Romania is the setting of Hans Reiter’s reassignment with the 79th Division and of his unexpected reunion with Baroness Von Zumpe. The country moves him from the sea to the Carpathians, where a military expedition to a castle turns a distant posting into an encounter with his past.

Military Reassignment

Reiter’s battalion had been stationed in Besneville when, without warning, all leave was canceled. It joined two other battalions of the 310th Regiment at St-Sauveur-le-Vicomte and Bricquebec, then traveled east by military train. In Paris, the train linked up with one carrying the 311th Regiment. The division was missing its 3rd Regiment, which apparently would never rejoin it, but the remaining force crossed Germany and Hungary before reaching Romania, its new posting.

The Carpathian Posting

The division’s troops were distributed near the Soviet frontier and the new Hungarian border. Reiter’s battalion was stationed in the Carpathians, while division headquarters were in Bucharest. The 79th had left the 10th Corps and become part of the newly formed 49th Corps, which then consisted of that single division. General Kruger commanded the corps; General Von Berenberg, formerly a colonel, commanded the 79th. The generals periodically visited the troops to inspect their readiness.

The transfer also changed Reiter’s daily surroundings and immediate prospects. Far from the sea, he gave up, for the time being, the idea of deserting. At first he saw only soldiers from his battalion; then he saw Romanian peasants moving constantly with bundles of belongings, their children following them like sheep or goats. The Carpathian sunsets seemed endless, but the sky appeared low over the soldiers, producing an oppressive atmosphere. Despite that unease, daily life was peaceful and uneventful.

The Castle and the Reunion

One night Reiter’s company set out before dawn in two trucks for the mountains. At midmorning the soldiers reached a castle, where an SS officer acting as butler put them to work. Most left their rifles in the kitchen and cleaned the building; Reiter was among four men assigned to guard duty, since the officer considered him ill suited to tidying the castle.

The guests arrived around three. General Von Berenberg came with Herman Hoensch, a writer of the Reich, and two officers from the 79th’s general staff. In another car were the Romanian general Eugen Entrescu, the young scholar Paul Popescu, and Baroness Von Zumpe. Reiter was astonished to see the baroness. She recognized something familiar in his face, and he explained that he had served in her father’s household from an early age, as had his mother. The baroness remembered him as the long-legged boy who was always underfoot.

When she asked what he was doing at Dracula’s castle, Reiter answered that he was serving the Reich. He looked at her for the first time and thought she was far more beautiful than when he had known her. The encounter reconnects his present military service with his childhood position in the baron’s household: the former servant now stands in uniform before the woman who remembers him as a boy.

Romania as a Narrative Setting

The episode gives Romania a double significance in Reiter’s life: it is both the destination imposed by military reassignment and the place where an earlier social connection unexpectedly resurfaces. Its mountain landscape replaces the sea that had defined his recent longing, while the castle gathers German and Romanian military figures, a Reich writer, a scholar, and the baroness into one expedition.

After General Von Berenberg becomes fatigued and retires, Entrescu leads the party through the castle grounds, with the baroness on his arm and Popescu supplying a succession of mostly contradictory facts. The baroness insists that Reiter accompany her, arguing that he had served her family before serving the Reich; Von Berenberg grants the request. At a rock-cut crypt barred by an iron gate, the SS officer unlocks the entrance and leads the others inside, while Reiter remains at the door on guard. Romania thus frames not only a change of posting but a carefully staged return to an old hierarchy of recognition, with Reiter close to the expedition yet still positioned at its threshold.