The Hands of War

by Marione Ingram

  The rear entrance to the courtyard of our building after the firestorm.

  A rear view of our apartment building after the firestorm.

  An opened door to our apartment building.

  Some firemen across the street were working with crowbars to open the metal door of a cellar shelter, while a fireman at the top of a long ladder chopped a hole in the roof of the building next door. Although we were afraid to approach for fear of being reported, I went close enough to hear one fireman yell to another that smoke from the building had entered the shelter through an exit tunnel. I thought how horrible it must be for those suffocating inside the shelter and was glad for a moment to be outside. But even as the firemen succeeded in opening the shelter door and began bringing people outside, the terrifying shrieks of falling bombs, followed by thundering explosions, announced a new wave of Lancasters or Halifaxes. Both my eardrums seemed to burst at once as a large bomb landed much too close. The blast also collapsed the wall of the building next to the shelter. We watched and moaned “NO! NO! NO!” as the fireman who had chopped a hole in the roof fell with his ladder into the flames.

  More bombs struck in quick succession. Most of the firemen abandoned the shelter victims and began to run for their own shelter. Two who didn’t run were ripped apart by shrapnel or flying debris from another explosion. One fell on his face on top of a smoke victim and the other sat down on the sidewalk, holding his groin and screaming. Two firemen returned to retrieve their comrade and carry him in the direction of their bunker. Many of the shelter victims were lying where they had been placed on the grassy strip beside the street, but some were staggering about, coughing and blinded, clutching at trees or lampposts for support. We lay in the gutter and watched as two or three from the shelter chased after the firemen. Following another nearby explosion, we got up and hurried after them, hoping that the firemen might allow us into their bunker. We ran down a narrow side street between high walls of flame until we came to a large commercial avenue. The firemen’s bunker was on the other side, about fifty yards away, but the air blowing down the avenue was filled with flying embers and was so strong that I could hardly stand up. I lost my footing and would have gone tumbling into the flames, had Mother not held on to my hand and hauled me back to her side. We ducked back around the corner just as another bomb exploded between the firemen’s bunker and us, spraying shrapnel into the wall we crouched behind.

  Father wrote, “Does anyone know the whereabouts of my family?” on our apartment building in Hamburg.

  After we’d caught our breath, we started running again, wanting desperately to get away from the flames and explosions erupting all around us. We would run down a street that seemed to have been missed by the bombers and cower for a time in an archway or entrance. But soon flames would shoot up in front of us and multiply like reflections racing toward infinity in a hall of mirrors. Fleeing the intense heat, we tried to move away from what seemed to be the main flight path of the bombers. But often we found the way blocked by a huge crater or hillock of smoldering bricks and flaming wood that had toppled into the street. Sometimes we tried to pick our way over the debris, but then would have to give up and turn back. Everywhere the bellowing wind drove the flames to frenzy, but the larger streets leading from the Alster Lake were the worst. Hot air and gasses flew down these streets with such incredible force that they carried everything that wasn’t anchored toward the blazing incinerator that an hour or so earlier had been the districts of Hamm and Hammerbrook.

  We found some partial shelter in a basement entrance, but soon that too was ablaze. It was obvious that we couldn’t stay where we were; pieces of the building had begun to fall onto the sidewalk. Despite the sustained roar of the wind and the sporadic explosions, I could sometimes hear the great cracking sounds made by the fire. I didn’t see how we could avoid being crushed by the collapsing building if we stayed or consumed by flames if we took to the street. I looked at Mother’s face and read that she was also undecided as to whether it would be worse to stay or leave. When there was a pause in the bombing, however, she wordlessly wrapped me like a mummy in my blanket. I could hardly breathe and coughed miserably as she picked me up and covered both of us with her blanket. Carrying me in her arms she edged back into the street. By sticking close to building walls and taking advantage of every possible windbreak, she managed to get us both to a more sheltered side street.

  We were both exhausted—limping, blistered, and bleeding from our ears and noses—when we stumbled into a crater that had some water at the bottom. The crater appeared to be in the small front garden of what until recently had been a handsome brick home with bays and turrets but was now a smoldering shambles. Mother thoroughly dampened her blanket and draped it over us. The terrible explosions seemed to have abated, although hundreds of incendiary bombs had fallen close by, some landing in rubble no more than a dozen yards away. A canister of liquid phosphorous had hit an office building just down the avenue. As the phosphorus burned and dripped its way through floor after floor, it looked like the lights were being turned on by someone descending methodically through the building. Before the phosphorus reached the ground floor, flames were leaping from the windows of the upper floors.

  Next I saw a woman carrying an infant come running down the street along the same route we had taken. She was followed by a young man dressed in the khaki shorts and shirt of the Hitler Youth. I thought they must be fleeing from a bomb shelter that had been damaged, possibly the one Mother had been heading for when we first left our apartment building. The woman looked to be about Mother’s age. Her dress appeared to have been burned, leaving her almost completely naked below the waist. Despite his agile build and hiking shoes, the boy seemed to be having trouble keeping on his feet. I thought his trouble might be due to the hot wind roaring down the avenue in front of us and almost expected to see him lifted up as he ran. Instead, after passing us at a gallop, he slowed to a grotesque caricature of walking, more like slow-motion skating, one leaden foot moving seconds after the other, with his arms spread out from his sides for balance. It took a while before I realized that both he and the woman were wading in molten asphalt. The woman slipped a couple of times and touched the pavement with one hand but managed to recover. Then she slowly fell head first toward the street, twisting at the last moment so that she landed on her back with the baby on her chest. The boy tried to reach her but slipped and fell, got up and fell again, and then again. Despite the incredible noise, I thought I could hear their screams and ducked down into the crater with my eyes closed and my hands over my ears.

  Mother climbed to the edge of the crater and for a moment I feared she was going to dash out to try to save the baby. But the hot wind burned her face and forced her back down. We lay in the crater beneath the blanket, getting hotter and hotter as gale force winds drove the flames into the sky. The image of the woman and the Hitler Youth writhing in hot asphalt remained vivid in the sweltering darkness until I realized that I was gasping for breath like a fish on land. No matter how deeply I inhaled, I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. When it seemed that I was about to suffocate and sink under the dark water, I pulled the blanket away and stuck my head out. Flaming logs and lumber, some of the planks several feet long, were sailing about in the air along with millions and millions of sparks swirling with such speed they seemed to be tiny streaks of light. Without thinking I opened my mouth wide and tried to suck in as much air as I could, until sharp needles of pain in my chest told me this was a big mistake. I slumped back more terrified than ever. When I closed my eyes it felt like we were lying between railroad tracks while an endless train rumbled over us so swiftly that sparks from the wheels prickled my face.

  I passed out for a time, awakening to find that breathing was still painful but that the explosions had stopped and the wind, though still almost as hot as steam, was not as strong. The heat was intense but so was our thirst, and we couldn’t remain in the crater any longer without trying to drink the stinki
ng water in the bottom. When we emerged we seemed to be in a winter snowstorm, with white flakes of ash flying in the wind. They looked so cool that I wanted to stick out my tongue to taste them, but there was still enough fire left in them to burn painfully. Mother wrapped us both in her blanket and we tried to walk so that the hot ashes were not blowing directly at us.

  We hadn’t progressed very far when we began to see bodies. Before leaving the area of the crater, Mother had cautiously confirmed that the woman and her child and the Hitler Youth were dead, but she had shielded me from the sight. Although earlier we hadn’t seen many other people in the streets, after the raid they seemed to be everywhere. Some, the obvious victims of exploding bombs, had been terribly torn or dismembered. Fire or heat had killed many more. Most were lying face down. The flames had shorn their hair and clothes, seared and swollen their buttocks, split their skin and raised their hips a few inches off the ground. Though unmistakably human, they looked like huge bratwursts. The smell of burned flesh churned our stomachs and made us want to cry, but we hadn’t enough water in us for tears or throwing up. Instead, I clasped Mother and buried my face in her dress.

  Desperate for something to drink we headed toward the Eilbeck Canal. Although we couldn’t have been more than six or seven blocks away, it took another hour to make our way to an underpass near a wide part of the canal. Hundreds of people were in the water, most of them near the opposite shore, where the water was shallow, much shallower than usual because of the lack of rain in the past few months. Even more were on the banks, quite a few of them obviously dead. Some had faces as swollen and red as Chinese lanterns: their heads had been cooked while their bodies had been under water. Piteous moans, whimpering, and cries of anguish rose from the canal. The screams of children seemed to hang in the air like paper kites. Now and then someone on the shore would start shrieking and jumping about and then leap into the water.

  Near our apartment building, one of the 45,000 people killed by the firestorm.

  Normally, Hamburgers were extremely stoic. Sometimes they might mutter curses or shout insults, but typically they clamped their jaws and grimly endured adversity in silence. That morning, however, they voiced their pain.

  Listening to the voices emanating from the water, I realized that many had been burned by the phosphorous. Just as it burned through the floors of a building, it quickly penetrated living flesh and bone. Judging from the grotesque shapes and expressions of the dead, many had died in agony. Those still in the canal had discovered that the phosphorus became inactive when it was submerged, but if they left the water, it would start burning again as fiercely as before.

  When another series of air-raid alarms announced that more bombers were within thirty minutes of Hamburg, a spontaneous wailing and cursing arose from the sufferers, and then quickly subsided as if the effort had been too taxing or embarrassing. A few people started moving toward the church, whether to pray or take shelter in the basement, I couldn’t say. Most, like us, remained by the canal. At the second alarm, which signaled the arrival of bombers within fifteen minutes, Mother recovered our blanket and wet it again in the canal. We were sitting with our feet in the water when the final alarm announced that the bombers were overhead. The unexpected quickness of their arrival gave us hope. If the bombers were moving so much faster than expected, they were probably the smaller British Mosquitoes rather than Lancasters or American Flying Fortresses returning to pulverize whatever was still standing. We lay on the bank for roughly two hours, listening to an occasional Mosquito Bomber buzz across the sky to drop a few more bombs into the billowing smoke.

  Long before the all-clear sounded, Mother and I began to have stomach cramps and to vomit the canal water we had drunk earlier. On our way toward St. Gertrude Church in search of fresh water, I stumbled over the outstretched arm of a woman lying in the grass presumably dead. But she wasn’t. She suddenly rose up to a sitting position and cried out, “Oh, God! Oh, dear God!”

  A view of our residential district (Eilbeck) after the streets were cleared of rubble. (Source: Imperial War Museum)

  Terribly upset, I said I was sorry and apologized for hurting her.

  She replied that I hadn’t hurt her and asked me to help her to get up. She also asked if it was still dark.

  As I helped her up, I told her it was only a little past noon, but so dark from smoke and clouds that I hadn’t seen her.

  The woman looked to be a few years younger than Mother and quite a bit plumper, with the kind of figure that men often called “juicy.” Her dress was wrinkled and damp and dirty, apparently from being in the canal, and long strands of blond hair streaked down her face, which was red and blistered. She kept her eyes shut and held her hands up to keep her balance. A gold cross lay just below the base of her neck and a red and white pin with a black swastika in its center was attached to her dress over her heart.

  “Let me help you,” Mother said, taking the woman by the elbows to steady her.

  The woman thanked her and said that she couldn’t see very well, having injured her eyes while in the canal to escape the heat. Mother offered to take her to St. Gertrude’s Church, which was only about fifty meters away, telling her that someone there would be able to help her.

  But a bossy churchwoman insisted that the injured woman needed to go at once to a women’s clinic several blocks away, in the Barmbeck district. Mother offered to guide her if she felt able to walk through the rubble-strewn streets.

  The woman said she lived in Barmbeck and thought she could walk to the clinic if she had some shoes, having lost hers in the canal. The bossy woman found shoes—I felt certain she took them from a dead woman—and stuffed them with bits of rag to make them fit. Then we set off, Mother taking one hand of the woman, who said her name was Maria, and me taking the other.

  Hundreds of dazed and injured women and children, many of them also burn victims, coughed and wept in the haze surrounding the small women’s clinic in the Barmbeck district. We couldn’t get Maria inside or find anyone who would take her off our hands. Everyone was exhausted or in pain or both. We waited with Maria in the gathering darkness, trying to recover some strength and to figure out what to do next. A woman wearing a Red Cross bandana, who was circulating among the injured, eventually stopped to ask about Maria, who couldn’t see anything and felt terrible when she tried. The Red Cross woman promised Maria that she would get better in time but said that the clinic couldn’t do anything for her now. She told Maria to rest, to keep her eyes clean and to get to a hospital or come back tomorrow or the next day if possible. We walked her home and put her to bed. She lived in a basement apartment that was mercifully cooler and less smoky than the world outside, and she didn’t have to ask us to stay the night; when the air-raid sirens resumed their wailing, we lay down, she in her bed and Mother and I on her couch, too tired and shaken to do anything more.

  The next day, while I prepared something for all of us to eat, Mother went into the streets early to look for water. She wore one of Maria’s dresses and, at Maria’s urging, took her ration card and some money. I feared for her, but she returned about an hour later with bottled water and good news, both of which she had obtained from a friendly fire warden at Karstadt Department Store. He told her that the firestorm had consumed our district and several others but had stopped short of Brandsende. Like other elderly wardens he took pride in Hamburg’s history, and he was so pleased that Mother had asked about Brandsende that he sold her some water from the emergency reserve earmarked for the store’s two large air-raid shelters. Otherwise, there was no bottled water to be had.

  Mother also reported that Maria’s Barmbeck area was still relatively unscathed but that thousands of people from all areas were in the streets trying to get out of Hamburg. Word had spread that the British intended to level the entire city. Maria said she had heard rumors of uprisings by slave laborers and prisoners of war at some of the many compounds in and near the city. Mother said she hadn’t heard of such developments an
d that as far as she knew prisoners were still helping with rescue operations.

  There were several more air-raid alarms during the day and the early part of the night, but the exodus of people continued without letup. When the seventh alarm sounded shortly before midnight, Mother and Maria talked briefly about trying to get to a shelter. We stayed because the basement was as secure as some shelters and a lot more comfortable and convenient. Also, there was no electricity and hence no radio confirmation that the British were coming again in great numbers. Soon after the attack began we realized that they had targeted Barmbeck. Mother and I climbed into bed with Maria, who trembled and clung to Mother more forcefully than I did. Except for the fact that I didn’t feel nearly as exposed and we weren’t forced into the streets, it was a repeat of our previous horror. An explosion caused the roof and top floors of our small building to collapse, filling the front and back entrances to our cellar with debris. There was a strong smell of spilled kerosene and from time to time ceiling beams and bricks crashed down. Afraid to move and barely able to breathe, we recovered our wits sufficiently to roll out of and then under the bed.

  Perhaps because it was necessary to talk to keep from going insane, Mother revealed to Maria that she was sharing her misery with Jews.

  “You should have told me!” Maria said after a pause. “I wish you had told me!”

  Choking back sobs she went on to explain that she was in love with a married man who was a Jew. They had worked at the same bank in Berlin and had continued to see one another after he had been fired and after her family and friends had in effect excommunicated her. Before the outbreak of war, they had broken off the affair and he had fled with his wife and child to England. The last time they were together, he had made her promise that she would move to Hamburg and join the Nazi party to rid herself of the stain of their affair and secure the protection she would need as a single woman without family.