The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  ‘The children are not at all well. All that travelling!’ said Rene as she laid out her nightwear in preparation for her first night’s rest in Germany – their first night in a proper bed in nearly a week of travelling. What luxury!

  She turned to Hugo for a response.

  ‘Hanne too, nah?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Hanne too.’

  Finally able to relax, Rene slipped off her shoes and immediately massaged her poor, swollen feet; it was like she had walked all the way from Cornwall.

  Hugo reassured her, ‘They will be all right; this is important for them. They are here to meet their cousins.’

  ‘Your mother gave them a good welcome.’

  ‘Which is more than she did me!’

  ‘Oh, come on now! She just hasn’t seen you in a long while.’

  Pushing open the bedroom window, Rene stared out at the lights of the little village set against the blackness of the Bavarian night, which to her seemed so much more black than a Cornish or English sky.

  ‘This is such a peaceful little place. Doesn’t look like the war ever came anywhere near here.’

  ‘Ah! So it might seem, but an American tank blew a hole in this wall.’

  He pointed to the entire gable end.

  ‘New wall. A hole in this very bedroom. Thank God I wasn’t in residence! I was a POW. Maybe it was the same Americans who captured us?’

  *

  Montag 2nd Oktober 1944, 3.11 pm

  Border village

  Outside, squinting in the daylight, assembled on the road as if awaiting a bus, the shabby remains of the recce platoon stood resigned and trembling while a chatty GI snapped their photo for posterity. Better to shoot us with a camera than a gun, thought Hugo.

  Their helmets replaced with peaked field caps, their useless weapons collected, the troop took stock of their surroundings; the only thing left to them in which they could take stock.

  How ironic – they’d achieved their objective of securing the road; they’d secured it for over twenty-four hours and at great cost. They’d arrived guns blazing “saving” what they believed to be a German village.

  Hugo congratulated himself on having done a magnificent job with the Panzerfaust. He’d held his nerve. He’d watched over the dying and braved being shot when venturing outside to get information. The Führer would have personally pinned a medal to his chest were he to be informed – most certainly.

  Now that the battle was over, they could see the environment for what it was. They’d come running into the smoke and flames, they’d seen buildings alight, and those that weren’t they set ablaze as if it were the buildings that were the enemy and not other men. This morning they were redundant, standing outside what had been a shopfront window, its glass under their feet, its produce buried under dust and rubble.

  Today, they would limp out. Yesterday, they’d forgotten hunger and thirst; forgotten sex and love; forgotten for a moment just who they were; forgotten that there might just be a tomorrow.

  For a brief moment yesterday they had been strong and fit; they had been at least capable. Today they would be children again – barked at, sworn at, pushed, shoved and cajoled toward a destination over which they had no choice; slaves in a new order.

  No sooner had the photographer taken their collective image, than he turned his lens on a GI tending to a wounded German combatant with a flesh wound in his right forearm. The wounded lad looked to be in tears, or close to. A corporal called to the photographer to take another picture, this time of three GIs tending to another wounded German who was in need of water. Hugo assumed the injured men were of the first group to be captured, as he didn’t recognise them from his platoon of what had once been 150 men.

  He looked across to where Gondorf had fallen, to see if he could see the body. It was there all right, he hadn’t imagined it; he hadn’t risen miraculously.

  That grisly image. Don’t care! Stop caring now! Look away, dummkopf! He meant nothing to you. You didn’t know him!

  In the cellar Karl had reassured him that Gondorf would have been brain dead instantly the bullet entered his skull; that his heart must have been strong and so it continued to pump. That’s why he convulsed. That’s why he bled so. That’s what he witnessed.

  They were to be searched again. Hugo quickly understood the gesture from the fierce GI glaring at them. His undisguised loathing would have had them line up for execution right there and then. There was no time for prisoners, no resources such was the whole bloody essence of capture. Thank God this morning something spared them from such a fate. Maybe they were so obviously kids – amateurs, cadets, raw recruits. Waffen-SS men would not have fared so well.

  The words uttered by the GI were not understood, but his gestures most certainly were – open coats, jackets, take off your caps. Something nasty is bound to be concealed.

  Again, the photographer was on hand, snapping away with his German camera loaded with American rolls of film.

  ‘Do the Americans make cameras?’ Hugo whispered across to Thomaz.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ returned the whisper.

  ‘Hey! He’s taken my wallet!’ growled Karl. ‘Thieving crook!’

  Such indignation simply earned him a smack round the head like a naughty schoolboy. Lucky that’s all it amounted to.

  Hugo thought it was probably just as well that the photographer was there as his presence was probably preventing a bigger crime. He feared for his watch and kept it concealed by holding his jacket open, his sleeve obscuring the beloved Heuer. He had nothing else worth taking.

  Once the search was complete and the photographer finished with snapping the humiliated losers, orders were barked in English for the formation of ranks of three. They were to march out at gunpoint and leave the hellhole ruins for good.

  Hugo noticed that once the photographer had finished, the GIs stopped attending the wounded. The photography was a publicity stunt and nothing more. The wounded would have to march with the rest, however uncomfortable, flesh wounds notwithstanding.

