Good morning, little book!

I hail from the town of Tulle in southern France, though I am now serving with the 21e DI, the 21st Infantry Division of the French Army, with whom I am stationed on the Aisne River. I know your legend, little book, as do my companions, and they have seen it fit to give you to me, half as a joke at my expense, and half as a continuation of the spirit of things. For, you see, my name is Otto.

I understand the confessional nature of this book and, seeing as I don’t have any better ideas, I’ll tell you the tale of Otto Duval.

As I have said, I was born in Tulle, a small town in the south of France. My family, the Duvals, have a small wheat farm on the outskirts of town, which I spent my entire childhood and adolescence living and laboring on. I lived there with my mother, father, and older brother, Charles, until our homeland joined the war - you already know this, of course. While I was convinced to join the war effort through sheer want for adventure outside our little farm, from the start Charles was unconvinced. Someone, so he argued, had to run the farm while I was gone, and he had no need for adventures into foreign lands. Evidently his teenage travels into central Europe and required military service from ages 20 to 23 had told him all he needed to know. He is now 31, and so has absolutely no obligation to rejoin the army if he so wishes.

I, not having the capacity to change my brother’s mind and, truly, not having any further want to, set off alone for conscription. The recruitment office for the 21st Infantry Division was lively as any social gathering I’d ever attended, a room full of young men my age and older from the surrounding area, all there for one reason or another, but all using the same road. During the hefty wait, I came to know a few of my fellow infantrymen-to-be, namely one Marcel Launois, whose older brother had served in the 21st at the same time as Charles, and whom Charles had no doubt been at least acquainted with. They had belonged to the 93rd Infantry Regiment, and it seemed almost destined that we would follow in their footsteps. Charles never spoke of his service, and I can understand why. He wasn’t involved in any combat, so it must have been uneventful. I assure you, my service has not.

Marcel is a wheat stalk of a man, stretched vertically in both body and face. The sides of his hollow cheeks are covered slightly by a particularly extravagant moustache in the style of the gentlemen of Paris, and I won’t bother hiding how jealous I am. The ends curl upward in a way I thought was impossible. Marcel himself is, of course, an impossible man. He holds his cigarette as if it were a fine wooden pipe, puffing it like some aristocrat, and if it weren’t for his plain clothes, I would’ve said he was one. Men like Marcel can be found all across southern France, in humble country cottages and along creekbeds, pretending to be of high society and - in some ways - living the part. The only thing separating Marcel from the ballrooms of Paris is the fact that he is now on the river Aisne with me defending them. It’s men like Marcel who make the French army invincible, I believe: Men who won’t let one enemy finger touch anywhere in a twenty mile radius of the Ritz before they do.

We also have men like Marcel to thank for maintaining our morale in these trying times, and maintaining our tidiness to boot. Even as we begin to dig literal holes out of the ground to fortify ourselves, still I have never seen a living quarters so clean! There is something to be said about the French war effort, that in these rising tides we have a mind clear enough to organize a Regimental Spice Cabinet! Ha! The Great War? We’ll be home by Christmas, I say!

Enough about Marcel for now, and onto the war!

After our training, which I took on easily enough, we were sent to the frontlines with the Fourth Army to face the Germans head on in the Ardennes forest. It did not, as history will show, go particularly well.

This is an understatement. I do not wish to think about it any longer.

We retreated behind the river Marne with, to mine and Marcel’s terror both, the closest part of the encampment being less than 100 miles from Paris itself. We had seen our share of failure, and the Germans more than their share of victory, and so the Frenchmen of the Fourth Army decided they had gone far enough. I sit here writing in this book absolutely certain that if not for our efforts that day, Paris would be in the hands of the Germans, perhaps forever. We held the flank at Verdun for a full three days before the German line near Paris broke and the Germans fled, and reasonably so. Truthfully I hold no ill will toward the German foot soldier, those who only wish to defend their families as I do my own. The men in high places who wish to take Paris, they were the ones I was fighting those three days. I hope our late friend Otto can see that now, if the curse of this book is to be believed.

The Fourth Army has been encamped twenty miles south of the Aisne since the 14th of September, one week ago, and we have begun to entrench ourselves into the earth, as I have said before. Along the front line, north and west of us, there is doubt, confusion, fear, but here in the 93rd Infantry Regiment there is an illuminant fourth emotion: wonder.

Here in my hands sits the secret to our continued high spirits, coupled with the tidiness, of course. Within this little book there is something other than the sum of its words, something beyond our understanding.

One of our companymen, a braver and more insubordinate man than myself, found it in an abandoned German position on the north bank of the Aisne just days ago, laying on the grass next to a dead German soldier. He had an officer’s pistol in his right hand, and a bullet in the right temple. On its front face there was German writing scrawled on in mud, which I have since cleaned off. We had one of our companions translate the text, which simply read “VERBRENNEN” or “BURN” - so I am told. Now, if I believed it were imperative that something be burned for fear of serious danger to others, I would do it myself, and immediately. Would you not? For this reason, we have concluded the curse of this book is not as dangerous as the Ottos let on. Maybe it’s self-inflicted. Maybe there is some truth to it. Apparently it‘s not worthy of immediate destruction, and that is good enough for me.

There is something weighing on my poor French mind, however, even after all of this foolproof reasoning:

Where is the German Otto?

Was it he who we found in the grass, or was it one of his countrymen? Why did he stop writing in August? Did he make it to Germany? Hell, did he even make it to Britain? I fear I will not find an answer to these things during this lifetime, though I may ask to be taken to where the book was found if time should allow. I am needed here, of course.

