The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days

by Juliet Conlin

  ‘Johanna!’ Alfred called, crawling under the smoke, oblivious to the shards of glass that were bloodying his hands and knees. He finally spotted her in the furthest corner of the room, lying perfectly still, her face the same colour as the plaster that speckled her hair. ‘Johanna,’ he called and lifted her head onto his lap. A thin stream of blood trickled down the side of her face. For the longest time, her eyelids remained closed, as Alfred bent over her and kissed her face, again and again. Finally, she opened her eyes.

  ‘Franziska,’ she said weakly.

  ‘Never mind her,’ Alfred answered. ‘Are you all right? Can you move your legs?’

  Johanna ignored his questions. ‘Make sure she’s alive. We need her.’

  Alfred turned around. Frau von Markstein was not only alive, but had already heaved herself back onto her bed and was tucking her feet under her blankets.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Alfred said to Johanna. He helped her get up off the floor – she didn’t appear to be seriously hurt – and into her bedroom. ‘I’ll go and see what happened,’ he told her after she’d lay down in bed.

  It was only when he walked through the hall to the front of the apartment that he realised how much damage had been done, and how lucky the three of them had been. The entire front wall of the building was missing, so that the living room was now on display to the entire street. He took a few steps forward. It was like standing on some surreal stage. Beyond the apartment door, he soon discovered that the main stairwell was blocked with bricks and rubble, so he quickly walked back through the apartment and down the servants’ stairwell. Here, in the yard, he would have expected to find the entrance to the cellar, which served as a makeshift bomb shelter, but instead, there was a huge hole in the ground. The detonation had sliced off the neighbouring section of the building, burying the bomb shelter in the process. Even before he heard the moans and screams coming from beneath and all around him, before he saw the stray bloodied leg that had been severed from its body, before he smelled the stench of burning flesh, he doubled over and vomited.

  Seven months later, a week after his eighteenth birthday, Alfred returned from his final day at school before the summer holidays to find Johanna waiting for him on the street outside the building. It was a hot day, and Alfred had been looking forward to spending his afternoon at the Strandbad Wannsee, the largest open-air lido in the city, and a place that had so far been spared any attacks from the air. Alfred had been there a few times this year already, mainly to catch a glimpse of his classmate Gretl in her swimming costume. A large sign outside the entrance notified visitors that entry was prohibited for Jews, a reminder of a reality that made Alfred sting with shame and anger, but the promise of clean sand and cool water had won every time. So when he spotted Johanna waiting for him, he was mildly irritated. His irritation vanished, however, when he noticed how white her face was.

  ‘You’ve been conscripted,’ she said, before he could ask what was wrong. She held up a letter. ‘You’re to report for your medical examination next week.’

  Alfred didn’t respond. Instead, he pushed his way past her, up the stairs to the apartment and flopped down onto his bed. Johanna followed him.

  ‘Alfred!’ she said crossly. ‘Stop behaving like a baby. You must have known this would happen, sooner or later.’

  Alfred sat up. ‘Of course I knew,’ he said. The dispensations hitherto granted to grammar school boys, postponing conscription to the Wehrmacht until they had finished their education, had recently been revoked in the War Ministry’s panic over the massive losses in the east, and the Normandy landing in the west. Many of Alfred’s classmates had already left for the front. He added miserably, ‘I just hoped it wouldn’t.’

  He passed his physical examination with flying colours; indeed, all the young men lined up in the gymnasium in vests and underpants passed with flying colours. The Wehrmacht needed every soldier they could get their hands on. His orders came through very shortly afterwards. He was to join the 325th Infantry Division, along with three hundred other men, to support the reinstallation of the Siegfried Line near Alsace.

  Johanna laughed out loud when she saw him in his uniform for the first time, but it was a nervous laugh, tinged on the edges with a slight hysteria.

  ‘What will do you while I’m away?’ Alfred asked, leaning down slightly to take her hands in his. He was by now a good few inches taller than she was.

  Johanna attempted a smile. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m sure some handsome rich stranger will appear soon to sweep me off my feet.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, and added quietly, ‘Frau von Markstein’s not going to last forever.’