  *

  20th Juni 1963, 11.22 pm

  Guest bedroom, Oberwinkel

  The last image in Hugo’s mind before sleep overcame him was that of marching past lines of American artillery: large howitzers and smaller field guns. Here was the cause of the bombardment. Had they continued, the cellar would have been turned into a mortuary.

  Tomorrow’s reunion would be in the schoolhouse. He would show Rene, Hanne, and Marco, too, where he had sat and learned. Maybe even his old chair and desk would be there. Perhaps the blackboard?

  *

  “We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.”

  C.G. Jung

  *

  Their teacher – Herr Fischl – had not turned up, and his classmates were quickly taking advantage of the lack of authority by running wild around the classroom, upsetting pots of ink and paint deliberately as well as accidentally.

  Two boys were throwing pieces of chalk at a third boy and abusing him with racial insults. One girl was being very provocative with some of the boys in a way that none understood. A book was thrown that narrowly missed Hugo’s ear, landing on the floor, then kicked around as a football.

  In desperation Hugo calls out: ‘Where is the teacher?’ to which his good friend Anton replies, ‘He isn’t coming anymore. He’s a Nazi in the Nazi Party and he won’t be coming back.’

  Anton mimics the teacher by goose-stepping around the room, raising his arm in a fascist salute as if he were a dictator in the making.

  ‘No one is going to teach us,’ he tells Hugo with relish. ‘We’re alone.’

  Hugo stands up from his desk where he has sat quietly and approaches the window with its view over the village square. Outside, standing on the cobbles, a group of people have gathered. They are strangely familiar to hi
m, yet he doesn’t recognise any of them. Their dress is remarkably colourful and styled in a way that is completely foreign to anything he has ever seen before. It is as if they are not of the world at all, but aliens from some other time and place that he cannot comprehend.

  The group total some fifty in number, from tiny infants in pushchairs to more mature members of a large family. They are so remarkably familiar to him, as if he has known them all his life, yet he cannot identify any of them. He watches for some while as the group poses for photos. He can’t hear them for all the noise in the classroom, but he can see them laughing and enjoying themselves.

  Turning back to his classmates, he declares boldly: ‘Don’t worry – there will be no war. My English family is here. We’ll never have to go to war again.’

  A senior boy grabs him by the shoulder and shakes him violently. ‘Don’t be stupid, Mauer! You’re not a priest; you’re not even a Catholic! You’re not English and you’re not even German. You’re a wretched Jew boy who just wants to make money!’

  Suddenly, Hugo is surrounded by the class. Someone shines a light into Hugo’s face; the force of the big boy’s grip causes a reflex in Hugo and he lashes out blindly.

  ‘Hugo! Hugo! Wake up, for heaven’s sake!’

  Gripping her husband’s wrists in a desperate attempt to prevent him thrashing out at her, Rene, gasping muted shouts, brings him back to the reality of 1963.

  ‘You were dreaming – calling out. You wouldn’t wake up, dear. Sorry, but I don’t want to wake up the children or your mother. I know it’s all this travelling we’ve been doing and you being back in your old home. That’s all it is – a dream. Don’t worry, you’re safe now.’

  Uncharacteristically, with a firm hand he pushes her away then rises to his feet, pulling at his pyjama jacket.

  ‘Let me get up. My pyjama is sticking to my back – very warm. I will take it off.’ Casting the damp jacket to the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed for a moment, trying to make sense of his experience, trying even to place Rene because at this moment she is a stranger to him.

  ‘I had forgotten how warm the nights can be here in summer. The air is always moving in Cornwall, nah? Not here.’

  ‘Are you all right, dear? I hope you’re not coming down with a sickness like the children.’

  ‘Of course not! I’m fine – I’m fine. This is a very important time for us – very important for our children. Switch the light off and go back to sleep.’

  Hugo, however, didn’t want to go back to sleep. He wanted to think, to remember, and the darkness of the bedroom provided the ideal environment.

  *

  Physically, he lay in Germany, in the very room he was born in, though he didn’t know it. Mentally, he returned to a Cornish field.

  Tuesday 28th August 1945, 9.47 am

  The Cornish fields were claustrophobic in Hugo’s opinion – small and surrounded by hedgerows. The trees atop the hedgerows were not much either, scrubby little oaks that didn’t grow particularly high but leaned to the southern sky in devout worship to the sun, their canopies like umbrellas against the northern winds.

  The people, too, were not particularly tall and also seemed to lean in the direction of the south as if the coastal winds had that effect on all living things.

  Hugo did not have the eye of an artist. He did not – could not – look at the countryside and see a pretty scene. Sentiment was not his to possess. Instead, he saw the countryside with a businessman’s eye. Land could be profitable. All land had its advantages, he thought, and a man could make the most out of any environment providing he had imagination, and Hugo had imagination aplenty.

  Bringing in the harvest that summer of 1945, he could see the potential of this “foreign” land. If he were to stay he would grow flowers; the soil and temperate climate were ideal for flowers. For now, he could only bide his time and scythe someone else’s corn, but upon release he could try the idea of growing something somewhere in his native Bavaria rather than labour on his mother’s farm.

