Curiously, it was Conrad who encouraged me to write for publications with a broader circulation and who persuaded me to go semipro. It’s to him that I owe my first contacts with Front Line, Jeux de Simulation, Stockade, Casus Belli, The General, etc. According to Conrad—and we spent an afternoon working this out—if I write regularly for ten magazines, some of them monthly, most bimonthly or trimonthly, I could give up my job and still get by while devoting myself entirely to writing. When I asked why he didn’t try it, since his job was worse than mine and he could write as well as I could, or better, he answered that he was so shy that it was painful for him, if not impossible, to establish business relationships with people he didn’t know, and that the work required a certain command of English, a language that Conrad could only just barely decipher.
On that memorable day we set the goals to realize our dreams, and we got straight to work. Our friendship was cemented.
Then came the Stuttgart tournament, preceding by a few months the Interzonal (essentially the national championship), to be held in Cologne. We both entered, promising half in earnest and half in jest that if fate pitted us against each other, we would be ruthless despite our steadfast friendship. Around that time Conrad had just published his Ukrainian Gambit in the fanzine Tötenkopf.
At first the matches went well. We both made it through the first round without too much trouble. In the second round, Conrad was slated to play Mathias Müller, Stuttgart’s boy wonder, eighteen years old, editor of the fanzine Forced Marches and one of the fastest players we knew. The match was tough, one of the hardest fought of the tournament, and in the end Conrad was defeated. But this in no way discouraged him: with the enthusiasm of a scientist who after a resounding failure is at last able to see things clearly, he explained to me the initial flaws of the Ukrainian Gambit and its hidden virtues, how to use armored and mountain corps from the start, and where one could or couldn’t apply the Schwerpunkt, etc. In short, he became my adviser.
I faced Mathias Müller in the semifinals and eliminated him. In the finals, I was pitted against Franz Grabowski, of the Model Kit Club, a good friend of Conrad’s and mine. That was how I won the right to represent Stuttgart. Then I went on to Cologne, where I competed against players of the caliber of Paul Huchel or Heimito Gerhardt, the latter of whom, at sixty-five, is the oldest of Germany’s gamers, a real role model for the sport. Conrad, who came with me, amused himself by giving nicknames to everyone gathered in Cologne, but when it came to Heimito Gerhardt he was at a loss, no longer so clever or boisterous. When he talked about him he called him the Old Man or Mr. Gerhardt; in front of Heimito he scarcely opened his mouth. Clearly he was afraid of saying something stupid.
One day I asked him why he had such respect for Heimito. He answered that Heimito was a man of steel. That’s all he said. Rusty steel, he added with a smile, but steel even so. I thought he was referring to Heimito’s military past, and said so. No, said Conrad, I’m talking about the courage it takes for him to play. Nowadays, old men usually spend their time in front of the television or going for strolls with their wives. Heimito, however, was brave enough to walk into a room full of kids, brave enough to sit at a table in front of a complicated game, and brave enough to ignore the mocking looks that many of those kids gave him. Old men with that kind of character, with that kind of purity, according to Conrad, were a uniquely German phenomenon. And their numbers were dwindling. Maybe. And maybe not. In any case, as I later saw for myself, Heimito was an excellent player. We faced each other just before the championship finals, in an especially brutal round of a poorly calibrated game in which I was assigned the weaker force. It was Fortress Europa and I was playing the Wehrmacht. To the surprise of nearly everyone at the table, I won.
After the match, Heimito invited a few people back to his house. His wife served sandwiches and beer, and the party, which lasted late into the night, was a delight, full of colorful tales. Heimito had served in the 352nd Infantry Division, 915th Regiment, 2nd Battalion, but according to him, his general was no match for me in maneuvering the troops—or, in my case, the counters— under his command. Though flattered, I felt obliged to point out that it was the way I had positioned my mobile divisions that had decided the match. We toasted General Marcks and General Eberbach and the Fifth Panzer Army. As the evening was drawing to a close, Heimito swore that I would be the next champion of Germany. I think that was when the Cologne group started to hate me. As for me, I felt happy, mostly because I knew that I had made a friend.
And I did win the championship. The semifinals and the final were fought with the tournament version of Blitzkrieg, a fairly wellcalibrated game in which the map as well as the opposing powers (Great Blue and Big Red) are imaginary, which, if both players are good, makes for very long games that tend toward stalemate. Not so this time. I dispatched Paul Huchel in six hours, and in the last game, timed by Conrad, it was only three and a half hours before my opponent claimed second place and gracefully conceded.
We spent one more day in Cologne; the magazine people suggested that I write an article, and Conrad spent the time wandering around taking pictures of streets and churches. I hadn’t met Ingeborg yet and already life was beautiful, or so I thought, unaware that true beauty had yet to manifest itself. But back then I saw beauty all around me. The federation of war games players might be the smallest sports federation in Germany, but I was the champion and no one could claim otherwise. The sun shone for me alone.
One more thing happened that last day in Cologne that would later have important consequences. Heimito Gerhardt, a fan of gaming by mail, presented Conrad and me with our own play-by-mail kits as he accompanied us to the bus station. It so happened that Heimito corresponded with Rex Douglas (one of Conrad’s idols), the great American gamer and star writer for one of the most prestigious of the specialized journals, The General. After confessing that he had never been able to beat Douglas (in six years they had played three long-distance matches), Heimito suggested that I write to Rex and get a game started with him. I have to confess that at first the idea held little interest. If I had to play by mail, I’d rather do it with people like Heimito or other members of my circle; nevertheless, before the bus reached Stuttgart, Conrad had convinced me of the importance of writing to Rex Douglas and challenging him to a game.
Ingeborg is asleep now. Before she fell asleep, she asked me not to get out of bed, to hold her in my arms all night. I asked whether she was scared. It came out naturally, unthinkingly. I just said: Are you scared? And she answered yes. Why? Of what? She didn’t know. I’m right beside you, I said, there’s no need to be scared.