There is the mad story of Detering.
He was one of those who kept himself to himself. His misfortune was that he saw a cherry tree in a garden. We were just coming back from the front line, and at a turning of the road near our new billets, marvellous in the morning twilight, stood this cherry tree before us. It had no leaves, but was one white mass of blossom.
In the evening Detering was not to be seen. Then at last he came back and had a couple of branches of cherry blossom in his hand. We made fun of him, and asked whether he was going to a wedding. He made no answer, but laid them on his bed. During the night I heard him making a noise, he seemed to be packing. I sensed something amiss and went over to him. He made out it was nothing, and I said to him: "Don't do anything silly, Detering."
"Ach, why—it's merely that I can't sleep——"
"What did you pick the cherry branches for?"
"I might have been going to get some more cherry branches," he replied, evasively—and after a while: "I have a big orchard with cherry trees at home. When they are in blossom, from the hay loft they look like one single sheet, so white. It is just the time."
"Perhaps you will get leave soon. You may even be sent back as a farmer."
He nodded, but he was far away. When these peasants are excited they have a curious expression, a mixture of cow and yearning god, half stupid and half rapt. In order to turn him away from his thoughts I asked him for a piece of bread. He gave it to me without a murmur. That was suspicious, for he is usually tight-fisted. So I stayed awake. Nothing happened; in the morning he was as usual.
Apparently he had noticed that I had been watching him;—but the second morning after he was gone. I noticed it, but said nothing, in order to give him time; he might perhaps get through. Various fellows have already got into Holland.
But at roll call he was missed. A week after we heard that he had been caught by the field gendarmes, those despicable military police. He had headed toward Germany, that was hopeless, of course—and, of course, he did everything else just as idiotically. Anyone might have known that his flight was only home-sickness and a momentary aberration. But what does a court martial hundreds of miles behind the front-line know about it? We have heard nothing more of Detering.