The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  ‘Hello!’ replies Seidel, strengthening his grip on Ilsa’s already tight lead. She whimpers. He opens the inner gate and walks out into the compound to meet them at the outer fence.

  Heike introduces their new friend. ‘This is our cousin, Hanne. She’s from England.’

  ‘That’s nice! I have some chocolate for you.’ He fumbles in his pockets, feigning a puzzled expression, pretending all the while to have left it elsewhere – an act he performs for his own daughters whenever he takes them home toys or sweets.

  Producing three bars of chocolate no less, he breaks them into strips and passes them through the wire links, smiling broadly as they accept his gifts.

  ‘Thank you!’

  ‘Yes, thank you!’

  ‘Can the dog have some?’ asks Hanne in English.

  Seidel is puzzled until Hanne breaks off some squares and gestures toward Ilse, who sits impatiently on her haunches.

  ‘Yes, she can have some,’ he assures Hanne. ‘She’s a good dog.’ He gives the squares to Ilse, who is indeed a good dog, but not good enough for her masters in East Berlin. Her days are to be spent in the quiet of the Bavarian hinterlands.

  Seidel glances up at the tower where Roth is watching them, god-like and disapprovingly. ‘Well now, you’d better be running along or I’ll be in trouble for talking and not working.’

  Rising to his feet, Hanne thinks how tall he looks, even taller than dad. She thinks that he looks like her TV cowboy hero, Clint Walker, and that he has a very kind face and his whole manner is warm and welcoming. She imagines that he will go home each evening whereupon, like Clint Walker, he will hug his wife and family and tell them how much he loves them. She imagines that he might have a daughter very much like her and probably also called Hanne.

  ‘Auf Wiedersehen!’ He waves with his free hand before tugging on Ilse’s lead; it is time to follow her master and return to the safety of the inner sanctum.

  ‘Wiedersehen!’

  ‘Wiedersehen!’ calls Heidemarie, waving frantically.

  ‘Bye! Thank you! You have a nice dog!’ calls Hanne in English. Erwin stops briefly to acknowledge her, turning to smile – a smile she will capture and keep all her life.

  ‘Goodbye, little English cousin. Come on, Ilse.’

  Begrudgingly, the dog follows her master’s heels away from the chocolate donations and the little English girl who’d shown an interest in her. The cousins had not walked far from the fence – perhaps a hundred metres or a fraction more – a lazy, carefree amble through the long grass, their goal accomplished – when the crack of a shot rang out behind them. The crack was sharp enough to make Hanne jump and glance back, much to the amusement of Heidemarie. Nothing can be seen of the fence now that they’re deep in the valley, but they can hear Ilse barking frantically.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Hanne asks.

  Heidemarie is reasonably confident. ‘He’s probably shot at a bird. They do that sometimes.’

  They conclude that there is nothing to worry about. The idle stroll toward the village will continue unabated, with the exception of frequent stops to lie in the grass and pull at the wild flowers. Heike and Heidemarie know that the border is all about strange things and that no one should enquire too much on either side of the fence. Hanne the foreigner knows no such thing and feels an overwhelming sense of insecurity because of it.

  *

  Footnote: Bureau investigation concluded later that year

  The official reasons behind the shot discarded suicide and concluded that it was an accident: that Border Guard Comrade Erwin Seidel had taken out his service pistol to either check or clean the mechanism, whereupon it discharged accidentally. Roth claimed it as an accident, that he’d watched Seidel all the time as was his duty and that apart from Seidel’s descent of the inner staircase he’d not lost sight of him for one moment. The letter in Seidel’s pocket had been opened, but its contents had not been officially recorded. Filed away in Stasi HQ, the letter was eventually returned to Erwin Seidel’s family in 1990, a month before his father Joachim died aged seventy-eight.

  *

  Mittwoch 26th Juni 1963, 6.10 pm

  Oma’s dining room, Oberwinkel

  Sitting around Oma’s long dining table that evening for tea, Rene, frustrated with the lengthy silence, could bear it no longer.

