The Secret Letter

by Debbie Rix

  ‘Well, good for you,’ said Imogen. ‘Joy and I only moved down to London a few weeks ago. We’re from Newcastle originally.’

  ‘You’re in the Wrens?’ Karl said, noting their uniform.

  ‘We are,’ she said. ‘But we really can’t say any more than that.’

  The émigrés drank vodka and told stories of their early lives. They had all left so much behind – jobs, families and loved ones.

  ‘Don’t you worry about what’s happening to everyone back home?’ Imogen asked Karl.

  ‘Of course, all the time. I worry about my parents and my little sister, Magda. She was just a child when I left. She’ll be eighteen now. But they live in the countryside and I hope they won’t get into any trouble. The cities are taking the worst of it… the bombing and so on.’

  ‘It’s so awful,’ said Imogen. ‘They bomb us, we bomb them. It seems that it’s always the innocent who suffer.’

  ‘Oh come on,’ said Joy, raising her glass. ‘That’s enough depressing talk. Here’s to all of us – and to the end of the war.’

  ‘To the end of the war!’ they chorused.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Augsburg

  February 1944

  The farmhouse kitchen table was covered with rounds of cheese, sides of ham and loaves of bread intended for the market in Augsburg. As Magda and her mother wrapped the produce, her father stacked it all away carefully in large baskets. Pulling on his winter coat he picked up a fully laden basket and went outside to pack up the cart. The yard was icy and Helga, the mare, slithered slightly on the cobbles.

  ‘I don’t know why you have to go all the way to the Augsburg market,’ Käthe said, as Pieter came back inside for another load. ‘We know the cities are targets for bombs and I worry about you. Why not just sell to the village?’

  ‘Because we won’t make any money selling to the village,’ Pieter said pragmatically. ‘Now stop worrying and pass me that cheese.’

  When the cart was loaded up, Magda, wearing her mother’s fur coat and hat, her hands already freezing in her woollen mittens, covered the produce with a canvas sheet and then climbed up next to her father

  ‘Goodbye Mutti,’ she shouted to her mother. ‘See you later.’

  As Helga trotted happily along the road, Magda looked up at the leaden sky. ‘It looks like snow,’ she said, pulling her muffler up around her mouth. Her breath felt warm and comforting.

  ‘It’s almost too cold to snow,’ her father replied. ‘I worry the market will be empty.’

  As they trotted into the ancient market square just before half past seven, he was reassured to see fellow stall holders were already setting up. They parked the cart near their chosen pitch, and tethered Helga to a nearby lamp-post with a nose bag attached to her bridle. The market area was icy and slippery and they struggled to unload the cart, but finally, just after eight o’clock, they were ready.

  Magda had left school the previous year. Still determined to go to university, she had been forced to defer her place as she was required to do some kind of war work first. She was offered a job in the factory crèche in Augsburg, but Pieter persuaded the authorities that his daughter’s labour would be more valuable running the family farm, as he had lost all his young casual male workers. Magda was in no doubt how lucky she had been to be able to remain at home and work with her parents.

  Business in the market that morning was slow. Women wrapped up in wool coats and shawls shuffled past Pieter’s stall examining the cheese and bread on offer, but not buying.

  ‘They won’t find better cheese anywhere else,’ Pieter said irritably, as yet another potential customer walked away empty-handed. ‘Hopefully when the workers from the Messerschmitt factory clock off for lunch, business will pick up.’

  ‘I’m sure it will, Papa,’ said Magda, who was busy trying to cajole an elderly woman into buying something.

  ‘It’s delicious,’ she urged her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the woman, reluctantly.

  ‘Try a little piece,’ said Magda. She was cutting a sliver from the cheese, when an air raid siren went off.

  ‘We must find a shelter,’ Pieter shouted to his daughter.

  ‘I don’t know where to go,’ Magda replied, panicking.

  The shoppers at the market scattered, running in all directions.

  ‘Come over here,’ Pieter called to Magda, ‘let’s lie under the cart.’

