Escape
Page 6
Never let the hero in your soul die.
Then she took my small pink blanket and with needle and thread turned it into a miniature rucksack. The next day we packed into it my spare pants, vests, stockings and an extra cardigan. She told me I was only allowed to take Charlotte, nothing else. I slipped my little wooden train into the pocket of my trousers, feeling very naughty for disobeying, while Eva packed a rucksack for herself.
We were about to set off together, a defenceless young woman and a child, walking across a country in its death struggle, flooded with refugees, soldiers, plunderers and invaders, strafed by bullets and bombs, with a desperate people full of fear and dread of the future. If we had known what lay ahead, would we have undertaken the journey?
I honestly believe that we would have. Our desire to be reunited with our mother overcame all our fears and gave us the courage to set out.
We were optimistic and our naivety and ignorance meant that we really couldn’t foresee what might happen to us. Eva was not unaware of the risks but she could not guess the extent of the problems that would face us. Nevertheless, she had the courage to set out alone, with sole responsibility for caring for me and getting me safely back to Mutti.
At four o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday, 7 April 1945, our big adventure began.
I was wearing long trousers and a double-breasted red cardigan with a hood and mother-of-pearl buttons, which Eva had knitted for me. Everyone called me Little Red Riding Hood. My pale leather shoes came up over my ankles, as at that time there was a saying in Germany: ‘Children should be taught the importance of looking after their ankles.’ Eva was wearing her ski trousers, a blouse and the warm blouson jacket that she also wore for skiing, and brogues on her feet. We both wore headscarves, mine a lovely red and white one that Mutti had given me to match my jacket. It covered my hair, which was in plaits, with a pretty comb holding a roll of hair on top of the head. It was the fashion back then and we called it a Tolle.
The girls at the home had made me a small wooden cart with a handle to pull it. This is where my rucksack and Charlotte travelled. We had a torch and we took some provisions: rye bread, which was baked at the home, spread with liver pâté, and some with honey for me. We took two packets of Zwieback, which is a cross between a biscuit and a rusk. Ours were plain, but in better times you could get them coated with chocolate or cinnamon icing. We took two shallow, thick china dishes, too, which doubled as plates and cups.
Eva had some money that Mutti had given her. She also had her own savings in the Post Office, but I don’t think she had time to withdraw any before we left. Sixty years later I cried when I saw in her diary the simple records she kept of her finances. At the top of the page, alongside the Post Office account number, she wrote, ‘Important Information: In the event of my death, this money goes to Bärbel.’)
We were not alone as we set off. We had the company of four girls who worked at the home. Lo, Hanna, Hilde and another whose name I cannot remember, walked and spent the first night with us. Nature was on our side. We had lovely, warm spring weather and the fruit trees along our route were beginning to blossom, throwing out sprays of white and pale-pink flowers. I can remember the tangy, clean smell of crushed pine needles in the woods, and the springy feeling of the moss and fern beneath my feet, like a carpet. Everywhere we went, we saw daffodils and wild crocuses, and tiny violets at the edges of ponds and rivers. This was not so difficult, I thought. In fact, it was more like fun.
Eva had a compass and a map with her, and she knew the route we should take. We had to head north and west to get to Wiedersdorf, where we last saw Mutti. Our path took us alongside the track of the little train, which was no longer running, until we reached another village in the forest, Friedrichroda.
As we approached the village, a dull, droning sound in the distance quickly developed into a roar. Suddenly, a plane thundered overhead and immediately, with a great throbbing and noise, hundreds of them seemed to be on top of us, flying above the treetops, heading towards the village and strafing everything in their path with bullets.
I heard the rat-a-tatting of bullets as they hit the road and saw the bright flashes of fire light up the planes’ wings before Eva grabbed my hand and pulled me into the undergrowth, where we lay, with the other girls huddled nearby, for several terrifying minutes.
Guns barked around us and the shadows of the planes flitted over us. We could hear bullets ricocheting among the houses, then the planes roared away and the anti-aircraft guns fell silent. I stirred, but Eva told me to lie still. My legs and arms were getting stiff and cold, but she made me stay there until she was sure we could go on. We crawled out from under the bushes and without even discussing what we had seen and heard, we carried on walking. Everybody else in the village was still taking cover and we were the only ones on the deserted road.
It was our first introduction to the perils of the journey.
By nightfall, as the warmth of the day disappeared and the cold darkness fell, we had reached the village of Finsterbergen, without any more attacks. We found our way to the Hotel Linde, which was a hostel similar to the one at Tabarz where we knew we would be welcome as we had been given a letter of introduction from Miss Ramelow, the head of the Tabarz home.
There were soldiers billeted at the hostel. At first I was in awe of them and a little frightened. They seemed big and forbidding in their uniforms, with their heavy boots, which made such a noise when they walked, but they smiled, patted my head and one of them gave me a biscuit, so I forgot my fears. Later, they generously shared their meal with us. It was really good: rice with lots of meat. Meat was scarce and to have such a plateful was wonderful.
