Escape

by Barbie Probert-Wright

  I understood what she wanted me to do.

  ‘I need a wee-wee,’ I announced loudly.

  ‘OK,’ said Eva, in a voice that could be heard by others. ‘Take the torch and go up this passageway until you are nice and private. Don’t turn off into any other tunnels.’

  She pulled the torch out of her rucksack and gave it to me. We had used it very sparingly up to this point, always aware that the batteries would not last for ever. Even when we had walked at night, we had not used it except to shine briefly on signposts.

  I stumbled along the tunnel, clear of all the people. I seemed to walk quite a long way and there were often tunnels branching away, but I followed Eva’s instructions and stuck to the one I was in. Eventually I came to a small tunnel on my left and at the end of it I could see what looked like daylight. I was worried about going towards it, because of what Eva had told me. So I took my hankie out of my pocket and left it at the junction with the tunnel that would lead me back to her, then I explored the other one and, just as I thought, there was daylight at the end of it. It came from a hole fringed with grass. I put my head through it and there was nobody around, no sign of any soldiers or of the main entrance to the mine, just fields and fields.

  I raced back to Eva, remembering to walk slowly when I got near the mouth of the tunnel where the people were. She was waiting anxiously for me – she told me later that she was very worried that she had done a foolish thing letting me go off on my own, in case I had managed to get lost.

  I sat down next to her. ‘I’ve found a way out, in a tunnel further up. There’s a hole that leads into fields,’ I whispered to her.

  ‘Well done, darling. Now, don’t let anyone notice what we’re doing. We’ll be out of here in no time.’

  So we behaved nonchalantly, quietly gathering up our things and slipping away up the tunnel together when nobody was taking any notice. We soon reached the hole through which the daylight streamed. I was able to wriggle through quite easily. It wasn’t high up, more or less level with my waist. I had to clear some bracken growing across it, but it wasn’t hard to get through. Eva passed the two rucksacks and Charlotte through to me. But when she tried to get through, the hole was too small to take her shoulders. She wriggled back inside, then we both started frantically gouging out the earth around the mouth of the hole. We had no tools, so we simply had to dig and rip with our fingers. I was very worried: I knew that if we failed I would have to go back into the tunnel with Eva and we’d be forced to join the huge crowd of refugees. The thought of that renewed our determination. Every so often Eva would try again to get through.

  ‘Just a little bit more,’ she would say and we’d carry on. I had to do most of the work, as I was on the outside. The soil I loosened was falling through on to Eva. Eventually, I pulled away a large clod of earth, which came free so suddenly that I fell backwards and rolled over like a ball. As Eva could not see me any more above the hole, she grew worried and by the time I walked back up the hill she had pushed her shoulders through again, this time successfully. With a lot of wriggling, the rest of her emerged.

  ‘Thank goodness I’ve become so thin since we started this journey,’ she joked.

  ‘I did a roly-poly,’ I told her and we both laughed, mainly from relief to be out of the crowded mine. We lay in the grass for a few moments, both of us exhausted but exhilarated to have made it.

  ‘Look at you,’ she said, surveying the grime that was embedded in my hands. The soil had turned our fair hair dark and both our faces were covered with smudges of dirt. We stood up, shook as much of the loose dirt off our clothes as possible, and set off walking, cautiously edging round the hill to avoid the entrance where the soldiers stood guard.

  At the bottom of the hill we found ourselves in a valley and along it ran a clear stream. We followed its bank until we were sure we were a long way from the mine, then we stopped to wash. From her rucksack Eva produced her beautifully scented soap, given to her by my mother. Both my mother and grandmother loved good-quality soap and they kept it for a long time before using it. They believed that the harder it was, the longer it would last. This tablet did very well: it took us through our whole journey. It smelled of lavender, which is another of the smells that instantly triggers memories of our long trek.

