Chapter One

The last explosion almost blew out my ear drums and the ringing was taking a while to subside this time. The Russians were definitely closing in on us but although my mother begged me to stay at home with her I felt a lot stronger to take the fight to them, defending what was left of our beloved capital with my two best friends. If we were going to die now that was our fate, with guns in our hands and not hiding under the bed waiting to be blown to smithereens. Hans was the bravest out of the three of us always looking for a vantage point where we could take aim at the encroaching Russian soldiers. But the situation was dyer and it was clear they would continue to bombard us with artillery fire until there were no buildings left to shoot them from. We believed the Russians had no courage to fight man to man and we heard they were raping women and children in areas of the city they had overran, so this just fueled our hatred and resilience to keep fighting.

Both my father and older brother had died in the war, my father in 1942 presumed dead from the cold on the eastern front, and my brother years later from the western invasion in the north. It was just me and my mother now. Although she was petrified that she would lose me too she knew she couldn’t stop me from continuing to fight. I hated to put her through the worry but we were still at war and all the men and teenage boys then were expected to do their bit.

Hans signaled for me and Stefan to join him in the building next to us. We ran across low and joined him in the front room of the abandoned building. He was crouched down next to a smashed window and signaled for me to come over and look outside across the road.

“You see that building with the blue door?” He asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“I think two of those bastards are in there setting up a machine gun,” he said.

“You sure it’s not ours?” I asked.

“No no, the sergeant would have told me if that was happening, besides why would we have been in there? It’s pointing in the wrong direction,” he replied.

“Look I’m going to go and have a closer look. I think it’s just two of them for now but if we take their machine gun the sergeant will be well pleased,” he said.

“Ok mate, keep your head down and I’ll watch and give cover fire if you get spotted and need to get back sharpish,” I said.

He managed to get to the other side of the road nearer the building with the blue door without being seen or getting hit by any shrapnel and I knew he would want us to join him to take out what was hopefully just two Slovaks. I looked back at Stefan and he was ready to go so I waited for Hans’s signal. When it came we both snuck across the road taking the same route as Hans as carefully and quickly as we could. I was almost there when I was blown off my feet almost landing on top of Hans and immediately thought, oh my God, Stefan! Hans pulled me against the wall and checked to see if I was hit.

“You’re ok Karl.” I read from his lips.

“Stefan.” I said in a daze, but I couldn’t hear my own voice.

He ran to where we had come from and I tried to stand up but my legs were like jelly. It took a while for the dust to clear. After a few minutes I saw the amount of blood on the wall where we had come from and I knew Stefan must be in a critical state if not dead already. There was no sign of either of them though or any body parts so I summoned all my strength to get on my feet and back to the building we had come from. I saw Hans on the floor of the living room crying and holding a body close to him that I knew was Stefan.

I knelt and said, “Come on mate, we have to go, we can’t stay here.”

“I’m not leaving him, grab his legs!” he said wiping the tears from his face covering it with blood.

I tried to pick up his legs but his middle was pouring out of him. “Hans we can’t, I’ll find something to cover him up” I said.

I went into the other room looking for any cloth or linen. I ripped down a curtain, came back and covered Stefan’s body. I said a few words with Hans bowing his head and we left to get to my mother’s house as fast as we could.

My mother shrieked when she saw us covered in blood.

I said “We’re ok but we lost Stefan.”

She hugged us both desperately and told Hans to go upstairs to clean up in the bathroom and she would be up in a while with clean clothes. She was treating us like children but we were fifteen and for now we didn’t mind her taking charge like that.

I sat in the armchair that my father used to sit in looking at a picture of the three of us on the wall, me my dad and my brother. I started to cry as I knew it was hopeless, and what the hell were we doing anyway. I was prepared to die fighting for my country, but this was just suicide, and I had no love for the fuehrer, losing my dad and my brother to this crazy war. My mother came back into the room with some tea and comforted me for a while.

I looked at her and said, “I don’t want to lose you too Mama, so I think we need to leave here tonight. The army won’t miss us and I know they don’t give a shit about Stefan. This part of the city is going to fall to the Russians in a few weeks if not sooner. If Hans wants to join us with his mother and sister that’s up to him. We should go to Aunt Sophia in the West of the city at least until the army surrenders or Hitler is killed or both, it’s just a matter of time. They won’t know I’ve been fighting here in the east, and I’ll just leave my uniform and rifle here, and that will be the end of it.”