  ‘What about Helga?’ said Magda, holding onto the mare’s bridle. ‘Won’t she be frightened?’ The mare, tethered to the lamp-post, began to shake her head, whinnying pitifully, as the sound of enemy aircraft approached.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Pieter said. ‘Get under the cart, quickly. The planes must be heading for the factory.’ He wrapped his arms around his daughter. ‘Let’s hope they hit that and not us.’

  As the planes arrived, sweeping over the city like a vast flock of angry birds, they let loose their load, the bombs crashing to the earth, causing the ground to shake so violently that loaves of bread and rounds of cheese fell off the table onto the snowy cobbles. Magda covered her ears with her gloved hands, trying to drown out the terrifying sound of pounding and explosions. German anti-aircraft guns filled the air with their hacking replies. Masonry fell, crashing into the square. They heard glass shattering, the desperate screaming of people as they were hit. Finally, the planes flew away to the south, leaving in their wake an almost eerie silence, interrupted only by the moaning and wailing of injured people. Magda and Pieter crept out from their hiding place. They were met with a scene of devastation – entire buildings had collapsed across the market square leaving yawning gaps; broken glass was strewn everywhere, mixed with shattered masonry and timber; and all around were the pink and red body parts of human beings, their blood spilling scarlet onto the icy white pavements.

  ‘My God!’ Magda said. ‘Look at it. There are so many injured.’

  Her father began to pile cheeses onto the cart.

  ‘Help me load up… quickly,’ Pieter said, harnessing the horse.

  ‘Shouldn’t we stay and help?’ asked Magda, staring around at the people moaning in the street. A woman came running into the square screaming, her face smeared with blood, her hands held out in front of her. Magda ran towards her and realised that she had lost her eyes. She put her arms around the woman and guided her to the Town Hall steps.

  ‘Sit down, and wait here,’ she said to the woman, as she looked around for someone to help.

  ‘Magda,’ her father called out, walking towards her, ‘we must go… the planes might come back. We’re safer in the country. Come quickly.’

  ‘But we can’t leave her,’ said Magda, gesturing to the woman.

  ‘She’s one of hundreds, probably,’ said Pieter softly. ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t help them all.’

  He dragged Magda away and lifted her, protesting, onto the cart as snow began to fall, covering the jagged edges of the bombed buildings with a thick white blanket. Climbing up onto his seat, he cracked his whip and the mare, Helga, trotted obediently up the street, past the damaged buildings and the people calling out for help. One or two young men tried to stop the cart – to commandeer it, presumably for the wounded. But Pieter raised his whip, and spurred the horse on. Once they were out of the town centre, he slowed to a trot. Magda looked back. The horizon was dominated by fires, leaping from damaged buildings like a wall of flame.

  ‘The fires are terrible,’ she said. ‘Why don’t they put them out?’

  ‘Why do you think?’ said Pieter. ‘It’s too cold. I suspect the fire hydrants have frozen solid.’ As they passed near the factories to the south of the city they could see that they too had been badly hit.

  Back at the farm, they unloaded the cart, and put the mare in her barn with some fresh hay and water.

  ‘Good girl,’ said Magda, removing her bridle and throwing a thick winter blanket over the mare.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you!’ said Käthe, as they came into
the kitchen. ‘No more trips to Augsburg – promise me.’

  Later that night, as the family prepared for bed, they heard the unmistakeable rumble of planes flying overhead.

  ‘Papa,’ said Magda, running to her parents’ room, ‘they’re coming back.’

  ‘I knew it,’ said Pieter. ‘They’re going to take out that factory; make sure it never gets back to life.’

  Bombs began to fall – some close to the farm. Magda, terrified, jumped into her parents’ bed.

  ‘We should go to the cellar, Pieter,’ said Käthe, ‘we can’t stay here.’ Together the family pulled on coats, and went down with a couple of candles to the cellar where they huddled in the cold for the rest of the night, listening as wave upon wave of Allied planes flew overhead towards Augsburg.

