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the normal way. The most singular myth about him, however, had
to do with his "decision" to refuse the additional daily pay that was
awarded upon application to all prisoners of war. The story went
that he had written to the Adjutant General declaring as his reason
for not taking the stipend that he wasn't a soldier because of the
money in it, and that he was sufficiently grateful for being alive and
home. What probably happened, I conjectured after some private
snooping about, was that he had simply never gotten around to
applying for it. He had, I supposed, his own reasons for not collecting,
but they were not likely to be the fantastic one held in such regard
by the regiment at large.
There was little of the mysterious or distinguished in his life,
I found. There were gaps in it that one could not readily bridge,
but that is the usual way with soldiers: their lives are even less event–
ful than the lives of ordinary people; great stretches of time elapse
without anything at all happening to them. Nomads by virtue of
their occupation, most of them never appropriate for themselves those
simple proofs of material and historical existence that articulate the
skeleton of life and grace it with a coherence and substance it does
not naturally possess. Pressed into uniformity by the raw tedium of
his routine, the soldier is disinclined to risk too sizable an investment
in those decorations or excrescences of individuality which are neither
portable nor readily sloughed off. Niederweg was no exception.
After struggling through the remaining two sessions, my eight
pupils went separately to the Post Education Center and took the
examination. The papers had to be sent to Madison, Wisconsin, to
be graded, and no results would be forthcoming for at least two
weeks. Except for Niederweg I never learned how any of them made
out, for I had been alerted for shipment overseas, and my activity
and interest had been turned to other things.
I saw Niederweg for the last time just before I shipped out.
The replacement company to which I had been assigned happened
to be adjacent to myoid regiment, and so in the evenings, as a
"casual," I returned to my former barracks to pass the time with
my
companions of the last eight months. Two nights before I was trans–
ferred to McGuire Air Force Base to board a flight, a few of us
drove to Willie's for some beer, and there I met Niederweg once
more. This time the bar was nearly empty and very quiet. Niederweg