  Johanna’s face became serious, and she glanced up with an expression he couldn’t read. ‘Don’t worry about me, Alfred. Besides, I know where she keeps her money.’ She embraced him, held him for a long time and then released him. ‘At least you’re going west,’ she said finally. ‘And it can’t go on forever, can it?’

  The following day, Alfred and hundreds of other soldiers boarded a train at Anhalterbahnhof, which took them first to Hanover, then in a second train through Frankfurt and finally arriving just outside Strasbourg some eighteen hours later. The journey was long and hot, and the heat of the other men in the overcrowded coach caused Alfred to sweat and itch in his bulky uniform. Upon arrival, the men swore an oath to the Reich and were given three days of basic combat training, where they were taught little more than how to clean, load and fire a rifle.

  On his first night, Alfred was assigned a bunk bed to share with Hans Bachmann, a young man from Oldenburg. Hans was a slender boy, about the same age as Alfred, with very dark hair and eyes and a curved, elegant nose, which, Alfred soon gathered, made him a prime target for some of his more malevolent comrades. One of the kinder nicknames they gave him was ‘Jew boy’. Unfortunately for Hans, he also had a clumsy and rather effeminate manner, which only compounded the boy’s suffering. So although Alfred didn’t set out to act as Hans’ protector, it took only a few kind words on the first night, when Alfred asked whether he’d prefer the top or bottom bunk, for Hans to adopt him as his new best friend.

  A day after basic training had ended, the unit set out on a march towards Hürtgenwald – sixteen kilometres in the baking sun. The men marched largely in silence, the experienced and battle-weary soldiers perhaps saving their strength for what was to come, the younger ones, like Alfred, imagining what exactly that might be. A small pebble inside his boot had been grinding into his heel for hours, and he was now trying to focus away from the pain. But then he was beset by an involuntary mental image of meeting an enemy soldier, perhaps a boy like himself, and then raising his rifle, placing a finger on the trigger as he looked this other boy, this stranger, in the face and then . . .

  ‘I’m not, you know,’ Hans said beside him, forcing him out of his thoughts.

  ‘What?’ Alfred asked.

  ‘A Jew,’ Hans said. ‘I’m not a Jew. I can trace my family back to the seventeenth century. I can prove it,’ he added forcefully.

  Alfred shrugged.

  ‘It’s just that – ’ Hans suddenly stumbled and almost fell, but caught himself and rushed forward to get back in line. He continued a little breathlessly. ‘It’s just that everyone in my family is dark-haired, my mother, my father, my brothers – ’

  Alfred cut him off. ‘I don’t care,’ he said, and then noticing the wounded look on Hans’ face, added, ‘I think you’re fine just as you are.’

  A smile spread over Hans’ face. He pulled his shoulders back and marched on. After just over an hour’s march, Alfred’s throat felt swollen with thirst. He was just about to ask Hans if he could unfasten his canteen from his pack, when he heard the crack of a shot and the man in front of him dropped to the ground. More shots followed, presumably from a sniper’s rifle; then a grenade landed in the midst of the unit, exploding seconds later and blasting several men into the air. Alfred was thrown sideways and must have blacked out for a moment, for when h
e came to his senses, he was lying face down on the dusty track. Hans was beside him, bleeding from a cut above the eyebrow.

  ‘Quickly!’ Hans shouted. ‘Get up.’ There was shouting all around them and the sound of more shots being fired. The unit was scrambling about wildly, men dropping everywhere. The air was full of smoke and dust, and groans and calls of ‘Hilfe!’

  Alfred got to his feet but couldn’t quite find his balance. Hans pulled him off the track, into the woods, and they ran, Alfred staggering like a drunk man, through the trees, until the noise fell away into the distance. When they had walked in silence for some twenty minutes through the increasingly dense woods, they sat down on the dry forest floor. Alfred looked over at Hans, who had fished some tobacco out of his pocket and was now attempting to roll a cigarette. But his hands were trembling violently, and Alfred realised he was still in shock from the ambush.

