I had already read a lot of books where boys like me experienced terrific adventures, and I also knew the story of Robert Baden-Powell, who as a British officer in the South-African Boer war engaged boys to serve him as scouts, and who after the war appealed to the boys in his own country to become as good "Boy Scouts". So the the Boy Scout Movement was born, in 1907 in England, soon afterwards in many more countries, and in 1911 also in Germany, where catholic and protestant and non-confessional Boy Scout associations were founded. I decided to join the non-confessionals – their lily, the sign of the Boy Scouts all around the world, had the most beautiful shape.

In our town, there was a Boy Scout group in nearly each district – except my own.

"We will found a new group in your part of town, if you can find a few more boys", said the chief leader of the town organization when I asked him how I could become a Boy Scout. I asked friends and classmates, and soon we were four. "That is not yet enough, but let's try a start", the chief said. He himself organized our weekly group meetings, he taught us songs and the Boy Scout Commandments, we learned knots and outdoor life knowledge and many other interesting things which a boy must know for hiking and camping.

I found all this very exciting, and soon I was firmly determined to become a real Boy Scout. Now I had to get hold of the Boy Scout uniform and the equipment for outdoor life: A blue shirt and the special blue "boys' blouse", Boy Scout belt and knife, a backpack, a mess tin, a sleeping bag, and a strip of canvas – that was needed at least. A good rain poncho, compass and maps, pocket lamp, and later perhaps a bike of my own – that could still wait.

I realized that my parents could not pay for all that – hardly ten years after the World War where we had lost everything. Also, my imagination of a good scout was that he should earn the money for his equipment by himself. So I worked all my holidays in a road construction gang until I had saved enough money, and after several extra shifts I could even afford a guitar.

The first trip was an exciting adventure. Never before I had biked a distance of sixty kilometers – I had no bike of my own, and this one, a rather ruined model from before the war, was only lent from a friendly little old lady, and I with my long legs sat on it "like an ape on a grindstone", as we say. When we finally reached our camping site on a lonely clearing amidst the wood I was so exhausted that I fell downright to the side together with my bike – to everybody's great amusement.

But the others were hardly better off. With stiff muscles we stalked through the undergrowth to find convenient branches for tent rods and pegs. It took ages till the tent was kind of pitched, and it was already dawning when the smoking campfire was aflame, and finally the instant pea soup bubbled in the big pot.

But then we all sat around the warming fire, we feasted and chatted and joked and laughed, and all pains of the day were forgotten. I unpacked my brand new guitar, we sang our songs, and the chief read aloud thrilling Boy Scout stories ...
And here, around the fire amidst the dark nocturnal forest with its uncanny little noises, all this had its quite special mystery which captivated me for a long time.

The night in the tent was cold, my cheap sleeping bag appeared to be much too thin, and the shabby strip of canvas which my father had brought home from the war let the moisture of the ground soon rise into my clothing. Nevertheless we slept like stones. The night-watches were cancelled because the first watch fell asleep and could not wake the next one.
It seemed we had still much to learn!

In the dead of night it had begun to rain, and it kept raining, with short interruptions, also the whole next day. The fire was extinguished, so we had no warming tea in the morning, and shivering with cold we chomped, bread in one hand and sausage in the other one, our cold breakfast, morosely staring at the dripping wet nature outside of our tent entrance, and obviously all of us were thinking the same: "What shall we do with such a weather?"

But our irrepressible chief had already been in the forest while we were still asleep, and had prepared a path, marked by tracks and Boy Scout signs, with hidden messages at certain places where we would have to fulfill special tasks.

There was definitely no hope for mercy for us. So we trotted through the wet wood for the whole morning, and got warmed up slowly. We had to look for a woodpecker's hole here, to collect leaves of all trees we could name there, on the hill we had to ascertain the directions without a compass, and had to cross a gorge with simply one rope, then we knotted a rope ladder and used it to climb up a mighty oak from where we could see our tent, but we still had to carve a wooden spoon, and finally we constructed a stretcher which was easily done using two long branches and two of our boys' blouses, and then we carried our youngest one on it, joking and shouting, back to our camp.

There the inevitable pea soup already steamed on the campfire. Each one had to try his carved wooden spoon first, and gave the round a burst of laughter because none of our products was really capable of catching up some soup, so everyone soon reached for the cutlery he had brought from home. Full and happy we still sat around the fire for a while, and then we celebrated the ending of our first camp in a solemn round.

Quickly we packed our things together, extinguished the fire, folded up our tent, buried the garbage, tied our backpacks to our bikes, and started. At once yesterday's pain of the aching muscles was there again, and it grew worse quickly. Soon I was dominated only by this one thought: Hold out, do not wilt!

I had only a faint knowledge of traffic rules, and when the group turned off I followed them blindly and almost landed under the screaming tyres of a truck, and when I then, with my guitar across my back, in a rush lurched onto the cyclepath, the neck of my guitar crashed against a lamp post and downright broke off. Tears came to my eyes when I heard the last sighing sound of my beautiful new guitar which I had worked for so hard. But fortunately nobody could see my tears in the pouring rain, and anyway nothing else counted now but: Boy, do not wilt now! Hold out!

