desperate lengths the right-wing side of politics will go to continue the robbery and fraud and taxation evasion so very rife right throughout it’s members…a clique of indolent, indecent, immoral nation-leeches.

So let us never confuse the political aim of the generic ; “The Working Class” with the people they are both members of , yet also representatives of, ie; the ideals and realities of those most in need of over-reaching representation through strong, honest unionism and a strong determined political party..the uniting of both these organisations into a seamless weld of strength and ethical ideals is imperative to the best solution for both the world-wide and the local supported working classes.
Forever United we will NEVER be Defeated.

The Social Contract between Humanity and Measured Time.

Edward Gibbon’s assessment of the “Golden Age” of humanity below could, many would demand, be measured against Gibbon’s social status, his time and place in history and of course..his gender.
But THAT would be doing a disservice to such a scholar and artist who dedicated over twenty years of his adult life ,which would in fact, if one considers build-up and weaning -off for and from the task, the best part of any lifetime (he died at 56yrs) . Added to that the prodigious research and learned knowledge of both Latin and ancient Greek along with the sensitivity of the artist who , in creating such a masterpiece, must transfer body and mind to that location in space and time that they wish to create..there are no short-cuts to Nirvana. So when he makes a statement like the one below, you have to take it for granted it was made with the knowledge of the impact of such a claim on the present generation and the knowledge of it’s judgment in a future readership…The man was no fool.

“If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm but gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws.”

Of Course, Gibbon was not to know in his 18th. century the then teetering on the edge of technological revolution, the industrial revolution bomb about to explode across the western world and continue to grow in all manner of undisciplined direction for the next unknown centuries and bring about devastation of both social stability and environmental balance of unrecorded catastrophe since the beginnings of humanity.
Time and history once seemed to move in a measured, agreed harmony. Great movements of peoples, beasts, even rivers and forests took much oragnised labour (be they human invoked or natural cataclysm) to manage and evolve..even the “sudden” passing of one geological age to another involved millions of years..But now, in this twenty-first century, time is not considered except in it’s expediency..yet it is still there, moving no faster, nor slower that it ever has..a second is still a second..be it to man , beast or God himself…for it is said ; “even God cannot stop time”.
But these ancient blocks of time and events have now shifted..Those moments of “happy prosperity” extended over a century or so have given way to a haste of “economic urgency”, no longer is the moment of tranquil bliss sought for until one has a secure income or healthy bank balance..Time, it seems can be delayed or suspended for such esoteric pursuits..The Capital Human is now in charge!
As in a clock..; The “lever escapement” wheel has shifted..that locking device that held the second hand suspended for a measured moment of history has moved..the pallet lever has lifted and the escape wheel has turned to the next tooth on the sprocket of humanity’s clock..The movement has turned one fatal cog and the finality of the “moving finger” of Omar’s prescient stanza “moves on”.

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

The direction of western politics and as is the reality; the lifestyles of the citizens has shifted with the “election” and promotion of the Right-wing of politics..The carefully cultivated stupidity of a large portion of the voting public has now given rein once again to the destructive arm of humanity without thought or consideration to either their fellow citizens or to those who will suffer from the actions of their selfish mindlessness. This shift in the political direction of the nation may seem a small thing, but we must keep in mind it is part of a larger delinquency of the idiot philosophy of Capital Accumulation.
Just as the social revolution of the sixties started from seemingly small, singular events scattered across the globe, just as the singular event of a pistol shot at some obscure Archduke of some obscure kingdom in the early part of last century, brought about untold killing and destruction and the end of empires..as did a few renegade emperors in Gibbon’s ideal Rome..so here too, with these seemingly so comical personalities in our own politics and in the USA. and in Britain , if left unchecked, if not immediately brought to account, if not dealt with , with finality and certainty of legal action and severe judicial chastisement, will, with ALL the absolute certainty of historical evidence and proof, deal a fatal blow to the greater peace and harmony of humanity. The world more populous, the environment more delicate and in balance, the weapons of mass destruction more numerous and destructive to allow renegade imbecility to rule over accrued wisdom and knowledge..Is it better we give free rein to these fools to destroy the platform of sustainable humanity than to remove them from office?
If we are to understand our “social contract” with history and time, let us embrace the historical truth of THIS moment in time and fully believe that in the case of the environment, social cohesion and future happiness, the time for action is here and now.
There can be NO pardoning with facile humorous dismissal and a fatuous waving of hand, that insidious intent and blind imbecility so obviously displayed by those of criminal intellect that will lead this nation and the rest of the Western World to certain perdition. If we are to have RULE OF LAW…then let us for humanities sake..for our own nation’s sake…. USE IT!