  The following morning, just after dawn, Pieter and Magda went out onto the farm to inspect the damage. The ground was covered with snow glinting in the morning sunshine, the sky a brilliant blue. They trudged across the yard and checked on the herd in the barn. The cows lay in companionable groups on the thick winter straw. One or two struggled to their feet when Magda and her father arrived.

  ‘They’re all right,’ said Magda. ‘I can’t see any damage.’ They left the barn, and walked further down the track, inspecting the fields on either side until they arrived at the boundary of their farm.

  ‘Let’s go on a bit further,’ said Pieter. ‘I’m sure I heard some kind of explosion nearby.’

  On the other side of the road, in a little patch of woodland near to where Magda and Karl had so often set up their camp, lay the tangled wreckage of a plane – like a terrible scar on the pure white landscape. The nose of the plane had sheered right off as it crashed through the forest, tearing off the wings and the tailplane which lay twenty yards away.

  ‘Don’t go near it,’ said Pieter, holding onto Magda’s arm. ‘It might explode…’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Magda, calmly. ‘It would have gone up by now. Besides, it’s covered with snow.’

  ‘It’s a British plane,’ said Pieter. ‘We should tell the authorities.’

  ‘No… not yet,’ said Magda. ‘There might still be someone alive.’

  She yanked her arm free and crept towards the main body of plane. A young man had been thrown free. He lay face down, his blond hair matted with snow. She touched his icy neck feeling for a pulse, but it was obvious he was dead.

  ‘Magda… come back. It’s pointless,’ said Pieter, but Magda persisted. The door of the body of the plane had been thrown open and she reached up and peered inside.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, recoiling. ‘There are four or five of them in there. All dead by the looks of it. They obviously didn’t have a chance to jump. I wonder why.’

  ‘Come away, please,’ said Pieter, as snow began to fall again.

  ‘They’re just boys, Papa – not much older than me. How awful that they should die like this.’

  ‘They were intent on killing our people – maybe they deserved it.’

  ‘No Papa,’ said Magda, ‘you can’t think that way. All death is terrible, and there is something so sad about these boys, lying here, hundreds of miles away from their families… dying alone.’

  ‘Well there’s nothing we can do about it. Come on – we must get back. The authorities will deal with this.’

  As he pulled her away, she held up her hand.

  ‘What was that noise?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Pieter, ‘come on.’

  ‘No… I heard something – a sort of moaning sound… over there.’

  She walked towards the nose of the plane. Still inside the crumpled cockpit was a young man, his arm and leg clearly broken, his face covered with blood.

  She touched him and he moaned again.

  ‘Papa,’ she called out, ‘one of them is alive. We must get him out.’

  ‘Magda, don’t be ridiculous,’ her father said, coming to join her. He looked at the boy and shook his head. ‘He’ll be taken prisoner soon enough.’

  ‘Please Papa, help me. It might be hours till anyone comes. He’ll be dead by then in this weather.’

  Pieter, torn between his desire to save his own skin and his daughter’s pleading, reluctantly went back to the farm and returned with the horse and cart. Between them, father and daughter dragged the young man, groaning, onto the cart.

  ‘I’ll stay in the back with him,’ said Magda, covering the young man with an old piece of canvas.

  As they were just turning onto the track that led to their farm, another horse and cart came towards them on the main road. It was Erika’s father – Gerhardt.

  ‘Someone said a British plane had come down over there,’ he called out to Pieter.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pieter. ‘I just passed it.’

  Magda, her heart beating loudly, checked the young pilot was hidden from view.

  ‘Is it on my land?’ Gerhardt asked.

  ‘No I don’t think so. It landed in that bit of woodland between our two farms,’ said Pieter.

  Gerhardt shrugged. ‘Got what they deserved,’ he said, trotting off.

  Käthe ran out of the farmhouse as soon as the horse and cart drew up in the yard.

  ‘Where have you been? I woke up and you’d both gone. I panicked.’

  ‘We found a British plane,’ Pieter said, jumping down and holding the mare’s bridle. ‘Magda has brought an airman back here.’

  ‘What? Are you mad?’ said Käthe furiously. ‘Magda – take him back… take him back now. We can’t have him here.’

