A Fight in Silence

by Melanie Metzenthin

  ‘He wouldn’t say. Did you say or do something this morning, something that would cause a problem?’

  ‘No, I managed to stay civil and bite my tongue. No one was interested in children having been murdered. I was told in no uncertain terms that if it’s only about German children, then it’s not their responsibility.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all Paula could muster by way of reply.

  Richard turned back to Harri. ‘Will you go with Aunt Paula now and say hello to Emilia and Georg?’

  ‘Can’t I stay with you, Uncle Richard?’ Harri clung to his hand, gazing up at him beseechingly. In the boy’s eyes Richard saw both a fear of abandonment and the heart-rending need for someone to cling to. He found himself wondering yet again what Harri had had to endure.

  ‘Of course you can, Harri. Let’s go and take a look at this Englishman who wants to speak to me.’

  ‘Richard, is that wise?’ asked Paula.

  ‘Yes,’ Richard responded as he went off to the waiting room, Harri at his side.

  Their visitor had been reading an English newspaper but folded it away as Richard opened the door into the waiting room.

  ‘Good evening, Richard,’ he said in German. This annoyed Richard straight away. He couldn’t understand why this man was using his first name, even if he did look vaguely familiar.

  ‘Leica II and an Egyptian tomb – ring any bells?’ the Englishman said, smiling broadly.

  ‘Arthur Grifford!’

  ‘So you do recognise me!’ Arthur got up and held out his hand to Richard. ‘You nearly ran me down this morning!’

  Richard put his briefcase on the table and shook Arthur by the hand. ‘That was you?’

  ‘That’s right!’ Arthur smiled again. ‘And who is this young man here?’

  ‘This is Harri, Fritz’s lad. We all thought he’d perished with his mother and sister in the bombing in ’43. And then, today of all days, I happened to find him in an orphanage. It’s a miracle.’

  Arthur’s smile vanished when he saw the expression on Harri’s face and in his eyes.

  ‘I’d rather we talked in a proper room,’ said Richard, ‘but our consulting room closes at seven and then gets turned into a bedroom. Eight of us live in this place – no, with Harri, that makes nine.’

  ‘This waiting room is fine,’ Arthur commented, sitting down again, ‘only without the usual reading matter.’

  ‘Yes, we had a good supplier, but that all fell apart at the end of the war.’ Richard took a seat opposite their visitor, with Harri at his side, still holding tight to his hand. ‘I’d appreciate it if you could make this fairly brief so I can spend time with Harri afterwards. He hasn’t seen a familiar face for two years and I want just to be here for him.’

  Arthur nodded. ‘I quite understand.’ He took a deep breath before starting to explain why he was there. ‘After you’d gone charging past me this morning with a face like thunder, I asked McNeil what was going on. When he filled me in on your conversation I pointed out to him that there probably was something in your story, all the more so because as early as the end of May I’d heard of similar incidents at the children’s hospital in Rothenburgsort. We’re carrying out an investigation into the senior consultant there, a Dr Bayer, although it’s admittedly more because he was a member of the storm troopers.’

  ‘McNeil told me you’re not responsible for German children.’

  ‘It’s not that simple. At the moment, everything here is still developing, and informants have indeed been streaming in to see McNeil. But after everything you told me back in ’42 it’s clear to me that you’ve got evidence, and that’s what I’m interested in. Will you show it to me?’

  Richard reached for his briefcase. The number plate lay diagonally against the files inside. He took it out, placed it on the table and then removed the files. Meanwhile, Arthur had picked up the plate and was looking at it.

  ‘Is this part of the evidence?’

  ‘No, it’s my old number plate.’

  ‘And why are you carrying it around in your briefcase?’

  ‘Because I came across it today in the rubble where our old workshop used to be. Call me sentimental. Paula and I were given the car as our wedding present from the family and set off for Italy in it on the first day of our marriage.’

  He handed Arthur the files, but the Englishman only said, ‘Did you carry on with the photography?’

  ‘Yes, with a box camera.’

  ‘Still got the Leica?’

  ‘Do you want to look at these medical files or talk about photography?’

  Harri suddenly spoke up. ‘Uncle Richard, have you still got pictures of Mama and Papa, and Henriette and Rudi?’