The Secret.

Ladies…
I know a little secret,
I’ll not share with other men.
It’s deep, it’s dark, it’s truth is stark,
It’s come down millennium.
It’s so complex that a genius,
Would have to give it a rest,
Yet, so disarmingly simple..
A child could tell it best.
I first heard it’s whisper in the wild oats,
Whose husks had shed their seed.
The breezes hustled the golden sheaths,
Where small lizards scurried beneath.
It was told me in the cries of birds,
The scratching bark of the mallee tree.
It was told me in my lover’s embrace,
When we kissed our anniversary.
The secret came from the other side,
Of the wide, vast universe.
But it really started right here and now,
In the confines of this Earth.
It is nothing strange or unusual,
But it can never be told.
It is as young as a first desire,
As a drama about to unfold,
AND..
As needed and as fought for,
As the last breath of the old.
The secret was known to those,
That first built ancient Athens town,
That sculptured the mighty Empire of Rome..
And then in anger tore both down.
It was known to Cleopatra,
When as concubine she went to Caesar
But then did, in the time of anarchy,
Present as Queen to Marc Antony.
It was sought by Van Gogh’s sad postman,
His crows in a wheaten field,
It was held in the breast of Manet’s
Absinthe Drinker’s desolate gaze.
It is a hunger never satiated,
A thirst never quenched.
A vein to mine as rich as Croesus ,
Yet a pauper would hold more wealth.
But..
It is denied to the cruel and greedy,
Those seekers of mammon and of wealth.
For it can be seen in their gold and silver ,
Their envy and their pelf.
That there, at the base of their every building,
Be it of of marble or Platinum.
Lay the broken, twisted bodies ,
Of abandoned, homeless humans.
So they will never be rewarded,
With it’s velvet glove of desire,
Their hands too full already,
Their eyes too blind to inquire.
So :
Ladies…
There is this little secret that ,
I’ll not share with other men.
It’s deep, it’s dark , it’s truth rather stark.
Though the wording mostly unseen.
You may know it or at least sense it,
For it was whispered you at birth.
You wear it as a heritage,
You shed it at your death.
Though you may not explain it fully,
There are times , I think you know..
When the call of men and children,
Must need your attention most of all.
I promise I will never reveal it,
Because that secret is held you see..
In a knowing look , a furtive wink,
exchanged in passing,
Just between you and me.

We’re Going to Federation Square.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxMjOo5UUAAOV1S.jpg

Quo Vadis…

I’m going to Federation Square,
I’m going to join some friends there.
I’m going to Federation Square ,
To confront a national peril.

There’s a mood gathering there,
With people in Federation Square
We’re off to stare-down there,
The ugly face of evil.

They’ll no doubt bring their rags,
Their bogan-slogans, usurped flags,
The plug-ugly scabs and hags.
With their hate and bigoted drivel.

So I’m going to Federation Square,
Myself and my friends to share.
The fight for all that’s fair,
To hold onto our civil rights!

Are you coming to Federation Square?
We will all meet together where
We confront the Fascists there,
To fight for our right to be free!

So ALL to Federation Square!
ALL people gathered there!
We’ll take those bastards fair,
And kick their arse to buggery!

‘OORAY !

Grappling with the Stupid.

Have you ever been confronted one to one with mind-numbing stupidity? With a person who looks sensible enough, ie; is not dressed unusually or extremely confronting and who talks in a calm, considered way..yet is espousing the most ridiculous rubbish you have ever heard..that eye-wincing, head shaking to clear the foolishness.. from what should be a credible conversation?..I’m sure you have..I have too..and I will give you just two examples of recent times.

#1.
An Anti wind-turbine spokesman.