She was teary eyed and she nodded. “Thank God.” she said as she gave me a big hug.

“Ok, take off that uniform and I’ll burn it, I’ll get Hans’s as well and bring you down some fresh clothes.”

As soon as it was dark the three of us left, me and my mother carrying a suitcase each with essentials and valuables and Hans wearing some of my clothes as mother had burnt both our uniforms. It would take most of the night to get to Aunt Sophia and I was sure she would be relieved and happy that we had decided to join her as she had requested it, but mother said she couldn’t leave me. Her husband had died on the eastern front as well and as she was living alone, she would have the room for us and Hans’s family. Hans said he was going to join us after picking up his mother and sister, but I wasn’t sure if he would as he was very subdued for once. I knew he was in shock over losing Stefan who was his oldest friend as they had grown up together, but I was also pretty sure he wasn’t too pleased that my mother had burnt his uniform. He was far more into Hitler youth than I was and did seem to believe all the rhetoric and propaganda about the reasons for the war and the Jewish conspiracy.

The Americans and Brits had been bombing from the air so large areas of the city had been demolished. We hoped and prayed that the area my aunt lived in wasn’t too badly damaged. We didn’t want an air raid that night as we wouldn’t know where to go for shelter, but thankfully it was an uneventful night. We arrived at dawn and she answered the door with a stunned look on her face as if she had seen a ghost, but then joy took over and she hugged us in the doorway for a few minutes. She led us into her living room to make ourselves feel at home and went into the kitchen to prepare some food. She was ten years older than my mother, quite a bit larger and always very affectionate to me and my brother as she didn’t have children of her own.

A week had passed and although the air raids were still going on it was much more organized than back at home as everyone would convene in the local air-raid shelter until it passed and then emerge to hopefully find their house still in one piece. We were both sleeping and eating much better. I started to feel more guilty about the worry I had put my mother through these past few months as well as putting her life at risk by continuing to fight, but we discussed it and she forgave me saying she knew it wasn’t my fault.

I was praying that Hans and his family were safe and hoping he would be joining us soon, but when he did eventually show up it was without his mother and sister. His house had been destroyed in a blast killing both of them while he was out still fighting. He seemed numb to it for now and I knew it was going to be a while before the old Hans started to come back if he ever would. He had lost everyone he was close to apart from me. Although I knew what it was like to lose a loved one I still had my mother and now my aunt as well.

We got word that Hitler was dead and there were mixed emotions, while my mother and I were elated as we knew this would mean the end of the war, both Hans and my aunt cried at the news. I wasn’t interested in the details, I just looked forward to hearing that the army had surrendered and the air raids to stop so we could get back to some sort of normality and start the long process of rebuilding our city. Word finally came a week later that we had surrendered to the Americans in the west and a few days later officially to the Russians in the east, though I knew there would be few of us still fighting. All three of us agreed to stay with Aunt Sophia and help with the clear-up in her area of the city as it was much more comfortable there and none of us wanted to face the Russian soldiers that had fought their way into the city from the east.

The clear-up began in earnest with all residents, old and young chipping in daily to clear the rubble left by the bombings. It was going to be a massive undertaking and would take some time, but there was a communal spirit that we had survived the war and we would rebuild our own city, the German people.

There were American soldiers that would come and go in their jeeps that were clearly in charge now. I wasn’t sure on the hierarchy yet and the right yanks to get close to, but as we cleared the rubble Hans and I were watching them closely. I spoke better English than Hans so he relied on me to get near enough to hear what they were saying.

We had a visit from a high-ranking American officer who interviewed my mother and aunt in the house with the help of his translator colleague about who was living there and what knowledge they had on the whereabouts of their men. He seemed satisfied when she told him they had been killed in the east and north and she only had me and Hans pointing to us, her son and his friend who they took in after his family were killed in the bombings. He looked at us and said that he was sorry to hear that, almost in shame, and that indicated to me he was a good man, and he did seem to take his job very seriously. When he got up to leave, I stood up as well and held out my hand and said in English, “It’s nice to meet you Lieutenant Jameson and I hope to work with you well as we rebuild our city.”

He smiled and replied, “Good for you son,” as he shook my hand and then left with his colleague.