The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  Leaping clear of the seat she dived underneath the tractor just as the belly of the aeroplane ploughed into the field barely 50 feet away. She could see the agonised face of the pilot behind the tinted, Perspex windscreen; his expression like that of a rodeo rider desperately pulling at the reins of his bucking, uncontrollable bronco. As the plane skidded across the grass its propellers churned up the freshly mown ground, batting clods of earth and stone across the field that showered down on the haymakers like shrapnel – some of it impacting the tractor under which Rene was sheltering.

  Shaking again but determined to keep her nerve, she scrambled out from under the tractor expecting to see yet another terrible scene. The aeroplane had come to rest and was still largely intact, though black smoke was billowing from the hot engine that had been on fire prior to the crash. Certain that there was a crew onboard she sprinted toward the wreckage shouting to the others: ‘IT’S AMERICAN, NOT GERMAN. SOMEONE GIVE ME A HAND!’

  The bomber was a US Navy Liberator returning to its base at St Eval on the north coast having completed an anti-submarine mission in the Atlantic.

  Entry to the aeroplane seemed hopeless but she noticed an aperture in the fuselage. Maybe it was for a large gun – she couldn’t see a gun, but whatever it was it was the only way in. Clambering inside, reaching out in the unfamiliar, claustrophobic environment of the fuselage, pulling her way forward to where she had seen the pilot before realising that her progress was blocked by a steel bulkhead. It wasn’t the way to get to him.

  Retracing her footsteps she climbed back out of the same aperture from which she’d entered, only instead of dropping to the ground she now climbed onto the roof of the fuselage. Below her someone was shouting encouragement.

  Stepping along the spine of the aeroplane she thought of a film she’d seen as a child – Buster Keaton walking along the top of a moving train carriage trying not to lose balance. Silly thoughts in precarious moments! Unlike Keaton, balance was never her thing.

  Dropping to her knees, peering down into the gunner’s turret; nobody in there. Onward now to the cockpit – just a few more steps. Yes! There! The pilot in clear view, still strapped in his seat, dazed and confused, talking into his throat mic as if in direct contact with his base.

  Glancing up at his would-be rescuer, he gesticulated and shouted: ‘Get away! It’ll blow in a minute… Get away.’

  Someone tossed up to Rene a heavy club hammer with which she could smash the Perspex. Breaking through to him she could now reach down with her long arms to release his seat harness then pull at his flying jacket with all her strength – strength that had come through months of pulling against shire horses, cajoling them, lifting heavy potato sacks, starting tractors with starting handles. Her remarkable strength caused him to reciprocate, pushing upward, holding onto life. This was no place to give up; life wasn’t going to end here – not today.

  Slipping to the ground, Rene once more grabbed the dazed pilot by the collar and continued to pull him until they were both safely clear of the wreckage. Laying him on the close-cropped ground of the hayfield, kneeling she took his hand and held it firmly between her own. He, too, was shaking.

  ‘Where are the other men? Your crew?’

  ‘All bailed out – just me.’

  Rene was awarded the George Cross and consequently merited a mention in The London Gazette, which thrilled her London family. She couldn’t have known whether the plane would have caught fire or not, so she was rightly recognised as a true heroine and consequently feted as the girl who saved the life of a US airman on the very day she’d posed for a poster.

  To the magazine editor, she was a heroine in two respects: the hardworking Land Army girl and the fearless rescuer of an Allied airman. But in an age of heroes and heroines, her day in the limelight soon passed, and by the time she met Hugo in 1948 her bravery had faded from the collective memory as people made a concerted effort to return to a post-war normality.

  This attitude was not unwelcome as it suited the city-cum-country girl who much preferred her life to be ordinary. Always modest, she never mentioned the crash or her award – the highest decoration for a civilian – to anyone, preferring to remain the lofty Land Army girl in dungarees.

