SCHOLASTICA: Just pray, Sister Agneta!

AGNETA: I’m praying to beat the band. But I’m still being carried away.

SCHOLASTICA (her voice dying away in the distance): Agneta, Sister Agneta.

AGNETA: Yoohoo, Sister Scholastica!

(The nuns disappear, but from time to time their umbrellas appear in the background. The phonograph record runs down. Beside the pillbox entrance the telephone rings. Lankes jumps down and picks up the receiver, the others go on eating.)

ROSWITHA: Telephones, telephones, wherever you go. Between the sea and the sky, telephones.

LANKES: Dora Seven speaking. Corporal Lankes.

HERZOG (comes in slowly from the right, holding a telephone and dragging the wire after him. He stops repeatedly and talks into the phone): Are you asleep, Lankes? There’s something moving in front of Dora Seven. I’m sure of it.

LANKES: It’s the nuns, sir.

HERZOG: What are nuns doing down there? And suppose they’re not nuns.

LANKES: But they are nuns. I can see them plain as day.

HERZOG: Never hear of camouflage? Never hear of the fifth column? The English have been at it for centuries. They come in with their Bibles and before you know what they’re up to, boom!

LANKES: They’re picking up crabs, sir…

HERZOG: I want that beach cleared immediately. Is that clear?

LANKES: Yes, sir, but they’re just picking up crabs.

HERZOG: Lankes, I want you to get your ass behind your MG!

LANKES: But suppose they’re just looking for crabs, ‘cause it’s low tide and the children in their kindergarten…

HERZOG: That’s an official order, Lankes.

LANKES: Yes, sir.

(Lankes disappears into the pillbox. Herzog goes out right with the telephone.)

OSKAR: Roswitha, stop your ears, there’s going to be shooting like in the newsreels.

KITTY: Oh, how awful! I’m going to knot myself still tighter.

BEBRA: I myself am almost inclined to think that we shall soon hear some noise.

FELIX: Let’s put on another record. That will help some.

(He puts on the gramophone: The Platters singing “The Great Pretender”. The rat-tat-tat of the machine gun punctuates the slow mournful music. Roswitha holds her ears. Felix stands on his head. In the background five nuns with umbrellas are seen flying heavenward. The record sticks in its groove and repeats. Felix returns to his feet. Kitty unties herself. Roswitha begins to clear the table and repack her basket. Oskar and Bebra help her. They leave the roof of the pillbox. Lankes appears in the entrance.)

LANKES: Captain, sir, if you could spare another cigarette…

BEBRA (his frightened troupe huddle behind him): You smoke too much, Corporal.

BEBRA’S TROUPE: He smokes too much.

LANKES: That’s on account of the concrete, sir.

BEBRA: And suppose some day there’s no more concrete?

BEBRA’S TROUPE: No more concrete.

LANKES: Concrete is immortal, sir. Just us and our cigarettes…

BEBRA: I know, I know, we vanish like a puff of smoke.

BEBRA’S TROUPE:(slowly going out): Smoke!

BEBRA: But in a thousand years they will still be coming to see the concrete.

BEBRA’S TROUPE: In a thousand years!

BEBRA: They’ll find puppy bones.

BEBRA’S TROUPE: Puppy bones.

BEBRA: And your Oblique Formations in the concrete.

BEBRA’S TROUPE: Barbaric, mystical, bored!

(Lankes is left alone, smoking)

Though Oskar hardly opened his mouth in the course of that breakfast on the concrete, the mere fact that such words should be spoken on the eve of the invasion has impelled me to record them. Moreover, we haven’t seen the last of Corporal Lankes, the master of “concrete” art; we shall meet him again when the time comes to speak of the postwar period and the present apotheosis of bourgeois comfort.

On the beach promenade, our armored personnel carrier was still waiting for us. With long strides Lieutenant Herzog returned to his protégés and breathlessly apologized to Bebra for the little incident, adding, however, that the beach was off limits for civilians and “Off limits is off limits.” He helped the ladies into the vehicle, gave the driver some instructions, and back we rode to Bavent. We had to hurry, there was no time for lunch, for at two o’clock we had a show at the charming little Norman château nestling among the poplars at the edge of the village.

We had barely half an hour in which to test the lighting; then Oskar raised the curtain with a drum flourish. We were playing to an audience of enlisted men. We laid it on thick and the laughter was hearty and frequent. I sang at a glass chamber pot containing a pair of hot dogs with mustard. Bebra, in white grease paint, wept clown’s tears over the broken pot, salvaged the sausages from the shards, and devoured them to the joy of the field-grey mass. Felix and Kitty had taken to appearing in leather shorts and Tyrolian hats, which lent their act a special cachet. Roswitha wore a close-fitting silvery gown and long pale-green gloves; her tiny feet were encased in gold-embroidered sandals. Her half-closed bluish eyelids and drowsy Mediterranean voice produced their usual effect of eerie magic. Oskar—or have I mentioned it before?—required no special costume. I wore my good old sailor hat with S.M.S. Seydlitz on the band, my navy-blue shirt, and my jacket with the golden anchor buttons. As the camera eye descended, it registered the bottoms of my knee-pants, rolled stockings, and a very dilapidated pair of boots. From my neck hung my red and white lacquered drum, serene in the knowledge that there were five more like it in my luggage.

That night we repeated the same show for officers and for the Blitz Girls from the Cabourg message center. Roswitha was a trifle nervous. She made no mistakes, but in the middle of her number she put on a pair of sunglasses with blue rims and abruptly changed her tone. Here revelations became more direct; for instance, she informed an anemic-looking Blitz Girl, whose embarrassment made her snippish, that she was having an affair with her commanding officer. This, it seemed to me, was in poor taste, but there were plenty of laughs, for there was an officer sitting beside the Blitz Girl, and there was good reason to suppose…

After the show the regimental staff officers, who were billeted in the chateâu, gave a party. Bebra, Kitty, and Felix stayed on, but Raguna and Oskar slipped quietly away and went to bed. It had been a trying day. We dropped off quickly and slept until 5 a.m. when the invasion woke us up.

What shall I tell you about the invasion? Canadians landed in our sector, not far from the mouth of the Orne. Bavent had to be evacuated. Our luggage was already stowed in the truck. We were pulling out with the regimental staff. A motorized field kitchen had stopped in the court of the chateâu. Roswitha asked me to get her a cup of coffee. Rather nervous and afraid of missing the truck. I refused. I was even a little rude to her. Thereupon she herself ran over to the field kitchen in her high-heeled shoes, and reached the steaming hot coffee exactly at the same time as a shell from a naval gun.

O Roswitha, I know not how old you were, I know only that you measured three foot three, that the Mediterranean spoke from your lips, that you smelled of cinnamon and nutmeg, and that you could see into the hearts of men; but you couldn’t see into your own heart, or else you would have stayed with me instead of running after that coffee, which was much too hot.

In Lisieux Bebra managed to wangle marching orders for Berlin. We waited for him outside the Kommandantur, and it was only when he joined us that he mentioned Roswitha’s death for the first time: “We dwarfs and fools have no business dancing on concrete made for giants. If only we had stayed under the rostrums where no one suspected our presence!”