After a lengthy diatribe on the ill effects of both noise and sub-vibrational waves to both humans and animals, there was a pause in the “conversation” for me to digest these amazing “facts”..”Facts” supplied by brochures put out by the “Landscape Guardians”..I was able to gather my thoughts and make some of my own observations. Knowing, as I did , the location of this person’s residence in relation to the distance from the proposed wind-farm, I was curious why he felt threatened.

“So..both the noise AND the vibrations come from the turning of the propeller on the turbine..which is transmitted over land and air to your place..?” They agreed..of course.
“And you live, I could calculate , approximately ten kilometres from the proposed nearest tower?…Yes, they acquiesced, but that made no difference as the vibrations could travel as much as 25klms’ from the source, evidently.

“And so , if my own experience is correct, as I live in this same area, near the same roads and under the same skies..There is the main flight-path from the eastern states to the capital city flying at any time right overhead..there is approximately many thousands of hectares of prime cropping land continually worked with heavy farming machinery throughout the year around you…there are two main roads that carry a regular stream of heavy transport B-Doubles from North / West to the eastern states right past your “front door”..there is wind in the trees, the power wires both next your property and on the main transmission towers right where the wind-towers are proposed, not to mention the many kilometres of fencing wire “singing in the wind”…and through all these other interruptions of background noise and vibrations, like the pressure pump for your water supply to the house and then all those white-goods that service your lifestyle…you can single out and identify that one particular “wind-turbine problem” that you claim is detrimental to one’s health?”

Now, at this point of any conversation with a person whose convictions are guided by “imported” ideology as against rational self-thought..you meet that moment of confusion that is taking place in their mind..the “veil of confusion” clouds, momentarily, their eyes..you can actually see it..you notice the stumped pause in their otherwise assertive declaiming..there is two ways one goes from such a point, one pauses, thinks on the information and says;

“Well…when you state it like that..there is something in what you say…”

or, as was the case in point:

“Yes..I could.”

And there..is the stupid..not in the denial as much in the lack of intent to even think on the foolish of it.

#2.

The definite knowing of how nodules of limestone calcrete scattered on a road are formed.

This was a neighbour of mine..and the spouse, at their property, on my picking up and turning over a spherical nodule of the calcrete found all over this location.

“Amazing, isn’t it how they are so round “..I turned it over and over.

“Yes..it’s the wheels that do it.” they casually remarked…so casually in fact that I thought they were talking on another subject.

‘These rocks, I mean”..I focused by holding up the item.

“Yes..I know…it’s the wheels that roll the dust around on the road that make them like that”.

I giggled, because I thought they were having me on in an innocent way.

“No” I innocently corrected.”…you can see if you break one open , the layers of built up strata over…well, in some cases.. a millenia of years, from the dark centre “pith” outwards.”…then I got the “clouded eyes” look and I realised they were serious…I became aware of my own frown…the spouse chipped in confidently.

“Yes..they come from the wheels spinning them..they break off the bigger pieces of limestone and they get rounded by the tyres spinning over them on the road.”

I looked to one, then the other…the eyes give it away..there is no-where to go from there..you just do one of those shut-mouthed gestures and drop the worthless stone to your feet…but at the same time, judging from past experience of conversations, you just know their opinion is the same opinion as the wider community of “old Family connections”…and you make a note to avoid any further observations on matters geologically interesting.

But there persists, as you drive home, the nagging frustration that here, with these criothans of idiocy, comes the power to vote in the political fools; local, state and federal that have the capacity to ruin your life…themselves, with an intellect like they have..they wouldn’t even know they were falling till they were three steps over the precipice!

“There was a silence again. Big Ian took a breath. “Orinjis,” he said, and then took another breath, “graw i’ Spain.”
He looked at Mr. Smith so emphatically that Mr. Smith nodded.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “They grow in Spain, too, I understand.”
“Orinjis,” Ian repeated, “graw i’ Spain.”
That seemed to settle the question. They all looked in the fire in silence. Saw Cooper sniffed.”…(Eric Knight ; “All Yankees are Liars”)

Kapitan Kemp’s Diary.

