War Brothers

by Patrick Slaney

  ‘Yes, it was fantastic and I brought you this to put on your desk.’ I handed him the miniature red London bus I had brought for him.

  ‘Do they have this type of bus in London, Markus? It is extremely colourful.’

  ‘The streets are full of red buses like this one and also black taxis. The best thing about London is the underground railway system which we used a lot.’

  ‘Did you get lost on the underground system?’ my grandad asked.

  ‘No, because we only went from the hostel to Paddington station and back again, so we didn’t experiment more than that.’

  ‘What else did you get up to then Markus?’

  I decided that I had better tell him about bumping into Chris and my father. He would be terribly upset if he heard later from someone else about it.

  ‘I had an incredible encounter with your son who is of course my father. I also met my twin brother Chris,’ I said as matter-of-factly as I could

  ‘You met Helmut and Kristoff? My grandad spluttered out, becoming much more animated than I had seen him for years.

  ‘He is not called Kristoff now but is called Chris. He was a member of one of the crews that we raced against, and we got talking when we met for a beer after the race. I met my father the following day when he came to watch Chris rowing.’

  ‘How is my son, Markus?

  ‘He is remarkably well, and his bakery seems to be thriving. I was amazed to find that he has a bakery just like you. Like father like son, as they say.’

  ‘They never should have split the two of you up Markus. You should have grown up with your brother and not on your own, without your father around, especially as your mother was working for me all the time. When her parents died in 1926 you were only nine, so you both could have gone to live in England then.’

  I had never heard my grandad talk this way before. He wasn’t someone who I had ever heard give his opinions freely, but he had obviously been upset for quite a few years.

  ‘Chris will be coming to visit Lubeck next year in the summer holidays, so you will see him when he comes. I will be going to Yorkshire to stay with them for a few weeks.’

  ‘I am so pleased for you that you have finally found out you have a father who is alive and that you also have a twin brother. You will have a lot of catching up to do over the next few years.’

  ‘I just hope that Germany doesn’t go to war with anybody in the next year or so and spoil all my plans.’

  ‘Let’s just hope that Hitler doesn’t get involved in anything stupid. I must get back to my work now Markus, so you must go home and leave us in peace to make some money.’

  ‘I’ll see you later grandad.’ He picked up the telephone to make a call, and I excused myself and left the shop to go home.

  The summer holidays flew by as I was kept fully occupied. I went to stay in Munich for a week with Walter and I also was invited to spend ten days with Susie Rothenburger with her parents in Kiel. During my remaining time in Lubeck, I helped in the bakery giving my mother a break from the continual serving of customers and lifting the heavy sacks of flour for my grandad. My good intentions of writing to Chris went the same way as a lot of my other good intentions, and I was back at University before I put pen to paper.

  1937 turned into 1938, and it wasn’t long before it was time to organize our long planned re-union. There was still a lot of talk of war, and in the Anschluss, Germany had sent troops into Austria and had taken over control of the country. It looked as if all borders with the countries that surrounded Germany would remain open, and it would be possible for Chris to come to Germany and for me to return with him to England. We were so keen to see each other that we decided to take a chance on nothing serious happening.

  Chris’s year in Oxford ended before mine, so we decided that he should come to see me first and then I would travel to England with him. He could spend a few days bunked down in my digs with Walter and me, before we travelled on to Lubeck. It was with considerable excitement that I went to meet his train.

  Chapter 12

  It turned out to be not the brightest of ideas to have my twin brother staying while I was finishing off my projects for the year. I had three days to get a mountain of work done which meant that I had to work well into the night. Luckily Walter, who had been like a brother to me for most of my life, was under less pressure. He took Chris under his wing and showed him the sights of Kiel. The other students who knew us were amazed when Walter told them that this was Chris Becker and not Markus. He looked so like me that they all just assumed that it was the two of us as usual. When he opened his mouth to speak, he gave himself away as, even after a year’s hard work on his German, he was not very fluent.

  He was amazed to see that I still had to attend the HJ meetings; despite the pressure I was under to get my term work completed. He found it hard to understand that if I missed a lot of the HJ meetings, I would be thrown out of University for a poor attendance record.

  I finally finished all my work and could relax. We had a mind blowing party in one of the bars near the University to celebrate the end of the academic year. It was two exceedingly hung over brothers who caught the 11.00 am train to Lubeck the following morning.

  ‘I wish that I was feeling in better shape Markus. I hadn’t planned on meeting my mother and grandad feeling like this,’ Chris said in a melancholic voice.

  ‘By the time we arrive in Lubeck, you will have had another hour and a half to recover, so cheer up.’

  ‘I have been looking forward so much to this day, and then I go and get blitzed the night before,’ Chris added.

  ‘When we finally get to Lubeck we will drop our bags at home and then we will go to the bakery and see Mum and grandad. You can then have another sleep or come with me around the city to see all my own haunts. I’ll even take you to the stadium to meet Stefan Mulder who was like a father to me as I was growing up.’

  ‘I am going to catch up on my sleep until we get there if you don’t mind and I’ll then decide how I feel.’ Chris rolled up his jacket, put it between his head and the corner of the window, and closed his eyes.

