Authors: Mary Nichols
Those that were left were rounded up, lined up in batches and herded out of the gates like cattle. At first Alex thought they might be going west, away from the advancing Russians, and he was content to go along with that, but after a time it became apparent they were going north. What their captors had in mind he had no idea, but
his mind was intent on reaching the Allies. They had not been going for long when the weaker among them began to drop like flies and were shot on the spot or left to die by the roadside. Could he fake collapse and be abandoned? But how could he be certain one of the guards would not put a bullet in him to make sure?
As they shuffled along incredibly slowly, they met civilians trudging along the road in the opposite direction, preferring to be taken by the Western Allies than the Russians. When, at midday, they were allowed to stop and rest by the wayside and eat the crust of bread with which they had been provided, he spoke to one of the women trudging southwards. ‘
Gnädige Frau
, what news is there?’
He had at first thought she was in her forties, but when she came closer to answer him, he realised she was at least ten years younger than that. She was thin as a rake and her hair, which had once been dark, was streaked with white. ‘Are you German?’ she asked.
‘No. English.’
‘
Ein Engländer!
How did you come to be with this lot?’ She nodded at the column of men in their striped camp uniforms.
‘I was attached to the Red Army when I was captured. They took me for a Russian. How far away are they?’
‘The Reds? No more than a few kilometres. Where are they taking you?’
‘I don’t know, but I don’t want to fall into the hands of the Russians.’
‘Why not, if you are English?’
‘I can’t prove it and the Communists would arrest me for a spy. Can you help me?’
‘Why should I?’
‘No particular reason. On the grounds of common humanity, if you like. On the other hand I might be able to help you when the time comes.’
She stood looking at him with her head on one side, turning over his request. If the Germans lost the war, it would make sense for her to have helped an Englishman, a sort of insurance policy. Not that they would lose; the Führer had promised them they would drive the invaders out and be victorious. ‘I wouldn’t help a Russian,’ she said. ‘I’d spit on him. You are sure you’re not Russian?’
He smiled crookedly, better not admit his origins. ‘No, I am not Russian.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
He looked round him. Their guards were sitting on the side of the road, eating bread and cheese and swilling it down with beer while their charges stood or squatted waiting for the signal to resume the march. ‘Find me some civilian clothes. I’ll get nowhere dressed like this. I can’t pay you, not until after the war, but I will do it then.’
She didn’t ask him how that was to be achieved. ‘You want them brought to you?’
‘No, I’ll have to slip away, roll into a ditch or something.’
‘They’ll shoot you.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a risk I’m prepared to take.’
The guards had finished their break and were rounding up their prisoners again. She thought for a moment. ‘I’ll claim you for my long-lost husband. What’s your name?’
‘Alex Peters, though I am known here as Alexei Petrovich.’
‘My name is Else Weissmann. My husband’s name was Erich.’
‘Was?’
‘He died outside Stalingrad in ’42.’
‘I’m sorry. That was a bad business.’
‘Yes. Come, I haven’t got time to waste.’ She grabbed his hand and hauled him towards the sergeant of the guard. ‘You have my husband here,’ she told him belligerently. ‘How did that come about? He is a good Wehrmacht soldier, not a Russian. They said he was missing on the Eastern Front and here he is, not two kilometres from home. I would not have known about it, if he had not called out to me. Let him come home.’
The sergeant looked Alex up and down. ‘Is this true?’
‘Of course.’ He launched into a story of being taken prisoner by the Russians who were subsequently captured by the Germans and he had been herded along with them. His German was perfect and everyone knew the Russians couldn’t speak anything but their own tortured language, so the guard laughed. ‘What does it matter?’ he said. ‘What does it matter if you all walked off? I wouldn’t have to stay if you did. Go on. Clear off.’ He turned back to hustling the rest of the prisoners into line.
Alex made a show of embracing Else. ‘Let’s hurry before he changes his mind,’ he said.