  I knelt on the bank and dipped my head in the water, so that Eva could wash my hair, rubbing the soap on to my scalp and lathering it through my curly mop. Then I had to dunk my head again to rinse it. Eva struggled to do the same to her own shoulder-length fair hair and I helped by rubbing up the lather for her. The water was icy cold, but we were both so happy to wash off the dirt that we didn’t mind. The sun was strong and warmed us after the shock of the water. We washed our hands and feet, then dried ourselves on the small towel that Eva also carried in her rucksack. We had no food, but Eva had two sweets left, which she said she had saved for a special occasion and this was it. We sucked them slowly, trying to make them last. Then we drank some of the stream water and for a few minutes afterwards we lay resting in the sunshine, with the towel spread out to dry. We were lying in a patch of tall, delicate white flowers; Queen Anne’s lace I heard it called years later in England. I looked up at the sky through the froth of tiny blossoms, and it felt as if they were hiding us. My Omi always wore little white lace collars pinned with a brooch, and the flowers made me think of her, with a sharp stab of longing to be at home with my family.

  We could not linger, though, no matter how great our relief, so after a short time we carried on. Eva had both the rucksacks on her back and I had Charlotte. Between us, we held the towel, stretching it out to finish drying it, and on we marched.

  10

  Into the Path of the Invaders

  Before long we had rejoined the road and Eva used the compass to make sure that we were still travelling north-west towards Kirchhasel, which was the way we wanted to go.

  It was eerily quiet. There were no people or houses and the road was completely deserted. All we could see were fields stretching to the wooded horizon and fruit trees lining the side of the road. We were very scared. We knew, from what we had heard in the mine, that the Americans would soon be upon us.

  ‘What will the Americans do to us?’ I asked Eva.

  She looked very worried. ‘I don’t know, Puppe. But you know what they have said about the enemies. If it comes to the worst, we may be shot or we may be taken prisoner. Whatever happens, we must be very brave.’

  We had been told to fear the Russians more than anything, but we were indoctrinated to believe that all the Allies were our enemies and would treat us very badly. It was propaganda like this that had inspired the German people to fight so bitterly to the end.

  Eva saw how fearful I was. She couldn’t pretend that our situation didn’t look very bad but she tried to comfort me as much as she could. ‘Don’t worry, Puppe,’ she said. ‘They will know that we are not important to them. Look at us! Just a girl and a child. We’ll be fine, I promise. But we must make sure they know that we are not going to resist. We have to carry white flags so they can see we surrender.’

  We had already seen houses with white sheets draped from their windows. Eva broke two stout branches from a tree, and we tied the towel to one and Eva’s white hankie to the smaller one. Eva told me to carry the smaller one over my shoulder, so that anyone approaching from behind would see my white flag. She did the same with the bigger one.

  On we went, marching forward in the silence, carrying our flags of surrender. It seems almost funny now, to think that the Americans, with their might and weapons, would consider us a threat to them. But we truly believed that they would be monsters in human form, showing mercy to no German citizen, children included.

  As we walked, we heard a distant rumble behind us, different from the throb of the heavy artillery. This was unrelenting, moving towards us, growing in volume.

  ‘They’re coming, Puppe!’ gasped Eva, taking hold of my hand.

  It was the invasion: the enem
y were here. They were advancing upon us on the very road we were walking along. The sound of gunfire had gone, and through the still air the growl of the tanks and lorries could be heard for miles. Although they were easily half a mile away, the ground seemed to shake and the noise reverberated round the valley.

  ‘Don’t turn back, don’t look at them,’ Eva said, clutching my hand very tightly. My heart was racing. ‘Hold Charlotte, hope for the best and say a little prayer, and we’ll be all right.’

  I was terrified as the sound grew louder. We stepped off the road on to the grassy strip at the right-hand edge, among the fruit trees, which were brandishing their white blossom like our white flags, to make room for this strange new traffic that we dreaded. When it seemed the noise could get no louder and the whole world was shaking, a convoy of Sherman tanks came into view, rolling inexorably towards us.

  Ignoring Eva’s instructions, I looked up in awe as the huge caterpillar tracks thundered past. There were twenty or thirty tanks and it seemed to take for ever as they drove onwards, roaring by us in their ungainly way. When the last tank had lumbered past, there was a new procession of lorries and jeeps, which seemed ridiculously small and quiet compared with the slow beasts that had preceded them. In the back of the last lorry was a crowd of young men in American army uniform.

  Here they were at last: the ‘enemy’ who had invaded our country.

  To my surprise, they were not like the wicked monsters of my imagination at all. They didn’t have two heads and horns. They weren’t frightening. They weren’t brandishing weapons or shouting abuse at us. All I could think was how they looked like our own soldiers, no different, except for the uniform.

  They were grinning, laughing and waving at us. To my astonishment, they began to throw things out of the lorry to us – miniature bars of chocolate, small packs of biscuits and chewing gum.

  The enemy, it turned out, consisted of friendly, young men, just like our soldiers. And that, as I was to learn, was the truth of it; the reality of war. Armies are made up of ordinary men, thrown into battle against each other through no fault of their own.

  I sometimes wondered if any of these American soldiers, when they went back home, told their families about these two bedraggled creatures, a young woman and a small child, totally on their own on a deserted road, with little white flags over their shoulders. Despite their confidence and the military force they had behind them, these soldiers must have been apprehensive about what lay ahead. The war was not yet over and in some places the invading troops met with fierce fighting. I hope that we brought a smile to their faces and somehow touched their hearts. If we did, then we had done our little bit for peace.

  Eva wrote in her diary later:

  I will never forget when we saw the first Americans. My heart was pounding in my throat and I dared not took at the cars and tanks, but when they started throwing goodies to us, my fears evaporated, bit by bit.

  Further up the road the convoy had stopped and we caught up with them. Eva spoke a little English, so we were able shyly to say ‘hello’ and ‘how are you’.

  The American soldiers had jumped down from their tanks and lorries, and they ruffled their hands through my curly hair and one of them gave me a big wink.

  The soldiers had set up folding trestle tables and benches at the side of the road, and they invited us to sit with them and share their food. Gratefully, we joined them and had a meal of potato mash, corn and chicken, which was delicious. They were all very friendly and introduced themselves by their first names, which was very strange to us, as in Germany we were much more formal. We communicated through gestures and facial expressions, as well as Eva’s bit of English. When we went on our way, they also gave us more goodies to take with us.

  The smell of this part of my journey is the sweet, slightly sickly smell of bright pink gum, which I had never seen before. I chewed my first piece for ages, trying to make it small enough to swallow, before Eva explained that you didn’t do that. She said, ‘You’re not meant to swallow it. In fact, if ever you swallow chewing gum, a rubber tree will grow inside you.’

  I remembered a rubber plant we had back in our Hamburg flat, a monstrous triffid of a plant, which grew as tall as the room and branched out across the top of the window frame. I surely didn’t want something like that inside me, so from then on I was always very circumspect with chewing gum.

  We walked on, there were Americans all around us. We were wildly happy and sang loudly in our joy. All that horrible fear that we had travelled with for days had evaporated.

  ‘See, it was good that we said a prayer,’ said Eva, her face light and happy.

  All I could feel was a huge sense of relief. We weren’t going to be killed, or taken prisoner as I had feared. We were going to keep on walking, to find my Mutti.

  We saw plenty more Americans as we approached Kirchhasel, and as we walked along the verge we found more food that they had thrown out to other refugees, but which had been missed. We filled our bags with biscuits and chocolate. In the village, which was draped with white flags, we went as usual to the community hall and were allocated an address where we could spend the night.