This story has two connections..The first is the idea and theme for the setting which came from a contribution in a WW2. official government publication ; “As You Were”..one of many such publications put out during and after the second world war from the Australian military..The writer was T.G.Hungerford..for whom I gratefully thank…the article was ; “Last Entry in Red” (As You Were; 1950).I have shifted the setting for the tale to the retreating German army and the Russian front.
The second connection is from a story told to me by an acquaintance many years ago about her father and his best friend, who signed onto the Czechoslovakian resistance in the 2nd.WW. as sixteen year old boys..the incident described in the story below about the young boys happened to the father.

It went like this..
Kapitan Kemp’s Diary.
My name is David Groetz, I am a teacher of German at the college. A week ago my neighbour at the units where I live stopped me outside my door as I came home from work.

“Ah, Mr Groetz!” He touched my sleeve.

“Yes?”, I didn’t remember his name.
“Mr Groetz…excuse me,.. I have a little problem,.. a bit of translating I would ask you to do…seeing as it’s in your line of work, so to speak.”

He was an old man so I obliged him to look at the “bit of translating”.

“You see,” he commenced as he handed me a slim note-book, very old and rather damaged. “It is from the war…yes…I took it from the hand of a soldier that I had shot…yes…in an attack of course.” he hastened to reassure me “I was with the advancing Russian army chasing the Nazi retreat.” he explained.

I eyed him wearily. I wasn’t keen to get caught up in another war epic, so I sighed and placed the slim note-pad on the table while I prepared a coffee in my unit to which we had both adjourned.

“Why do you wish to translate it?” I asked.

“Curiosity”…the old man shrugged, “that is all…curiosity and,… I am growing old and a small thing puzzles me about the soldier I took that note-book from.”

“You are puzzled by a dead man after all these years” I gazed at him quizzically.

“Yes…I tell you:…”

He sat and clasped his hands together in front of him on the table.

“I was a corporal with the Soviet army and we were chasing the German retreat out of Russia. Myself and my platoon advanced upon this post, an old foresters hut within a clearing in the forest. As we crept up to it, one of the sentries gave a cry and we attacked with grenades…I came in from the left flank and took up a position behind a thick stump of a tree Just as I did so, this soldier, the Kapitan, ran out of the door close to me and turned away from me.

“Stoi !” I yelled…”Halt!” but he just looked at me, turned away and ran…now this is the queer thing,…he ran not to cover, but rather to the centre of the clearing, out in the open!”

“Halt” I shouted again but he kept running toward the centre of the clearing, so I opened fire and he stumbled but kept on going forward the most…most sad, hopeless expression on his face and finally he fell, almost relieved, I couldn’t help but think, into this sward of…of “fialki” we call them…white violets…and as I ran up to him I saw that he, with his last strength, sort of embrace an armful of these violets and as I stood over him I heard him murmur with his dying breath, “Liebling…mien liebling.” I took this note-book from his hand there and then…I have always wondered if that captain was mad or if there is a clue in the note-pad, for he had no gun on him, only that book…and he looked so very determined when he ran toward those violets.”

I raised my eyebrows appropriately at my neighbour’s story and said very well, I will look at it and translate that which is readable.

“I know it seems a trivial thing..yes…but…I am an old man now,” he sighed as he passed through the door ” and I feel I must know about that captain and the answer, maybe is in that book”.

The writing in the note-pad was very faded, in most places illegible. But I thumbed through it just to satisfy my neighbour. It was toward the last few pages of transcript that I found a reference to the flowers that the captain had died in. I translated those last few pages for the old man so:

From Kapitan Kemp’s Diary.

” Monday:

Violets!, violets! can you imagine that mein liebling, violets as pure as the snow they break through! who would have thought this cursed Russian countryside could produce something so beautiful. They reminded me immediately of you my dear, after all, you share their name: ” Viola” – violets. I say your name to myself so as to relish your memory and hope for the time when I will see you again. …perhaps now that the flowers have bloomed maybe spring is here enough for us to get out of this place. The men are of high morale considering the circumstances… I have my orders to hold the ground at all costs and to remain until further orders come through. It is not Berlin here,…but…

Tuesday:

Things must be moving fast at the front which is god knows where by now. At night the sky is a veritable bonfire. The men are jumpy, but on the whole, disciplined, although Sergeant Richter reported some rations missing, he suspects one of the two young boys (Klaus and Dieter) of taking them. He wants them disciplined, but I have my doubts it is they at all. I will look into it, I tell him and he grudgingly dismissed himself. I worry about Richter, he always seems to find trouble among the men.

