Of: A tale of how Peter Mueller came to be

By Steve Luttner

Of – A tale about how Peter Mueller came to be is crisply written, fast-moving historical fiction that sprinkles its characters into a backdrop of international events over a period of roughly 100 years. Beginning in 1870 in Europe, the book touches upon three wars and conveys the travails of poor Hungarian and German immigrants arriving in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Settings include World War One bomber runs over the Italian Alps, the horse farms of Kentucky and the coal mines of Ohio. Of poignantly transmits the harshness and poverty that many immigrants encountered upon arriving in America during that period. Characters' sparse, bleak environments are leavened by frequent injections of humor that help to keep the reader engaged. Of relies heavily upon dialogue between characters, including those who don't speak English very well. All of this is tidily connected, even the final chapter that finds the book's namesake physically ejected from a beer festival in France the day that Richard Nixon resigned from office.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098350376

Book preview

Of

©2020, Steve Luttner

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions

thereof in any form whatsoever.

This is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, historical people

or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are

products of the author’s imagination.

ISBN: 978-1-09835-036-9

ISBN eBook: 978-1-09835-037-6

To Christine

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Forward

History, particularly the period between 1861 and 1945, has always captivated me. I am especially drawn to the recollection of military exploits, which attracts me for a variety of reasons including the gallantry of troops and the compacted and intense dramas resulting from combat.

Never having experienced the death, destruction and suffering of warfare, I wonder how my interest would have been affected if I had.

Being interested in history does not make one a historian, and I certainly fall far short of that. This is a work of fiction and – while it generally adheres to real global events – much of what follows is made up by me. This book certainly includes historical inaccuracies, but it is not intended to be a textbook. At its best, it is simply meant to entertain.

Some of the content is built upon the long-buried bones of family lore that I often have not been able to verify or document. Some of the events in this book occurred, or at least I believe they occurred, but other sections are total fabrications.

I had a blast writing it. After decades of writing for editors and clients, I wrote this to please only myself. If that sounds selfish, then I am guilty as charged.

This is by far my most significant effort to write fiction. To me it’s a new and wonderful world. Writing requires discipline on any level, but spinning fiction is for me different and liberating.

I have been carrying parts of this book in my head for decades. There’s only so much writing, even in its simplest forms, that can be done well by any one person in any single day. I knew that I simply wouldn’t be able to do my best work with a novel during my working years. I also thought it unfair to my previous employers to write this book while I was still being paid to write newspaper stories and later, social media posts, press releases and speeches. One has only so much quality writing capital in a day or a week. Retirement and blessed good health gave me the chance to complete this top bucket list item. I am as thankful as I am gratified.

Special thanks to my wife, Christine, the love of my life, who always encouraged and supported me in my previous work as well as this undertaking. She served as my editor as she did many years ago when I was just beginning my career as a newspaper reporter. She is as smart as she is pretty, and she is very pretty.

Steve Luttner

Chapter 1

Northeast France, 1870

He awoke alone in the mud shortly before the sun rose over the silent field.

It had – at least early on - been a great night, what he could recall of it. He and three of his fellow soldiers from the Third Bavarian Horse Korps had gotten time-limited passes to go into town. The German army, where Anton Schmidt served as a lowly horse tender, had been stationary for more than a week with no engagement with the French to the south.

With a snarl and a penetrating glare, Sgt. Heinrich Wiessturt issued the passes to Anton and his horse-tending army buddies.

Passes in hand, they had hitched a ride to town on a munitions wagon, which was en route to a depot to pick up a load of artillery ordnance. They jumped off in front of the Place de Berlin, a tavern with a name that reflected the French and German influences of the Alsace-Lorain region of northern France that was now the bloodiest real estate in the Franco-Prussian War. The war would last less than a year. It would be a humiliating defeat for France and would unite Germany, making it into a continental power.