  ‘Yes, lots. We’ll have a good look at them afterwards.’

  ‘Have a look at them together now if you like. I’ll need time to read these files.’

  ‘This isn’t the right time.’

  ‘Why not?’ Arthur and Harri spoke as if with one voice.

  Richard couldn’t think of a good enough reason, so he picked two albums, one from 1939 and one from 1940. First of all, he showed Harri the earlier photos of their last visit together to the beach at Travemünde.

  ‘See, there’s Mama, there’s Henriette with your papa, and there’s Rudi, burrowing in the sand.’

  Harri started to cry.

  ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’ Richard put his arms around Harri again to comfort him as best he could. Arthur looked up from the files and gazed at Harri with the greatest sympathy.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ wept Harri, ‘’cos I didn’t hold on tight to Rudi.’ Then it all poured out, all the anguish of the last two years and the story of how he’d survived when his mother and sister hadn’t. He told Richard how they had rushed to their air-raid shelter in the cellar on the first day of the terrible firestorm but Rudi had kept whining, refusing to go down there, and then had broken free. Harri had run after the dog, not hearing his mother beseeching him to come back, and suddenly found himself out on the street without the others. He was immediately caught in the stream of people fleeing the danger and they swept him along with them. Rudi was nowhere to be seen and the panicked crowd moved swiftly as the bombs rained down on the city and homes went up in flames. An elderly woman had seized Harri by the hand and pulled him along with her, the boy still shouting, ‘Rudi! Rudi!’, but then she had jumped with him into the River Elbe, where they and lots of others had clung to a boat while their world was consumed by the fire. Harri’s recollections of the following days were hazy. At some point he was picked up and taken to the orphanage. He gave his name, but they heard it as Ellerwig, not Ellerweg. Harri couldn’t yet read and only knew his father’s first name, not his full date of birth, so his origins were deemed unknown, which was why Fritz had never found out that his son was alive.

  ‘If I hadn’t gone after Rudi, none of this would’ve happened,’ he sobbed. ‘Mama and Henriette tried to come after me, but they were forced back by the others going down into the cellar and the door got closed and then they died. All because I’d run off.’

  ‘No, Harri,’ said Richard, still holding the boy and soothing him in his arms. ‘Rudi wanted to save you all. Animals have a strong instinct for danger. If Mama and Henriette had managed to follow him, they’d have been saved too. You did the right thing, and your papa will say that to you, I know. He will be so proud of you and Rudi.’

  ‘But he’s not here,’ wept Harri. ‘Uncle Richard, tell me the truth. Is Papa dead too?’

  ‘No, Harri, definitely not. We’re going to find your papa. I’ve promised you that.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about Fritz?’ Arthur asked Richard very softly.

  Richard shook his head. ‘I last saw him a year ago, in Cherbourg.’

  ‘You were both in Cherbourg?’

  ‘Yes, we took advantage of everything the war had to offer,’ replied Richard drily. ‘You asked earlier on if I still had the Leica. No, it got lost when I was badly wounded i
n Cherbourg. If you’ve got half a dozen bits of shrapnel in your liver and belly, you don’t give much thought to packing. It was Fritz who arranged for me to get home on one of the last transports for the wounded. What became of him after that, well, I still don’t know, although I go through the Red Cross lists every week – like today. Although today I was really worked up and looked at the wrong list. Tell McNeil I’m grateful to him: if I hadn’t been so angry about the conversation with him, I’d never have ended up looking at the list of orphans instead of the POW list. It’s just amazing how good can come from bad.’

  They sat in silence for a while.

  Arthur eventually spoke. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘Two things, yes. Make sure these murderers in white coats stand trial for their crimes. And if you have any better sources than the Red Cross for finding out the whereabouts of German prisoners of war and their location, I’d be so grateful if you could do some digging into Fritz’s case, so that Harri can have his father back at long last.’

  ‘For sure,’ promised Arthur. ‘Now, I think it’s time I left you two in peace. May I take these files? They’re most enlightening.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Arthur put the files and his newspaper in his briefcase. He hesitated for a moment before reaching into his jacket pocket. ‘I wanted to ask you a favour, actually. I’ve been trying to give up smoking. Could you possibly get rid of these for me?’ He held out a packet of cigarettes to Richard.