She took him back to an apartment in a block on the eastern outskirts of the nearby town of Prenzlau where she had been living. From her top floor living room they could see the smoke clearly, and even as he stood there while Else searched the wardrobe for clothes, he heard the whistle and then the bang of an exploding shell. The windows and doors rattled and some plaster came down from the ceiling onto his shoulders. He moved away from the window. ‘They’re getting closer,’ he called out to her.
She appeared with a bundle of clothes and a pair of shoes in her arms. ‘Try these.’
He was taller than her husband had been and definitely thinner; the trousers barely came to his ankles and had to be held up with a belt. But it was better than the prison uniform with its conspicuous patch. The shoes, although a mite tight, were better than the clogs he had been issued with for his march to the factory and back. While he was changing, another shell came over, nearer this time. ‘They’ve got the factory,’ she said, looking out of the window. ‘Hurry up, we’ll be next.’
They clattered down the stairs and out into the street, then dodged from building to building as more shells came over and more heaps of rubble appeared where once buildings had stood. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, when they paused in a doorway to get their breath back. ‘I have delayed you. You could have been far away by now.’
‘Where do you want to go?’ she asked.
He laughed. ‘As far from here as I can get, preferably to the Western Front, wherever that might be.’
‘Have you got any money?’
‘No.’
‘I have a little. You had better come with me. I could do with the company.’
And so he did. They escaped from the town which was rapidly becoming a ruin, plodding slowly along with hundreds of others, carrying whatever they could in the way of belongings. Some had donkey carts, some handcarts, some prams, some nothing at all. There were women and children and old men and, here and there, a soldier in a tattered uniform. Occasionally they were overtaken by camouflaged cars with officers sitting in them, their drivers
hooting to make the pedestrians get out of the way. This was an exodus. No one wanted to be left behind for the Russians to find. Occasionally they met convoys of military vehicles going in the opposite direction and they learnt from experience to scatter into the surrounding woods and fields when that happened because they were almost certain to be dive-bombed.
As they walked Else filled Alex in on her husband’s details in case he should be asked: where he had been born, how old he was, where he had been educated, what job he had done in civilian life – he had been a bricklayer for the city corporation in Potsdam. Because Alex still limped from the effects of his broken leg which had not been properly set, the others on the road accepted that he had been invalided out of the army and he became used to being addressed as Erich.
Else herself was the daughter of a grocer. Her father had become more and more depressed by the rationing and the shortages and, having nothing to sell, had taken his own life. ‘Hanged himself in the cellar,’ she told him. ‘When
Mutti
saw him hanging there with his mouth and eyes wide open, she had a heart attack and died in hospital a week later. I shut the shop up and took a job in the garment factory, making Wehrmacht uniforms. It was while working there I met Erich. He drove the lorry that came to collect the finished goods. We were married just before he was sent to the Eastern Front. We had no married life to speak of.’ She spoke without inflexion, giving no indication of how these tragedies, coming one after the other, had hit her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘War is bestial, no matter whose side you are on.’
‘What did you do before the war?’
‘I was a diplomat.’
‘Not a soldier?’
‘No. I left England before the war started, or I might have been.’ He paused. ‘Do you know where the Allies are?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘But France has been liberated?’
‘Yes, and the Netherlands. But we are not done yet. There is a secret weapon the Führer says will change the whole course of the war and give us victory.’
‘And what is that?’
‘A flying bomb. It is already devastating London. The population is in panic and the government gone into hiding.’
He smiled at her simple confidence in what she had been told but he did not believe Londoners were panicking. While in Russia at the beginning of the war, he had heard reports of the London Blitz and how everyone had coped, and he imagined Edward in his business suit, bowler hat and rolled umbrella going to work at the Foreign Office, just as if nothing had happened. Oh, how he hoped that was an accurate picture. Hitler’s invasion of Russia had brought the nightly attacks on London to an end as the Soviets had never ceased to remind everyone when lobbying for a second front to relieve the pressure on them. Now they had it and Germany was being attacked on both sides. ‘Then perhaps I am fortunate to be here,’ he said mildly.
‘How are you going to find the Allies?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Catch a train, I suppose.’
She laughed, assuming he was joking.
‘What about you?’
‘I have an aunt and a cousin in Potsdam. I shall go there.’
‘You are not going to come with me and surrender to the Allies, then?’
‘No. I have no wish to be a prisoner.’
They stopped at night to try and find lodgings, but every hotel, house and barn was already crowded with refugees and the unlucky ones built fires beside the road to cook what they could and slept where they were. The trek continued. The weakest fell by the wayside and were abandoned. When baggage became too heavy that was also abandoned to lie beside rifles, anti-tank guns and ammunition boxes – all the detritus of war. There was no food and they resorted to begging at farmhouse doors. Sometimes they were welcomed, sometimes turned away, and Else’s money was soon gone.
He had been half starved and was painfully thin, but forced labour had made him stronger than he looked. It was Else who faltered first. She had seemed so strong and determined, but all the walking took its toll. Her feet became covered in blisters which suppurated and became infectious, and as day followed day, their progress became slower and slower. He could not in conscience abandon her and helped her along as best he could, and thus they arrived at Neustrelitz, still too far east for Alex’s peace of mind. He half dragged, half carried her to the railway station.
‘Come to Potsdam with me; my relatives will give you food and clothes,’ she said that night as they waited on the platform, hoping, along with hundreds of others, that a train would come. When it did, it was packed to suffocation and steamed straight through without stopping. Alex cursed, but cursing did no good, and Else had a fever which worried him. He left her to go in search of a doctor and found one at last, trying to tend the sickness and wounds of
the thousands of refugees who had descended on the town. They were queueing two- and three-deep for hundreds of yards. Alex realised he would have to bring Else to the queue. He went back for her but she could not move. He left her again and found a pharmacy, where he was given salve for the blisters.
The salve helped a little but she still could not walk. She gave him her wedding ring and, with the money it fetched, he bought bread, a small lump of cheese and a tin of soup, which he took back to her. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she begged, wolfing down the food. He watched, hungry himself but reluctant to take anything from her. Nor could he leave her.
Two days they rested there, while all the while the Red Army was coming closer. Something had to be done. He went into the countryside and found a farmer who had a horse and cart which he was loading, ready to flee himself. Alex, telling the story about being captured by the Red Army and then the Germans, which ensured him a sympathetic hearing, begged a lift for Else. Reluctantly the man agreed. Else was fetched and lifted onto the back of the cart behind a table, chairs, a bedstead and mattress, several bundles of clothes, a sack of potatoes and a cloth-wrapped loaf of bread. The farmer and his wife sat at the front and Alex walked alongside.
Progress was even slower than walking because of the number of refugees and the abandoned debris of war on the road, but at least Else was resting. They arrived in Fürstenberg late at night to discover the town was being evacuated en masse. The Russians, so they were told, were only a few kilometres away and the Americans were at Bad Kleinen. Alex would have liked to strike off in that direction,
but Else was determined to go to Potsdam, convinced the Allies would be halted long before they reached there; leaving her would be a cowardly and ungrateful thing to do. There was a train going south the next morning and they managed to squeeze onto it.
They arrived in Berlin the next day after a night in a siding during an air raid. Alex had stayed in the city during his time as a diplomat and thought he knew his way about, but very little was recognisable among the ruins. They were confronted by whole streets which were nothing but rubble. Else, only able to hobble, was horrified and insisted they go to Potsdam at once. They caught a local train but that stopped short of Potsdam and everyone was told to leave it. ‘The station has been blown up,’ they were told. ‘You’ll have to walk the rest of the way.’
The lovely city of Potsdam, once the state capital, full of ancient palaces and churches, was also in ruins. Else, leaning heavily on his arm, guided him to the street where her relations lived, but it had been totally destroyed. She stood looking at the heap of bricks, stone, broken windows and smashed furniture with tears raining down her face. ‘Now I have no one,’ she wept. ‘I am alone.’ She turned and flung herself into his arms. ‘You will stay with me, won’t you? If the Americans come, you will stand up for me? Tell them I helped you.’