  ‘Hanne went with her cousins to the border post today.’

  ‘Be careful! The guards shoot children, you know!’ Hugo was deadly serious.

  ‘We heard a shot as we were walking away.’

  Sitting opposite one another, both parents exchange concerned glances, which Hanne notices, as does Oma at the head of the table.

  Hanne desperately wants to explain how it had not been like that at all, how wonderful the guard was and his beautiful dog. How he’d come down to meet them from his lofty tower armed only with chocolate and a winning smile.

  *

  A gusty day in Berlin is seen by Cornish people in Bavaria

  After tea, it is Hanne, with her accustomed cheek, who suggests they put the television on for the evening because now they’ve recovered from the long journey and feeling quite normal again, Clint Walker just might be on, with his voice dubbed into German, or even better there might be some news relating to the border post that she’d visited that afternoon.

  To Hanne’s delight, Oma has an eye-catching television – a very modern state-of-the-art Grundig that makes all competitors look ashamedly Stone Age even though it is already five years old. Both Hanne and Rene had been most impressed on first seeing its wondrous design and wooden casing that could only have come from the future. The “box” was a shining example of what the British papers at home were raving about – the new German manufacturing powerhouse. This, however, would have been a revelation to Oma, who was quite unaware of her nation’s newfound reputation overseas. She still used oxen to plough the fields and, with the exception of electricity, the farmhouse remained just as it had done in the days when her husband had set off to fight a fire and her sons had set off for war.

  Oma only tolerated the TV because some relative insisted she have one just in case a national emergency was about to break and then she would need all the information she could get. In her defence, she said that if the Russians were to come she would be one of the first to know about it – television or no television.

  Hanne had to know whether Germany also had a “Children’s Hour” and whether they had any British or American programmes that she could understand. She pestered her mother with this request rather than her father as she was still shy of Oma and suspected that dad would only say something like, ‘We have not come all this way so that you can watch television, young lady.’

  Hugo passed all responsibility when Rene suggested that they ask if the “box” could be put on. He wanted nothing to do with it and told Rene she should ask Oma herself and that he shouldn’t act as interpreter all the time. The family should communicate directly with Oma, language or no language. She wouldn’t eat them alive despite appearances to the contrary.

  Caught perilously in the no-man’s-land of her daughter’s pestering and her husband’s reticence to communicate with his own mother, Rene summons her courage. She can at least point and gesticulate at the box, deftly articulating the thumb and forefinger of her right hand to demonstrate switching on.

  ‘All right if we have television on, Oma?’ and then just in time remembers to say in German: ‘Bitte?’

  ‘Doch! Bestmont!’ replies Oma, nodding.

  ‘Danke! Danke!’ Rene, genuinely grateful for the exchange, scrutinises the “box” carefully if she is to pull or turn the correct switch that will bring the set to life. There appear to be only two, but then it also functions as a radio and a record player.

  Hugo suggests that as it is nearly seven o’clock they should see the news. Mindful not to concede too much in
the way of choice to his beloved daughter, he is keen to impress his own mother of his worth as a father; that it may be 1963, but he won’t be walked all over.

  The bulletin is already underway as the set warms, the sound coming through first and eventually a grey, though clear, picture, which impresses everyone. Hanne’s interest in the border is rather prophetic to say the least, as the lead item is all about it, only on telly the border is the Wall in Berlin and President Kennedy is visiting the divided city and making a speech. Even Oma stops long enough to listen to Kennedy address the crowds, his English speech immediately translated for German viewers by subtitles and the growl of a correspondent. There’s rampant applause when he addresses the crowd in German: ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’

  ‘He’s a doughnut?!’ queries Oma in German, not sure that she’d heard him correctly, her reaction causing Hugo to smile for the first time since leaving Cornwall; not that she notices.

  ‘I wonder if the President will come here and meet our guard?’

  ‘I don’t think so, dear. Germany is a big place,’ says Rene, hugging her daughter.