  Once we got to Lubeck events took over, and we didn’t have time to remember our hang overs. Grandad had given my mother the afternoon off, so she was able to join us for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the river. I had never seen my mother looking so well. She had bought a new outfit to greet her long lost son and looked years younger. She even had her hair done for the occasion.

  Chris just sat there with a big grin on his face looking at her and absorbing the atmosphere. He obviously was emotionally touched by the meeting.

  By the time that the ten days had gone by, and it was time for me to return with Chris to England, he was a fully-fledged member of the family. I had to work in the bakery from 5.30 am every morning. Chris used to join me when I went to the bakery, making the rigours of getting up at that time of the day more pleasurable. The fact that he had experience of working in my Dad’s bakery in Harrogate made him a particularly valuable part of the team, and we got the work done a lot quicker. My grandad also was delighted to have his two grandsons in his bakery. He could be seen walking around the bakery with a prideful smile on his face. On many occasions, he talked to customers in the queue telling them all about his new grandson from England.

  On the few occasions that I had to go to the Flieger-HJ meetings at the aerodrome Chris amused himself around the city or worked in the bakery.

  ‘I can’t believe that you spend so much time at your Hitler Youth meetings Markus,’ Chris commented one evening near the end of his stay.

  ‘I don’t have any choice as my log book must be signed and there must be two entries in it for every week.’

  ‘What happens if you miss some meetings?’

  ‘I will have to go before the Kommandant and explain myself.’

 
‘And, what can he do to you?’ Chris asked.

  ‘He can refer you to the SS, and they will stop you attending University and also probably make you to join the regular army as a Private.’

  ‘I can’t believe what you are telling me Markus. It’s like a police state. How do you put up with it?’

  ‘It is what I have grown up with and what I am used to. It is the same for everybody.’

  ‘I don’t think that I could live in a country like this, but then you do, so I suppose that it can’t be that bad.’ Chris gave me a tolerant smile.

  ‘I love my flying and by being a member of the Flieger-HJ I am able to fly for nothing even if it is just gliders.’

  ‘I belong to the Oxford University flying school, and I have trained as a pilot too. They want to have a supply of pilots just in case war breaks out, and we have to defend ourselves,’ Chris said.

  ‘Do you actually fly fully fledged planes?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yes, we have been flying the De Havilland Tiger Moth which is a bi-plane trainer. It is ideal for learning in as it is extremely forgiving.’

  ‘Have you pranged a plane yet Chris?’

  ‘I have had one unfortunate landing which damaged the undercarriage, but other than that I have been OK.’

  ‘I have heard that when the University term resumes at the end of September, we will have some real planes to train on in Kiel,’ I added. ‘Evidently Hitler has decided to ignore the treaty of Versailles and provide lots of war planes to the Luftwaffe as a matter of urgency. Rumour has it that the planes we are getting will be Messerschmitt Bf 109’s which proved so effective in the Spanish Civil War.’

  ‘I envy you Markus. They won’t let us near a Hurricane which is the equivalent of your ME109.’

  ‘It’s your last night in Lubeck Chris, so let’s go down to the harbour area and drink a beer or two,’ I suggested.

  After our experience in Kiel, we just had two steins of beer and then left to spend the rest of the evening with our mother.

  That was our intention; however, it didn’t work out as we planned. As we were coming up a street that led from the centre of town to our house, we heard a sound like a football crowd makes when their team has just scored a goal. We also heard the sound of many feet running towards us. We pulled back to the side of the street to give them plenty of room to get by. A high percentage of the participants were wearing Hitler Youth uniforms, and there was one of the older boys shouting instructions at them.

  Just before they reached us, they stopped and faced a shop. They all started to chant ‘Juden, Juden, Juden......’ and they worked themselves up into a frenzy. Some of the crowd had pots of white paint with them. They went to the front walls of the shop they had stopped outside, and painted the Star of David in a number of places and also daubed on anti-Semitic slogans.

  The leader of the group moved over closer to the shop, and I recognized him. It was Boris, who I had known since my days in the HJ in Lubeck, and who had tormented me after that night with the two leaders in the tent. He turned around to yell at the crowd.

  ‘Come on guys, let’s break every window in this shop, and set it on fire.’

  He came over to where we were standing to get some stones. He spotted me standing there with Chris and came over to confront me.

  ‘Well if it isn’t the leaders’ pet. Are you not going to join in with us?’ he sneered as he spoke the words.

  ‘I’m on my way home with my brother, so I don’t want to get involved,’ I said in as strong a voice as I could muster.

  ‘Oh come on goodie goodie, dirty your hands and get involved like a true Hitler Youth member.’

  Just then there was a tremendous crash and the main window of the shop splintered into a thousand pieces, this drew the attention of Boris away from us, and he rushed back to the gaping hole in the front of the shop. We beat a hasty retreat as he lit a rag and threw it with some petrol into the shop. There was a whoosh and the whole shop went up in flames. Thankfully the assembled mob, with their job done, took off at a run. Chris and I took the opportunity to run off and get well away from the mob and the taunts of Boris.