  By ten o’clock that morning, a bright, blue, cloudless sky had established its authority on the day and a new shift was coming his way. He’d volunteered to go out at dawn so that he could finish earlier that afternoon. Karl and Thomaz – never early risers – were coming out for a later shift with others on board the lorry.

  From the back of the lorry, Karl’s familiar face appears, bellowing familiar German tones: ‘Hugo! No post, Hugo. No post.’

  It must have been the expression on Hugo’s face that caused Wally Johns to drop tools and approach him. The son of the farmer to whom Hugo and the others were assigned as prisoners of war, Wally had, since their arrival some eight months previously, been trying to establish his own friendly relationship with Hugo.

  Wally was roughly the same age – the same generation. He’d been exempt from military service, told to continue on his father’s farm in a reserved occupation of farm labourer. Like Hugo, he’d wanted to join the Air Force, to do his patriotic bit for King and country, but his parents had requested that he remain with them due to certain abnormalities thrown up by a medical shortly after his 18th birthday. His eyesight test showed him to be colour-blind; he was also under the height requirements for military service and underweight – in fact, the ideal physique for a steeplechase jockey.

  It was agreed by a weary panel that none of the British armed forces were missing anything by not having him on the parade square. His mother, Meg, had been nanny to Sir Giles Paton – Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall – a letter from whom suggested that young Master Johns could better serve his country as a dairyman and tractor driver on his home farm rather than become a Bevin Boy – the alternative fate for British youth at that time.

  Now, with the war over, some villagers were suggesting that Meg had deliberately starved her boy to avoid the draft, as he was growing into a man of sound stature – quite solid around the trunk, though he was never likely to be tall.

  Hugo particularly fascinated Wally. Hugo was everything Wally wasn’t – tall and powerfully built. Though not blond or even fair, he was the type of Aryan the British propaganda unit had been warning about – tall, athletic, broad shoulders, with chiselled features. In Wally’s eyes, Hugo looked strong enough to be able to pull a wagon on his own without the need for a horse or tractor.

  Wally had grown up hearing tales of the Kaiser’s war, as it was known in those years, and the remarkable reputation for stamina and honesty of German prisoners. No farmer from that period had ever complained of a theft, wilful damage or any other such crime involving a “Jerry”. Not so now with the Italians, where things would go missing, get broken, or some maid would complain of sexual shenanigans. God forbid if it rained, as no work would be done in the rain unless at gunpoint. Such was the “Eyetie”.

  ‘Hugo?’

  Hugo hears the call but chooses to ignore it. His work is fine.

  ‘No post, eh?’

  Wally edged closer.

  ‘Nicht post, Hugo? Nicht post?’

  ‘Nein. No.’

  ‘Never mind, boy! Tomorrow maybe, eh?’

  *

  ‘Tomorrow never comes, it’s always today.’

  Hanne Mauer, aged nine.

  *

  21st Juni 1963, 5.18 am

  Guest bedroom, Oberwinkel

  Leaving Rene to slumber, Hugo rose early with the previous night’s visions of bizarre dreams and recollections crystal clear in his mind.

  Today, he would walk the old haunts. He’d been looking forward to it, and now as the sun was climbing would be the best time. He didn’t want Rene with him on this occasion, or either of the children selfishly demanding at least some or most of his attention. He’d had quite enough of that over the past few days.

  Looking out from the landing, he could see his mother already busy in the yard below feeding chickens and looking so much older
than he remembered. It had been… what? Eighteen years? Now she looks like an “Oma”, he thought.

  Reluctant to engage her in conversation for fear that there was nothing in common between them, he slipped out the rarely used front door, taking with him the ornately carved walking stick – his late father’s pride and joy. She wouldn’t notice it missing.

  His father, Joseph, had survived the First War only to die at a neighbour’s house fire, or rather as a result of that fire. Isolated villages such as Oberwinkel provided their own fire services, with a wagon and pumps stationed in the village for those very occasions when a fire broke out.

  Joseph Mauer answered the call at around 10 pm on the night of 3rd September 1933 when a fire that had begun in a barn threatened to engulf a neighbour’s house. Eyewitnesses recalled a heroic effort from all who turned out, and in particular Joseph Mauer who entered the house on several occasions to rescue valuable property for the owner.

  Joseph’s lungs – already compromised due to the gas attacks suffered on the Western Front – were severely affected by the smoke. He collapsed exactly two weeks after the fire whilst sawing timber in a nearby wood. Coughing – severe coughing – probably aggravated by sawdust did for his heart. A search party found his body some time later, his hand still grasping the handle of the cross-cut saw, with that very ornate walking stick laid out beside him.

  A boy of eight years when Joseph died, Hugo, together with his elder brother, worked alongside their mother to maintain the family farm until their own call-up for war number two. Hugo had likened the “new” war to a bus – a bus that had taken their father but had not completed its journey, so it had to return to pick them up as well in order to reach its eventual destination.