And then, hours later, I was at home. I could hardly stand on my legs, was wet to my skin, and my guitar hung down its neck like a tired swan. But I was full of all the new impressions and experiences of this first trip, and I was so proud that I had stood all strains and pains, and with a beaming face I told everybody: "It was great!"

Our enthusiasm was infective: Soon we were eight boys, and that was enough to found an own group.

On our group meetings we had learnt a lot, and some of our new skills we had demonstrated already on our first trip. But it took still half a year until we were ready to become members of the Boy Scout Association.

But then the great day came on a camp where all the Boy Scouts of our town were assembled. Each group had their own tent pitched in a wide circle on a clearing, with their coloured pennants in front of them.

In our group we took the commandments very seriously, and if someone wanted to cut a young tree because it looked like a good tent rod he was stopped promptly: "Are you crazy? The Boy Scout is protecting plants and animals!"

While we were still busy to take our examination, the other Boy Scouts had already piled up a heap of firewood in the free space amidst the circle of tents. Then all the groups had their supper, and when it began dawning, they all assembled forming a circle around the pile of firewood. Of each group, one boy carried the pennant, and another boy held a burning torch. We also had our new pennant with us but it still was rolled up tightly.

The solemn round was opened with a song, and then the boys with the torches approached the pile of firewood from all sides, pushed their torches into the pile, and the big fire was ablaze the next moment. The chief delivered a short greeting address, and then, after another song, our great moment came:

Then our group was founded officially. The chief gave us the name of "Markomannen" – we had elected this name because all groups of our town were named after Germanic tribes. Our new pennant was unrolled, and when the chief handed it over it to me he appointed me to be the leader of our group.

And then he went away – he who had prepared us to become Boy Scouts, who had led our group until now, and had been such a good leader, he went away and left us alone in the circle ... And I cleared my throat and delivered the first speech of my life: "We are the group of 'Markomannen', and now we sing our group song." We were so moved and excited that we hardly could sing. But fortunately everybody who knew this song soon accompanied us, and encouraged us to bring our performance to a good end.

Then we went back to our place and listened how the chief explained the cross-country game which was planned for tomorrow, and what activities the Association had scheduled for the next time.

When the round was finally ended with a last song, and the circle was dissolved, we were still too excited to sleep. We sat at the fire still for hours and made friends with our new Boy Scout brothers from other parts of our town.

Now I was a real Boy Scout after all. But that is not so easy. For you are a Boy Scout all the time, not only in uniform, and not only during the group meetings or the weekend trips.

For instance, there is the promise to help everybody any time. To learn this, the Boy Scouts around the world resolve to do a Good Deed every day. I had a small pocket calendar where I noted down every day what Good Deed I had done: Surprise my Mom by cleaning the windows, do an errand for Dad, help a child across the street, assist an old woman to carry her shopping bags home, push a car, visit a sick classmate ... If you keep your eyes open you soon will find thousand possibilities to help.

Later I did not make notes any longer, but in the meantime I had developed a good sense for opportunities where my help could be needed.

Our group met weekly, and about once a month we made a weekend trip, mostly in order to try something which we had learnt on our group meetings: How to find edible berries and mushrooms in the woods, and how to prepare a tasteful tea from dry blackberry leaves; how to rope down from a high rock; how to save people from drowning; how to send Morse signals with a pocket lamp; how to defend ourselves in case of an attack ... We always went to a convenient camping site in a quarry, or on a lonely clearing deep in the forest, on a little island amidst the river, or in the old castle ruins of the Isenburg high on the cliff where it was especially romantic to tell the old tales of knights and ghosts at the campfire at night.

In the summer holidays we always made a far trip. We were on the road for several weeks with our bikes, headed for the Netherlands, or biked 1000 kilometers through Northern Germany, free to go where we were allured to, or to stay where it pleased us, and to do what we wanted – a wonderful freedom, and a time to collect impressions and experiences which stay alive for the whole life.

Outdoor life was always adventurous, and often dangerous, too, for sure. Mostly even the most daring adventures came to a good end. But once, on a night excursion, one of us drank from a water which looked like clear spring in the dark, and afterwards he lay on the isolation ward with typhoid fever for many weeks; another boy was hit on his head by a tumbling boulder, and while we carried him to the next road, two of us ran ahead, blocked the whole road and stopped the first coming car, and in a hurry we drove to the next hospital, where we waited until our friend was cared for ...

We stuck together, and went together through thick and thin, and soon our group was a good crew with a deep comradeship which gave us all that what a family cannot give to youngsters of this age:
Friendship among young people of the same age and a like mind, self-experience and self-probation in adventure and danger, self-chosen ideals and a self-found orientation for an independent and self-determined life.

The big regional and national camps gave us the impression how big and strong our new world was. Hundreds, thousands of Boy Scouts were there, endless rows of tents; everywhere colourful pennants, and flags with our lily sign; everywhere singing and guitar playing, everywhere friendliness and the will to help. This was our world: An waving ocean of boys in blue shirts, and among them the green or gray or khaki shirts of the guests from all over the globe, delegations of the worldwide Boy Scout Movement, who in the evening, at the great Jamboree, when our songs out of thousands throats rose to the stars, performed also the dances and songs of their home countries, and sat at our tents the next morning and exchanged addresses with us.