Escape

by Barbie Probert-Wright

  Eva hastily apologised for our trespass into the barn. ‘We are on our way home to our mother and got lost from the main road,’ she explained. ‘As you can see, I have the little one with me and she could go no further, so we came in here to sleep. We meant no harm.’

  The woman said nothing and her expression did not change.

  Eva added, ‘We can pay you for letting us sleep here.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ the woman said at last and her face cracked into a big smile. ‘Just wait here till I milk the animals and then we’ll get you inside for breakfast. Here, you can give me a hand.’

  I held the full pails to prevent the cows from kicking them over, luxuriating in the warm sweet smell of fresh milk, then Eva and the lady carried them across to the kitchen. She was glad of the help, because it would have taken her two trips to carry it all herself.

  As we went, she apologised for being so suspicious of us at first. ‘You can’t be too careful, in these times,’ she said. ‘Even of children, I’m sad to say. We’ve seen plenty of people go through and most cause no harm. But there are always exceptions.’

  When we got into the warm kitchen, the farmer was there. He was older and greyer than his wife, and also surprised to see two foundlings appear from nowhere. He welcomed us readily and sat us down at the table. The kindly couple made us a wonderful breakfast of home-baked bread, butter from their cows, plum jam, honey from their own hives and boiled eggs. The farmer’s wife poured the fresh milk from the pail through a strainer and offered us each a glass. I can still remember the taste of it. It was warm and sweet, but I could see it in my mind, coming out of the cows’ udders in the stable. The thought put me off and I really did not want to drink it; but, not wanting to seem ungrateful, I said it was nice.

  The farmer said, ‘Give her some more. She won’t get good nourishing milk like this very often.’

  I smiled, but shot a desperate look at Eva, who understood. Later, when the couple had gone out to feed the chickens, ducks, geese and pigs, she drank it for me. Before we left, we were given a glass of home-made apple juice, which I liked much more than the milk.

  When Eva was in the bathroom getting washed, I sat at the kitchen table with the farmer. ‘I didn’t know cows and goats snored like that,’ I said, making polite conversation with our host.

  ‘Like what?’ said the farmer, looking surprised.

  ‘Like a rattling noise, like lots of little feet marching.’

  He looked blank for a second or two, then laughed. ‘Your sister told you that noise was the animals snoring, I bet?’

  Eva walked back into the room at this point and the farmer gave her a broad wink. ‘She’s a good girl, your sister. She’s taking good care of you.’ He laughed loudly and repeated the word ‘snoring’ a couple of times. Eva laughed and I joined in, because I knew something had amused them, although I had no idea what.

  It was only later, when the walk was long over, that Eva confessed to me. The ‘snoring’ I had heard had actually been the sound of rats scrabbling around the barn. She had seen two of them, and she had not slept a wink until the sun came up and they scuttled back to their nests. She had been terrified that they would crawl over us if she slept. As usual, she had shielded me from her fears and made sure that I had several hours of sleep.

  We lingered over our breakfast, because the farmer’s wife was keen to show us photographs of her two sons, neither of whom she had heard from for many months. That could mean they had been sent to the Russian Front, because the Americans and British obeyed the Red Cross rules and sent the German army notifications of any prisoners they took alive, or dead they found. The Russians refused to pass on any information to their enemies. The old couple were clinging to the hope that they were alive in a Russian camp, not dead in unmarked graves. The farmer’s wife had tears in her eyes as she showed us certificates her sons had won when they were at school and agricultural college, and the old man said that soon they wouldn’t be able to run the farm without help, but they wanted to keep it going in case one or both of their boys returned.

  The farmer and his wife filled our rucksacks with bread and strong home-made cheese. Then they pointed us in the right direction and we set off again. Without our little cart I had to carry my own rucksack some of the time, but whenever she could, Eva carried it for me. It was a very warm day and we managed to find a clear stream to drink from at lunchtime, before settling down to eat our cheese and bread. For a few blissful moments we lay in the sun, our stomachs full and our legs rested.

