The sea as witnessed through picture books, photographs and the newsreels is a very different place to the real thing. The North Sea, viewed in all its unpredictable rolling reality for the first time, both intrigued and unsettled them.
They had travelled across France prior to the Allies landing in Normandy but had gone nowhere near either the north or south coast. So now, like rabbits transfixed by an unfamiliar object, they stood mesmerised by the water’s enormity and temperament as it swelled, pulled and slapped the pebbled shore.
Parked on the shore was one of the largest seagoing vessels they could imagine.
‘It has to be American!’ exclaimed Thomaz.
‘Nah, British,’ argued Hugo, not because he knew better; he didn’t.
‘Whatever it is, it’s brought in vehicles – tanks, lorries, that sort of thing. And it’s going to take us out of here.’
‘Take us to New York, Karl. You’ll like that!’
‘No, Thomaz, not New York for me. For you maybe? I’m a European and I intend to stay a European.’
Behind them by some 10 kilometres, the camp of tents that had been their cold, infested home for three weeks and four days. Forced labour had not been the problem there; it was the lack of something to occupy mind and body as they waited to be shipped out to England.
They had chased rats, and some wag even confessed that a rat had actually chased him back. They had bet all manner of currency on rat racing, or the fastest earthworm that could disappear into the soil, the fastest snail and the slowest snail – anything that you could wager on. Fortunes would have been lost if fortunes had been available to any of them; but those who have fortunes don’t normally find themselves in a POW transit camp betting on rat racing, or kicking their heels until a boat takes them away. Dysentery had threatened the camp and no one had escaped that save for the guards. It wasn’t a critical thing, just another endurance. Their British guards were efficient in keeping discipline and a tight perimeter, whilst mercifully lacking the hate that could be seen in the eyes of some of the Americans who’d taken them prisoner. This would change, however, in the New Year with the discovery of Nazi death camps such as Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and Neuengamme.
In the East that summer, the Soviets had already liberated camps such as Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen and others in the Baltic states, and news of atrocities were spreading, but for now the British were even-tempered. That would soon change, of course. Hugo did not know about such things, nor did Karl or Thomaz. The Führer had told them nothing. They would find out later; but one thing: they had witnessed crimes but passed them off as war.
So they shot her dead?
She was an enemy agent.
It’s war.
Those prisoners are all communists – that’s why they’re in rags.
They’d do the same to us. Worse even!
He tried to kill a soldier. That’s why they shot him.
There was always an excuse of some sort. Excuses, excuses and more excuses.
We have an explanation. We can give you an answer. Our answer is: this is not murder or uncivilised behaviour because we would have been their victims.
Do you understand, soldier?
Do you comprehend the reasons behind hanging those children?
When you have been in the Wehrmacht as long as I have been…
Excuses were the currency of atrocities. They absolved you of crime; they were passed around and juggled like balls in the air. If you were an ordinary foot soldier, you could load excuses into your magazine along with bullets. Easily done.
How odd it was to see the British at close quarters now; so different to the Americans. The language was the same, but they were nothing alike.
The Americans, for example, comprised several distinct kinds. There were the Northern European Yanks who seemed resigned to the fact that it was a job to be done but it wasn’t personal because there was some family connection there. Then there were the Southern European Yanks who hated the Germans; but their hatred was as nothing compared with the Jewish Yanks or the Eastern European Yanks who were itching to kill every Kraut they encountered. They would spit, kick and punch a prisoner whenever the opportunity presented itself, and the opportunities frequently presented themselves.
Thomaz had been a particular target of a man whose sadism knew no bounds. Thomaz had the face of a man with a target between his ears. Or rather, he scowled back and that infuriated the sadist.
The British were different, or rather indifferent. Their attitude was simply one of disdain. They didn’t hate the German prisoners because the prisoners were nothing to them. There was no feeling of animosity because the game was over – Britain 2 : Germany 0.
Beaten, the Germans were no more than a duty that had to be completed. Guard them, process them, put them on transport and deal with the next job, whatever it might be. Nothing personal. Jerry tried, Jerry lost. There was never going to be any other outcome.
The British had been winning wars since the dawn of time. It was part of British life – a heritage thing. King Alfred beat the Danes; the Normans beat everyone; the Plantagenets beat the French for a hundred years; Elizabeth I beat the Spanish; Wellington beat Napoleon; and now Churchill had beaten Hitler. Britain’s history books were full of victories, and the total score was well into double figures.
Jerries? Huns? Poor buggers! Tried twice and lost each time. Give ’em a cup of tea, have ’em clear up the mess and send the buggers home. Nobody takes on the British Empire and wins.
No, with the British, it wasn’t personal.
Karl had been telling anyone who’d listen about his uncle Heinrich. How he’d been captured during the Kaiser’s war and sent as a POW to Scotland where he’d worked as a farm labourer and been taken in by the family who came to treat him as one of their own.
‘They’ll look after us!’ exclaimed Karl. ‘You’ll see!’
