by Giles Milton
One morning, a whole new busload of homeless people were brought to Eutingen and assembled in the school playground. Everyone in the village was told to go and pick a family that could be lodged in their homes.
Marie Charlotte, busy with household chores, sent her sixteen-year-old daughter down to the lower village in order to make the choice. When Gunhild arrived at the school gates she found a crowd of refugees, all in need of shelter. Clueless as to which ones to pick, she eventually selected a mother with three children because she was impressed with the way the little ones said mutti.
The arrival of these temporary lodgers coincided with that of a new home help. Sigrid Weber lived in the lower village of Eutingen and her parents were close friends of the Aïcheles. When she turned sixteen and had to do her compulsory Pflicht-jahr or Duty Year Service, the two families conspired to arrange for her to spend that time being a maid in the Eutingen villa.
It was an arrangement that suited both sets of parents. Marie Charlotte would have someone she already knew to help with the numerous domestic chores, while the Weber family would be able to keep their daughter close to home. The only person who was not particularly happy was Sigrid herself. For much of her childhood she had been best friends with Gunhild; now, suddenly, she found herself a domestic servant in her old friend’s household.
It was still bitterly cold and the house’s size made it difficult to keep clean. Sigrid was constantly being told to sweep the floor and clean up but it remained a hopeless mess. The new lodgers and their young children contributed to the chaos. The kitchen was filthy from overuse and there was always a pile of greasy crockery in the sink.
Sigrid soon found herself entangled in a fraught relationship with Marie Charlotte. The tensions were due, in part, to the hunger and extreme cold, but they were also fuelled by Marie Charlotte, who had been living under immense stress for many months.
She was suffering, perhaps, from acute depression – and with good reason. Her two sons were both at war; she herself was being monitored by the Gestapo; and the greatest joys in her life – reading, art and music – were now firmly controlled by the Nazi regime.
Sigrid was constantly intrigued and often exasperated by Wolfram’s parents. She had always known them to be eccentric but now that she was living under their roof, she realised they were completely different to all the other Germans she had ever met.
It was as if they were living in a fairy-tale world – in their own private castle, in a land that was completely divorced from reality. Sigrid was left with the impression that refined conversation and music were all that mattered – that intellectual exchange and culture were far more important than food and drink. Indeed, it was as if they did not care about what was taking place in the wider world. They certainly never spoke of politics or war, although these were taboo subjects for everyone.
Yet war constantly intruded on them, especially as a growing number of their circle lost their loved ones in battle. The most recent to die was Rolf Elsässer, whose parents were close friends of both the Aïchele and Rodi families.
His religious memorial service had to be conducted in secret because of the ban on the Christian Community. ‘Even though it wasn’t in a church,’ wrote Marie Charlotte, ‘it was very beautiful and solemn. The Rodi children and the Elsässers played music very beautifully and [then] they read the gospel of the Resurrection.’
Young Rolf had always told his family that he did not expect to come back from the front. ‘He’d prepared his young wife and his brothers,’ wrote Marie Charlotte, ‘who all managed to contain their grief. It was much more moving than if they’d been in hysterics.’
In Eutingen, as in Pforzheim, public morale had by now dipped to its lowest ebb since the conflict began. By the winter of 1943 most people had realised that Germany was going to lose.
Hitler knew from his experiences of the First World War how important it was to keep up public spirits. Cinemas, theatres and concert halls remained open and virtuoso musicians were spared war service so that they could entertain those with loved ones at the front.
Marie Charlotte’s spirits were temporarily lifted by an evening of opera at the Pforzheim concert hall. The renowned tenor, Wolfgang Windgassen, was making his debut as Don Alvero in Verdi’s La forza del destino. His bravura performance electrified the Pforzheim audience; Windgassen was the heart-throb of thousands of young local girls. When he emerged to greet his swooning fans at the end of the concert, Gunhild was among them. She was presented to him and even got close enough to touch him, a rare and exciting privilege.
Wolfram’s parents continued to visit close friends in these troubled times, but no amount of entertainment could disguise the fact that the war was going from bad to worse. The humiliating annihilation of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad had been the first cruel blow. The only consolation was the saving of General von Kleist’s forces in the Caucasus, which had been able to cross the Don and reach safety before they too became trapped.
There had been more grim news throughout the course of 1943. In July, the Germans had launched their much vaunted offensive against the Kursk salient. It proved a catastrophe; the largest tank battle in history ended with the German army losing a staggering 2,900 tanks. By early autumn, Soviet forces had advanced into the Ukraine and driven the German army back to the River Dnieper.
The Allies, meanwhile, were taking advantage of their victories in North Africa, launching a seaborne invasion of Sicily in July 1943. The island was in their hands by mid-August, by which time Mussolini had been dismissed from power and promptly arrested. Within weeks of the victory in Sicily, the Allied Fifth Army was landing 170,000 men at Salerno, just to the south of Naples. With rumours of an impending Allied landing in northern France, where coastal defences were still not completed, Hitler looked increasingly vulnerable on every front except the home one.
