Almost a Great Escape

by Tyler Trafford

  “You should have this.”

  It was my turn to wipe the tears from the corner of my eye. (The knife and bellows are in the glass cabinet of Alice’s writing desk, beside me as I write this.)

  My emotions settled down shortly afterwards and we looked through family albums. Several photos of Jens with Morten and Mari reminded me that Jens was a grandfather as well as a hero. In the photos, there was little of the hero to be seen, and a lot of a grandfather’s love for Mari and Morten.

  In showing me an album of Jon and Grete’s cabin and motorcycling holidays, Jon frequently stopped at photos that, to me, seemed barely note­worthy. A sandwich by the road, a rest along a hiking trail, a glass of wine on a terrace. It wasn’t until we were near the end of the album that I caught on to Jon’s way of thinking. They had visited some special places, including Stalag Luft III, but it was the roadside stops that he considered the most important.

  “That’s us,” he would say as he pointed to one of these photos.

  “That’s us. Just enjoying life.”

  That phrase would become the way I would remember the Müller family. People who are just enjoying life.

  That was how I remembered My Goodbye Mother. As somebody who was showing me how to enjoy my life. Riding my horse. Skiing. Reading a book. Hiking in the mountains. Being ordinary and doing ordinary things. Just enjoying life.

  No wonder Jens was a refreshing, unexpected wave that swept over Alice at the Alpine Inn. The Tyler family, as Uncle John told me, were show-offs. Big, important people putting on big, important displays. Everything was big. Very big. Their friends and businesses doing very well. The path of their unhappiness.

  And then she met Jens. Just a Norwegian fighter pilot. Just loving her, determined to survive the war and return to marry her. Jens. Her One Good Thing.

  Maybe their life together wouldn’t have worked out. Maybe she wouldn’t have been content too long with just enjoying life. I’ll never know.

  I asked Jon about the Christmas cards Jens had received from Canada every year. He told me his father opened them without saying anything and then they disappeared. His mother Liv knew about them and would sometimes make a disparaging remark about “that woman.” But his father never said who they were from. The cards are long lost, Jon explained, so we’ll never know for sure. We both think about that for a moment and then change the topic.

  What aren’t lost are Jens’s POW dogtags, he said. He showed them to me, stamped with Stalag Luft 3 and his identification, Nr. 296. His father must have worn them through the tunnel and to Britain. I expect he believed if he were caught, the tags would assure him of reasonable treatment as a recaptured POW. How wrong he was. He would have been shot in the head.

  That evening Grete and Jon prepared a special meal of roast reindeer, and invited Mari, Morten, and Cato to join us. (Liv, Jon’s mother, was not well enough to join us.) I was looking forward to meeting Cato. He has been a journalist at the Aftenposten newspaper since 1980 and has written histories of the Norwegian Air Force and the air war in Norway. Cato has an almost photographic memory and gave us detailed accounts of the war in Norway and of Jens’s experiences after his escape from Stalag Luft III. Jens’s modesty stood out in all the stories Cato told. Even in Jens’s subsequent career as a pilot with Scandinavian Airlines he rarely mentioned his wartime experiences. The only time he acted less than ordinary was when he was responsible for training pilots. Then, he was so demanding few students were capable of passing the standard he set — perfect.

  After dinner, Cato had to make a long drive home but, as he was saying goodbye to me, he told me that he had once quizzed Jens about the girlfriend in Canada, and Jens had told him it was Alice Tyler. That was a kind, unguarded confirmation by Cato, and I wished I had more time to spend with him.

  Jon drove me to the train station the next morning. We said our goodbyes knowing but not saying how well the weekend had turned out for both of us. But it was there, in his eyes. Unlike his father, Jon is not poker-faced.

  I couldn’t sleep in the aircraft. I passed the time deciding what memories I would most like to recall of my meeting with the Müller family. The one I chose was the reindeer dinner with Jon, Grete, Mari, Morten, and Cato, and with Jens’s uniform jacket hanging behind us and Alice’s collection of Jens’s letters on a table nearby.

  My favourite story of the evening, the one that epitomizes Jens for me, was Jon’s description of his father at the premiere of The Great Escape film in London, 1963.

  As Jens and his wife, Liv, were walking toward the theatre, he noticed a large crowd gathering outside. Telling his wife the crowd must be waiting for somebody important to arrive, he found a back door into the theatre.

  Inside, he asked who the crowd in front was waiting for. The answer was, “They are all waiting for Jens Müller to arrive.”

  Back in Calgary, I spent three days looking through my Jens/Alice pictures and letters and my photographs of Norway to make an album for the Müllers.

  This was the letter that accompanied the album I sent them:

  March 24, 2007

  Jon, Grete, Morten and Mari:

  Until I sat down to write this letter, I hadn’t thought of the sig­nificance of today’s date. It is also Judy’s birthday, which I mention just to keep my life’s priorities right.