  The incident also brought a temporary respite to her shaking, though for many years afterwards the condition would return to affect her for various reasons. The pilot whose life she saved, Lieutenant Terrence Deforrest Robbins, remained such a good friend that he travelled at great expense from his home in Idaho to England for Hanne’s christening in January 1954 at which he was made an honoured godfather.

  *

  Freitag 28th Juni 1963, 4.19 pm

  Oberwinkel

  Hugo glanced at his watch; it was getting late and tea would be ready. Oma would not be at all pleased if only half the family were in attendance; she couldn’t abide empty places at the table; and what of poor mum all alone with her mother-in-law and not a common word to exchange between them.

  He knew only too well what it was like to be in the company of a mother-in-law who was distant and unwilling to build bridges. He could understand how Agnes – Rene’s mother – had resented his presence. Marrying the enemy! Breaking the family apart! Just what was Rene thinking of?

  *

  August 1950, the exact date forgotten; Hugo didn’t record it.

  Cornwall

  From that very first outing to the cinema in Penzance to see David Niven and Kim Hunter in Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death, and from the moment he gently placed his left arm around her shoulder during the picnic scene, Hugo had known that he would never – never walk away from Rene. There could be no German bride for him.

  In his head, he was David Niven’s character – Peter D. Carter; and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had fallen head over heels for a former English Land Army girl and there would be no power on earth or in Heaven that could separate them.

  Agnes, like his own mother, was a widow – Rene’s father having died of leukaemia in 1930. Agnes was convinced that his service as an artillery gunner in the First War had brought about his premature demise and it most probably had. Such a common denominator cemented the bonds that linked Hugo and Rene.

  With Rene’s help he learned English quickly. Each and every date was also an English lesson. Now, thanks to Rene, he only had to hear a word once and he would remember it, though his pronunciation left much to be desired. She was a natural teacher and a keen student of grammar and, for his part, Hugo was a willing and intelligent pupil. He had so much to say to her and desperately wanted to understand everything she said. He wanted to know who she was and where she was from, why she’d agreed to meet him – an “enemy” – when there were so many returning British servicemen.

  It wasn’t until just a few weeks before Hanne was born in 1953 that Rene was able to explain to Hugo the reasons that had brought her to West Cornwall, and only then because she started to shake uncontrollably and the doctor had to be called one evening.

  *

  Freitag 28th Juni 1963

  A very warm evening in Oberwinkel

  Hanne knew that her godfather – Uncle Terry – was an American, but had no idea as to her mother’s role in saving his life or the great award bestowed upon her, though she would discover their story many years later. For now, all she knew was that it had been a smashing walk with dad and that it was getting hot – very hot indeed.

  When the heat of the day had subsided, Oma agreed to babysit whilst Rene took her turn to walk with Hugo through the village, or “promenade” as she called it. She wanted to see the village and meet the community, so the prospect of linking arms and chatting without kids or mother-in-law in attendance was an opportunity too good to miss.

  ‘Did you enjoy your walk with Hanne today?’ asked Rene.

  ‘Yes, it was a good walk.’

  ‘Talks, doesn’t she?’r />
  ‘For England, I think.’

  ‘You need to bond, both of you.’

  ‘She is… What is that word?’

  ‘Inquisitive? Curious?’

  ‘Yes, curious. She asked about Uncle Terry.’

  ‘Did you tell her how we met?’

  ‘Her mother the war hero? A job for you to tell her one day, nah?’

  ‘She doesn’t need to know. I don’t shake anymore and that’s all that matters.’

  ‘Maybe her uncle Terry will spill the beans one day.’

  ‘It was our war, Hugo; they don’t need to know. Their lives are different – will be different.’

  Hugo as tour guide knew each and every house in the village. ‘So-and-so lived there,’ he would say; ‘she was the oldest woman in the district – probably in Bavaria. Her grandson was a convicted criminal and joined the SS. The Russians executed him. Just as well.

  ‘Cousin Jurgen lived in this house. He was a builder. He did not come home after the war. Nobody knows. His daughter lives in Berlin. She will come to the reunion. You will like her.’

