The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  Gondorf, noticeably calm and collected under fire, ordered Hugo to take out the house where someone was pinning them down with rifle fire.

  ‘Take it out with the Panzerfaust.’

  Hugo, keen to impress his leader and keen also to put his training into action, lifted the weapon and took aim. His first shot fired in anger. On pressing the firing lever, the rocket blasted into the house with such force that it took out both the front and rear walls. The incoming rifle fire stopped immediately. Job done – for a moment at least.

  It was an expression of doubt that Hugo noticed next on Gondorf’s face. The destruction of the house and its lethal occupant had surprisingly not brought satisfaction to the veteran’s weathered features; rather a very slight dribble of blood from the temple mixed with perspiration.

  With bullets whipping past their ears, completely out of character, Gondorf rose to his feet as if to rally his men with a cheer.

  What are you doing, teacher?

  Felled by an unseen axe from behind! Knees buckled, his helmet falling forward hitting the ground, whereupon his face fell into its upturned rim, his solid body crashing like an oak into the churned earth.

  Hugo, keeping flat, turned every which way looking for the assailant.

  Who wielded the axe?! Where is the slayer? I can’t see him!

  There followed a grotesque display of convulsions as Gondorf – brain dead – lifted himself from the dirt before kicking and thrashing his limbs in a spastic, grabbing effort to regain his feet and life itself, with blood and plasma pumping from his nostrils and mouth, eyes rolling with wild accusation at those near enough to witness his dying throes.

  For what seemed an eternity, Gondorf’s wretched, animated corpse writhed, whilst his blood drained into the crater.

  By the time darkness began to fall over the burning village, the remains of the recce party had assembled in the basement of a house, the most able survivors bringing with them wounded comrades in varying states of distress. One young soldier cried of ferocious pain emanating from a wound to his wrist, while others mortally wounded screamed incessantly for morphine, their mothers and Christ.

  There was little anyone could do to comfort the poor wretches: no morphine, few bullets. Their only hope was to wait for reinforcements, and the only kindness they could realistically offer was to talk-up the arrival of reinforcements.

  ‘There’s a division on its way. General Guderian and his panzers. You’ll see! He’ll blow the enemy away. Hang in there, comrade. Not much longer now.’

  Truth was, they had only ever been a recce party in the hands of an experienced soldier. They were little more than boy scouts who had spent the last eighteen months since conscription guarding railway sheds and sightseeing across Europe.

  The hope for relief from some approaching friendly unit was a slim hope indeed. The flare pistol used to signal lay with Oberfeldwebel Gondorf’s body on the other side of the road. It would need retrieval if they were to stand a chance, but even then no one knew just what colour flare should be fired for help. The wrong colour would bring artillery fire onto their heads. Therefore, a codebook was needed too.

  *

  Rene was determined to learn some German for reasons of getting to know her husband’s family and in case an emergency should occur. Mark Twain’s experience in learning the language, however, troubled her: “One might better go without friends in Germany than take all this trouble about them.”

  *

  ‘It’s not like him to cry like this. I don’t think he’s very well. Can we stop the van?’ Hanne pleaded with her parents.

  ‘Ooh, are you not feeling well, my love?’ Rene reached back to feel Marco’s forehead. ‘He’s got a temperature all right!’

  ‘We can’t stop now. We’re almost there. He can rest at Oma’s.’ In Hugo’s mind, he was only saying what Oberfeldwebel Gondorf would have said and what Oma would have said.

  *

  “Do generals and politicians know of the expertise of sergeants? Probably not.” (Hugo Mauer speaking to a noted professor of Twentieth Century History).

  *

  ‘There was nothing I could do for Oberfeldwebel Gondorf – nothing! He just stood up. I don’t know why.’

  Hugo felt guilty. The recce party’s lucky omen was gone. Slain by his own misadventure. The much loved professional who’d trained them so well had done the inexplicable by ignoring his own advice; the very thing he’d always warned them never to do. Now they – his pupils – were alone in the world.

  *

  Working as a nanny for a prominent Cornish family in 1946, Rene had read Dr Spock’s Baby and Child Care, a book recommended by her employers. She could recite passages from the book verbatim. Coincidentally, their journey to Bavaria that day took them past Spock’s ancestral Dutch home.

  *

  Sobbing, Marco’s condition appeared to be worsening with every kilometre. ‘I think we ought to stop. He’s not very well, are you, Marco my love?’ As Hugo pulled the van into the side of the road, Rene reached back, lifting the tired little boy into her loving arms. Switching the engine off, Hugo, exhausted, covered his face with his hands, pressing his fingers tightly against his ears to cut out the noise of incessant crying.

  *

  The screams of the dying would not subside and the walls of the cellar merely trapped and amplified the cacophony. Prayers went unanswered. Thomaz considered it would be better to leave the confines of the “hellhole” and take his chances elsewhere because he couldn’t stand it anymore. This, despite the death he’d already seen.

  Karl reminded him: ‘Did you see Gondorf? Did you? Did you? Is that the fate you want? Eh? Eh?’

  ‘Gondorf knew better than to stand up in the middle of a fight!’

  ‘And you know better than to walk out there now!’