‘I’d rather be going to America,’ said Hugo. ‘I have cousins there. They’d look after us.’
Interrupted, craning their necks, a vast armada of heavy bombers some five miles high, emitting con trails against the fleeting patches of blue in an otherwise laden sky; a mighty force of avenging angels of death eastward bound, their mission of imminent destruction little more than an hour away.
The landing craft that was to remove them from their native continent was the largest vessel of its kind that they could imagine. It had come in with vehicles and fresh troops aboard. No wonder the Allies had landed in such force if the landing craft that had brought them were so big.
Like some beached whale with its wide mouth open, gasping for air, waiting for an incoming tide to refloat it. This was not just a landing craft, it was a landing ship – gargantuan in scale and capable of carrying hundreds if not thousands of troops.
Onboard, the mixture of diesel, urine and vomit combined to create the next element of torture that lay ahead. Each man was handed a life vest and told to sit down and be patient. The tide was still some hours away from floating the craft, meaning that the voyage to captivity – once it was underway – would be long and arduous.
Patience ebbed and flowed that afternoon. The sea did not.
Obedient Germans, they sat still for what seemed an eternity, until some individual got up and moved, and nobody reprimanded him or shot him, so others got up and moved around and grumbled. Those quieter ones like Hugo remained sitting in whatever space they’d found for themselves, their heads bowed into what little privacy and shelter their uniform coats could provide, while others leant on the cold, grey fo’c’sle and stared out towards a new and uncertain horizon.
Even when the tide eventually floated the huge vessel off the beach – underway for England – progress was slow… interminably slow. Diesel fumes blew back into their faces and reached down their throats, causing men to retch and writhe with each roll and pitch of the flat hull on th
e agitated open water. Vibration through the cold, flat, grey-steel surfaces and the perpetual rocking motion took its toll. This was every bit as bad as a battlefield. Surely, by the time they reached England, no one save the helmsman would be left alive.
Karl was the first to succumb to seasickness. Protesting in gasps to both God and man he considered his condition terminal and that these minutes were to be his final moments: ‘First dysentery, now seasickness! There’s nothing left in my guts to throw up! If we survive this it will be a miracle.’
Seasickness it was, but there was more to Karl’s deteriorating condition. Despite his bravado, his faith in a British welcome, he was perhaps the most fearful of the three friends. Whilst he had stood on continental soil, he had felt close to home, close to his family. He could have walked home had the chance presented itself.
In the transit camp, the thought that occupied him each and every day was the desire to escape. Beyond the wire he would throw away his uniform, bury it and steal some clothes from a washing line. Pretend to be a civilian – the British and Americans wouldn’t ever suspect because they wouldn’t realise or wouldn’t care. He could speak French quite well, and with his dark hair and brown eyes he could be a Walloon, so the Allies would be fooled. Without a uniform nobody would know.
Okay, he had no papers, but a lot of people would be on the move home again as the Allies advanced. He could always bluff his way by saying that the Gestapo had captured him and imprisoned him. During interrogation they took his papers, then released him as the Allies were advancing quickly and he wasn’t important enough to hold. That happened a lot; he had heard that it did. He would then begin a new life with a new identity, but he would still get word to his family that he was well and that he would be with them just as soon as the war was over.
A beautiful young woman would take him in and hide him, feed him and clothe him. He’d heard of this happening, too; German deserters and Russian slave workers on the run. He’d heard many stories based on real incidents.
What lay ahead scared the living daylights out of him. What if the British weren’t so receptive? What if they kept the Germans – for good this time? They’d tolerated his uncle because that was war number one; this was war number two and there had been even more casualties, especially among civilians who’d been bombed.
The Germans had lost again; no one was going to show them any respect. Children would spit at them and throw stones and dirt; women would hit them with sticks. They might be paraded through towns and jeered and beaten. The British hated Catholics and they were bound to hate German Catholics even worse.
He knew a good deal about British history; how wars had been fought against the Catholics. He believed that the British hated Catholics in the same way that the Nazis hated Jews. His uncle had written quite recently and included in his missive this line from an old British friend: “I’d hoped Hitler had come in 1940 just to do to the Catholics what he’s [doing] to the Jews!” In pre-war years, his uncle had maintained his connections, remaining in touch with many of his British friends.
In Britain, how would his parents – Matheu and Inge – know where he was? What if he died in captivity? Why should the British treat them fairly when there was little enough food for anybody let alone wretched POWs? If they were to be released then it wouldn’t be until at least 1954 or ’55 at the earliest. No authority would let them go earlier than that! They would be made to clear up all the damage – rebuild what had been destroyed and make proper amends.
The Nazi Party members would all be killed; they’d have to be eradicated once and for all; hanging and shooting all of them. Good riddance! If Britain and America didn’t do it, then Germany would. Hang the bastards from street lamps and leave their wretched bodies to rot as an example to others. Do unto them as they had done to others. In London, they might even behead the scum and put their severed heads onto spikes as used to be done.