  Rene, the George Cross heroine, had been too timid to venture out alone, fearing that someone might try to engage her in conversation, find out that she was British and then spit at her for having been on the side that had beaten Hitler and ridiculed his ridiculous promises. The war was only yesterday after all. Eighteen years was nothing in people’s memories, and it wasn’t simply that Germany was a beaten nation – it was the indignity of it.

  Saying nothing to Hugo, in her head she was prepared; just in case. Her thoughts were thus:

  They’d raised their right arms to blindly follow a complete and utter maniac to disaster; a corporal with a Charlie Chaplin moustache! A pavement artist who could barely sell his own work! The insane man who’d taken control of the legitimate government when he should have been locked up in an institution! What nation on God’s green earth would blindly follow a maniacal former corporal-cum-failed street artist who bore a resemblance to the twentieth century’s most successful clown? What’s more, he’d done all this damage to Germany when in fact he was Austrian. He even instigated a policy to rid Europe of people who were dark just like him, whilst favouring a fair-haired, blue-eyed race – a group with whom he bore no resemblance and was clearly no example.

  No, Rene didn’t want to retaliate, but if push had come to shove then she’d have let the offender have it with both barrels. With Hugo beside her, she had no such worries.

  ‘I love the cobbled streets and the houses! It’s like a fairy-tale village. I keep expecting Hansel and Gretel to come skipping down the street.’ She pointed to a large monastic building. ‘Is that building your old school? It’s magnificent – for a village.’

  Hugo nodded. ‘It is an abbey to Saint Margaret. You know why my mother wanted me to be a priest, nah? Here is the “factory” right here in the village. It might have been my fate had the Nazis not come when they did.’

  ‘Better a priest than a Nazi, Hugo.’

  ‘We would never have been together,’ said Hugo quietly, in a rare expression of sincerity to his English wife.

  People passed them and initially politely exchanged greetings, until such time as someone recognised the mature, post-war face of Hugo Mauer.

  ‘Good evening! … Hugo? Is it…? It is you! How are you, my friend?’

  Another was more formal: ‘Herr Mauer? How pleased I am to see you again! Your mother said that you were a prisoner? Is that true? Did they treat you well?’

  Some enquired as to whether he’d returned for good. Others were strangers who had come to the village in the post-war years and had no idea as to who he was, but they spoke anyway; but at least two people chose to ignore him completely. Didn’t matter, he’d known them to be Nazi Party workers employed in what had been the Gauleiter’s office, so to hell with them. In all, it became a busy “promenade” as the villagers stepped out into the cooler evening air to partake of the fine summer weather.

  He asked someone about the Nazi headmaster Haas who had taken over the school from the gentle Herr Fischl. ‘Haas is in America now, working for the CIA. I hear he is doing very well and the Americans reward him very well indeed.’

  Hugo didn’t really know why he’d enquired about Haas as he cared not one jot, but the man to whom he made the enquiry had also been at the same school at the same time and it was just a way of making conversation in a world where so much had changed. ‘And Fischl?’

  ‘Fischl was not so fortunate. He died in prison defending his anti-Nazi credentials.’

  At the narrow bridge that crossed the river, where Hugo’s grandparents had first entered the village looking for work in the 1880s, Hugo told Rene of the epic battle that had ensued on that very bridge: ‘My great-grandparents were not welcome. My great-grandfather was a cowboy…?’

  ‘Cowboy?! You mean “maverick”?’

  ‘Yes, maverick – a fighter who had a way of things… Doing? Nah? He did not… What is the word?’

  ‘Endear himself? Meaning to get along with…’

  ‘Yes, “endear”. He was Bavarian. Bavarians are stubborn, nah?’ remarked Hugo as he proudly recalled how his “maverick” ancestor had fought a vicious “battle of the horsewhips” on the bridge when the family’s wagon encountered another midway across. ‘Each man held their ground. Each had a whip.’

