by Derek Hansen
Slowly his tremors eased and he turned to look at her.
‘Friedrich, you don’t know for sure what has happened. Your wife and your son could be safe somewhere in a bomb shelter. You don’t know what has happened to them. You don’t know for sure!’
He looked at her and saw the glimmer of hope. It was enough to help him gather his wits together. ‘Yes, the house in Prager Strasse has a strong cellar. Perhaps they are safe.’ But he knew there’d be little hope for people trapped in the centre of a firestorm. Maybe the firestorm didn’t start until the second raid. Maybe they escaped from the cellar after the first. ‘I must send a message to Gottfried.’
‘No, Friedrich. As soon as your friend hears anything he will tell you. I imagine he is doing everything in his power. Now, I’m going to pour you a cup of tea and you will drink it before you do anything else.’ She poured the tea in silence and they drank it in silence, each grateful for the chance to examine their thoughts. Cecilia was upset for Friedrich—who wouldn’t be? Yet it hurt her to see the depth of his feelings for his wife and son. Would he react the same way if it was her who’d been bombed? She knew the answer almost as soon as she phrased the question. She’d ignored the fact that he had a family and commitments elsewhere, even though he’d made no secret of his affection for them and often spoke about them. She’d simply pushed that to one side as an issue irrelevant to her role as informant and made no adjustment as the circumstances had changed. She realised bitterly that she’d deliberately misled herself; that she’d invented her own convenient little fantasy, another little compartment, without regard to reality. Yet hadn’t he done the same? He seemed to love her, even told her he loved her, and they were lovers, as closely entwined as lovers could be. The bitter truth was that once more she had to share the affections of the man she loved, and accept that the division was unequal and that another had greater claim. She glanced up at Friedrich. He’d barely sipped his tea and a skin was forming on the top. There were no tears from this man, no hysteria and not even anger. He sat straight-backed and stared unthinking at the table top. Only the ashen pallor of his skin gave any indication of the pain he felt inside. Cecilia’s heart went out to him.
Friedrich alerted the radio operator to bring him all signals the instant they arrived and remained in his room with Cecilia. The operator didn’t need to be told. He liked Friedrich, as did all the men under his command, and knew his family lived in Dresden. At one thirty another signal came through from Gottfried. The operator read it and smashed his fist into the wall in rage. Fierce pain shot up his arm to his elbow but it was pain he was glad to bear for his commandant. He took the message up the stairs immediately as instructed.
Friedrich read the message aloud in stunned disbelief. ‘1210 Dresden bombed by heavy force of American bombers strength estimated 1000 plus. Communication intermittent. No casualty lists yet available. Will keep you informed. Gottfried.’ He turned to Cecilia. ‘Why?’ Once more his control was shaken. He collapsed back on his chair at the table and reread the cable. ‘Why Dresden? It doesn’t make sense. There is nothing in Dresden worth bombing. Why bomb it three times? Why bomb it at all? It is a refugee city. Where is the point in taking the war to people trying to escape it? How does that help the British and Americans? How does that help anybody?’
Of course Cecilia had no answers. She sat down next to Friedrich and took his hand in hers. What could they do but sit and wait?
For the next two days, Friedrich stayed in the barracks. He organised patrols as usual but charged his Hauptmann with the responsibility of carrying them out. He instructed the junior officer to withdraw and inform him instantly if they made any substantial contact with the partisans. He was loath to venture out himself in case a message arrived. In every other way it was business as usual. He gave his men no reason to believe their welfare was being compromised by his personal trials. He knew the communications clerk would share the news with the men because he’d given no instructions forbidding him to do so. While none would presume to address him directly on the issue, they showed their support in many subtle ways: by holding a salute a fraction longer; by standing straighter and performing their allotted tasks with more zeal and military exactness; and by the quiet they maintained around his rooms. He was a tower of strength but every tower needs solid foundations. Cecilia was his. He didn’t weep on her shoulder or cling to her desperately in the lonely hours of night. Nor did he open his heart to her and pour out his sorrow. But Cecilia was well aware of his unspoken need and stayed with him as much as she could.