  ‘That shouldn’t present any problems,’ said Richard, taking them from him.

  ‘Thanks,’ Arthur said with a grin. ‘I reckon we’ll be meeting again very soon.’ Then he turned to Harri. ‘I’ll do everything I can to find your papa. You have my word.’

  Chapter 58

  After Arthur had gone the family bombarded Richard with questions – how he’d found Harri, how the child had survived and what the Englishman had wanted.

  ‘It would be so nice if you’d let me eat something first!’ Richard said in an attempt to fend them all off. ‘I haven’t had a scrap of food, and Harri must be really hungry. But Frau Koch, look, here’s something for you.’ He gave her Arthur’s cigarettes.

  ‘They’re real British ones!’ Their old housekeeper’s enthusiasm was clear for all to see. ‘They sell on the black market better than German ones. How on earth did you come by those?’

  ‘Harri’s sorrowful look.’

  Paula came in from the kitchen with two bowls of lentil soup. ‘It’s only lukewarm.’ She put the soup in front of Richard and Harri. ‘That’s what happens when you’re late home and then spend ages talking to your visitor.’

  ‘Never mind. At least we won’t burn our tongues,’ Richard said with a playful grin.

  ‘You probably do enough of that all by yourself!’ she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek.

  Harri savoured his soup one spoonful at a time while Richard wolfed his down and then set about answering the family’s questions.

  ‘That man was Arthur Grifford. Fritz and I met him at El Alamein in 1942.’

  ‘You met an Englishman? In the middle of the war? Had you taken him prisoner or something?’ Richard’s father was baffled.

  ‘Not really, as the Brits would say. Although I was pointing my gun at him at the time.’ Richard laughed softly. ‘It’s a very strange story and certainly wasn’t one we could tell anyone at the time.’ He related the incident in the Egyptian tomb.

  ‘This morning I had a pretty unpleasant encounter with a certain McNeil, who seems to view German children as the lowest of the low and who saw fit to throw me out of his office. I was so furious I couldn’t see straight and collided with another officer on my way out. It was Arthur, but I didn’t recognise him and rushed off. Well, after that, he made the effort to come and see me and is actually interested in what I had to say. He’d already heard of similar cases at the children’s hospital at Rothenburgsort.’

  ‘Does that mean these murders will be looked into at last?’ asked Paula’s father.

  ‘I certainly hope so.’ Richard then went on to relate how he’d found Harri.

  ‘We must find Harri a bed,’ said Richard’s father, ‘but the sofa will do the job for now.’

  Richard nodded. ‘I have complete confidence in your organisational skills, Papa!’

  Over the next few days Richard and Paula worked as normal in their quarters at home. Since January, when they’d started offering general practice as well, the waiting room was always full. Meanwhile, the rest of the family was fully occupied with getting hold of enough food. The schools were still closed, so Emilia and Georg spent a lot of time down at the allotment with Aunt Margit and her family. Someone had to watch over the fruit trees and vegetable beds in case of theft, and the children also enjoyed fishing in the stream where they used to go canoeing. They regularly added a fish or two to the family menu, something that made them both burst with pride. They held no licence, so this was technically poaching and therefore all the more exciting.

  Harri was very withdrawn in the early days and suffered terrible nightmares. Richard hoped that Arthur would soon find out what had happened to Fritz, and continued to comb through the Red Cross lists himself. But there was no sign of him. Richard found himself wondering if he needed to adjust to the fact that Fritz might have fallen after all. He wondered how he could possibly tell Harri.

  One Thursday in July the twins had been especially successful on their little fishing expedition, catching no fewer than five fat roach, each one weighing a good kilo or so. The catch was so precious that Karl personally escorted the pair of them home in case anyone ambushed and robbed them on their way back. Richard’s mother and Frau Koch immediately set about gutting and baking the fish. They asked Karl to eat with them, but he had to get back to Moorfleet in time for curfew.

  Just before eight the meal was ready to serve. Richard could see they’d be going to bed with full bellies tonight for the first time in months. They had all just taken their places at the table when the doorbell rang. Frau Koch started from her chair, but Richard was first on his feet.

  ‘I’ll go – you stay there, thank you, Frau Koch.’ He assumed it was going to be a patient in urgent need of help before curfew. But when he opened the door he saw an unshaven, hollow-cheeked man in a tattered army uniform.

  ‘Fritz!’

  His friend gave an almost imperceptible nod. They lurched towards each other and Richard wrapped his arms around his friend, pressing him close, before calling out for Harri.

  ‘So it’s true?’ whispered Fritz. ‘Harri’s alive?’

  Only then did Richard realise that Arthur Grifford was standing behind Fritz in the corridor. But before Richard could reply, Harri had come into the hall of the flat and stopped dead when he saw the man in the torn uniform. Fritz crouched down in front of him. ‘Harri?’ he whispered. ‘Don’t you recognise me?’

  Harri was stunned. There was an agonising silence. ‘Papa!’ He threw himself into his father’s arms.

  Fritz held him tight. ‘You’re alive,’ he whispered, his voice thick with sobs. He lifted the boy up into his arms. ‘Harri, I’ll never leave you alone again. Never. D’you hear?’

  Harri clung to his father as if he would never let go.

  ‘I’m so very sorry for what you must have gone through, Harri.’ Fritz couldn’t hold back the tears now. ‘But I’ll make everything all right again. Everything will be all right again.’ He kissed his son’s forehead, then hugged him close once more.

  Richard fought back his own tears of joy and relief. He looked over at Arthur. ‘Thank you. I’ll never forget what you’ve done here.’

  ‘I had to call in seven old favours and tell three white lies to get him home,’ replied Arthur. ‘But to have witnessed this – well, it was all worth it.’

  Deep in thought, he took out a packet of cigarettes and was about to light one, but faltered. ‘Dammit, I’m supposed to be giving up.’ He put the cigarette back in the pack. ‘I keep lap
sing! Can you get rid of these for me?’ He handed them to Richard.

  ‘But of course! For the sake of your health.’

  ‘Right then, I’ve got to take the jeep back now and find a way of explaining to my bosses what I was doing out on Lüneburg Heath, why I had a flat tyre on the way back and used the spare.’

  ‘That sounds like a problem.’

  ‘Sounds to me more like calling in favour number eight.’ He smiled. ‘You’ll hear from me again in the coming weeks when we tackle Krüger.’

  Chapter 59

  Fritz said very little about what had happened to him over the past year. He kept it to their disorderly withdrawal from France and their attempts to get back to Germany. He did disclose that the British had captured them in early April and they had surrendered without a fight. Fritz had been a prisoner of war at a Lüneburg Heath camp.

  ‘The conditions were appalling,’ he said. ‘I saw to the sick and the wounded, but we had nothing, no bandages and no clean water. Many of the wounded died like flies and then dysentery got most of the others. I tried so many times to get medical supplies from the military administration, but they showed absolutely no mercy. It was easy to see how much they hated and despised us.’

  ‘How did Arthur get you out?’ asked Richard.

  ‘No idea. Someone summoned me, said I was needed in Hamburg on the orders of the military administration and was to be released. I didn’t immediately recognise Arthur, and told him I would rather die in the dirt there and then with my comrades than lift a finger to help the British administration. This was when Arthur dismissed everyone else from the room. They did exactly what he told them. Interesting, I thought. And then he told me Harri was alive, asked me to be so good as to play along and not wreck everything. I was dumbstruck, literally, so didn’t say anything else. So I got my discharge papers and climbed into this terrible old jeep that Arthur had brought along. I still wasn’t sure what to make of it all until soon after Lüneburg when we got a flat tyre. His casual manner slipped then, and I added some interesting words to my English vocabulary. He was absolutely desperate because he’d borrowed the car on the quiet from one of his colleagues but not told him he’d be taking it outside Hamburg. On top of that, he had not the faintest idea how to change a tyre. I think that was when I started to believe that he really had called in a few favours just to get me back to Hamburg. So I did a quick tyre change, showing him how to do it so that he’d know for next time! I’ve always enjoyed sharing my knowledge with others.’ Fritz chuckled. ‘I was so shocked when we got to Hamburg. I didn’t recognise a thing.’