  According to Hugo, the encounter had entered village folklore, and various stories of his grandfather’s legendary anti-social behaviour – stories that had been told to him as a child by Oma – were also known throughout the district.

  ‘Sounds like you’re a chip off the old block!’ replied Rene, squeezing her husband’s hand. ‘I wonder how I would have coped had I been taken prisoner and brought here to work, unable to speak the language and far from home.’

  ‘You would have coped,’ said Hugo.

  ‘I couldn’t have started a business or bought land as you did.’

  ‘Maybe with me here? I would help you.’ Hugo stopped and looked not at Rene but off into the distance as if to utter such a thing was too emotional for a Bavarian of his generation to confront. He’d become too emotional in recent years, he felt.

  Emotion, so often frowned upon when he was at school, even during Herr Fischl’s tenure as headmaster, and later removed in its entirety under the Nazi doctrine. His school friend, Jacob Schultz, had been badly beaten by Haas for crying in the classroom – crying for the loss of his pet dog who had died the night before. Haas had even recommended to Jacob’s father that his son be removed from school and his family in order to be sent to Berlin where the Hitler Youth would cure him of self-centred sentimentality.

  Rene, however, was thrilled with Hugo’s sentiment. Sentiment was a word that the Nazis had all but removed from the German lexicon and so Hugo had not easily understood its meaning as he grappled with English vocabulary. It had shocked her that he appeared not to be able to comprehend its meaning.

  Now she waited for him to turn to her, look her in the eyes and hold her gently, telling her how much she meant to him, but she realised that the German in Hugo had returned and his aloof demeanour was strengthening again in this environment. His sentiment had been a fleeting exposé that he could cover up in an instant.

  ‘I see no ships?’ she asked.

  ‘We should go and see this fence that Hanne and her cousins saw.’

  ‘Not tonight, Hugo!’

  ‘Tonight? No, but before we leave for home again.’

  At the cemetery gates on the outskirts of the village they stopped to stare at the various headstones, polished and in shining contrast to the historic Cornish headstones of granite, weathered and uncared for.

  ‘Are your ancestors here?’ she asked him.

  ‘Some. My ancestors came from villages to the north and west. When no longer the grave can be maintained also
the stone is removed, unlike in Britain.’

  ‘Would you want to be returned here?’

  ‘Do not worry – I will live forever!’ he laughed.

  She’d asked him the very same thing some thirteen years earlier as they’d walked around a Cornish cemetery. ‘Would you want to be buried here in a foreign land?’

  ‘I will not die,’ he’d replied then. ‘I should have died a hundred times, but death does not want me.’

  She had thought it a very sad thing to say at the time, but had let it drop because then there was a new business to talk about and a new cottage – “Roseveare”.

  *

  Monday 5th May 1952

  A hamlet between Hayle and Penzance

  Hugo had taken her on the bus to see Roseveare Cottage.

  ‘Splendid in its isolation!’ he exclaimed when they eventually arrived at the garden gate. She was sure he’d learned the expression verbatim and most probably from Wally, but whatever, he was quite right; it was indeed “splendid in isolation”.

  Roseveare Cottage was not on the market; it was a tied property owned by Rene’s employers the Valdeans and vacant to a young family employed in agriculture. Hugo and Rene fitted the requirement in every respect – Hugo now in the employ of Mr James Hubert, tenant dairy farmer, and Rene employed as a live-in nanny for the Valdeans. They simply had to keep the place tidy and make themselves available for milking duties three weekends out of four. Hugo would continue in the employ of Mr Hubert, but the large garden offered a unique opportunity to begin an enterprise – market gardening.

  Hugo had learned from day one in Cornwall that the soil combined with a temperate climate in the far west of the county was ideal for growing produce – anything from cabbages and potatoes to daffodils. The cottage garden was too small to grow daffodils but it would be ideal for smaller blooms such as anemones and hyacinths.