  In her rucksack Eva carried a small pot of cream, similar to Nivea cream. Every night, before we went to sleep, she rubbed some on my lips and on hers. During the day, when we were very thirsty and there was no sign of anywhere to drink, she would take out the pot and say, ‘A little bit of cream will help.’ It did, because it moisturised my cracked lips. It also helped psychologically: I always felt better when Eva had put cream on me and to this day I keep a lip salve within reach at all times.

  We could hear the rumble of artillery fire in the distance, but we were only forced to lie flat on the ground a couple of times in the whole day, when planes flew over. We had been walking for almost ten days; it was now halfway through April and the countryside was blooming. The land was still heavily wooded on the hillsides, but there were fields of crops in the valley, well tended and looking for all the world as though life were perfectly normal. It was only the background growl of the guns that never allowed us to forget the danger we were in.

  Eva used days like this, when we walked for many miles on our own, to teach me. They were never formal sessions, but she would encourage me to learn the names of all the trees and identify their leaves. Years later, when I was in high school, my biology teacher, Mrs Muchow, told the class, ‘Bärbel should become a botanist: she knows more about trees and plants than I do.’ As we walked along, Eva also taught me my times tables, and she tested me with adding and subtracting, and spelling. She told me stories from history and I remember how one night when we saw a very clear moon, she explained to me that the moon influences the tides.

  Towards the evening, we seemed to be walking towards fighting again as we could hear the sounds of fierce conflict, but we saw nothing. The road took us over heavily wooded hills and dropped down into the town of Rudolstadt, which is an ancient medieval city with a castle that dominates the skyline, around which the old buildings seem to huddle. Eva had told me there was a castle and I’d imagined something with turrets and towers, like in a fairy tale, or with a castellated battlement, like the old British castles. So I was disappointed that it was simply a huge palace, built in the eighteenth century on the site of a much older building.

  As we walked into the town across the bridge spanning the wide River Saale, the streets were deserted, apart from the odd person scurrying about their business. There was no sign of any soldiers. We asked the way to the town hall and were directed to a red-and-white brick building where a few other travellers were waiting to be allocated rooms for the night. After registering, Eva and I were sent to stay with a family in the town. They were very welcoming to the two tired, dirty strangers and we looked forward to a night of sorely needed rest. Poor Eva was in worse shape than me, after her wakeful night in the rat-infested barn, and was clearly exhausted.

  But, as if we had to pay for the beautiful, fairly peaceful day we had spent on the road, that night the bombardment of Rudolstadt started in earnest.

  ‘The American forces are very close,’ our hosts told us. ‘But we have the cellar we can shelter in.’

  Despite our longing for a soft bed and a deep sleep, we had to spend the entire night down in the cellar, as the attack was so ferocious, and there was no let-up. There were other families down there and we all huddled together. A sofa and some makeshift beds were all we had to sit on. I don’t know if I slept at all, cuddled up closely against Eva, although I suppose I must have dozed at times. I just remember that the night seemed to last for ever. Even so, it was g
ood to be off the road and to rest our tired legs.

  One bright point was that in the corner there was a table with a huge china washbasin, beautifully painted with big roses, and a matching jug that was so big I could never have lifted it. One of the locals brought some boiling water, mixed it with cold from the jug, and Eva and I had a wonderful wash.

  The sound of breaking glass told us that the windows of the house above us had been blown out, then there was a huge explosion, which must have shaken the whole town.

  ‘That’s the bridge gone,’ said one of the men and he was right. The bridge we had crossed only hours earlier had been blown up to halt the American advance. It worked, if only temporarily, because we fully expected to see the streets full of American troops when we emerged from the cellar in the morning, but there was nobody about. The family we were staying with begged us not to try to move on, but we were determined. Eva, of course, made the decisions, but throughout our walk she always consulted me. I was far too young to offer any advice or opinion, but I loved the way she treated me as a grown-up. I agreed with whatever her suggestions were. However tired I was, Eva could always get an extra mile out of me.