Children would have to understand the hard way that Nazism could never be tolerated ever again. Thankfully, Karl was no Nazi in principle, but he’d known plenty who were, and others who were cajoled into the most barbaric acts. Some very ordinary fellows had claimed (some even boasted) of murdering and raping civilians – even children – and they weren’t SS or die-hard Party members. And if they admitted this to the British and Americans, then every damn one of them would be condemned by association.
For a fleeting moment on that wretched ship, he swore that on lifting his sorry head he could see his parents standing there in plain view. Yes, there on the very same deck as he, arm-in-arm, watching him, so very concerned but rooted to the spot as if unable to reach him. Fighting disbelief, for he could see them every bit as clearly as he’d ever seen them. It was only when he tried to get to his feet that the phantoms evaporated as if into a mist. Propping himself up he looked around in vain, convinced that their presence had been within his reach, but by now they had vanished. Loneliness at that moment overwhelmed him.
He knew ghosts when he saw them, and this was his first sighting – ever.
Almost two years later in the calm of 1946, Karl was informed officially that his parents had been killed in a bombing raid. News sent in the form of a press clipping by a cousin he hardly knew. The raid in which Matheu and Inge died took place on the very day and at the very time that he saw their apparitions on the ship.
*
Freitag 28th Juni 1963, 7:12 pm
Oma’s dining room, Oberwinkel
Hanne stifled her need to giggle. Stupid giggling is an act of nature that’s brought on by something silly or something that looks silly, and this was silly. She thought it was very amusing to see her father nod off at the dinner table halfway through a meal. How silly was that?!
To begin with, because his elbows were on the table with the palms of his hands cupped around his long nose and wide mouth, she immediately thought he was about to sneeze, but when the sneeze didn’t come she thought he was praying – saying Grace silently, thanking the Good Lord for all they were about to receive – because this was a very religious house; but no, he was sleeping, and right under Oma’s gaze.
If Oma had noticed, she wasn’t letting on. Hanne glanced between the two with the utmost discretion, not wishing to draw attention to her father’s state. She did, however, glance at mum, but if Rene had noticed she wasn’t letting on either. Oma would not be pleased if she realised. She might even slap him around the ear. Now, that would be something to see.
*
Dienstag 18th Juli 1933, 11.05 am
The bakery at Oberwinkel
Hugo’s subconscious had transported him away from the table, back to a time immediately following his father’s death when he and his close friend Anton would push and pull the handcart across the village and out of the parish to the bakery of Herr Gustav Mencken.
The baker was a rotund, chubby faced, kindly sort, giving them each a glass of milk whenever they turned up for their task: to either deliver grain or collect bread. He was never a moody or difficult man, and the boys enjoyed their meetings with him because he treated them as responsible adults rather than children. He never spoke down to them and they liked that.
They liked his wife too, a very attractive young woman – quite tall, with a full figure, moon-faced with flowing red hair and large green eyes. Much younger than her middle-aged husband, her stunning appearance elicited in them feelings that they didn’t quite understand.
Spying them from the back room, she would beam a smile, wave or call out to them in greeting as if, somehow, they were important to her. They thought she was like a film star even though they’d never seen a film in their short lives. Their concept of a film star was that of heavenly beauty. Like a film star, she remained out of reach – never coming into the shop but always remaining in that dark, busy back room, her delicate hands and slender forearms immersed in flour.
That particular morning was memorable for this reason: th
ere was an atmosphere when they arrived; something was not right. A painfully thin woman and a stick-like young boy stood in the shop looking anxious – the boy was about their age but half their weight.
Pale, shivering and dishevelled, as if the two of them had been sleeping wild in the forest. The boy appeared not to acknowledge the arrival of Hugo and Anton, staring fixedly down at the cracked and scuffed black leather that had largely parted company with the soles of his second-hand shoes.
Between shivers the mother was trying to negotiate a deal, but the baker was having none of it. ‘What use have I for a promissory note? It makes no odds to me, fräulein. The empty basket you carry is worth more to me.’
Hugo and Anton’s arrival provides a welcome diversion for the baker.
‘Now then, boys, you have my grain?’
‘Yes. Have you got our loaves?’ asks Hugo.
‘Yes, I have your loaves.’
For a brief moment normality returns to the bakery – all is good here. Hugo and Anton look toward the back room hoping to glimpse Frau Mencken. She is not visible this morning. Never mind! The baker, relieved to have an excuse to break away from the woman, absents himself with a gesture to get the boys’ bread from the depths of the mill.
‘What do I have to do to get bread?’ the woman calls out after him, almost crossing the counter line. ‘Do I have to grow my own wheat, too?’
It was only when she spoke that the boys recognised just who she was – Frau Gruber – widow Gruber as she now was. Her husband Otto – like Hugo’s father a veteran of the Kaiser’s ill-advised war – had only recently died aged forty-four; his “poor lungs still full of British mustard gas” was the local take on his premature demise, and that apparently was straight from the housekeeper of none other than Herr Doktor Liebermann.
The Reunion Page 10