Werner Pfennig and Frank Volkheimer's comrade relationship

Werner Pfennig and Frank Volkheimer’s comradeship is forged in military service and tested when Werner hides the truth about a French radio transmitter. Volkheimer is Werner’s commanding companion in the field, but their relationship becomes more than a chain of command: in the ruins of Saint-Malo, Werner trusts him with a secret, and Volkheimer ultimately sends him onward with a rifle. Their story leaves the outcome of that trust partly unspoken, while the later memory of Werner as a boy gives their wartime bond a postwar afterlife.

Service in the Field

Werner serves in a unit under Volkheimer’s authority as the men move through villages along the Rance River. They are tasked with searching for radio broadcasts, and Werner fears that the broadcasts will expose him. He imagines the officers who might already suspect him and wonders whether Volkheimer knows. The danger is therefore present within the comradeship from the start: Volkheimer is both the man responsible for the unit and the person whose knowledge could determine Werner’s fate.

On the first of August, a lieutenant tells Volkheimer that the need for men at the defensive lines has become overwhelming. Anyone not essential to Saint-Malo’s defense must be sent away, and the lieutenant asks for at least two men. Volkheimer assesses the group: Bernd is too old, while Werner is the only one able to repair the equipment. His decision keeps Werner with the unit, not because the passage describes a private exchange between the two men, but because Werner’s technical skill makes him operationally necessary.

Neumann One and Neumann Two are chosen instead. An hour later, they are in the back of a troop carrier with rifles between their knees. Werner observes despair in the faces of the departing men, and Volkheimer says, “In the end,” none of them will avoid it. The remark gives the reassignment a stark context: the separation is not an ordinary personnel change but a division made under the expectation of death. Werner remains with Volkheimer while two of their companions are sent toward the lines.

That night, the unit continues its search near Cancale. Bernd takes one transceiver to a field knoll, while Werner operates another from the back of Volkheimer’s Opel. The French broadcast is expected at two twelve in the morning. Werner knows he must either switch off the transceiver or pretend that he hears only static, and he plans to cover the signal meter with his hand and keep his face still. His concealment is an immediate risk to his standing among the men, especially to the commander beside whom he works.

A Secret Between Comrades

Werner’s fear concerns the transmitter he was supposed to locate. When he finally tells Volkheimer what he has learned, he explains that he found it weeks earlier and that the supposed terrorist network was only an old man and a girl. This disclosure reframes the military search that has kept the two men in the field: what their assignment treated as an enemy network is, in Werner’s account, a small civilian connection.

Werner asks whether Volkheimer had known all along that he knew the truth. The question matters because it leaves their knowledge asymmetrical and uncertain. Volkheimer does not answer. The passage also indicates that he may not be able to hear Werner through the headphones, so his silence cannot be treated as proof that he knowingly protected him. The relationship’s tension rests precisely in that unresolved space: Werner confesses, but the text does not settle what Volkheimer understood before the confession or what he chooses to do with it.

The circumstances make Werner’s trust costly. He carries the radio and its battery across the cellar to Volkheimer, who is seated in a gold armchair, and places the headphones over his ears. Werner tells him that the girl is using the transmitter and that her broadcast asks for help, warning that someone is there and will kill her. A moan passes through the rubble above them. Werner understands that the transmitter is high in the house, close to the shelling, and says that he saved the girl only to hear her die. His words disclose both his fear for her and the helplessness he feels beside Volkheimer; the latter remains still and gives no sign of understanding.

Companionship in the Rubble

After the collapse of the Hotel of Bees, Werner and Volkheimer are trapped beneath the ruins. Werner sleeps while Volkheimer remains awake beside the large radio and its dying battery, wearing the headphones Werner left with him. The detail makes their connection tangible without turning it into a declaration: even when Werner is unconscious, the equipment he brought and the listening position he left behind structure Volkheimer’s vigil.

Static unexpectedly becomes music. Volkheimer listens, then finds Werner in the darkness and puts the headphones on him, urging him to listen. Werner recognizes the piece as “Clair de Lune.” The moment reverses their earlier arrangement: Werner had carried the radio and tried to make Volkheimer hear the girl’s broadcast; now Volkheimer wakes Werner to share the music he has found. He then tells Werner to connect the light to the battery. The song does not resolve their danger, but it creates a brief exchange of attention and purpose inside the confinement.

When they reach the lee of the ramparts, both men are staggering. Volkheimer tells Werner to take the rifle and go. Werner asks what will happen to Volkheimer, who answers, “Food.” The exchange is brief and practical; the text does not explain more about Volkheimer’s plan. Werner sees his torn jacket, his broad jaw, and the tenderness of his hands before leaving with a canvas bag, a rifle, and five rounds. The parting is not framed as a formal farewell. It is an order that gives Werner a chance to move on, and an act of trust that leaves Volkheimer behind.

Memory and Aftermath

The postwar account returns to the unit through the recovery and attempted return of a dead soldier’s belongings. A letter explains that an organization is trying to deliver possessions to the next of kin of soldiers whose names have been lost. It identifies Frank Volkheimer as a staff sergeant who served as the ranking officer of a unit that included the owner of a bag collected by a United States Army prisoner-of-war processing camp in Bernay, France, in 1944. The document places Volkheimer within an official chain of responsibility, but the scene also shows him looking at the photograph and recognizing Werner’s notebook, marked with the initials W.P. The surviving objects carry the relationship beyond the battlefield, even as the passage does not state who ultimately receives them.

Later, when asked about Werner, Volkheimer names Saint-Malo as the last place he saw him. He recalls that they spent a month there and says he thinks Werner might have fallen in love. The statement links Volkheimer’s memory of his fellow soldier to the girl whose broadcast had become central to Werner’s hidden knowledge. It also preserves the limits of what Volkheimer can claim: he remembers their final shared place and offers an impression, not a confirmed account of Werner’s feelings.

Their comradeship is shaped by repeated acts of proximity under pressure: operating equipment from the same vehicle, sharing the danger of an undisclosed broadcast, listening in the cellar, and separating at the ramparts. The narrative does not make Volkheimer’s silence fully legible or resolve everything he knew. Instead, it lets the bond emerge through decisions and objects—the transceivers, the headphones, the battery, the rifle, and the notebook—while Volkheimer’s later recollection confirms that Werner remained present in his memory.