  Besides, this family had their own problems. As we emerged from the cellar we saw that their house had been damaged. The windows had been blown in, even the frames, and were now ragged holes in the brickwork. There was glass everywhere, some of it propelled with such force that it was sticking into the opposite walls. Torn blackout blinds flapped sadly over the window holes and chunks of plaster had fallen from the ceiling, coating the furniture with a thick white layer of dust.

  The house across the street was on fire and still burning. Flames curled out from the naked rafters and, on this windless day, smoke drove straight upwards, as fire fighters struggled to control the blaze. There was a strong smell of blistered wood.

  We could not help and we did not want to hinder, so we started out again, heading north-west up the road towards Kahla. The carnage was the worst we saw on the whole journey. There were dead bodies everywhere, not even moved to the sides of the roads. Some of them had been there for a long time, and the stench of decomposing flesh was so great that we took our headscarves off our heads and tied them over our noses.

  ‘Don’t look, Puppe,’ said Eva sternly. ‘I mean it, you must not look. If you do glimpse something, or happen to catch sight of one of these poor things, I want you to look at their feet only. Do you understand?’

  I nodded. I didn’t want to look and I tried my best not to, but there were so many bodies around me that it was difficult to walk without watching where my feet were going and that meant I could not help seeing the rotting corpses.

  But I did as I was told. I looked only at their feet. I can remember to this day the feet of a woman who had lost one of her shoes. Her flesh had turned blue. I caught a glimpse of her skirt, deep purple in colour, almost the same colour as her foot, and I am reminded of her whenever I see the colour. There were bits of mangled carts, horseflesh, twisted metal, fallen masonry and masses of other detritus from the shelling.

  We threaded our way through debris from the collapsed buildings until we were out of the town. The corpses still littered the way and we actually saw foxes and big birds, crows probably, scavenging on them. The sound of grenades exploding and heavy gunfire was very close to us. Flares lit up the sky beyond the treetops and there were long, panicky bursts of machine-gun fire. We could hear the whistle of shells and the crump of them landing only a few hundred yards away, where we could see plumes of smoke and dust. Occasionally a plane screamed over.

  ‘Let’s leave the road,’ said Eva. If she was scared, she tried very hard not to show it. ‘I think we will be better off if we walk through the woods.’

  ‘What about the path? How will we find our way?’ I asked anxiously.

  Eva took out her compass. ‘Simple. We can use this to guide us. You’ll see. Follow me.’

  Eva carefully read the compass and used it to lead me through the thick beech wood, following tracks probably made by deer, while all around the trees shook as shells and mortars whined overhead. Occasionally there would be a respite, a small island of quiet, when the noises of the forest would be heard again. Twigs would snap under our feet and birds would flap wildly up into the air, screeching a warning that humans were approaching. How strange that they should be afraid of us, unintentional and harmless intruders into their terrain, when all around was the malevolence of war.

  We struggled on for what must have been a couple of hours, because when we emerged from the wood the sun was shining strongly. Here we found a huddle of people taking shelter from the constant firing along the line of trees that marked the edge of the wood. Only a few hundred yards ahead of us German soldiers were gesticulating to us all to come over. We ran across to them and found they were standing by the entry to a mine, which led straight into the side of a hill. Thuringia, the region we were walking through, has many networks of mines beneath its beautiful surface. Coal is mined further south and salt is mined to the north. The underground mines around Kahla, which was the nearest town to us, were in fact used during the war as secret factories. As the bombing destroyed the big industrial cities, production of weapons and planes was switched underground in 1944 and some of the mines in this area produced Messerschmitts.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ said a soldier, waving people past him into the dark mouth of the mine.

  ‘Where are you sending us?’ asked Eva, as we got caught up in the small stream of people going into the depths.