We shared a dormitory with the girls who had walked with us, but there were several air raids in the night, which meant we had to go down to the cellars. It must have been difficult for Eva, as I was heavy and drugged with sleep, and wanted to stay in my bed. But she would whisper, ‘Wake up, Puppe, darling,’ and take me in her arms, shaking me to hurry me into wakefulness. We slept in our clothes, as we would do every night of our long trek.
The next morning, at 7 a.m., we prepared to set off again, first saying goodbye to our four companions who were going to make their way back to Tabarz. All the girls cried as they said their farewells.
‘Are you sure, Eva?’ asked Hanna. ‘Do you really want to go on?’
‘Please, come back with us,’ pressed Lo, her face worried.
Eva was insistent. ‘We have to go on. We’ve started now. But thank you for coming this far with us. I promise we’ll be fine. Look after yourselves as well.’
We all wished each other luck with tearful hugs and kisses, and set off on our way again.
We were on the road towards Georgenthal. Whenever we reached crossroads or junctions where Eva was not sure of the route, she would look at the compass and take the road going north. We had to depart from our planned route several times and when I retrace the route we followed on a map I can see that we walked miles out of our way, always to avoid pockets of fighting. It meant we spent many of our first few days walking to no avail, as we circled and didn’t move forward. Luckily for us, the road signs were intact. Later, I read that the Allies were surprised when they reached Germany to find there were road signs; in Britain they had been removed to foil the enemy in the event of invasion.
As we walked in the early morning, our surroundings were lovely. There was an ethereal mist clinging to the ground among the trees, which looked magical to me. The countryside we were walking through was breathtakingly beautiful: today it is a national park. There were gentle hills on the horizon and the hazy grey dawn soon cleared into strong, crisp spring sunshine. Although man created death and destruction, and brought suffering and sorrow to so many ordinary people on both sides of this terrible war, nature was oblivious and celebrated the rebirth of warmth in the earth with her usual profligate beauty.
We held hands and sang songs to keep up our spirits, and because, as Eva rightly
pointed out, you walk faster if you are marching to the beat of music. One of the songs we sang was called ‘The Hamburger Homeland’ song and was obviously written after the bombing of the city:
Where Schulau lies on the beautiful River Elbe,
Where all that is left of Hamburg is a pile of rubble,
Where there are so many ruins, endless heaps of stones and bricks,
That is where my homeland is,
That is where I am at home.
Where the bombers circle at night in the sky above us,
Where all around everything is up in flames,
Where the windows shatter and the lights go out,
That is where my homeland is,
That is where I am at home.
Where the enemy kills wives and children,
Where there are so many casualties to be mourned,
Where tired eyes are full of tears,
That is where my homeland is,
That is where I am at home.
Where so many cries for help can be heard,
Where so many family homes lie in ruins,
Where so many people lost all that they owned,
That is my Hamburg, my homeland,
Fought for with German blood.
I can also remember singing a song about the Luftwaffe, which went something like ‘High in the sky like an eagle, the Luftwaffe is at home’. It had a good beat, which really got us moving. All German children, especially those old enough to be in the BDM or the Hitler Youth, learned these patriotic songs, but to us they were just music with a rhythm to march to. Mostly, we sang German folk songs, which I had learned in kindergarten. One of us would start singing, then the other would join in. We’d been taught to harmonise, so we practised as we walked and giggled when it went wrong.
We saw other people on the road, but there was no time to stop and talk or make companions. People scurried along purposefully, everyone trying to reach their own destination and keeping themselves to themselves, perhaps scared of getting too friendly with strangers.
We had not walked more than a mile or two when a military car pulled up alongside us and the two soldiers and driver offered us a lift. We gladly piled in and they took us as far as the Steigerhaus, a local landmark. It was a large house built early in the century for a Prussian princess, but used at this time as a hunting lodge for senior members of the Nazi government. That was where the soldiers were bound for and they dropped us nearby. As we got out, one of them gave me a bag of Printen, special German ginger biscuits covered with chocolate, which we traditionally eat at Christmas. They are delicious and Eva allowed me to eat one straight away. The walk was still a novelty to me and I thought to myself, ‘Great! I will get presents all along the way.’
Eva wrote in her diary:
When he handed her the biscuits, little one smiled with her great big eyes.
‘You mustn’t eat them all at once,’ Eva said. ‘We must make them last. So we should limit them to one each evening, as a reward for all our hard walking.’ In the evening, I always offered the bag to her when I took mine and she would take one. But I know she never ate it. When she thought I was asleep, she would secretly put it back into the bag, so that the supply lasted longer for me. It was a simple act of selfless generosity I have remembered all my life.
Walking on from the Steigerhaus, we came upon an area of heavy fighting. Eva wrote:
There was shooting and banging every where, from all sides. The shells were whistling past us. We were very, very scared.
We had stumbled into the pathway of the American assault on Germany. The war was not yet over and there were fierce pockets of fighting all around us but we pressed on, trying to stay out of the way of danger and hopeful that we would find shelter when we reached the village. We were just a mile or two away from Georgenthal when we stopped to rest on a bench under a tree. If there hadn’t been the sharp patter of sporadic gunfire and the whine of the grenades, it would have been a lovely spot to rest. It was only April, but the sun was hot enough for us to have taken off our jackets and we were glad of the shade from the tree.