  ‘Here, I’ll do that,’ he said, taking the paper and the few strands of tobacco from Hans. He was no expert, but he had dextrous hands, and quickly rolled a matchstick-thin cigarette, which he handed back to Hans.

  ‘I – ’ Hans started, looking at Alfred from his dark, hooded eyes, but Alfred shook his head.

  ‘You smoke that,’ he said quietly, ‘and then we’ll eat something. Just make sure to put it out properly. We don’t want to start a forest fire.’

  Although he had no idea when they would next find food, it seemed sensible to keep their strength up for as long as they could and use their rations. He also feared that without any sustenance, Hans might fall seriously into shock, and he didn’t relish the thought of carrying the man, however slim he looked, through the forest. So he took his food box – a cream-coloured cardboard box with the words Nur für Frontkämpfer im Infanterieverband stamped on it – from his kitbag and opened it. This eiserne portion – iron ration – consisted of canned Cervelat meat, some dry, crumbly zwieback crackers and a small bag of coffee powder. They had heard wondrous tales of the rations found on captured American soldiers – items such as chocolate, fruit bars, peanut paste, chewing gum and biscuits, most of which Alfred had never tasted, even before the war. If the tales were true, how would they stand a chance of winning this war? But for now, he was content with what he had, so he opened the can of meat, cut a slice off with his knife and offered it to Hans. Then he cut some for himself. It was salty on his tongue, but tasted good. Soon, they had finished the first can, so they set about the crackers, eating silently but urgently. Then, when Alfred’s ration box was empty, they opened Hans’ and finished that, too.

  Feeling more satiated than he had for a long while, Alfred leaned back on his kitbag and felt the exhaustion tug at his body, felt himself sinking into the moss and dead dried leaves that made a mattress of the forest floor, creating a soft, fragrant bed more comfortable than any bunk. But as it got darker and darker, it soon became clear that without a map, or a radio to contact the rest of the unit, they would have to find shelter for the night.

  ‘Let’s sleep here,’ Hans suggested. ‘Maybe they’ll come looking for us.’

  Alfred thought for a moment. The night air was certainly warm enough to sleep outside.

  No. You’re too exposed here.

  You must find somewhere safe to sleep.

  Alfred knew they were right. Although it felt as if they were miles inside the forest, he couldn’t be sure that they weren’t camped at its very edge and thus vulnerable to discovery and capture, or worse, to be mistaken for deserters.

  He turned to Hans. ‘No. We should move on.’

  He helped Hans to his feet and they continued through the forest, Alfred bringing up the rear to allow Hans to set the pace. Hans was thus the first to spot the barn. It stood in a clearing, just beyond the fringes of the woods, varnished by the full moon with a white glaze. It reminded Alfred painfully and suddenly of his childhood home.

  ‘Shall we?’ Hans asked, looking to Alfred for a decision.

  ‘I’ll go and check,’ Alfred said. ‘You watch the rear.’ He crept out of the cover of the trees and headed towards the barn, silently. Hans followed him, treading equally softly, with his rifle at the ready. Alfred opened the barn door and peered inside. It was dark and warm. Apart from a handful of irritable chickens that clucked away furiously around Alfred’s feet, it appeared to be empty.

  It’s all right. You’ll be safe here.

  ‘All clear,’ Alfred said quietly, lowering his rifle. Hans stepped in behind him and shut the door. It couldn’t be bolted from the inside, so Alfred slipped out of his coat and jacket, removed his braces and attached one end to the handle and the other to a large iron ring that protruded from the wall.

  ‘Just to make sure,’ he said. ‘We’ll hear if anyone tries to come in.’

  The two of them then climbed the ladder leading up to the hayloft.

  ‘It’ll do for the night,’ Alfred said, spreading his coat out on the hay, making sure his rifle was within arm’s reach.

  ‘Better than some beds I’ve slept in,’ Hans said.

  Alfred lay down on his coat. As he shifted about to make himself comfortable, he was hit by the fragrance of hay that brought back a flood of disremembered fragments – playing in the hayloft on the farm, watching Emil and Johanna take turns to jump from increasingly taller stacks of hay, their only worry that they might get caught by their father and receive a stern telling off.

