My Family for the War (44 page)

Walter’s wartime experiences lead him to be interred in May 1940 with other “enemy aliens” on the Isle of Man for several months. Two years later he is a soldier stationed in North Africa and then Italy, where he follows the actual route taken by the Eighth Army under General Bernard Montgomery (“Monty”). For dramatic reasons, I have sent him overseas nine months earlier than was actually permitted to a native of Germany who joined the British Forces.

In Holland and later in Belgium, Mamu and Uncle Erik’s family are overwhelmed by events that unfortunately really did happen. Also accurate is the dramatic rescue of about 370,000 British and French soldiers from a beach near Dunkirk in Belgium (May 26–June 3, 1940) that brings Matthew Shepard back to his Amanda. The radio program through which Ziska learns about it didn’t exist in exactly that form.

I hope the Jewish community in Finchley, London, will not mind that I set the main stage for this story—the Shepards’ cozy little house on Harrington Grove—in their neighborhood. Any parallels to actual people, places, or events there are purely coincidental and not intentional.

Berlin, July 2006

Anne C. Voorhoeve