Haussmann

Haussmann is a soldier in the narrator’s unit whose recurring complaints mark him as isolated among his peers. He shares a cramped room with Lockhart and Jeffries, then becomes involved in a confrontation with Borges that brings local police to the barracks. The episode ends not with a charge or a clear account of what happened, but with Haussmann denying that anyone tried to stab him and the group later going together to Bennigan’s. His brief arc links the ordinary indignities of barracks life to the unit’s capacity to turn a serious disturbance into a matter everyone can set aside.

Identity and Place in the Unit

Haussmann lives with Corporal Lockhart and Private Jeffries in a small room on the other side of the building from the narrator. The three have been there throughout the year. Haussmann is described as someone who might have been easy to like, except that he complains constantly and speaks badly of others. His conduct leaves him alone: people let him keep to himself, and, in the narrator’s account, he becomes someone the others have effectively forgotten. That description presents his isolation as social as well as physical. He has roommates, but that fact does not make him part of a close group.

His position contrasts with that of Lockhart and Jeffries. They complain less, but are described as particularly frail and have been made the company arms-room workers. They listen repeatedly to My Chemical Romance and talk about Lockhart’s wife; Haussmann, meanwhile, is identified chiefly by his dissatisfaction and his unsuccessful attempts to change rooms. These details place him in a small, closely observed barracks world where assignments, habits, and grievances become a soldier’s visible identity. The account does not supply a fuller biography for Haussmann, so his character emerges through these routines and the way others respond to him.

Shared Quarters and Failed Requests

The room is both a setting for Haussmann’s isolation and a place where the narrator records unsettling behavior by his roommates. Lockhart and Jeffries make videos in which they harm mice. Haussmann is not described as participating. Instead, the account turns to his reaction: he does not know what to do and repeatedly asks to be moved to another room, but his requests are refused. His complaint that the situation is unfair is one of the few direct indications of how he experiences life there.

The distinction matters. The narrative places Haussmann beside conduct he finds intolerable without assigning him responsibility for it, then shows that he cannot simply leave the room. His lack of influence is concrete: he asks for a transfer and is denied. At the same time, the account does not explain who refuses the requests or why, and it does not describe any further action Haussmann takes about the videos. The result is a portrait of someone trapped in an unpleasant living arrangement, but not a developed account of his private thoughts or motives.

The narrator also recounts that Lockhart’s wife, living in Killeen, Texas, has become more emotionally distant while Lockhart is in Iraq. Her life and relationship with Lockhart form part of the room’s wider atmosphere of resentment and strain. Haussmann’s own position remains distinct: the evidence connects him to the shared quarters and his unsuccessful requests to move, not to Lockhart’s marriage. That separation prevents the room’s surrounding troubles from being mistaken for Haussmann’s personal history.

The Confrontation with Borges

On a Wednesday evening at the Echo Company barracks, Borges begins arguing with Haussmann. The narrator does not know what prompted the dispute. Borges tries to stab Haussmann, who gets away and calls the emergency number. The account therefore begins with an allegation of immediate danger, even though the reason for the argument is left unspecified.

The police arrive with North, who is the officer responsible that evening. They are officers from the Killeen police station, not military police. Before the interviews, the narrator has already told Haussmann that he has made a mess of the situation and needs to help resolve it. Lessing briefs Borges. The narrator says that everyone appears to be on the same page, and the officers separate the men: one questions Borges and Lessing, while another speaks with Haussmann and the narrator.

During that interview, the narrator supports Haussmann’s account that there has been a misunderstanding. He says that no one genuinely tried to stab anyone and describes the incident as reckless words rather than a serious matter. Haussmann then apologizes to the officer for having been called and insists that the matter is a misunderstanding and that nobody tried to stab him. His statement sits in direct tension with the earlier report that Borges tried to stab him and that he called for help after escaping. The narrative records both versions without resolving the discrepancy, leaving readers to see how rapidly the account is softened once the police are present.

Borges, standing farther down the corridor with Lessing and the other officer, shouts that the others are lying. That interruption underscores that there is no shared account of the confrontation, even as Haussmann and the narrator present it to the police as minor. North tells the narrator to calm down; the narrator responds angrily to what he takes as North’s insult. The scene thus extends beyond Haussmann’s dispute with Borges to include the narrator’s own hostility toward North, while keeping the original cause of the argument unknown.

Resolution and Narrative Significance

Nobody goes to jail. The narrator says that it all ends well and that there are no hard feelings. Borges, Haussmann, Lessing, and the narrator then go to Bennigan’s together. The gathering offers a strikingly ordinary ending to an incident that had involved an emergency call, police interviews, and conflicting accounts. It shows the group resuming social life without establishing exactly what happened or why the argument began.

At the restaurant, Borges tries unsuccessfully to flirt with the server, and she tells him she will stop serving him Long Island iced teas. Haussmann is present in this group outing, but the narrative gives him no further action there. His arc consequently closes through collective movement rather than personal vindication: he had sought help and said he was not attacked, and then he joins the others after the investigation ends. Neither the refusal of his room-change requests nor the tension that led to the police call receives a lasting resolution.

Haussmann’s narrative role is largely that of a figure at the edge of the narrator’s attention, first overlooked in his own quarters and then briefly central when a dispute makes the police arrive. The account’s dry turn from a reported stabbing attempt to a shared restaurant outing does not erase the contradiction; it makes the group’s ability to smooth over conflict part of the episode’s meaning. Haussmann remains difficult to know beyond his complaints, his request to be moved, and his retreat from the accusation during the interview. That limited portrait is consistent with the narrator’s earlier observation that others had forgotten him.