We have four peasant soldiers in the unit and they are a very morose lot, they say they can feel death approaching…fools… they call death: HE. “He’s around about”, one of them would say mysteriously nodding his woolly head or, “He’s coming for sure”, when we’d get a barrage of artillery. I had to command them to “shut-up” that kind of talk. Just then some artillery howled away over-head toward the distance:

“Those’ll be ours” I lied to boost their morale, but the sergeant just looked at me strangely so I said, “eh ,Sergeant?”

“Yes”, he replied quietly, “ours…yes sir,” but I don’t think the men really believed me.

The violets are springing up in a big patch in the middle of the clearing…they look truly wonderful…like the terrace garden in that little park at the end of our street…Ach! that I could be there with you now. Dieter and Klaus couldn’t have stolen the rations, they are too simple, too honest both with me and with each other, like twins, mere boys…maybe sixteen, no more than…

Wednesday:

Enemy snipers have moved forward, one of our peasant soldiers shot dead yesterday, means their front is approaching, still no word from H.Q. The men are nervous, it’s the waiting, waiting that gets at them, at me too, not sleeping much at all. A message from Post 12 on my left flank half a kilometer away they are getting short of supplies, could I afford to send a few? Am getting low ourselves, can’t get to the bottom of this thieving business…have secretly assigned corporal Schmidt to observe the store surreptitiously night and day! Sent what food I could spare back with the messenger…shouldn’t weigh him down in the snow!

Every evening I am going over to the patch of violets…”the Kapitans’ flowers”, I have heard the men giggle behind my back, but I don’t mind, indeed it is just that…my violets…my Viola! I go there and kneel next to them on one knee and slowly sweep my hand through…they are so soft and yielding…tonight as I was there thinking of you my darling, one of the young boys…Klaus… came and stood behind me and addressed me so that I almost got a fright, but I kept my balance.

“Sir,” he called softly (I think he respects my solitude…he is a good boy).

“Yes”, I replied without turning.

“The men were wondering if they…we, could have permission to tune in to a home broadcast tonight…Sir.”

He stood rigid to attention there…those others must have sent him as they know I have a soft spot for the “children” as I call them sometimes. Ordinarily I would never permit such a thing, the ordeal would be too upsetting, hearing songs and talk from back home while stuck here at the front. but tonight for some reason I acquiesced.

Tonight I feel for the first time I will never see you again… forgive me this cowardice.

Thursday:

What a cursed day! That bloody radio program last night did just as I suspected it would; it upset the whole camp, it was all I could do to call the men to order this morning. It started out alright, with a bit of news and a few “bar room” songs that had the men stomping their feet and singing along, I even wished I had a few steins of beer to give out…and a few buxom barmaids to serve them!! But then after a pause in the music for a bit of talk, a new song came over. The woman singing, I have to admit had, if not a wonderful Voice, a voice very coaxing, very gentle, almost caressing tone about her, and the words and music crept deep into my mind, my heart, and the men quieted down with that song and no-one looked to each other anymore, they all gazed down at the little fire we have in the middle of the floor.

Oh! her voice, it was like yours my love, like yours, like my mothers, like…like…all the women I have heard…like home… ya, like home…maybe soon eh?.

Corporal Schmidt reported on who is stealing the supplies. He noticed the soldier creep quietly out from the sing-along with the radio and go outside…he followed him and saw him take a portion of the rations to a hiding place just away a bit in the woods. The thief is Sergeant Richter! Yes, surprise, surprise, although he has the eyes for it. And he would have seen the young boys punished for it! A cruel man. I shall have to deal with him soon.

More Violets! Yes even more. I think of that song the woman sung last night:
“My legs grow strong, My pack is light!” Yes, my heart too is light at the mere thought of you, Viola, are you waiting for me like Lili Marlene? .