The four young, uniformed men guzzled good beer and threw back shots of lie, a potent, inexpensive drink made from the remnants of the wine-making process – grape skins, seeds and stems, their valued first press juices already having been extracted and sent along to be made into wine. The refuse would be pressed one final time to produce the brownish liquid known as lie, which came with a faintly foul aroma that some likened to slightly aged manure.

The tavern’s clientele was a mix of reserved townspeople and boisterous German soldiers. The soldiers were discouraged from fraternizing with the locals, who kept their distance and tended to sit quietly at tables in the shadows.

As the evening wore on and the beer and lie continued to flow, Anton struck up an age-old dialogue with a full-figured barmaid in a white blouse who looked increasingly more appealing as the alcohol-hazed evening progressed.

It was from that point forward that his aching head had trouble recalling what happened next, but he had somehow convinced the barmaid – he had no idea if he had even learned her name – to return to the vicinity of his camp, with the bleary reasoning that he knew his pass was limited and – if he returned after his allotted time – Sgt. Wiessturt would impose severe and immediate penalties.

The barmaid had asked Anton if he could loan her some money, which he did, understanding even in his drunkenness that it was in fact payment for services about to be rendered. He felt now suddenly for his wallet, which was missing, causing another jolt of anxiety as he lay in the large French field that was surrounded by forest. The slowly rising sun now began to illuminate the perimeter of treetops. Early birds began to tentatively chirp, one note at a time, in the low light of the new day.

The barmaid, of course, was nowhere to be found. Anton’s mates were not there either – they had certainly had the good sense and discipline to have returned to camp on time.

That would make him the lone violater for Sgt. Wiessturt, a short, slight man who seemingly lived to enforce minor rules and regulations. Wiessturt was a man who knew no gray – he lived within the tight, strict black and white parameters of right and wrong. He was as perfect as he was ill-suited to be in the military – a rigid enforcer of rules, yet a man with no capacity for original thought or extenuating circumstances. He seemed to have a particular dislike for Anton, which the young horse-tender thought stemmed at least in part from the fact that Weissturt was barely five and a half feet tall while Anton was a bit above six feet.

Komplex des kleinen mannes.

Anton rolled onto his stomach and peered over the weeds toward the edge of the woods that bordered the field to the north. His unit was camped there and included cavalry, infantry and horse-drawn artillery pieces. Smoke was slowly rising from freshly stoked campfires. He rolled again on to his back and slowly exhaled.

You have done it this time, you dumb bastard, he said aloud. Then, a more involved, unspoken conversation with himself: Wiessturt by all rights could throw me into the brig and – worse – could have me publicly lashed. How humiliating. If word gets back to my mother she will be so embarrassed by her worthless son – who really isn’t a soldier, but a mere horse valet, and a failed one at that.

He also realized that Army regulations held that if a pass was violated by more than 24 hours, it could be deemed to be desertion, which demanded more severe penalties up to and including a firing squad.

At the age of 20 – when his life should be blossoming before him – Anton feared his selfish actions could now threaten his future. He could forever be known as a drunken deserter.

Before he joined the army, he had worked at a stable in his home village of Breitz – located in Bavaria, close to the Bohemian border. He did not like the stable’s owner, a sour old man named Heintz who was nearly bald but grew bountiful, untended crops of curly gray hair in his formidable ears. Anton loved horses and had a knack for working with them. He did not know why. He thought at times that he liked horses more than he liked people. Sometimes it seemed as if horses were the only thing that Anton loved, with the possible exception of his mother.

He was fascinated by the superbly muscled large animals, often marveling at how all of that great weight was capable of such high speed and agility upon such spindly legs. He long pondered a horse’s ability to run so swiftly and, he thought, so beautifully.

These were the type of private thoughts that often consumed him at work.

He could shoe horses, brush them, feed and water them, clean their stalls, teach them calming ways, heal minor ailments. He also made handsome bridles using brass rivets and supple leather from the local tannery.

He was confident of his work, which came to him innately, without education from anyone – especially not grouchy, perpetually squinting Heintz. He knew when to be soft and gentle to horses and when to command respect with a mild slap or a harsh word but he was never mean or abusive. Sometimes horse owners asked for Anton by name when they brought their animals to the stable for care or training. Anton’s good work, and his bond with these animals, was his lone source of pride – whether he fully realized it or not.