I’ve told you about Marcel and his royal mind, but how could you get a sense of the company without my describing the rest of the men? I’ll give you a few:

Rudolph Gritzman is about as German a name as a man can receive. Big Gritz stands at about 195 cm and must weigh about half an automobile, and has the personality of one as well. Loud, boisterous, and mechanical, Big Gritz makes up for our lack of cavalry and then some. His jaw and shoulders are broad, his head is shaved almost to the scalp, and his eyebrows jut out from his head in a way that covers his pinpoint eyes in shadow at all times. I’m not sure if he means it or not, but this gives him the appearance of a natural born killer, the kind the French army try to manufacture out of schoolboys every day. Big Gritz is no schoolboy. Maybe once, but not now. Now he makes up a charging line all by himself. He is, however, harmless if you’re on the right side of the war - in fact, his demeanor sometimes borders on oafish.

Otto Gritzman, or Little Gritz as we call him, is tall and lean and happens to be Rudolph’s little brother. His even temper and light-heartedness make me question whether they really are brothers at all. His jet black hair, which was cut dramatically down during training, is beginning to grow down toward his eyes once again. I have never seen hair grow so quickly before, and it is especially extraordinary compared to his brother’s, which hasn’t grown back at all. Still, I can see the resemblance in the eyebrows, and the way Otto’s eyes are covered in a perpetual shade. This, along with his boyish face, has the opposite effect as his big brother’s, in that he seems to look meek and harmless without meaning to. Little Gritz, in reality, is a killing machine like I have never seen. I have personally witnessed Otto Gritzman kill no less than seven German soldiers, and he shows no signs of stopping. Big Gritz, to my knowledge, has yet to kill his first.

The third and final chief character in this story is John Ashcroft, a small Englishman with the build and temperament of a bumblebee, who has come to be their adopted third. Where the Gritzmans - or the French army, for that matter - found such a man I will never know. What I do know, however, is why. You see, John Ashcroft is nothing short of a genius. I have no other word for it, besides perhaps conniving maniac, but that, my dear Lord, is just this man’s opinion. Ashcroft carries a red handkerchief in his pocket, and twirls it around with his pointer finger and thumb whenever he’s thinking. Scheming’s the proper word for it, if you ask me. You see, John Ashcroft was the man who first found and subsequently gave to me this very diary, and to whom I owe the pleasure of inheriting the curse, which for now remains only imaginary. He is pale in the way that Englishmen are, that sort of sickly eggshell that comes from too many clouds and too little sun, and sports a pug nose with the wispy whiskers to match. This is the image of Ashcroft I want you to have as I describe this event: stout, ugly, and mean.

I sat facing toward the enemy on one of the wooden slots that had been nestled into the mud walls of our subterranean fortress. I heard a familiar voice from my right while cautiously listening for commotion from over the top. It was none other than the high, almost squeaky tones of sir John Ashcroft. He approached from the other side of the trench to my left, accompanied by the Gritz brothers who snuck smiling glances at each other from behind him. I found and still do find it amusing how proud they were of the plan, despite the fact that it was Ashcroft who had masterminded it. He has that effect on them, instilling the idea that it was a team effort. I believe this is how he keeps them around.

I noticed as he came closer that Ashcroft was holding his hands behind his back, at which point I took up a subtle defensive stance in case of any misdoings.

“Hello, Duval,” he said in his perfect French.

“Hello to you, Ashcroft,” I said with, I suspect, a little more apprehension in my voice than I’d intended.

“Duval,” he repeated, “we have a gift for you. We call it the Otto diary.” He sneered and pulled out from behind his back the diary, still adorned with its menacing dirt message.

As I hadn’t seen it before, this first glimpse meant nothing to me. Here we go, I thought, another scheme, and this one is aimed at me. His previous plan had been at the expense of a thin boy named Clément Bissett, whose only crime was being within five kilometers of John Ashcroft. After Ashcroft was done with him, Clément had to shamefully ask for an entire replacement uniform from command. For the sake of his pride, I will not describe what the bastard Ashcroft did to him, but rest assured it had me ready for combat at his approach.

“What is it?” I asked, tilting my head at the diary. I glanced down just long enough to see the German script on it, though it was no use to me. I know absolutely no German, nor do I plan to learn any.

“You’ll have to see. It’s in English. Can you read English, Duval?” He held it out to me. I let him stay like that for a few seconds, and tried to find any hint of a trick in his face. Unfortunately I can only look at his face for so long before I start to feel ill, so I begrudgingly took the diary from him.

“It starts slow but trust me, you’ll never read anything more interesting in your entire life.” I could see the Gritz brothers stifling laughs behind him, but I couldn’t deny that my interest was piqued.

It was an unusually thick diary, bound in brown leather, and almost entirely unused. From the side I could see only a sliver of the pages had been opened and written on. The text on the front was in angry, sharp letters in an angry, sharp language I didn’t understand.

“If it’s in English, why is there German on the front?”

”You’ll have to read to find out, Duval.” Ashcroft leaned in to meet me at eye level. “Come find me when you’re finished.”

With that the three of them walked away down the trench, leaving me alone on watch once again. Later that night I did indeed read through the diary, the content of which you already know, of course. That was last night, the 18th. It is now the evening of the 19th, and I am sitting in the same spot I received the diary. I haven’t gone to Ashcroft yet. I’m not sure why I’m writing in it. Maybe I want to irritate Ashcroft, to ruin the joke. Maybe he wanted me to write in it, to get inside my head.

Maybe he wrote it himself, but how could he know so much about America, and of London? Maybe I won’t go to him at all. Otto and Otto, if you’re still in this diary, show me the way. Tell me what to do. Haunt me, if you like.