Friday:

Things go from bad to worse. No sleep at all last night. Although same could be said for most of this week. I am at my wit’s end, and the men feel it. Still no orders from H.Q….is there still a H.Q.?…are we forgotten here?…But must stay…only cowards and the stupid desert their posts. And seeing as I’m not about to become a fool, and I pray God for courage, I shall stay, but feel now there is little hope. The war seems all around us, the night is forever ablaze! Shall I ever touch your soft skin again as I touch the violets Will you ever yield to my love as do the violets to my hand? I day-dream often of my family, but then wince away the memory, for I have my duty here although my heart has already fled away.

Sadness, waste. Dieter is dead. Sent a patrol out to scout for the enemy front and they were ambushed. Dieter was shot in the stomach and fell screaming at Klaus’s feet. Sergeant Richter tried to get Klaus to take cover but he would not leave Dieters side. They returned in an awful state with a few others minor wounded.

“I told him Captain,” Richter explained. “We must go…we have to leave him, we are under fire! But he would not leave his side, bloody fool could’ve got us all killed…ya..ya. I know Dieter wasn’t dead, but we couldn’t carry him in his condition and we couldn’t stay.”

“Well, what did you do?” I asked

“Me?…nothing…not I, sir.” Richter shrugged, and then turned his gaze slowly to the boy…god, only a boy. “He did it” Richter said softly.

“Did what?” I demanded fiercely.

Richter just put his index finger slowly to his, temple and made a gesture with his thumb. Klaus just stood there in shock…only a god-damned boy…

“With his rifle?” I asked.

“Nien…Sir…” Richter wet his lips “I gave him my Luger.”

I looked at Klaus just standing there, a boy, they send us mere boys to be brutalized so…I lost my temper at the futility of it all and grabbed Richter by the throat and thrust him against the wall.

“You…you made the boy do what you,…a grown man…an experienced soldier and commander should have done” I was speechless with rage… “You made him kill his friend while you looked on…lent him your Luger.. lent – him – your – bloody – Luger!…his best friend for gods sake!…” and I shook him and shook him and I think I might have throttled him if I had not heard a sobbing sound coming from Klaus that caught my anger and brought me around. I let go of the sergeant slowly and turned to look at Klaus who was standing loosely to attention and his shoulders shaking and trying his hardest not to cry..The boys had signed up together..just a boy…

“We had to go, Captain..” the sergeant continued, still fallen against the boxes where I had pushed him. “We had to go…and besides,Sir..besides.. he too is…is now..a soldier…Sir.”

I turned quickly to address this thief, but words would not come to my mouth. I dismissed him to get him out of my sight. Klaus I kept a while longer.

I did not go tonight to the violets.

Saturday:

All is over, I can hear small arms fire out at the enemy front and to my left flank, presumably the other post I sent the food to. Speaking of which, I finally dealt with Sergeant Richter. I discover from one of the men that he was going to desert us and also that he had been selling our scarce rations for money for this adventure. I could have shot him myself, but this would have unnerved the men so I wrote a dispatch to the commander of the post on my left flank:

“Commander, the man who delivers this dispatch to you is named Sergeant Richter. He is a liar, a thief and a coward. Execute him immediately”… I signed it ; “Captain Kemp.” and I put my official seal on the envelope. I called Sergeant Richter.

“Here, sergeant.” I kept my face stony, but it was giving me pleasure, though I hate to admit it.

“Take this dispatch to the commander of post 12. See that he receives it personally.”

“But sir.” He shifted his feet anxiously. “It is getting toward evening” he cowered. I raised my eyebrow.

“What I mean Sir.” he shifted ground. “Seeing as it’s getting dark and it will be night by the time I turn around to come back…would it be alright for me to stay there the night?” I laughed to myself cruelly…I laughed;

“Why, yes…yes sergeant…you will stay there the night.” and I saluted him off.

As I write this I am becoming more and more sure we have been forgotten by H.Q. and I am almost of the opinion that we should pull back toward our own lines. Yes! I feel certain of it as I write this. Indeed, I will finish this entry then give the order to abandon post! Yes mein liebling, soon now I will come home to you, I promise. I will be there in time for the spring and together we will touch the violets, and maybe also then you will yield to my love… All I now ask is to have the chance to see you again, just for the joy, please God, please , plea…”

End of diary.

(translator – Groetz)