  Hans also lay down and turned to face Alfred. ‘What’ll we do now?’ he asked.

  Alfred unbuttoned his jacket. ‘We’d best get some sleep,’ he said, ‘and decide tomorrow.’

  But he couldn’t sleep. Despite his weary mind and aching limbs, he tossed and turned on the hay, at the mercy of the thoughts he had managed to suppress since they had been separated from the unit. He relived the blast of the explosion, the desperate cries of the men whose limbs had been ripped so violently and unexpectedly from their bodies; the acute, dizzying fear that he himself might so easily have been one of those lying on a dirty track with shrapnel embedded in his eye socket or a bloodied stump where an arm should be. He forced himself to lie still, and opened his eyes. Through a small round window above him, he could see the sky; it was a sumptuous dark blue, almost purple, with stars larger than he’d ever seen in Berlin. They seemed to wink at him. He turned to look at Hans, who lay fast asleep, two hands tucked beneath his face, like a child. He reminded Alfred a little of Salomon, and not for the first time, wondered what had become of his best friend. Hans’ eyelashes were impossibly dark and long, even more so now, with his eyes closed. His mouth, blush-pink and soft, was ever so slightly open, though he slept so silently Alfred wondered if he were breathing at all. Then suddenly, Hans opened his eyes and looked directly at him.

  ‘I – ’ Alfred began, but Hans lifted his arm and placed his hand gently on the nape of Alfred’s neck, drawing him close. His kiss was hot and dry, but it soon grew wet and thirsty as he parted Alfred’s lips with his tongue. He shuffled closer and undid Alfred’s trousers nimbly with his smooth slender fingers. Alfred moaned as Hans slipped his hands in and touched him, then he reached across to unbutton Hans. He had to suppress a nervous laugh when he saw Hans’ swollen penis; its hooded tip made it look as though it were wearing a little bonnet.

  ‘What?’ Hans breathed anxiously, but Alfred shook his head and placed his mouth back on Hans’ lips. They stroked each other, first gently, then more urgently, until after only a short minute or two they both came. Afterwards, they embraced quickly, shyly, and lay down facing each other, close enough to feel each other’s warm breath on their faces. Alfred closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep immediately.

  He woke before Hans. Daylight had already crept through the small window, shooting a ray of light across the barn. The sky outside was an unbroken, extravagant blue. Carefully, not wanting to wake Hans, Alfred got up and pulled his uniform on. Then he heard the sound of feet scuffing the dirt outside, and a muted conversation in a language – English? – he couldn’t understand. He d
ropped down, out of sight.

  ‘Hans,’ he whispered, shaking the boy’s shoulder. ‘Wake up. There’s someone outside.’

  Hans groaned and opened his eyes slowly. ‘What?’

  ‘Shhh, quiet. There’s someone, some people outside.’

  Alfred grabbed his rifle and looked around helplessly. He had no idea what to do next. Hans sat up sleepily. He was wearing only his vest and underpants.

  More voices outside. It was definitely English. Then Alfred had an idea.

  ‘Hans, listen to me. This is our chance. I’m going to go outside, without my weapon. Here, give me your vest.’ He put his hand out, but Hans pushed it away.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. He sounded very frightened.

  ‘Use it as a white flag,’ Alfred answered. ‘I’ll tie it around – ’ he looked down from the hayloft and spotted a pitchfork leaning up against the wall. ‘I’ll tie it around the pitchfork. Then they’ll know we want to surrender and they won’t shoot us.’

  Hans looked panic-stricken. ‘I can’t surrender.’

  ‘It’s our only chance. In fact, it’s our best chance.’

  Hans’ face hardened for a moment. ‘I’m not letting them take me prisoner. You know what they do to people like me?’ His chin was trembling. ‘People like you?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Hans. You don’t know what you’re saying.’

  ‘I’m not going to surrender.’

  You know what you have to do, don’t you, Alfred?

  The voice caught Alfred off-guard. ‘No, I don’t,’ he answered out loud, not caring now what Hans thought.