  But Thomaz would have walked out despite Karl’s protestations. It was only the bombardment of incoming shells that caused him to stay, as they impacted all around them, shaking the foundations and threatening the fragile ceiling with imminent collapse. The devil was playing golf and the cellar was smack in the middle of the fairway. Maybe the devil was German, maybe American. It didn’t matter because the devil was non-partisan. Whosever “golfballs” they were, no one was going anywhere – least of all Thomaz.

  ‘No reinforcements are going to come. We’re going to be blown to hell if we can’t get that pistol from Gondorf and the codebook. No one’s going to know we’re here,’ exclaimed Karl.

  Just as it seemed as if the occupants of the cellar could take no more, the continual shock of bombardment and gut-wrenching screaming came to an abrupt stop.

  ‘Merciful heaven! Either we are dead or they are!’ said Thomaz.

  Hugo checked the condition of the last of the seriously wounded. ‘They’re at peace.’

  ‘They’re fortunate, because that’s more than we are!’

  ‘Now is the time to retrieve that flare gun and see what is out there.’ Karl was the nominal leader now and fully prepared to step up to the mark.

  ‘Without a weapon? We’re out of ammunition,’ snarled Thomaz. ‘Any volunteers?’

  Metz was the youngest. ‘Where’s Metz?’ someone asked.

  ‘Metz is dead,’ Hugo told them with certainty. He was looking at what remained of Metz – the nervy boy with a gaping hole in his stomach who had been brought in to die. Hugo wondered what the Führer would think if he were here now looking at Metz – or what had been Metz, the promising academic and musician. His facial muscles strained by the slow passage of agonising hours spent pleading for death; his mouth gaping wide now like a landed fish, glass eyes staring into blackness.

  Hugo searched for a sign that might have been Metz’s spirit rising from the body but could see nothing. He reprimanded himself for not having the faith to be a priest as his mother wanted him to be, or to be able
to see beyond death – whether it be the death of a bloated cow in a burning farmyard or a German youth no older than he.

  Karl reminded him that if Metz was dead, then he was now the youngest.

  *

  By the time of the family reunion in 1963, the population of Germany had risen to just over 73 million, with the preservation of large areas of forest considered vital for the nation’s well-being.

  *

  ‘Where’s Dad going?’ asked Hanne.

  Hugo got out of the van without saying a word, before stumbling as if drunk to the edge of the forest where he fell to his knees.

  Unable to see his face, Hanne and Rene watched in silence as he leant forward and started to sweep the forest floor with the palms of his hands as if trying to uncover a hidden, precious object from the debris of twigs and leaves. Something personal and utterly special that was lost in this very spot nineteen years previously. Hanne turned to her mother for an answer to his bizarre behaviour.

  Rene was not slow to respond: ‘Dad knows a special German medicine for sick children. You find it in the woods here. Oma taught him all about it.’

  ‘Can I go with him?’

  ‘No, he’ll be back in a minute once he’s found it. Won’t he, Marco? Eh?’

  *

  Of all Hugo’s recurring nightmares, this was the worst.

  *

  Out in the fresh air, crawling as he had been taught to do, like some earthworm, Hugo silently prayed that he be spared the sniper’s bullet because he was certain there had to be a sniper – somewhere.

  Ahead, he could see through the smoking rubble the figures of two men, both recognisably German in their green uniforms. For a moment, it appeared that all was okay after all. Problem solved. Their presence suggested that they’d held the road and that there was no need to hide because clearly these two fellows were alive and animated. Hugo’s first instinct was to call out or make some sort of noise to attract them; but maybe it was illusionary – a mirage – and so caution prevailed. He continued to worm his horizontal approach until he could see with clearer, starker clarity that these men were indeed an illusion of sorts. One poor wretch was suspended on a wire fence – caught like a fly in a giant web. Why was he trying to climb a fence? His bizarre entrapment made no sense.

  The other figure was sitting back against the fence as if taking a breather. Then it dawned on Hugo that an explosion must have blown them against the wire.

  From his right side a voice approaching his position, drunk – grotesquely drunk – singing in strangled tones some desolate song that he can make no sense of. It’s a woman, quite young and eminently pretty, empty wine glass in hand, dressed for an evening ball in heels and long black gown over which she has draped, like a jacket, a man’s white collarless shirt; the ashen skin of her face and exposed arms bruised and mottled with white dust, her fine fair hair cascading loose to her bare shoulders, her voluminous breasts swinging seductively as she trips and topples on broken heels, her awkward path to a destination that Hugo cannot begin to imagine.

  Now the worm becomes a timid cat crouching ever deeper to the ground, he watches her pathetic, limping steps, but without pity, for in his base desire he so badly wants her.

  Stopping within metres of his position, she pauses as if suddenly able to sense his presence, glancing around her as if responding to some unheard call for her attention. Hugo holds his breath. Trembling, unable to focus, she steps forward, momentarily easing his tension, her bizarre song begins again and this time she accompanies it with a dance: step – close – step, step – close – step. She discards her empty glass on the broken ground where it shatters into tiny shards, which impact Hugo’s face just as she reaches out for an unseen partner.