  When we went through the door into the house, we weren’t able to speak for a few minutes as we were out of breath. I could see the anxious face on my mother as she waited for us to provide an explanation.

  ‘What have you two been up to,’ she asked when she saw that we were able to speak.

  ‘We got caught up in a group of youths burning down a shop owned by a Jew,’ I explained.

  ‘It was genuinely scary as the leader tried to make Markus participate,’ Chris added.

  ‘Who tried to get you involved Markus?’ Mother asked.

  ‘Do you remember Boris who used to be in the Hitler Youth when I was in the Lubeck branch and who used to pick on me.’

  ‘That is the guy you said was a bully.’

  ‘Yes him. He seemed to be leading the mob tonight, and he saw me and told me to get involved. Luckily he was distracted by the smashing of the window and we escaped,’ I added.

  ‘How can they burn down a shop like that without the police getting involved? Would someone not have told the police what was going on?’ Chris had a look of disbelief on his face that something like this could happen.

  ‘Oh the police were told alright, but they won’t come out to protect the Jews. Basically, Hitler wants all Jews driven out of the country.’

  I was highly embarrassed by what had happened and could imagine what Chris was thinking. In his place, I would not have been very impressed, and I was upset that I had accepted what had been going on as ‘the norm’.

  ‘Is there nothing that you can do about it? How has it come to a point where someone’s shop can just be burnt to the ground?’ Chris obviously was still extremely angry.

  ‘We elected the Nazi party into power and they are now so much in control of everything that we can do nothing but agree with them,’ my mother explained.

  ‘In some ways I am glad that I am going home in the morning. I was extremely frightened on the street tonight with that crowd shouting ‘Juden’ and then burning down the shop.

  “I will make you both a hot drink to calm you down and then you must get to bed as you have an early start in the morning and then a long journey ahead of you.

  Chapter 13

  The following morning, after a very tearful goodbye to my mother, Chris and I started our marathon journey by train and ferry to Yorkshire. We caught the train at 6.30 am from Lubeck to Hamburg where we transferred to a train to Rotterdam. A special boat train took us to the Hook of Holland where we caught the same ancient ferry to Harwich that I had taken the year before with the rowing crew. We took yet another train to Liverpool Street station in London, transferred by the underground to King’s Cross station, and finally caught a train to cover the last leg of our journey to Harrogate. We finally arrived at our destination just after midnight in a near comatose state, totally ‘journeyed out’. Needless to say, our father wasn’t there to meet us, and we had to struggle with our bags to the accommodation above the bakery. I was shown to the bed I was sleeping in, and that was the last anyone saw of the Bekker twins until just after noon the following day.

  After brunch, we joined our father in the bakery, and I met Gwen, who had acted as a mother for Chris while he was growing up. I could see that they were quite close, and it must have been strange for him when he learnt that he had a natural mother in Germany.

  The two weeks flew by far too quickly, and it was soon time for me to return home to Lubeck.

  On the last evening, we went as a family to the local pub, to have our final beers together.

  “Well Markus, have you enjoyed your time in Harrogate?’ my father asked me.

  ‘I have never been able to relax like I have over the past two weeks, Dad. I hadn’t re
alised how oppressive living in Germany has become. It was only seeing how you live your lives in Yorkshire, without the police watching everything you do that my eyes have been opened.’

  ‘You do know Markus that you can stay here if you want. Chris and I would love to have you here with us, and if you stayed your mother might come as well.’ I hadn’t anticipated this offer from my father, and I was very tempted to accept.

  ‘I want you here Markus,’ Chris added. ‘If it does end up that there is a war between Germany and England, I don’t want you to be on the other side.’

  “I’m sure that there won’t be a war. Everyone is still suffering from the last major conflict and common sense must prevail,’ I said hopefully, although, having seen the preparations in Germany, I didn’t honestly believe what I was saying.

  ‘I am also concerned for your safety after what happened on our last night together in Lubeck,’ Chris said. ‘That encounter with the Hitler Youth mob was really frightening.’

  ‘I will be going back to University soon, and life is decidedly different there.’

  ‘Anyway Markus, you know that you can always come here, provided of course that the borders are still open, and we aren’t at war,’ my Dad said.

  ‘If things get any worse back in Lubeck I will certainly talk to Mum about coming here, but I do want to finish my engineering degree which will give me a passport to anywhere in the world.’

  ‘We had better go home now as you will have to be up early in the morning and I have to be at the bakery by five o’clock,’ my father said, getting up to leave.

  I couldn’t get to sleep that night thinking about my situation:

  Up to meeting Chris and my father, I had accepted the events in Germany as being necessary to make Germany great again. My eyes had been opened, and I was now starting to question the ideals that Hitler was indoctrinating the nation with. How had it evolved that we accepted that Jews could be burnt out of their shops that they had operated for years. I knew a lot of the Jewish shopkeepers in Lubeck, and they were decent people. Should I stay in Harrogate with my father and Chris? The answer was ‘No’; I had to go home to my mother and grandad. I was all that they had, and I would just have to get on with life. Although I had an English father and an English brother, I was a born and bred German.