As they boarded the train at Münsingen station, Wolfram and his comrades still had no idea where they might be sent. Some thought they were heading for the Ukraine. Others said they were off to Italy. All the speculation proved in vain; their destination remained so secret that even their commanders did not know.
The journey seemed to last a lifetime. The lads would sleep, then be jostled awake, then fall asleep again, and still they were on the move. At one point, one of Wolfram’s friends peered out through the window and thought he recognised the Paris skyline. However, the train rattled on through the night and it was only when it finally came to a halt in Bayeux that they realised they had been posted to Normandy.
The men were told to walk to Caen, some twenty miles to the south-west. On their arrival, weary and footsore, Wolfram and his comrades were told to continue on towards Audrieu, a little village that lay a few miles from Caen.
They blinked in disbelief when they finally arrived there. Chateau Audrieu, their billet, was an elegant manor built in the formal classicism of pre-revolutionary France. The Livry-Levels, hereditary chatelaines since the early eighteenth century, had made few changes to its unstudied grace.
In the dim light of its oak-panelled salons, there were enough antiques to have kept Wolfram occupied for days, but the house was so dark that he could snatch only brief glimpses of the ancient trunks and settles, and portraits of the family’s Louis Quatorze armigers – chevaliers of impeccable pedigree – remained as incorporeal as ghosts.
The German officers got to stay in the chateau while Wolfram and his fellow funkers were lodged in the outhouses, surrounded by acres of formal gardens, parterres, fountains, topiary, orchards, meadows and woodland.
As winter gave way to an early spring, they were sent on training exercises into the nearby woods and coppices, with constant reminders of the need to be absolute masters of their machines. Men’s lives would depend on the speed with which they could transmit messages on the battlefield.
They were woken at three in the morning in order to prepare their horses. The animals had to be harnessed to a cart that carried their Morse machin
e – a clunking great piece of equipment that was far too heavy to be transported by hand. The men themselves packed everything else they needed into rucksacks: weaponry, cooking equipment and a zeltbahn – cleverly designed triangular structures that could be put together and made into a tent.
The Morse excursions took them through many picturesque farming communities. As the dawn sun broke through the woodland, and they sent and received messages, they were hotly trailed by infantry. These foot soldiers would fire blanks at them so that they could experience what it was like to be operating the machine in the heat of battle.
Once the exercise was finally over, the men made their way back to the chateau in their own time, often stopping at the farmhouses to try to buy eggs, milk and butter. A few of the farmers expressed their displeasure at the sight of German soldiers training on their land, but most were friendly, especially towards Germans who spoke a smattering of French. Wolfram’s team-mate, Miggel, asked one farmlady: ‘Avezvous du lait?’ She emitted a peal of gay laughter, placed her hands on her withered bosom and told him that her cows had milk but that hers had dried up years ago.
On one occasion, Wolfram went with one team member into a village store in St Come-de-Fresne. The shopkeeper shook her head sadly, saying, ‘So young,’ to the lad that was accompanying Wolfram. She asked his age and, taking pity on him, gave him a little bag of sweets.
One morning, the men peered out of the window of their billet to see a band of exotic new arrivals shuffling up the chateau’s long driveway: volunteers from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan who had been drafted in to help Wolfram and his comrades transport their unwieldy Morse machines.
Wolfram stared in amazement. Here was a band worthy of the Golden Horde – Tartar and Mongol warriors with tapering eyes and wispy beards. Seven centuries earlier, they would have arrived on horseback, wielding arced bows and damascene scimitars. Now, they were armed with more familiar weaponry, automatic Lugers, yet their Far Eastern appearance lent a touch of foreignness to a quintessentially French backdrop.
‘Turkmen!’ wrote Wolfram to his parents. ‘There’s nothing European about them.’
These Asiatic soldiers, who had yoked themselves to the German war machine out of their hatred for Stalin, brought a renewed sense of adventure to the training exercises. Wolfram was bemused by their lack of knowledge about the war. ‘They’re taking part in this conflict even though they have absolutely no idea what it’s about. Nor do they have any clue as to which country they’re in and they certainly couldn’t point to it on a map.’
The arrival of warm weather injected a note of optimism into the men’s lives. ‘Now we have such lovely spring mornings,’ wrote Wolfram, ‘and the bird chorus in the morning is just like at home. On the lawn beyond the chateau, the daffodils are beginning to bloom. At long last, spring is really coming.’
At the beginning of April, Wolfram’s spirits were raised still further by a visit to Caen. It was market day and the town was packed with farmers peddling their local produce, prompting memories of the distant days of peace. ‘There’s still lots to buy here. And there’s such a lovely, joyful life in the streets and loads of civilians everywhere. It reminds one of the times that haven’t existed in Germany for so many years.’
He was staggered by the variety of items on sale in the shops, quite unlike the empty shelves of Pforzheim, and decided to send things back to his parents. ‘I’ve bought you 250g of cocoa powder…I also bought myself two woollen socks, which I’ll send you to keep for me. When I next go into town, I want to buy some angora wool which you can get here. And when I’ve saved up enough, I’ll get myself a big rucksack. I saw a fantastic one in a shop window for 1,350 French francs.’