  Eyes shut tight instinctively; the shards do not penetrate – thank God! The woman stumbles on out of sight, out of resonance.

  However, in the years to come she will return to his nightmares many, many times.

  *

  Rene made a note in her diary of the date and time they entered Bavaria:

  Donnerstag (Thursday) 20th Juni 1963, 11.37 am

  *

  At last, dad’s country! Wind down the windows, the air is warm and still. The bunting will have been strung out in Oberwinkel; they’ll be boiling water for that welcome home brew. Biscuits will have been bought or baked especially for this day. The miles and kilometres have flown by; the years have flown by; 1944 is a long way behind us now. Cornwall is a long way behind us. The parish priest will mention the reunion at Mass and give thanks for a loved one returned to the flock.

  *

  ‘Why are there no barbed wire fences surrounding the fields?’ asked Hanne. ‘No fences at all!’

  ‘That is because in Germany we have no need of wire fences as they do in England.’

  Hugo’s answer could not placate his ever-inquisitive daughter.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You will see when we get to Oma’s.’

  *

  Montag 2nd Oktober 1944, 1.45 pm

  Another cellar

  His eventual return to the dark cellar, his return to the living who complained of the dead because they were beginning to smell; but the living smelt almost as bad.

  ‘Is there any hope, Hugo?’

  He felt giddy and as tall as a giant as he brushed the dirt from his uniform with his hands, having forgotten the sensation of what it was like to stand again. Two hours’ crawling does that to a man; makes him feel 10 feet tall.

  He had this to tell them:

  ‘The Americans have withdrawn behind the safety of the barbed wire. There’s no way back over the open ground in daylight – not without weapons. And there’s no way through that barbed wire – it’s at least 2 metres high.’

  ‘Then we stay put,’ affirmed Karl. ‘Thomaz? You man the first lookout.’

  Uncomplaining for once, Thomaz dutifully went to his post – the only aperture open to them.

  *

  20th Juni 1963, 3.03 pm

  Oberwinkel

  Their arrival in the village of Oberwinkel coincided with the 413th utterance of the question that trip comprising the sentence: ‘Are we there yet?’ the sentence that Hanne had been asking on a regular basis ever since the van left Cornwall. The only word missing this time was: “nearly”.

  Hugo had shut his mind off to the frequency of the question in much the same way as he had learned to do in the cellar with the screams and moans of the dying, whereas Rene had kept a secret tally for her own amusement.

  There was no bunting that they could see; no band waiting to beat the drum; no welcome committee headed by the parish priest. No fanfare. Perhaps they were ahead of time and it would all be performed tomorrow. After all, how could the villagers know they were to arrive at this particular minute in the afternoon?

  ‘Hooray! We’ve arrived at last in Rip van Winkle!’ squealed a jubilant Hanne, forgetting in her excitement to check the mileage.

  *

  Montag 2nd Oktober 1944, 2.07 pm

  The end in sight

  Thomaz had not been at his station long before calling for quiet. The survivors had been consoling one another with whispered stories of home and family and just what the future might hold for them once this mess was over.

  He could see just far enough through the smoke and wreckage to get the impression of an armoured unit approaching.

  ‘I can see Americans – 200 metres to our right.’

  Each of the twenty surviving men in the cellar reached for their weapons; weapons with near empty magazines. They might fire off a few rounds between them by way of a gesture, but an empty gesture was all it would be and more likely suicidal.

  ‘They’re approaching and they’ve got prisoners.’

  Karl joined him to peer out of the tiny aperture. ‘It cannot be so?’

  Always the o
ptimist, he wanted to see a German contingent bringing American prisoners captured with food and boundless other supplies; but no, clearly it was indeed a large American contingent approaching their position with prisoners – a good number of men whose ranks seemed to outnumber their captors. Gone were the steel helmets of battle, for these men wore their field caps, and far from being the saviours of the so-called “glorious Third Reich” they were nothing more now than the defeated remnants of a once all-conquering army.

  ‘We’re tired, hungry and thirsty,’ commented Karl quietly and philosophically. ‘We should join them.’

  *

  20th Juni 1963, 8.09 pm

  Guest bedroom, Oberwinkel

  Hugo not only loved his English wife, he admired her. She’d just put the children to bed having received a courteous welcome from his mother with little more than a handshake. Rene loved to talk but there would be few opportunities to share her thoughts with anyone else in the coming weeks of their holiday. Hugo would be busy on the farm and she deserved better, he thought.

  Over the past few days since leaving Cornwall, she’d navigated them across southern England, Belgium, Holland and Germany all the way to Oberwinkel with only occasional errors that were not her fault. She’d organised the maps, planned the route, pitched camp at night, and got them underway the following day all the while keeping the children amused.

  In that very bed where he’d last laid his head in 1942 he recalled those pre-war days of school and farm work. Then, he’d never given the English, or Cornish, a second thought. Why should he? Travel had not concerned his young mind, nor had language. Now, he was “British” of sorts; he spoke English; his children were English; his wife and her family were English; he drove an English car. Hitler and his cronies with all their so-called meticulous planning had only succeeded in turning a Bavarian boy into an Englishman – of sorts.