21:40 Aug 3, 2010 

Thank you very much for this Diana - it had never occurred to me that he might have entered the civil service as a 'reward' for his military service, but it would make sense in the context. Shall search to find how old the author of this piece was, to see if this was possible.

15:12 Aug 3, 2010 

This is a bit tricky. One possibility is that the writer was called up and then served in the army during the war (Militärdienst and Krieg being simultaneous). Another possibility was that he first did some sort of military service (in the peacetime army) and then fought in WW1. There will be a difference as to how to render this part.
The other enigmatic point is whether these things (military + clerical/administrative service) happened one after another and independent of each other, or whether the first was a prerequisite for the second. For instance my father in law was a member of the regular army in the 1930s, then he fought in WW2 and afterwards he narrowly missed becoming a life-long civil servant (Beamter) which in those days was the CONSEQUENCE of having spent 14 - I think - years altogether in the army. Thus becoming an alimented "pen-pusher" was a kind of reward for sticking it out so long in the armed forces (and we'll keep politics out of this please!)