Painful Blows

[Mammatus]

Here is one of my more troubling memories from my PL as a German soldier in WWII. This is from my blog on wordpress, which you can find the link to in my signature.

I’m standing in a study of some sort, it is filled with books and shelves. A library perhaps? I am in uniform, as is custom for meetings with commanding officers. I take a look around, investigating the many books that reside here. After several minutes, the door to the libary/study opens, and in walks my commanding officer (Man from Berlin bar). He has a wide smile spread across his face, happy to see me he says. He extends his left hand, which is gloved, and waits for me to take it. I do. His smile fades as he talks about feeling “disappointed in my work”. I’m of course, understanding, I am somewhat absent-minded. But then from no where, he produces a night-stick, which he then brings swiftly across the left side of my face. His expression screams anger, as I fall to the floor in shock and pain. He hit me very hard. I try to scoot back out of his reach, but his left fist connects with the other side of my face. I reach a wall behind me and am cornered, as he shoves his boot into my side. Tears of pain stream down my face. I am confused and do not understand. I try to lift myself off the ground, but I can hardly see. He grips his hands on the collar of my uniform, pulling me up roughly, pushing me against the the wall. I stare into his electric eyes, searching for an answer. Why is he doing this? I managed to squeak out an incomplete “why”. He just stares at me, his angry expression quickly fading to one of horror. He lets go of my collar and steps back, looking at the ground.

I cringe as pain shoots through my face and side. Tears are still flowing down my face, but the pain has slowed them. He looks at me, and shakes his head. “I’m sorry” he says (all conversations between here are in German btw). He then goes on to do something unexpected. He actually tried to hug me. He actually sounds as if he is crying. I’m still in shock over the attack, and wriggle away. I walk to the door, and I can feel his eyes boring into my head. I close it behind me, a friend waiting outside. The left side of my face is extremely swollen, and my friend freaks at the sight of my bruised and beaten face. He asks me what happened, but I just shake my head. I don’t want to talk about it.

He drives me home and I am greeted by my significant other at the door. She has a smile on her face at first, until she sees my face. She asks me what happened, lightly touching my cheek with her hand. I start crying, and she enbraces me in a loving hug. We sit on a couch in our living room, and I sob into her arms as she tries to soothe my pain.

After some reflection, it feels as if my commanding officer was more angry with himself for some reason other than what he mentioned, and then decided to take it out on me. Why, I don't really know.
Any thoughts?

 

[Mama2HRB]

Could he have been following orders from someone else, and then when he realized how bad he hurt you he felt bad?

 

[Mammatus]

I guess that's a possibility. I distinctly remember having a dream where someone screwed up an important document, and I got mad, but decided to spare them and take the blame (they were somewhat of a newbie).

 

[Mama2HRB]

The beating could have been as a result of your taking the blame for the newbie's mistake.

 

[Nightrain]

The exercise of discipline takes many forms, and is sometimes very brutal and impersonal in some circumstances, such as the situation described by Mammatus. I don't know how pervasive it was during the Nazi regime, but I have seen it exercised even here in the United States by certain organized groups. The punishment is often meted out by a responsible party who may, in fact, be good friends with the victim. For example, some motorcycle clubs have what is called a Sargeant-at-arms. If the President of another club is responsible for bringing "heat" upon his club, even though he might not have been directly responsible, the Sargeant-at-arms is expected to call that President on the carpet and physically "thump" him, sometimes with a baseball bat. This is how most organizations throughout history have maintained discipline in the ranks. And the measure of a person's moral strength and character was/is determined by one's willingness to carry out their responsibility, no matter how distasteful, even at the expense of a close personal or familial relationship. As they say, "...nothing personal!".

 

[Blueheart]

Only you have the answer, of course. But having grown up in a German-American family, I can venture a few guesses.


The officer saw himself in you, and didn't like what he saw, and set out to stamp it out.


The officer probably rationalized that it was "for your own good." Any number of scary, dangerous, and violent things happened in my family's history for this reason.


Hope this helps.

 

[catseye]

during the war


In my experience in that same period I found that a lot of men in uniform were extremely frustrated individuals who seemed to take out their anger on whoever gave them the slightest opportunity. You, my friend, seemed to be in the wrong place at the right time. The officer probably got a tongue lashing from his boss and he had to hand it on down the line.


I found in my own experience that you learned to avoid any instance that might get you NOTICED if something went wrong because somebody somewhere was going to make you pay for it.


The hugging part kinda surprises me though, perhaps wou were some relative of the officer and he was trying to let you know that his actions were purely 'business' oriented and not personal.


Just a thought.:freak: