Dear grandchildren,
This post elicits so many emotions for me!
I can’t help but be maternal and really feel for poor 16-year-old Thomas, who is now alone and scared, trying only to stay alive. He must have felt so alone!
I also feel a HUGE amount of admiration for 16-year-old Thomas, as he pulled himself up and did what was necessary to survive. He was no longer a boy, but a man, with very adult responsibilities.
I have no photos for this post, but I promise, your imagination will create your own powerful visuals.
Here are your great-grandfather’s words:
For a fleeting moment I considered going underground, just disappearing. After all, it would only be for a few weeks until the war would be over, and I could re-surface. But I dismissed the thought almost instantly. For one thing, “one doesn’t do that,” as it would have run counter to the integrity my father always insisted on. For another, it would have been unwise since Nazi efficiency, coupled with the powerful and efficient German bureaucratic machinery, was still in place, and martial law was in effect. If I overstayed the time of my documented leave allowance, which had been indicated on my identification papers, and if I were caught, I would probably be shot, while if I returned to the “legitimacy” of my proper station in Meissen, I would not be guilty of any transgression, and would be safer.
So I returned to Meissen.
Even before I walked from the train station to the warehouse, I sent a telegram to Rainer at his camp, not knowing if it would ever reach him, but I thought I should try anyway. “HOUSE DESTROYED STOP BE PREPARED FOR THE WORST STOP THOMAS.”
Telegrams have been gone for a long time, replaced by the immediate communication of texts. Apparently, telegram machines couldn’t use punctuation, so the punctuation had to be spelled out – much like you’d dictate a text today, using the same sort of language, but naming the desired punctuation: “House destroyed, period. Be prepared for the worse, comma, Thomas.
It turned out that my choice of words was not specific enough. When the telegram finally reached Rainer, he applied for a leave from camp because of the death of his father. His Lagerkommandant[1] wanted something more specific. “So your house is destroyed. Many houses are destroyed these days. Request denied.”
There wasn’t much I could do in Meissen but wait for the end of the war to arrive, probably in the form of Russian or American tanks. The warehouse didn’t have much work or material left and contact with the units it was supposed to supply had pretty much gone silent anyway. Rainer had been notified, Ulli was apparently safe in Wernsdorf with our uncle’s family, and all my worldly possessions -- except for what I had in my rucksack and a cardboard box -- had been destroyed, so I had time to make a wooden cross for my father’s grave with the help of Horst the carpenter. I even found an old sign painter who painted my father’s name on it.
It was night. Neither I nor Heinz nor Horst could sleep. We were listening for the distant sound of heavy artillery. The military front — what was left of an organized front — was that close now. We were agonizing over what had happened, and what was to happen. What would tomorrow be like?
How could we hide? Could we just run away?
Where? And why?
There was a knock at the door. It was only Herr Uckel.
His face was gray, and he was shaking so badly that he had to whisper.
“I am leaving. At daybreak I’ll head for Berlin. I don’t care what you do. Take what you need from the warehouse. You are free and on your own. Don’t get caught. Good luck.”
Horst and Heinz decided to stay, to hide out and let the wave roll over them when it came. I packed the few things I had into my cardboard box and stored it in the warehouse basement. In the stockroom, I packed my rucksack full of cigarettes to have some currency for trading, packed some soup mix, some sugar, a new pair of socks, some crackers, and a bottle of cognac. Then I went to the warehouse office and tore the triangle of Saxony out of the map of Germany that was on the wall.
I lay down on my bunk and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. At four o’clock I put on my rucksack and left, heading southwest toward Wernsdorf, where I hoped to find my sister, my aunt and uncle, and Gisela’s family.
At daybreak, Meissen was behind me and I was on a road. Luckily, I had a small compass and a map that showed the names of the small villages I’d pass through on my way to Wernsdorf. I could find out where I was only by asking; as all signs with town names and all direction signs had been removed in the naïve hope that the enemy army would not know where it was.
By mid-morning I encountered a small group of German soldiers who were heading in the same direction as I. There was no reason to fear them for more than a brief moment, as they were obviously in retreat and without a leader. Their packs were loaded on a horse-drawn farm cart and I joined them for a few kilometers, my own pack dangling from the wagon. No one talked. There were no questions and no answers. Everyone was exhausted and we all seemed to know that the less said, the better.
It was good not to have to carry the rucksack for a while, but I was so tired I almost fell asleep walking next to the cart. When we left the forest through which we had been walking, I stayed behind, lay down in a ditch at the edge of the forest and dozed off.
The ra-tat-tat-tat of machine gun fire woke me up.
I shot up and saw a small plane flying directly toward me, low over the very road I had just left. I couldn’t see what its target was, but it must not have been very important. The plane disappeared over the forest and didn’t come back. Probably just a horse-drawn farm cart and a few weary soldiers....
After that close call I tried to stay away from all roads, using only farm paths or walking across fields, through forests, and over meadows in order to avoid contact with people — any people, of either side. I knew that military patrols were looking for deserters, who were shot on the spot, or for anybody capable of fighting who would be inducted right then and there into the Volkssturm, a ragged army of civilians, old men and young boys, without equipment other than a few rifles and bazookas. I had no papers. I was barely old enough to be in the army. If questioned, I could give no plausible explanation of where I came from or where I was going. The prospect of being forced to fight was hardly any more pleasant than of being shot.
In the afternoon I could no longer hear the artillery fire. This could mean one of three things: 1.) the resistance had collapsed altogether and there was no more shooting, 2.) I was moving faster than the front, or 3.) the Elbe river had momentarily stopped the advance of the Russians. The bridge in Meissen has probably been blown up by now, I thought, as it had already been wired with explosives when I crossed it in the morning. The last thing I wanted to do was get caught in the middle of a battle, so I kept going.
I walked until it was dark and I could no longer see the path in front of my feet. It was too cold and too wet to sleep outdoors so I knocked on the door of a farmhouse and asked to stay overnight. The peasants did not hesitate for a moment to take me in. They even shared their evening meal with me, and I shared my cognac, something they’d never had. Maybe they felt sorry for me, or maybe it was the cognac, but they went out of their way to make me comfortable. Since they had no extra bed, they put some chairs together in the kitchen, placed pillows on the seats for a bed, and gave me a thick feather comforter as a blanket.
I had planned to leave at dawn, but the farmer’s wife was up before I was. She was boiling an egg, a real fresh farm egg for breakfast. I hadn’t had an egg for a long, long time!
Just as I left the farmhouse, I saw a military patrol on the road leading to the village, the men standing around an army vehicle trying to keep warm. Very quickly, I turned around and walked toward the forest behind the farm, making a wide circle around the village.
For two more days I navigated by sun and compass alone, hardly ever seeing a person, except for another drifter like me who said he had lost contact with his army unit. Under a bridge abutment, which provided a refuge from a sudden driving snowstorm, we together finished off what was left of the cognac, and when it was gone the lost soldier decided that he might as well not even bother any more try finding his unit, and stayed right there under the bridge for who knows how long.
I went on, my pack a little lighter.
[1] Camp Commander
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