He tried unsuccessfully to make contact with Dresden by phone and radio. As the days passed, his despair grew. If Carl, Christiane or Lisl had survived they would have sent a message through to Gottfried somehow. What petty bureaucrat would refuse to transmit a message to a Generalleutnant? He now knew for sure that Prager Strasse had been razed to the ground, but he clung to a slim shred of hope that the cellar would have held up under the bombardment, and that the rescue and repair service would dig down and find the occupants alive. He’d heard of such miracles happening after the firestorm bombings of Hamburg, Darmstadt and Heilbron.
On the morning of the fourth day after the bombing his phone rang, startling him out of his reverie. He recognised the voice immediately despite the crackle and distortion on the line. ‘Gottfried!’
‘Friedrich! Listen carefully, our time is limited. I have been to Dresden. I still have no definite news. The Vermissten-Suchstell—the Missing Persons Inquiry Office—is only beginning to compile lists but, my dear friend, it doesn’t look good. For either of us.’
Friedrich’s heart sank. Gottfried was softening him up, preparing him for the worst. He knew what he was going to say. Had suspected it all along. But that didn’t make it any less painful.
‘All of central Dresden has been flattened from the Dresden Friedrichstadt Sportsplatz and Central Station to Dresden Main Station and the Great Gardens back to the Elbe. They are digging for survivors but there are too many cellars and too few labour gangs. So far they have not been very successful. Those who survived the blast from the bombing had the air sucked out of their lungs by the firestorm or were overcome by poisonous gases. They say the temperatures reached eight hundred degrees centigrade. If Carl, Lisl and Helmuth remained in the cellar after the first attack then there is little hope.’ Gottfried paused to allow that information to sink in. Friedrich wanted to respond but no adequate words came to mind. Gottfried continued, his voice matter-of-fact and soldierly. ‘I was referred to a woman from the Frauenschaften who knows Christiane. She says Christiane relieved her at Central Station.’
Once more the voice on the other end of the phone hesitated. Friedrich closed his eyes as the cold fingers of dread took hold of him, squeezing out the last of his feelings and desensitising him. He braced himself for the next blow.
‘Friedrich, Central Station was the aiming point for the second attack.’ Again Gottfried paused as if he found the next words difficult. ‘Christiane was assigned to look after two trains filled with Deutsches Jungvolk. Both trains had been moved out onto a siding after the first attack. The second attack caught everyone by surprise. There was no time to bring the trains back under cover. Both were completely destroyed. We don’t know yet if any of the occupants had time to find shelter elsewhere, but none of the Jungvolk have been reported to the Vermissten-Suchstell. Nobody left aboard either train survived.’
‘Gottfried, is there no hope?’
‘Perhaps it is too soon to give up hope entirely. There are always the miracles, those who survive against all the odds.’
‘Dear God!’
‘I’m sorry, Friedrich.’
‘Gottfried? Will you go back for me? If they have been killed, at least see that they are properly identified and buried.’
‘I will do my best. Goodbye, my friend. It seems that Dresden has been made to pay for all our sins. Perhaps we will all be made to pay. I will get back to you the instant I hear any more.’
The line went dead. Friedrich stared at the phone, letting the realisation wash over him that he no longer had a wife and child to love and be loved by. That his beloved Christiane and precious Helmuth were gone forever. Along with Carl and Clara, Lisl and her little baby Trude. They were all gone as if they’d never existed, wiped off the face of the earth. And why? All because of the little Austrian corporal and his insane ambitions. The nightmare they’d unleashed was coming home to haunt them. He sat at the little table almost catatonic, unseeing, unfeeling, unhearing.
He still hadn’t moved hours later when Cecilia arrived. She immediately guessed what had happened. She was unsure what to do, to comfort him or leave him alone to grieve. She walked up behind him and put both hands tenderly on his shoulders.