  ‘No,’ said Magda, firmly. ‘It might have been Karl. You’d want someone to help him, wouldn’t you, Mutti?’

  ‘But Magda – the authorities are already upset with you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Magda. ‘That was a long time ago. Help me Mutti… We’ll get him into Karl’s room.’

  ‘No!’ said her mother. ‘Not there.’

  ‘Mutti, what’s the point of keeping it like a shrine? Help me take the boy in – please.’ She looked desperately between her two parents.

  ‘You can put him in the barn,’ Käthe said. ‘Then at least if someone finds him we can swear we knew nothing about it.’

  ‘No Mutti – it’s too cold. He’ll die out there. Besides, do you really think people would believe we knew nothing about it? Everyone knows we’re in and out of our barns every day. He’ll be safer inside where we can keep an eye on him, trust me.’

  The boy drifted in and out of consciousness as they hauled him upstairs. From time to time, he called out.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Magda said calmly, as she settled him on Karl’s bed. ‘We’ll look after you.’

  He was slender and tall, his feet almost falling off the end of the bed. He wore a sheepskin flying jacket and boots, and his flying helmet had slipped off, revealing bright red hair and a gentle face. As he opened his amber-coloured eyes he saw the family standing staring at him and recoiled, terrified.

  ‘It’s all right – we won’t hurt you,’ Magda said in English, sitting on the bed next to him. ‘I have a brother about your age. He’s in England. This is his room.’

  The young man appeared to relax a little. ‘Thirsty,’ he muttered.

  ‘Mutti, get him some water.’

  Once Magda had fed a few sips of water to the young man, she checked him for injuries. ‘I think he’s broken his arm, and his leg,’ she said to her mother. ‘What can we use to mend the bones?’

  ‘A splint, you mean?’ asked Käthe. ‘God knows, I don’t. This is madness – trust me. We will all live to regret this day. We’ll all be shot.’

  Pieter went downstairs and returned with two straight lengths of firewood.

  ‘Go and find a piece of cloth we can tear up into strips,’ he instructed Käthe. ‘Can you feel the break with your fingers?’ he asked Magda.

  The young man whimpered as Magda gently helped him out of his flying jacket. His arm hung limply at his side as she carefully removed his shirt and ran h
er cool fingers along his arm. ‘Yes… it’s here. On his forearm.’

  ‘That’s lucky,’ said Pieter. ‘It should heal faster. A break near the shoulder would be difficult. We’ll tie a piece of wood along the forearm with fabric strips. But first, we’ll need to make sure it’s straight. We have to pull it into position.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ asked Käthe, coming back into the room with a handful of cloth.

  ‘I saw it done in the first war. One of us must stand behind him, holding his shoulders. I’ll do that. Käthe – go back downstairs and get some schnapps.’

  ‘You want a drink now?’ she asked.

  ‘Not for me, you stupid woman – for him!’

  She returned a few moments later with a bottle of schnapps and small glass.

  ‘Pour some into his mouth. Magda, you must pull his hand away from his forearm, like this…’ he demonstrated on his own hand, ‘until you feel the bones slot back into position. Otherwise it will heal all wrong.’

  He sat behind the man, and braced himself against the wall.

  ‘I’m going to pull your hand,’ Magda said to the airman, ‘I’ll try not to hurt you.’

  He grimaced. ‘Just do it…’

  She pulled his hand and manipulated the bones of the forearm, until she felt them slot into position. The man cried out in pain, his face contorting.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Magda.

  ‘Tie on the splint now,’ her father instructed. She lay the piece of wood along the man’s forearm and her mother tied the cloth strips around it.

  ‘Now… more schnapps. Then we do his leg,’ said Pieter. Together they removed the airman’s trousers and once again, Magda ran her fingers along his shin, until she found the break. Once more they manipulated the limb and fixed the splint in position.

  The young airman lay back on the pillow exhausted, and attempted a smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, weakly.

  ‘We’d better clean him up,’ Käthe said. ‘I’ll go and get some water.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ the young man asked Magda in English, as she wiped his face and hands clean.