"Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We..." () is a short story by the German author Heinrich Böll (1917–1985). It tells the story of a seriously wounded soldier during World War II being carried on a stretcher through the school which he left three months earlier, because the school is being used as a makeshift military hospital. The narrator slowly notices details confirming where he is, but ignores and explains them away in an internal monologue. At the end of the story, in the art room, he sees unmistakable confirmation that he is indeed in his old school: his own handwriting in chalk on the blackboard: Stranger, bear word to the Spartans we... The story was first published by Verlag Friedrich Middelhauve in 1950 as the title story in a short story collection. Today, Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We... is one of Böll's most famous stories and is one of the best known of examples of Trümmerliteratur ("Rubble literature"). Plot The unnamed first-person narrator begins the story in a truck and is transported through a partially burning city that he cannot identify, and is also unable to accurately gauge the amount of time spent traveling. He arrives in front of a makeshift field hospital set up inside of a school and is carried inside on a stretcher, describing the details of the corridors and staircases that he passes through. Everything seems eerily familiar to him, but he ascribes those feelings to the pain and his fever. The narrator entertains the thought that all schools use the same interior layout and decorations, which would explain why he recognizes every door sign or picture on the wall. In the art room, while waiting for the doctor to come, he asks one of his companions where he is, and learns he is actually in Bendorf, his hometown, but is still uncertain that he is indeed in his old Gymnasium, named after Frederick the Great, in which he spent eight years as a pupil. Alongside the question of his location, a second question of the severity of his wounds is raised. Both of these questions are answered directly after one another: he sees his own handwriting on the chalkboard, containing the quote "Stranger, bear word to the Spartans we..."from three months agotruncated because his lettering was too large to fit on the board. Right after this realization, he also discovers that both