‘They’re gone,’ he said flatly. ‘All gone.’ He turned and looked up at her and she was struck by his appearance. His skin was grey and his eyes dull. It was as if his life had also been drained from him and only the husk remained. He was beyond pain and despair. ‘They’re all gone,’ he repeated. ‘There is only the two of us left. Just the two of us.’
Chapter Forty-one
‘God abandoned Dresden on the night of February 13, 1945, that much is certain. But for you I would have killed myself or allowed the partisans to do it for me.’ There was no life in the old man’s voice. He occasionally looked up at Colombina in the armchair opposite him as he told his story, but mostly he stared at the worn patch in the carpet around his feet. Every now and then he paused to sip his tea.
‘I have read every book there is to read about the bombing of Dresden and I believe Gottfried’s first instincts were right. Dresden was destroyed as punishment for the atrocities committed by the Reich. It is impossible not to see the hand of God involved in it. Almost the whole of continental Europe was shrouded in cloud that night, yet the British weather forecasters were able to predict one brief window in the cover. That window was estimated to last for between four and four and a half hours. It occurred between ten in the evening and two the following morning, right above Dresden. Can you believe that? The very night the raid was planned, the heavens parted to make it possible. Even the timing is significant. Ten o’clock was the earliest possible time the British bombers could reach Dresden without risk of being attacked by our fighters in the last moments of daylight. Two o’clock is also significant. It allowed the RAF to complete the second raid before the clouds closed in once more. Half an hour earlier and the second attack would have been called off.
‘A lot of people blame Bomber Harris for the attack but that is too simplistic and too convenient. Churchill himself was an advocate of area bombing and was even quoted as saying “… it was better to bomb what we could hit than to carry on bombing what we couldn’t.” The theory was that if the RAF wasn’t accurate enough to hit the factories, they could disrupt production by striking at the people who worked in them. It was also Churchill’s decision to bomb Dresden or, at the very least, his War Cabinet’s. One thing is certain, he approved both of it and the manner in which it was carried out. The most convincing explanation I can find for why the attack took place at all rests with Churchill. He, more than any of the other Allied leaders, recognised the threat Russia might pose in the post-war years. He wanted to give them a demonstration of Allied power should they be tempted to overstep the mark. Dresden was perfectly placed a mere eighty kilometres or so from the Russian front to provide the example. The instructions given to Bomber Harris are clear evidence of this.
‘Bomber Harris’s responsibility was to carry out his instructions. In his defence he was only carrying out orders to the best of his ability. But that is not a defence that works particularly well in trials for war crimes. Many of my ex-comrades were testimony to that. The records prove that his plans for the attack were focused squarely on Dresden Centre, radiating out from the Dresden-Friedrichstadt Sportzplatz in the shape of a slice of pie to include all of the old city. The target sector markings totally ignored military targets to the north, and the Dresden-Friedrichstadt marshalling yards to the east which were full of trains carrying supplies to the front.
‘Because of the nearness of the Russian Front he chose the elite Number Five Pathfinder Force to lead the attack. They used radio waves and radar to pinpoint the exact location. As they closed in to drop their markers, they realised to their astonishment that the city was undefended. They were able to drop their primary markers within one hundred metres of the aiming point. It was the most accurately marked raid in the whole of the Second World War. The Master Bomber took advantage of the lack of defences to call the bomber force in below the level of what little cloud there was. Naturally, the lower altitude and lack of ack-ack ensured their accuracy.
‘They had no night fighters to contend with. Because of the diversionary attacks on Bohlen, Nuremburg and Magdeburg, and the jamming of German radar, Fighter Control had no idea where the main force of bombers was headed. They didn’t consider Dresden. When it finally dawned on them that Dresden was in fact the target, they scrambled fighters from Dresden-Klotzsche, but they didn’t receive their orders until nine fifty-five. The marking had already begun. By the time they’d climbed to attack altitude, the first attack was over.