  I hope you enjoy this Jens and Alice Album as much as I enjoyed assembling it for you. The photos from Alice’s Album, the ones I re­ceived from Jon and Cato, and the ones Jon and I took in Norway are filled with new and old memories for me, and all of them good.

  When I arrived in Norway last month and was standing at the Sandvika train station . . . and no Jon . . . I wondered if I had made a mistake bringing this story to you. As it turned out, Jon was on the platform up the stairs waiting for me, and by the end of the weekend when I said goodbye to Jon on the same platform I knew I had not made a mistake.

  Meeting you assured me that Alice had good reason to love Jens as she did. I am sure Jens would be very proud of his family today with your diverse interests and talents. At the risk of sounding sentimental, I will tell you that when I returned to Canada I told Judy that I felt very close to Jon, as if he were a brother I wished I had . . . except he is so much bigger than me and would probably have roughed me up a lot.

  I also told Judy that I had never heard anyone describe a scene as well as Jon did when he was showing me pictures of his motorcycle and hiking journeys. “This is us,” he would begin. Then he would pause before adding, “Just enjoying life.”

  Well, I like to think that phrase describes how my mother and Jens spent their time together. Of course, we can drive ourselves mad wondering about “what ifs” so I will not think too much about Jens and Alice’s romance and its possibilities; instead, I will be happy that I took a chance and bought a plane ticket to Norway. I admit, though, that I like to wonder if Alice and Jens were watching while we ate reindeer, drank wine by the fire, looked through old letters, and told stories about our own lives.

  I am enclosing an ornament from a pioneer’s wood-burning cook­stove that Judy and I collected while riding through an old home­stead. We found this piece of “Canada” in the grass and have had it hanging on our cabin wall for years. Now it can hang on your cabin wall as a reminder of us when you are “Just enjoying life.”

  Tyler

  After I sent my Jens and Alice Album to the Müllers, I wrote one more Goodbye Mother story.

  On her birthday, October 24, 2007, I went to Eden Brook, where I read it aloud.

  MY LAST GOODBYE MOTHER STORY

  A BOY WITH A HORSE

  I found you once lost in The Campbell’s Soup Box. I found you patient in the kitchen when I planned to run away from home, age six. You packed jam sandwiches for me. You never asked anything, not where I was going or what I was going to do. You let me walk down 38th Avenue wearing my favourite red shirt and blue jeans. I had a problem and it was up to me to keep walking until I solved it.

  I
found you fishing on the Gulf Stream. I found in you a truly big fish that a fisherman keeps in his heart forever. I found you in Santiago written with a new ending. I found you at Old Canmore when the crippled cowboy unloaded a brown mare, a horse of my own. A life of my own. I was eight and you showed me I could go anywhere, do anything.

  You knew what you were choosing when you married Ted, and you knew what you were doing when you left me The Jens Album.

  In that Campbell’s Soup Box you committed yourself to the life you chose. You had a fuck you answer to booze, betrayal, and cancer. You had a love you answer to every question I asked.

  I find you on this afternoon of October 24, 2007, as I stand by your grave. Alice Tyler 1924-2004. I have brought one letter from The Jens Album and a pack of matches. I light the My Dearest Alice corner of the letter. It is time to cremate what is finished.

  You baptized me to never let go of who I am. I will always be a boy with a horse of his own and you will always be My One Good Thing . . . the heart that swings me high into the saddle of nothingness.

  Goodbye. My Mother.

  XXX OOO

  Tyler

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author would like to thank his agent, Carolyn Swayze, and her associate, Kris Rothstein, for their persistence, editors John Sweet and Paula Sarson for their commitment to this book, and Goose Lane Editions.

  Every reasonable effort has been made to secure permissions where necessary. Attributed excerpts from the following appear in the text:

  The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill, drawings by Ley Kenyon, copyright 1970. Published by Latimer Trend & Co Ltd.

  Excerpt from “Part One: Life XVI” from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, copyright 1960. Published by Little, Brown & Company Limited.

  Excerpt from “Tell All The Truth” from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, copyright 1960. Published by Little, Brown & Company Limited.

  Excerpt from “Part One: Life VI” from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, copyright 1960. Published by Little, Brown & Company Limited.

  Nakash by Betty Guernsey, copyright 1981. Published by Fides.

  “Three Got Away” (unpublished manuscript) by Jens Müller. Reprinted by permission of Jon Müller.

  Photo by Judy Trafford

  TYLER TRAFFORD worked as a reporter, editor and columnist first with the Calgary Herald, then with the Australian, and later with the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. When he returned to Canada, he began writing biographies, histories and works of fiction, including The Story of Blue Eye, shortlisted for the 2005 Grant McEwan Author’s Award. He now lives in Calgary.