  *

  Donnerstag 27th Juni 1963, 8.50 am

  Oma’s meadow, Oberwinkel

  The following morning was too humid even for Hugo. The cool coastal breezes of Cornwall that kept the air moving and made it so palatable for working in had, over the years since his arrival in the Duchy, somewhat softened his ability to cope with high summer humidity in Central Europe. A Bavarian summer could be very warm. Today was no exception.

  Stopping briefly to wipe his dripping brow, he came under the glare of Oma, who, despite advancing years, seemed more than able to till the soil of weeds – hacking at them with a vengeance. The last time he had seen such an expression was when he’d been ordered along with Karl and Thomaz to dig graves for American servicemen killed in action.

  *

  Mittwoch 4th Oktober 1944, 9.10 am

  A field somewhere on the Dutch/German border

  Then the GI had glared at him for momentarily stopping to wipe the sweat from his face. In Oma’s disdainful expression, Hugo could clearly see again the soldier’s face: his gaunt, skinny figure, his smart khaki blouson and trousers freshly pressed. He remembered the man as being what he had always expected an American to look like – a mongrel mixture of fifty-nine varieties that he and his fellow prisoners nicknamed “Heinz”. A man of European, Asian and African descent, and thinner even than the bolt-action carbine he carried at his side.

  It was the arrival of another truck that distracted Heinz from his hate-filled glare. It was loaded with bodies, mostly American but some German too.

  ‘Okay, listen up! You guys did this, so you can do the honourable thing.’

  Heinz – as he was to be known by the prisoners – was about to take the digging detachment, that included Hugo, Thomaz and Karl, and give them a lesson in preparation prior to the deceased being laid to rest. With a body already on a stretcher laid across the broad bonnet of a Jeep, he demonstrated just what he wanted the POWs to do, together with his ability to instruct a captured enemy using little more than numbers and instructions taken directly from the US military manual.

  ‘One – eins – you remove all personal items starting with the boots.’ Unlacing the mud-splattered, blood-stained boots, he pulled them off the feet of the corpse but only with some difficulty, before holding them up by the laces as lesson number one, tying them together, then unceremoniously dropping them into a large, round receptacle into which they fell with a thud.

  Karl desperately wanted to lighten the mood by joking that Heinz had a poor bedside manner and would be charged extra for that sort of clumsiness in an Amsterdam brothel. He sensibly kept his joke to himself.

  Heinz then started to fumble in the various uniform pockets of the dead soldier, pulling out a packet of cigarettes, a chocolate bar, wallet, stubby pencil and a Woolworths notebook. Collecting the various items in both hands he held them aloft as if he were a triumphant winner showing off his prize.

  ‘Two – zwei. Personal items go into a bag like this one.’ He put the items down and lifted a large polythene bag wherein he placed the objects that the dead man had hoped to carry across Europe before returning home.

  Opening the wallet, he took from it several dollars in cash and a small photo – the image not of a beloved fiancé or wife, but of a dog lying in long grass, panting and seemingly grinning – grinning for the loving attention of his master. The photo and cash were replaced with greater solemnity and dropped into the bag. ‘These are returned to the man’s family. If you take the money, or any personal item of a soldier, we will shoot you! Be sure of that,’ he warned, patting the holster of his sidearm just so there was no possible misunderstanding.

  ‘Three – drei. Cigarettes, condoms, whatever, go into the garbage bin.’ He threw the pack into a nearby bin without caring to look whether there were still cigarettes in it.

  ‘Four – vier. You tie the bag with the man’s ID tag – that’s dog tag,’ he reiterated, in the belief that his captive audience were bound to understand the term, but checked nonetheless. ‘Do you understand?’

  Exchanging looks, the POWs nodded in unspoken agreement that if they didn’t they’d be joining the corpses.

  ‘Then get to it!’ barked Heinz, removing himself from the impromptu class with a backward stomp of the feet as if demonstrating to the young “savages” a proper lesson in US military drill.