On Holy Friday, at the end of April, the men were given a day off. Miggel managed to tune their wireless to a certain radio frequency and suddenly there was a wonderful burst of music. It was Bach’s St Matthew Passion, broadcast live from Leipzig. They could not hear it very well for the line was crackly, but they sat glued to their headphones. The music transported them back to civilian life and reminded them of happier times.
The next day was Wolfram’s twentieth birthday; it was also his last at Chateau Audrieu. The threat of an Allied invasion from England was increasing with every day; now, the men were to be transferred to Brittany to protect a stretch of coastline that was dangerously exposed.
They headed to Dinan by train, a journey of extreme discomfort. There were no compartments or even carriages, just a platform on wheels, open to the elements.
However, the apple and pear trees were still in bloom, and the landscape was at its bucolic best. ‘Sometimes from the train we get the wonderful scent of the blossom,’ Wolfram wrote to his mother. ‘It reminds me of Franconia, except that instead of timber houses they’re built of Normandy stone.’ He was delighted to catch a glimpse of Mont St Michel, its black silhouette outlined dramatically against a luminous, copper-red sky. ‘Just as we passed, the round disc of the setting sun was hovering above the church spire. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.’
The train came to a sudden halt in the middle of the countryside and everyone was told to get out. They were ordered to unload everything, but no one explained why. Guns, crates of ammunition, and straw and oats for the horses – all had to be taken off the train. Just as they lifted off the last few boxes, the order was countermanded and they were ordered to reload them.
Everything had to be done in a great hurry for the train needed to continue to its destination, giving no time to reload all the fodder for the horses. The officer in charge took the decision to leave three men to guard these supplies. Wolfram and two others were chosen to remain behind, lodged in an empty house.
They had no idea how long they would be there, were given hardly any food and had no papers justifying their presence. Having assumed someone would return for them on the following morning, they were surprised when no one showed up.
A second day passed and still no one came. By now, they had eaten the last of their rations and were getting hungry. It was while they were considering what to do that a young lad from the nearby farm paid them a visit.
Looking longingly at the supply of oats, he told Wolfram that his horse had not eaten properly for more than two years. The Germans, he said, had confiscated all the best fodder. Now, he had a proposition to make: if they gave him some oats, he would supply them with food in return.
Such an exchange was strictly forbidden, but Wolfram thought it sounded like a sensible idea. He checked with the others and they agreed, but they warned the lad to burn the sacks as soon as they were empty, because they knew he would be shot if such incriminating evidence was discovered on his farm.
The boy took a sack and promptly returned with eggs. He also asked the Germans whether they would like to dine with his parents in the farmhouse that evening.
Wolfram and his two comrades were delighted to accept, if a little embarrassed. As they sat at the table next to a roaring fire, the farmer’s wife made them dozens of pancakes, all washed down with cider. At the end of the meal, conducted in the soldiers’ broken French, they were invited for lunch on the following day.
The farmer was quite open about his views on the German occupation, telling them that whilst it had brought many changes to their daily lives, it was the small things that irritated him the most. The ban on firearms was a source of particular annoyance. The farmer had long been accustomed to hunt and shoot for the pot, but his rifle had been confiscated by the Germans on the day they had occupied the area.
When Wolfram and his comrades heard this, they offered to help him out. One of the three, a keen shot, promised to shoot wood pigeons. During the following morning he managed to bag dozens. From then on, Wolfram and his comrades were invited to share the roasted wood pigeons with the family each evening.
Word of their excursions soon spread through the local villages. The owner of a little bistro near by asked them to shoot pigeons for him as well, so they started to provide
him with a regular supply.
The three Germans were by now on such good terms with the farmer that they were invited to attend the first communion of one of the youngsters in the family. ‘We can’t possibly come,’ Wolfram told the farmer. ‘We’re the Bosch.’ However, the farmer pressed them, telling them it would be fine.
They went to the celebration in their uniforms but left all their weapons behind – an offence that was punishable by death by firing squad, although they did not think of the danger.
The locals stared at the three soldiers dressed in their khaki fatigues, until the farmer assured the congregation that they were good Germans. Afterwards he invited them back to eat sausages and cake made with real butter and real eggs.
One evening, when they had got to know the farmer well, they asked him why he was being so kind to them. He told them that he had served as a conscripted soldier in the First World War and had hated it. ‘It’s not your fault,’ he said. ‘You didn’t choose to fight.’
As they all drank more and more cider, and grew ever more merry, they drew caricatures of Hitler, Stalin and Churchill, pinned them to the wall and threw rubbish at them. There was general agreement that the people at the top were all the same: criminals, every last one of them.
For more than a fortnight, no one came to look for Wolfram and his friends until eventually one morning, a German military car pulled up. A professional officer by the name of Glasser stepped out and announced that he had come to fetch them.
When he noticed the nearby farm and poked his head into the pantry, he was sorely tempted by the sight of their eggs, butter and cream. With some hesitation, he drew Wolfram to one side and asked him whether he thought the farmer would be willing to sell him a little food. Wolfram feigned ignorance and said he had no idea.