  There was an overwhelming sense of relief among the other travellers and the people organising the billets. Grown-ups shook hands, lots of people patted me on the head or pinched my cheeks. Yes, we were a defeated nation, but we were drained and tired and just glad it was all over, and we exulted in the feeling of release.

  As the Americans and British swept into Germany, they tried to do as little damage as possible. They did not want to carry on fighting; they, too, were desperate for an end to the war. They met some pockets of resistance and where this happened they crushed it ruthlessly, and there were villages and small towns where much destruction occurred. But resistance was rare and most places were left intact and the people unharmed. These soldiers wanted, above all, to survive themselves: death or injury at the moment of victory seemed horribly pointless.

  If you travel through this beautiful area of Germany today, you will see the medieval town centres, untouched by the wars of the twentieth century. The people who live there are much more affected by years of Soviet domination, after their area was allocated to the Russians three months later, when Germany was partitioned among the Allies. They were not reunited with the rest of Germany until 1990 and those years under Communist rule were very hard.

  On the whole, the American troops entered towns and villages seeking a peaceable surrender. As the convoys of tanks and lorries approached a town, they would halt and an amplifier would warn the inhabitants, in German, not to resist. Usually the mayor and the head of the local troops would come forward with white flags, and the village would surrender. Often, they would then telephone ahead to arrange the surrender of the next village along the road.

  Where there were SS troops and where, so sadly, there were the indoctrinated young boys of the Hitler Youth brigades, there might be defiance and a determination to obey Hitler’s command to defend Germany to the death. These were the towns and villages that were inevitably destroyed by the tanks. Sometimes, in the distance, we would see the sky glowing bright orange, and we knew that a village had refused to surrender and was now ablaze.

  For the most part, though, common sense and a strong desire to live and get back to some sort of normality prevailed. It soon became clear that the conquering army was not interested in reprisals. The devils that the Nazi propaganda had created in our heads did not exist, and as soon as we could see they were human beings who, like us, wanted peace and an end to the madness that had gripped the world for so long, we felt nothing but relief. For me, at only seven years old, there was no real understanding of the big world picture, the politics of defeat and victory. I did not know why all this was happening: like every child, what I needed and wanted was warmth, food and love. If Eva felt any shame at our country’s defeat, she did not express it, either to me or in her diary. The nation was beyond that kind of pride, we had had it beaten
out of us by years of war, a war that had been of our leader’s making.

  But not all our conquerors acted in this humane and dignified way. The Soviet troops behaved savagely and to this day I thank God that we were in the area of the country that was taken by the Americans, not in the path of invading Russians. They were desperate for revenge and took out their anger on everyone who crossed their path, man, woman or child. I know there have been stories of looting and even rape by British and American soldiers, but they are few and far between, and we never saw any of it. Our experience of the Allies was only good.

  It’s possible that, as a little curly-haired child, I was made a fuss of and only saw the best of everyone, but I don’t think I was given any kind of preferential treatment. These soldiers who came in with their tanks and their guns were fine young men who wanted to get home to their wives and families, and they did not hold us, the women and children and old people who were left in the villages and towns, responsible for keeping them away overseas for so long.

  They must have seen terrible things that would haunt them for the rest of their lives, just as I have never been able to forget the sight of bodies splayed in death by the sides of the road, or completely rid my nostrils of the stench. Some of these soldiers had the appalling task of liberating the concentration camps, and there is nothing I can say but to ask forgiveness for the atrocities committed in our name by our mad leader and his henchmen. But these men, the invading troops, never to my knowledge took it out on innocent Germans. They saw us, as we saw them within minutes of their arrival, as fellow human beings, thrust together by the appalling circumstances of war.

  If ever I needed proof that there are good and bad in all races, it came that night. The address we were given for our billet was of a house just beyond the centre of the village. It was a tall, fine-looking building with a big red front door, which I particularly remember. When we knocked we were let in by a very thin, nervous woman, who told us to come through into the kitchen and wait for her husband to come home.