Battle Fatigue by Mark Kurlansky

most famous diary, the one I have heard the most about, was written by a girl not much older than me, named Anne Frank. Anne Frank was a German Jew in hiding with her family in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. She wrote in her diary while in hiding. She wrote about her family and the other people in hiding and her thoughts and her feelings. She could express herself. Her diary was her friend. And all of it is particularly stirring because I know that in the end, no one will save her. Someone will give up the hiding place, the Germans will come and take the family away to be gassed to death, and no one will do anything to help them.
    I start spending late afternoons after baseball on the screened-in porch, lying in a glider, a sort of rocking couch, reading the carefully written feelings of this German girl, soon to be killed by Germans.
    Suddenly there is the flat slapping sound of someone trying to knock on the screen door. With my book still in my hand, I walk over to the door.
    There stands a boy of about my age, with short-clipped dirty-blond hair and gray eyes. I have not met many foreigners but I can tell that he is one. His haircut, half-inch spikes of hair sticking out evenly all over his head, is not an American haircut. His baggy gray shorts pulled in tight at the waist and ballooning out around his thin legs are definitely not American. Nor are his leather sandals with long straps that wrap several times around his bony ankles.
    â€œHello,” he says with a slight accent. “My name is Karl Moltke. I am zeh new Gehman exchange student.”
    He explains that he is staying with the Hargroves. They live down the street but I don’t know much about them because they don’t have any kids. I think Mr. Hargrove was in the Pacific.
    Karl holds out his right hand to shake mine and I quickly take the book into my left hand and hide it behind my back, hiding Anne Frank from the German. As we lock hands to shake, he gives one stiff jerk and nods his head, at the same time swiveling his feet to make his heels hit each other. After a childhood of German ghosts, this is my first live German.

Chapter Nine
    Taking a Stand
    â€œMom,” I say. “This is Karl. He is from Germany and he is living here now.”
    My mother extends her hand but Karl does not take it. Instead he makes a slight bow and swivels his feet so that the sides of his heels slap together. My mother backs slightly away from him. I look across the lawn at the Panicellis’ house. Popeye Panicelli might shoot him if he acts like that. What is Mr. Shaker going to do when he sees Karl click his heels? The new exchange student doesn’t know it, but he’s in danger. He needs to be a lot less German to live in Haley. I better teach him quickly.
    I teach Karl how to shake hands, not to click his heels, and how to dress. I will have to teach him baseball. That is the quickest way to be an American. But as I think about it, baseball is not that easy to explain. In the fall there will be soccer and he will probably be the best player in school. Germans are good soccer players. That is the answer. Soccer will be his savior, just as baseball had been mine. In my school, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. None of the other kids care what kind of grades you get. Good looks are not that important. Where your family came from, how much money they have, what your father did in the war, the clothes you wear—all that is secondary. But if you play a sport well, you are in.

    This summer I am teaching Karl how to act more American, starting with a good batting stance. The other kids don’t treat him badly. They always call him “Kraut,” but they use a friendly tone. “Why don’t you put the Kraut in?” Rocco and the other pitchers shout from the mound. They all do the same thing. They blow two pitches right past him and then with a two-strike count, instead of striking him out, they fire a fastball right into his left