While we were sitting there a middle-aged man dressed in green with a rifle over his shoulder and a pair of binoculars dangling round his neck came towards us.
‘Is he a soldier? Is that why he’s wearing a uniform?’ I whispered to Eva.
‘No,’ she replied in a low voice. ‘He’s a forester.’
‘Where are you heading?’ he called as he approached.
‘We’re trying to get to Georgenthal,’ said Eva.
The forester looked serious at this. ‘You’ll never get there. They’re fighting everywhere, in the village and on the road. The Americans are advancing in that direction. It’s not safe, you will definitely be killed if you go that way. You should head instead for Stutzhaus.’
‘Thank you,’ said Eva politely and the man vanished as quickly as he had arrived. Then she looked worried. ‘I don’t know how we’ll get to Stutzhaus. I’ve no idea of the way. Come on, sweetheart, we’d better get moving.’
We stood up but before we could set off again two German soldiers appeared, tin helmets on their heads and rifles in their hands. Their trousers were tucked into their knee-length socks and I noticed that their boots were very muddy.
‘Where are you going, ladies?’ they asked and, when Eva explained, said, ‘We’re heading for Stutzhaus too. We can take you with us if you like. We’re going cross-country. It will be much safer than following the roads. The American artillery are bombarding them non-stop. Come on.’
Gratefully we went with them. We started off following a track, but very soon we were making our way through woods and even crawling through undergrowth when there were sounds of gunfire. We skirted fields, keeping to the hedgerows and ducking into ditches whenever we heard any sound of engines. It was only the second day of our march, but already I had learned to throw myself into a hedge, a ditch or any indentation in the land whenever the sound of firing was close. We knew that when we heard the whine of a shell, we had to get down.
If there was no cover, Eva told me to lie as flat as I could on the ground and keep still. ‘If the enemy see you,’ she said, ‘they will think that you are already dead.’
The two soldiers knew the way and guided us expertly. They were very patient. I could not travel as fast as they could and must have held them back, but they didn’t say anything. As soon as we got close to Stutzhaus they stopped.
One gestured towards the town. ‘That’s where you’re going. Just keep straight on and you’ll come into town. OK?’
‘Thank you so much,’ Eva said, ‘we would never have made it without you.’
‘You’re welcome.’ With that they disappeared into the woods.
As we walked towards the town I asked Eva, ‘Why were they on their own? Shouldn’t they be with other soldiers?’
‘They’re probably scouts,’ she answered. ‘Perhaps they were sent out to discover where the Americans are and find out what’s going on, and they’re on their way back right now to report to their unit. Or they could be messengers, taking news from their unit to headquarters.’
‘They are very brave,’ I said, wide-eyed.
‘They have to do it, Puppe, if they are ordered to. That is what being a soldier is all about. But you’re right – they are brave. And probably local men as well.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Well, they led us right across fields and through forests without any maps.’
In Stutzhaus we went to the village hall to register our arrival, as we would in most of the towns and villages where we spent nights. The Germans are rightly famous for their efficiency, and even as the government was disintegrating and the country was facing defeat, people took pride in handling the problems they faced in an organised manner. Refugees like us would register where we were from and where we were going, and then be given an address where we would be billeted for the night. I don’t know whether Eva ever had to pay anything, but
I don’t think so. Everyone was prepared to help out.
We spent that night in a bakery, which was wonderful because, despite all the windows being blown out, the baker was still making bread. All the smells of my early childhood in Hamburg and the bakery on the ground floor of our apartment block flooded back to me. The scent of proving yeast, the delicious aroma of the newly baked bread, the warmth of the huge bread ovens, the dusting of flour that settled everywhere felt reassuringly comforting and normal in the middle of all the chaos and fighting. More important, we got to eat this wonderful fresh bread, still hot from the bakehouse.
It was another night of little sleep, though. The air raids came throughout the hours of darkness, the shrieking of the alarms sending shivers down my spine when I heard them. Sometimes I was too deeply unconscious for the sound of them to penetrate my sleep and Eva had to shake me awake. I have blurred, sleepy memories of Eva trying to carry me without waking me, but at seven years old I was too big for her to carry far and she had to wake me, so that we could stumble down into the basement until the attack was over and another siren wailed the ‘all clear’.
When we were down in the cellar during yet another raid, I said to Eva, ‘Why do we have to go upstairs again? Why don’t we just sleep here?’
‘It’s too crowded, Puppe. How would we sleep? There’s barely room to sit.’
She was right. The cellar was crammed with people. It was not just the family from the bakery who used it – others knew it was a good place to shelter; consequently it was very crowded and airless, and sleep would be almost impossible. So each time we returned to our beds to grab a little more rest before the next raid began.
The most memorable event that night was not the air raids, although a bomb hit a block only a couple of hundred yards away, shaking our building and making us clutch each other as we thought it would fall down on top of us, then terrifying us as the smell of smoke drifted down to us and we worried we would be burned alive, trapped in the cellar. There was a great deal of shouting and noise as people struggled to put out the fire. We heard later that some of the residents had been killed.