One morning while he was brushing a horse, German soldiers in new, pale blue uniforms and spiked helmets marched in tight formation down the village’s cobblestoned main street, their shouldered rifles outfitted with fixed bayonets. A small brass and drum band brought up the rear as village children and yapping dogs ran alongside. Anton was instantly transfixed. It was a recruitment drive, and Anton signed on immediately, seeking no counsel from his mother or anyone else. He didn’t really listen to the terms of his enlistment and did not read the documents he was signing.

A friendly, handlebar-mustached sergeant signed him up at a small table in the village hall. Anton, whose father had died years ago, lived in a small row house in the village with his mother and his three sisters – whom he had little interest in or affection for. He found his sisters to be uninteresting and inconsequential. He invested little energy in listening to them, and they largely avoided him.

As soon as Anton signed the document of enlistment, he thought he noticed a palpable, immediate change –for the worse – in the enlistment sergeant’s friendly tone and demeanor.

What can you do? the sergeant tersely asked, his smile vanishing as the ink of Anton’s signature dried.

What? Anton answered.

The enlistment sergeant frowned.

First thing, son, is you call me sir. Do you understand?

Yes, Anton replied.

Yes what? the agitated sergeant answered, waiting for the new recruit to identify him with the respectful appellation.

Yes, I understand, Anton said.

The sergeant immediately stood and – his face now inches from Anton – spoke in a harsh, hurried whisper.

You listen to me, you Bavarian asshole. You are now in the German army. If you need things repeated for you, you are not going to go far. And if you piss me off any more today, I will assign you to the worst barracks and the worst drill instructor in all of Germany and then you will be assigned to shovel shit in every army latrine between this shithole of a village and Berlin. Do you understand me? Do you?

Yes, Anton, back on his heels, said and then quickly added Sir. Yes sir I understand.

The enlistment sergeant, his face now reddened and his eyes bulging, stared briefly at Anton, then sat.

Now, soldier Schmidt tell me, what can you do?

I tend horses, Anton said. Sir.

The enlistment sergeant stared again at Anton, and his mood brightened a bit.

That’s very good. Very good indeed. You will be assigned to the Horse Korps. We need tenders for the horses that pull our superior artillery pieces, which are going to blow the French cowards into tiny bits and pieces as they turn and run from the front line. Your job will be important. You will help to win the war for Germany.

But…sir….Anton stammered.

What is it?

I want to be in the infantry.

Request denied. Here’s your papers. Welcome to the Army. Go to that room and await departure. Next!

That had been four months ago. There had been three months of basic training and then assignment to the Bavarian Horse Korps. The only weapon he had been issued was an ancient sidearm that was prone to malfunction. He had witnessed artillery fire but had not had any close range exposure to true combat. He had seen war-ravaged villages and dead soldiers, both German and French.

Horse tenders were not well regarded by the regular army – they were seen as little more than attendants. And it did not help that he was Bavarian. The Franco-Prussian War resulted in various Germanic states joining together into a mighty European nation, but this new unity was not without its parochial divisions. The Bavarians, Anton had quickly learned, were held in low regard by the Prussians and others from northern Germany, who thought those from the southern part of the newly forged nation were nothing more than dim-witted farmers.

Heu junges, the German soldiers from the north called the Bavarians: Hay boys.

Most soldiers in the infantry, cavalry and even the artillery spoke gruffly to him, if they addressed him at all. If they didn’t have disdain for him because he was a horse tender they almost certainly did because he was Bavarian. He was indeed in the army, but much of the time he didn’t quite feel as if he was a part of it. He felt more like a servant in his ill-fitting, drab horse-tending garb that compared poorly to the better-tailored and appointed uniforms worn by those in the infantry, artillery and calvary.

Anton regarded his enlistment as a failure, a mistake in a life that – as he was about to begin his third decade – was offering little direction or sign that he