Number two.

The third victim—who will it be?—should start worrying.

Herman died during ‘hand-grenade training’.

The routine exercise goes like this: each Jungmann has to place a hand grenade on his helmet, and time it for detonation in three seconds. The exercise is successful if the Jungmann manages to stay completely still, without shaking, perhaps even without thinking—an idea could make him flinch. The grenade stays balanced on his helmet and explodes there. No damage to anything. The apprentice soldier comes out of it unharmed. Sure, he’s a bit shaken, stunned by the noise of the explosion and by the terror he experienced during those three seconds that felt like an eternity. But he’s in one piece.

The exercise is a failure when the grenade falls—either it wasn’t placed in the right spot on the helmet or the Jungmann moved slightly, a sudden urge to sneeze, or cough, or there was a gust of wind—and it explodes at his feet. Half the student’s leg is torn off, or the whole leg, or both, but he’s alive and quickly rushed to hospital. The Napola pays for his treatment and provides him with a compensatory pension for the rest of his life.

In Herman’s case it wasn’t just a failure, it was a bloodbath. Butchery. The grenade fell on his shoulder, so the explosion reduced his head to a pulp.

Just like Gunter.

The mastermind behind this second murder is obvious. At least it is for me, as I know there was a first murder. By Lukas. This time I don’t need him to explain what happened. Herman didn’t flinch, Herman didn’t sneeze, or he would have only had his legs blown off. Lukas wanted him gone. Lukas wanted to decapitate him. So he made sure the grenade fell in just the right spot: on his shoulder. It was just a matter of a small dent in the helmet. Lukas must have tampered with it while Herman was asleep. Or else, on some pretext or another, he exchanged helmets at the last minute.

I’m sure my hypothesis is correct, but I’ll never know.

Lukas was absent from the dining hall that day. He wasn’t at the farm or at the carpentry workshop in the afternoon. Had he already been unmasked before the news of his arrest had been announced? I could already see him being interrogated by the Heimführer, declared guilty, hanged on a butcher’s hook and, by way of example, put on display, bleeding, in front of everyone gathered in the courtyard. He didn’t turn up at dinner either. I couldn’t stand it any longer so I asked one of his classmates and was told that Lukas, along with a few other students, had left on a training exercise.

Phew!

During their training at the Napola, the Jungmannen often undertook training outside the school: study exchanges overseas, at a Napola in an occupied country, for example. Or time spent in German families, in cities or in the countryside, to lend a hand while the men were away, and to prevent any defeatist attitudes developing. Or work with the potato harvest. Lukas’s training was in ‘Special Missions’. He had to supervise prisoners of war in factories (it used to be in Volkswagen assembly factories; now it was armaments and munitions factories). The workers were from France, Belgium, Holland, and there were Russians, who had the worst reputation. He had to check their production times and make sure they didn’t steal.

I’m doubly relieved. Lukas wasn’t unmasked and, over the coming months, no more students will lose their heads—literally.

But in the meantime, I’m losing the plot. There’s something wrong. The mood at the Napola has changed. There are fewer and fewer of us every day, both students and teachers. The final-year students go straight into the army, without even sitting an exam. So many others graduate, in waves, to the next level, as if, all of a sudden, they were all deemed gifted. The morning classes are down to a strict minimum: no more German, History or Maths classes, only Biology now and again. But the physical training is more intense: we do it mid-morning, all afternoon, and in the evening instead of supervised homework. It’s exhausting; we’re allowed no mistakes and any sign of weakness is severely reprimanded by instructors who are on the edge of hysteria.

Same deal with the Heimführer, who bombards us, at every meal, with a double ration of speeches instead of his normal readings. His voice, usually so modulated, often rises to a screech. His face is swollen, sweating; he makes big theatrical gestures, scanning the rows anxiously to find any looks of incredulity among us. The Volkssturm!* That’s all we hear about. The Volkssturm is rising. A new army is on the march. Nothing will stop it, it will guarantee the Reich’s victory, just like the finale of a fireworks display. We, the Jungvolk, will be the main members. We are going to take up arms. We have to be ready to undergo the final sacrifice for the Führer.

Double ration of speeches. Half rations on our plates. Even though the physical training leaves us ravenous.

I’m really missing the extras that Lukas used to sneak me.

He’s still not here.

But it’s as if I can hear his voice contradicting that of the Heimführer’s. The ‘magic potion’ flushes out of my system a lot more slowly than food does. A voice inside me—Lukas’s? Mine? I don’t know anymore—is telling me that our missing teachers are at the front. If we’re mobilising younger and younger soldiers, it’s because the adults have called it quits. They’re prisoners, or they’re dead.

There are rumours that, every now and again, instructors form commando units with students who haven’t been called up. One of the units that recently left on a mission was made up of five young boys, the youngest of whom was thirteen. Only two out of the five made it back. Severely wounded. The boy of thirteen had half his face blown off. There are rumours about schools all through the country having to retreat to other schools as the enemy advances—the Russians, for the most part. But we don’t have anywhere to retreat to: Potsdam is too close to Berlin.

It’s hard to untangle the truth from the lies. It’s hard to know if we should be frightened of dying or thrilled to fight. Or be frightened to fight while being thrilled to die.

The good thing about the changes is that security is less strict, especially at night in the dormitories. The section leader isn’t always on our back. And, even if he were still here, there’s not much to supervise. Most of my buddies are so exhausted they fall asleep even before their heads hit the pillow. They go to bed early and are scarcely awake during the free time before lights-out. I wonder sometimes, in the mornings, if the wake-up bell will ring in a completely silent room, unable to wake corpses.

Fatigue makes me nervy and I can’t sleep. Without having to worry about my fellow dormmates, I can ‘play’ as much as I like. I’ve still got Lukas’s present under my pillow. The farting Führer. (I didn’t throw him away, and I won’t until I’ve extracted from Lukas exactly how he made the farting mechanism.) In the end, I like the toy. I play with him every night. I talk to him.

‘Do you think somehow you might have tricked us?’ I ask him. ‘Lied to us? Were all your fancy speeches just hot air? Like your farts? Go on, answer me! Answer me, you idiot!’

He says nothing and that really annoys me, so I slap him. I yank on his arm to pay him back for his silence. And he farts, and farts. And that makes me laugh. I laugh so much I end up crying. Afterwards, I’m ashamed, full of remorse. I insulted our Führer. What sacrilege. I doubted his word. Verboten! In order to redeem myself, I undertake a self-criticism: I was under a negative influence, but I have removed myself from it and I still believe in victory and in the invincibility of the Reich. I deserve a punishment. As there is no one here to punish me, I’ll do it myself. I take my dagger of honour and, with the tip, I make cuts on my hands and on my arms. It hurts. It feels good. And I end up falling asleep with my face on the Führer’s bum.

Every night I do the same thing. I put up with it better than the toy does. Even if I have more and more cuts, they’re not deep and scar over well. But the Führer can’t cope with being handled so much; not only does he not fart anymore, he falls to pieces. I chuck him in the bin.