‘Only two hundred and forty-five Lancasters took part in the first attack but their accuracy and the high concentration of incendiaries made a firestorm inevitable. Dresden was ill-equipped to handle any air raid let alone one of such severity. By law—the Luftschutzgesetz which had been in force since August 1943—all homes had to provide fire syringes, grappling hooks, ropes, ladders, first-aid chests, beaters, fire buckets, water tubs, sand-boxes, shovels, paper sandbags, spades, sledge-hammers and axes. Few people in Dresden bothered to comply though it is unlikely these precautions would have had much of a bearing on the final result even if they had. But people did prepare their cellars and excavate tunnels and holes between buildings to enable evacuation. The authorities even built water towers at strategic places. While the intentions were laudable they brought tragic results.
‘The damage done to Dresden by the first raid should have been enough. It is hard to believe that any civilised people would not be satisfied with the havoc they had caused. But Bomber Command and Bomber Harris had been instructed to leave a message that the Russians would find unmistakable. The first raid wiped out the Air Raid Protection Command Centre so there was no co-ordination of emergency services. It also wiped out the power supply and telephones. As news of the catastrophe spread, emergency services began to pour in from all over Saxony. But Bomber Command had anticipated this and timed their second attack accordingly. Just as help arrived in the stricken capital, the second raid began without warning, trapping and annihilating the would-be rescuers. This time there were more than five hundred and forty bombers.’ The old man paused as his voice gave out. He covered his face in his hands. His whole body shook.
‘Friedrich, there is no need to go on.’ Colombina was too emotionally drained to go to him and comfort him. She wasn’t sure she wanted to anyway. She wanted to bring him back to the square in Ravello before her own strength deserted her, but she was powerless to intervene. She was held captive by the horror of his words.
‘You talk about murder, Cecilia. That was murder.’ He looked up at her briefly then reached for his cup. The tea was cold but did its job in enabling him to continue. ‘The temperature at the heart of the firestorm reached 1,000 degrees. The winds reached 200 kilometres per hour. The smoke rose over five kilometres into the air. Pilots in the second attack reported that they could see the glow of Dresden’s fires from 350 kilometres away. As far as I have been able to ascertain, this was when Christiane was killed. Cecilia, can you possibly comprehend what it must have been like? Rock takes millions of years to metamorphose but in Dresden it took a single night. People in cellars were reduced to piles of ashes as if they’d sought refuge in a crematorium’s furnace. Roads melted. Pots and pans and even bicycles melted down to pools of metal. And tho
se poor people who sought refuge in the water towers were either overcome by the heat and drowned, or boiled to death.
‘Once again the fighters were caught off guard. Most were refuelling after their abortive attempt to engage the first wave of bombers. In all, only twenty-seven night-fighters took to the air to fend off the most devastating air-raid in history. Ten minutes after the second attack finished the cloud closed in with fifteen square kilometres of the city destroyed forever. A total of 1,400 bombers had been used in the night’s operation. I hope the Russians were suitably impressed. But Dresden’s trials were still far from over.
‘At twelve fifteen on the following afternoon, just fourteen hours after the first attack had begun, 1,350 Flying Fortresses and Liberators attacked the Dresden-Friedrichstadt marshalling yards. Because of their high altitude and the cloud cover the bombing was largely ineffective and the bombs hit everything but their target. But worse was to come. The bombers rendezvoused over the target with P51 Mustangs. Their primary job was to protect the bombers from day fighters which they succeeded in doing, and secondly, to strafe targets of opportunity. Targets of opportunity! Would somebody please explain to me exactly what that means! They dropped to roof level and machine-gunned the columns of refugees streaming from the stricken city. They dropped down over the Elbe and machine-gunned the people sheltering from the fires on the river banks and bridges. In the reports and books I have read, many people claim it was only then that the city gave up. It seemed that the horror would seek them out no matter what they did. Dear God! To have survived the bombing and then be caught like sitting ducks by fighters and machine-gunned.’
‘Yes, Friedrich, it was unforgivable. But you make it sound as though the bombing of Dresden was the only atrocity of the war. What about what Nazism did across the length and breadth of Europe? What about the death camps?’