“I need to get back into the city. I made a promise.”
“How are you going to manage that with only one leg?”
“I left a Kübelwagen back there not far from the bridgehead.”
“Forget it, soldier. Enjoy your stay on the Rhine.”
Two American GIs marched him away. Allowing time and space for his leg-swinging gait, they led him to a compound surrounded in barbed wire, and left him there.
Built on rising ground, the camp was awash with thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers. Many wore bandages or walked on crutches; some had limbs or eyes missing. All bore downcast looks and unkempt, filthy uniforms – the unmistakable signs of a defeated army.
Hans wandered about among the rows and rows of wooden barracks until he found a quiet spot to rest. He lowered himself to the ground within sight of the boundary fence and the heavily guarded entrance and considered his position. Gretchen and the Kübelwagen were calling to him like sirens in his mind. Could he escape from the camp? If he managed that, maybe under cover of darkness, could he make it across the bridge and find the Kübelwagen?
Another prisoner sat down beside him. “Thinking about escape?” He grinned and offered Hans a cigarette.
Hans took the cigarette. The soldier struck a match and they both lit up.
“How did you know what I was thinking?” said Hans.
“Forget about it, friend,” said the soldier. “What chance would you have?”
“I left a Kübelwagen on the other side of the bridge. If I could reach that, I might make it back to Berlin.”
“Why would you want to go back there?”
Hans shrugged.
“Forget her, whoever she is.” The soldier’s salacious smile told Hans what he was thinking. He pointed his cigarette at Hans’s false leg. “I wouldn’t make it as far as the bridge, and I’ve got all my limbs.”
An immovable rock settled in Hans’s stomach then. This is where my journey ends? He thought. I will never see Gretchen again.
54
Dressed in his pajamas, Oskar sat in Hans’s armchair outside the cabin on the allotment. Gretchen sat beside him on the wooden kitchen chair. It was early evening. The temperature was cool, but pleasant. Low clouds of smoke hung overhead reflecting red from the fires burning all over the city. The guns were silent.
She opened her tin box, took out Oskar’s Iron Cross and pinned it on his chest.
Then she took out the bundle of letters and read them to Oskar. She left the first one till last. “You were a teenager when you wrote that. Do you remember?”
He smiled at her, but she doubted that he remembered.
“Your words were quite forward for such a young man, but you had a lively turn of phrase.” She laughed.
“Do you remember our wedding day? You looked impressive in your uniform. Your mother wore an apricot dress, do you remember?”
Oskar showed no flicker of a memory.
“My mother wasn’t happy with my choice. She gave us six months! That was twenty-five years ago.”
She rummaged in the box, found the old banknote and showed it to Oskar. “You remember this.”
Oskar’s eyes focused on the banknote. “Your father sold his tools,” he said.
“That was your father, Oskar.”
“He should never have sold his tools,” said Oskar, dreamily.
She ran through her memories of her early life with her parents, of laughter and good food, the good times with Oskar, and the hard times during the depression.
Finally, she dipped into her sweet memories of the night she’d spent with Hans, his tender touch and her delicious release.
The throaty roar of a tank engine, two streets away, interrupted her thoughts. The squeak of its tracks stopped and the double boom of an artillery shell firing and exploding shattered the evening.
55
Berlin, June 1957
In the allotment at Westend, Hans opened the tin box. Inside he found a bundle of letters addressed to Gretchen. Needles, spools of thread and a bag of buttons. A hundred-million-mark banknote from the Weimar Republic. Three photographs: Gretchen and Oskar’s wedding, Oskar in uniform, and an older picture showing a couple he didn’t recognize. Oskar’s discharge letter was there too, and, right at the top, a letter addressed to Hans Klein.
Dear Hans,
I’m hoping that Inge, Martha and you made it out alive, that Martha was reunited with her fiancé, Paul, and that you’ll come back and find this letter someday. Oskar and I are sitting here in the sunshine in your allotment. The Russians are very close now, the city defenders hiding among the ruins, still fighting. There’s not much left of our city. The shelling has been horrible, but there are still birds flying around.
It’s hard to imagine at this moment, but I live in hope that Germany will rise again from the ashes and future generations of young Germans will put all this behind them and start afresh. Maybe the carnage of these past 6 years will turn the human race away from war in the future forever.
I have so many questions that I never got to ask you. Where were you born? Were you ever married? Did you have children? Lots of questions. If things had been different, we might have become a happy couple and lived out our lives together.
I couldn’t leave when you asked me to. You know why.
I’m sorry.
Love,
Gretchen
Berlin, April 29, 1945
Epilogue
Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945. The Gauleiter of Berlin and minister of propaganda and enlightenment, Joseph Goebbels, murdered his whole family before committing suicide a day later.
Dora survived. She and a close network of friends were responsible for evacuating an unknown number of Jewish orphans and saving at least 10 by keeping them in hiding in Berlin until it was safe.
Frau Tannhäuser, Frau Carlson, and the postwoman, Frau Niedermeyer all disappeared.
Herr Korn, the master baker, and Ludwig the Hitler Youth troop leader went down fighting in the ruins when