  ‘Come on,’ said the soldier roughly. ‘It’s for your own good. Can’t you see the fighting out there? The Americans are coming. You’ll be safer below ground.’ He waved us past brusquely. ‘Get moving! Come on, quick!’

  The ugly roar of the guns was close and we were happy enough to make our way into the shelter.

  This mine had not been used for war munitions work, but had probably once been the place for mining the special sand used to make the porcelain that the area is famous for, although there was no work there now. Once we were inside, the darkness was very strange after the bright sunlight outside and we stumbled along a level shaft for a short way until we emerged into a bigger chamber, which was lit by a few petroleum lanterns and the occasional flash of a torch beam.

  My eyes adjusted to the new, dim light and I realised that the cavern was full of people, literally hundreds of them herded in together. As we came through, some of them were shouting, ‘No more room, no more room!’

  They were right – there was barely any room. There were benches along the walls, but they were all filled and the whole place was crammed with people of all ages, from the very old to the very young. One woman was struggling to breastfeed a baby that cannot have been more than a few days old. Toddlers clung to their mothers’ skirts, older children cried. Everyone looked totally worn out and wretched. Some people were praying, nervously passing their rosary beads through their fingers.

  An elderly man who was sitting on the bench near where we were standing suddenly slumped forward. Nobody took any notice and nobody helped him. Perhaps he had died but it seemed that no one cared at all. Everyone was consumed by their own fear. What would happen to us? Would the Americans come and get us? Would we be blown up, or shot?

  Some of these people had been underground for hours: there was a thick stench of sweat. In those difficult days it was hard to keep clean and many of these people seemed to have given up trying. There was no sanitation at all and no food or water. When anyone needed to relieve themselves, they walked a short way down one of the tunnels leading from the chamber. But these tunnels were also full of people, for quite a few yards away from the main area, so they had to push further on to empty their bladders and bowels, and some of them could not be bothered, or were too afraid to go far. This increased the sour stench. I was aware that the ground under my feet was wet and I did not like to think what with. We could not even sit down.

  Eva pulled me tight agains
t her, but I could see that she was very frightened. There was a desperate, panicky look in her eyes. Neither of us liked enclosed spaces and this was our idea of hell. (Even today I am terribly claustrophobic – I’d rather swim the channel than use the Eurotunnel. And I cannot bear being plunged into enclosed darkness, which perhaps dates back to this experience.) The noise from people talking, not particularly loudly, reverberated and echoed around the chamber, which was thankfully high, the tunnel having been dug straight into the hillside.

  ‘Come on,’ said Eva. ‘I’d rather take our chance with the guns than die in here.’ She told me later she was seriously afraid that there was not enough air to sustain life for so many people for very long. She started to push our way back towards the entrance, to the annoyance of other people.

  ‘Where d’you think you’re going?’ a large woman asked her.

  ‘We’re going out. My sister is claustrophobic. We’d rather risk it outside.’

  ‘They won’t let you,’ the woman replied. ‘They’re guarding the entrance and threatening to shoot anyone who tries to leave. You’re not the first one to try to get out, believe me.’

  ‘They don’t want anyone giving away that we’re here,’ a man standing nearby added.

  ‘How long will they keep us here?’

  ‘Probably until the war is over,’ said the man. ‘Which won’t be very long.’ He gave a wry laugh.

  Eva bit her lip and hugged me even closer. We turned round and pushed back deeper into the chamber, until we found a place where we could sit down. We were near the mouth of one of the tunnels that led away from the main chamber and we sat there for what seemed like hours, watching the strange shadows thrown by the guttering lanterns.

  Eventually Eva whispered to me, ‘Say that you are going for a wee-wee, then go and explore this tunnel. There may be another way out of here, without guards. You must be very careful, understand? Most important, don’t wander off down any side tunnels or you could get lost for ever. Come back in a few minutes, though, no matter what. And do you understand about the side tunnels? Don’t go down them. It is very easy to get lost, even if you think you know the route.’