11. September 1943
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| Spandau | 
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| Stettin |
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| Cammin |
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| OKW situation map October 1943 | 
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| Training course for convalescent officers | ||||
| Wehrkreiskommando III | ||||
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A week later[1] I am discharged and sent to a training course for convalescent officers in Spandau. At these courses, officers are assembled who have been discharged from the military hospital but have not yet fully healed. Curative treatment continues here, but is essentially limited to radiation and massages. In addition, however, there is the course with a fixed timetable, in which all areas of military knowledge are refreshed practically and theoretically. It is obligatory duty. Closing time is five o’clock in the afternoon. The Berliners are allowed to live and sleep at home. For me, however, the journey from Spandau to Friedrichshagen is too far and time-consuming, so I am only ever at my parents’ house on Wednesdays and over the weekend.
In between, I obtain leave to go to Szczecin once, where I meet up with Carola. Before leaving, I meet Miss X at Stettiner Bahnhof who wants to take the same train. She is a tall, willowy, light-blond, blue-eyed squire’s daughter from the Kołobrzeg area. The train was very crowded, and that gave us ample excuse to stand close together. The stately girl was of a barely restrained complaisance. She became engaged to a captain a few months later, as she wrote to me.
In Szczecin, Carola is standing on the platform. She looks around with bright, attentive eyes, but only notices me when I stand in front of her. She looks darned attractive in her well-fitting green costume and perky little hat.
Once again I have taken leave to Kamień Pomorski. It is a crucial trip, for we may want to get engaged. I come without a firm decision and when I arrive I don’t yet know how it will turn out. I sleep in the spa hotel. The next day is a Sunday. At Carola’s suggestion, we go to church and receive Communion to ask for God’s grace and enlightenment for our vital decision. In the afternoon we go for a walk. It is a dull, rainy day. After a lot of criss-crossing through the city, we then stand on the jetty at the Bodden and wrestle for the decision. Carola hustles into engagement, but I’m still conflicted about my feelings. Isn’t it unwise to get married in the middle of war? Or did I just not want to lose my freedom yet? Or was there another person in between from whom it was difficult to part? Or am I simply hard of decision? In the end I agreed to it, without actually saying it clearly. In the late afternoon I have to go back to Berlin. Carola takes me to the station. We stand at the train. And while I’m already standing with my feet on the footstep, boarding, Carola asks me again: “Are we engaged now?” When I then smile a “yes” at her, joy lights up on her face.
The course takes place in a barracks in Spandau. When I approach the barracks gate for the first time, the guard hurries at a quick pace to his place next to the sentry box and performs a snappy present-arms in front of me. This is customary towards officers, but I was experiencing it for the first time. Now it is an old custom that officers who are saluted for the first time with a present-arms slip the guard a coin. I did the same, and when I saw the uncomprehending astonishment of the sentry, I had to explain this custom, which was unknown to him.
The course leader in Spandau is a leg-amputated colonel. On the bench next to me sits a Lieutenant von Schlieffen, a grandson of the great strategist.[2].
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- ↑ on 11 Sep 1943 according to Soldbuch p. 12/13
- ↑ Alfred von Schlieffen had no grandchildren named Schlieffen; nephew Eberhard was 58 years old at the time, great-nephew Ernst-Albrecht already deceased in 1942, others not found