  Physically, the task was so much easier than digging the graves. All they had to do was work as a team removing the boots and going through the pockets, but it was a nightmarish, grisly task. The waxen cadavers sometimes appeared to be still alive – groaning, farting and sighing as the final draughts of air expelled from lifeless bodies.

  Others were badly mutilated, as if a mad butcher had hacked at them with a cleaver. Their deaths must have been agony, Hugo thought. Yet others seemed simply to be asleep, slumbering peacefully as if slapping their faces would bring them round.

  ‘My God!’ exclaimed Thomaz as he delved into his first pocket and withdrew a large pack of condoms. ‘This one was looking to screw his way across Europe!’

  Karl had found a wad of cash in a pocket of another corpse. ‘Yeah, and this one was planning to pay for it with hard cash.’ He glanced immediately at Heinz who was watching them with hawk eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah, I know. Don’t even think about it,’ he whispered.

  ‘We can keep the cigarettes and condoms though,’ said Thomaz. ‘Watch Heinz – he turns a blind eye.’

  *

  Donnerstag 27th Juni 1963, 9.03 am

  Oma’s meadow, Oberwinkel

  Opening his eyes to the present, Hugo glanced down at the hard, dry soil he was tilling. He was so keen to show his mother how he’d grown as a man. He’d been a boy the day he left, tall and gangly, proclaiming silly promises to protect the Fatherland.

  Was she proud? She never said and he never asked.

  He felt like asking now: Were you proud, Mother?

  Did I do the right thing, Mother?

  Are you proud of what I’ve done?

  I’ve lived, I’ve come through all this and I’m here again now. So many are not. The boys I buried while I lived – the American boys, the German boys.

  I went through their pockets.

  Can you believe that, Mother? I went through their pockets like a thief! I lifted their only possessions and placed them into bags.

  Their mothers collapsed; they fell to the floor. I know they did. Enraged and bitter, they cry every night to this day, I know they do. Their nightmares came true.

  In Cornwall I grow flowers, Mother; and each flower that I grow and care for I pretend that it’s a boy. I pretend that I can grow all those lives again, that I can bring them out of the soil and give them life again.

  And when my field of flowers is grown and their heads open and turn towar
d the sun, I salute them. Did you know that, Mother?

  *

  Mittwoch 4th Oktober 1944, 6.57 pm

  A field somewhere on the Dutch/German border

  The six Germans were each wrapped in parachute silks before being lowered into the trench. It was the last duty of a day that drained the surviving detachment of any residual energy that they’d had following the battle.

  Thomaz felt that another day of this “slavery” would be enough to cause him to join the dead by jumping in the graves with them. ‘I feel like we’re abandoning them!’ he blurted out before weeping.

  The sun was within moments of setting. Hugo, Karl and Thomaz agreed; they would come to attention and salute their comrades whatever the circumstances, whatever the threat.

  Hugo in particular was eye-balling Heinz; and Heinz – itching to raise his rifle – was not about to let such insubordination go unnoticed, so he referred the matter upward.

  ‘Sergeant? Do we let them salute like that?’

  ‘Relax; it’s not a Hitler salute. They’re burying their own. Besides, we’re handing them over to the British tomorrow, so it’s not our problem.’

  *

  Where Hugo had once glared at Heinz in defiance, now he glared at Oma, for in his damaged mind she had momentarily become Heinz, but there was no greater earthly authority for her to appeal, so she glared right back.

  He came to as if awaking from a dream to see her stern expression meeting him head-on.

  ‘He who doesn’t work, can also not eat,’ had been her oft spoken critique of any idleness when he was a boy. Now he muttered her words under his breath as he resumed his labour.

  *

  Zaterdag 2nd December 1944, 8.42 am

  The Dutch coast – exact location unknown

  Born and raised in landlocked Bavaria, Hugo had never seen the sea or a seagoing vessel other than in picture books and magazines; nor had Thomaz or Karl for that matter, and not one of them really cared that much. Karl joked that if they had wanted to see the sea, they’d have joined the Kriegsmarine.