The day Hansi shot himself in the left hand started out ordinary enough, with April rain streaming down the dirty barrack windows and wood boards. The Lieutenant cancelled the bicycle trek out to the nearly completed trenches, substituting ‘weapons cleaning’ instead on the notice board.
“I think I get it. We’re the secret weapon #4, the new heroes, the Reich’s crack, bicycling home guards unit of pea shooters,” said Eddie. “We’ll win the war for them. Mark my words. We’ll stun Ivan with our nimble fingers, the slight of hand and — and—”
“—and best of all, the elegant, never-before-performed thing with mirrors,” said Motz. “Somebody tell the Lieutenant to order an assortment in time for the Führer’s birthday,” said Eddie.
They were assembled just outside the barracks, the approaching Sergeant wielding a couple of bazookas, when a solitary fighter plane, a Mustang, dived through the cloud cover, strafed the new potato seedlings and pulled up, thoughtfully avoiding the nearby roofs of Berlin’s well-heeled. In the commotion no one heard the pistol shot that rang out from inside the Lieutenant’s office, but the door burst open and a wild-eyed Hansi emerged, cradling his dripping left hand, followed by the Lieutenant, who, remembering that their medic was away, made for the car.
From the galley, Lilly ran with a clean small towel and attempted a tourniquet with her uniform scarf. Emma put her arm around Hansi. Ulli came up and pointed towards the streets.
“I know where there’s a doctor,” he said, and they were off, with Hansi bleeding all over the seat.
“That kid’s always fooling around with his gun,” Corp. Peters said, careful not to sound too critical in view of Hansi’s role as mascot, but didn’t quite pull it off.
“He IS?” asked Motz. “I was under the impression he could never find the damn thing!”
“The boys have been teasing Hansi about losing it all the time,” Emma said. “But if they are going over to Dr. Havemann’s, Hansi’ll be in good hands. Just fifteen minutes from here.”
“Look on the bright side,” said Motz, “that ends the war for him. He could barely keep hold of the bike handles with both hands intact before —”
“Right. But I’ll bet he could ride a mean horse bare-back for hours,” said Axel. “Ever notice his gait? My guess is Home’s a farm in Pommerania or West Prussia, somewhere out there.”
This marked the end of the weapons cleaning drill for the day.
In an effort to restore order where none was needed, the Serge marched the somber bunch off to target practise. No bazookas would be fired today. They were scarce, but mostly the Serge didn’t cherish the thought of another one going “fffff-t plop” as it hit the target.
Circumstances surrounding Hansi’s injury, the missing pointing fingernail and lost thumbnail, remained sketchy in spite of, or knowing Hansi, possibly because of their urgings to tell. He was saved by a summons to the kitchen on his return.
“Ulli, did you?” But Ulli shook his head. As soon as he had delivered them to the promised address, taken Hansi and the Lieutenant inside, the practicing team in the small clinic had shown him out into the packed waiting room. An older woman doctor and a younger war veteran were in charge.
Ulli did say that he heard the Lieutenant’s voice on the phone the entire time Hansi had been in there. Ulli said that the doc, recently a field surgeon in an army hospital, had offered a note certifying Hansi’s evident inability to further serve in the forces of the Third Reich.
“So where is it?” Axel asked. “Who has it?”
The boys stood huddled in one of the barracks, the rain again beating against the window panes. Ulli looked around the room at Axel, Eddie, Motz, Gus, Chris and Tom, joined at the hip, as usual, and Rainer, with Anna and Lilly at the door.
“The Lieutenant refused to take the medical certificate. He told the doctor, who wanted to keep Hansi for observation, that there would be an investigation. An enquiry! He was to produce Hansi for a hearing.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Who’s playing these games? This war’s in the latrine,” said Axel. “Shouldn’t he be armed with something in writing? I don’t understand. I really don’t.”
That morning Lotte had pretended to be clearing out the stove, taking her time with the ashes, when the Sergeant had closed the door to the office and started to yell into the receiver.
“I want a clear answer,” the Serge shouted, “are we getting dog tags for the boys today or not? This is my fourth call. You promised, yes YOU! A third of them don’t have regulation hats, forty boys still lack uniform jackets and scarves. The front is closing in, and I will not have this unit treated as partisans by the enemy. Am I making myself clear? Good!” and he slammed the receiver down, stormed out into the Mess Hall, face to face with Lotte.
“Assholes,” he yelled. “Imbeciles, all of them!”
“Who?” asked Lotte. “The army?”
“I wish, I wish,” shouted the Serge, “I wish the army were running this show. Did you know the Party is in charge of the Home Guards?”
“The Party?” Lotte hadn’t known. “How do they —”
“They don’t, that’s the crisis . Clueless, the lot of them. Those fat cats are creaming off the kids’ rations—”
“I know they do that,” said Lotte. “I’ve seen it downtown last summer. Came into the shelters and helped themselves to the supplies for the bombed out families. Didn’t care that we stared them down right there, just looted.”
“Lotte, these kids don’t have legitimate armed forces I.D. Do you know what we did with partisans in Yugoslavia, with snipers?” He was pacing. “And if we don’t finally get more ammunition, we’ll be meeting the T34s with pitch forks and shovels! Don’t tell anybody!” He stormed back into the office and slammed the door.
Lotte went out and told all the girls.
This is the night of April 18, 1945, and no one is asleep. The Lieutenant has come into the galley, taken two metal buckets and requested a third. When Lilly delivers it to his office, she grabs a pack of papers from the confidential basket at the edge of the desk, to wrap the boys’ rations with them. They would be deployed to their trenches very soon now. The Lieutenant’s back is turned as he fidgets with a cigarette lighter. He is preparing to burn documents. Alone. Potbellied stoves are notoriously unreliable.
Hiding them under her jacket, Lilly runs across the mess hall to the girls’ dormitory and shoves the papers under her mattress.
They have a visitor, as it turns out. From the sound of it, it’s the only member of the company in the middle of his voice change.
“How do you spell that?” Anna is asking.
“Annette or Budigkeit?” Hansi wants to know.
“I can spell ‘Annette’,” Anna says, “just give me your family’s last name,” and Hansi spells it out and then the name of a small village in West Prussia as well.
“I wonder if it’ll get to her if we put this, this old address on the letter,” says Anna, pen in the air. “Do you remember where your Mom and Dad—”
“Mom and Grandfather,” Hansi corrects, “where we were headed originally?”
“Yes, originally, before you got separated,” says Anna. Emma and Monika are lying on their bunks, shielding their eyes with their arm.
“Well, we wanted to go stay with her cousins in this place near Dresden, but we waited too long, should have left a month earlier, when the first letter came. Mom didn’t want to leave all our things behind, but mostly she was waiting for news from my Dad.”
“Yes, of course, I see,” Anna says. “So do you think you can recall some of the address of these relatives?” she asks.
“Not really, but it doesn’t matter. I know they won’t be there, anyway.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“My folks were overtaken by the Russians, the army. Their tanks just cut across the fields. Our wagons couldn’t move on the slushy roads. Total chaos, all the long lines of people’s carts waiting to be pulled from the snow. Finally, people left everything behind, just started walking.”
“No trains?”
“Not enough trains. People figured they couldn’t take anything with them, you know, getting on the packed trains…”
“Did you walk then?”
“No, I rode a horse.”
“Whaaaat? You — look, I’m sorry, let’s write the letter to your Mom.”
And that is how Anna, and Emma and Monika listening, heard about Hansi’s story.
“Dear Mums and Grandfather,
A friend is writing this because I had a little accident with my left hand, but don’t worry. So I’m in Berlin, not IN Berlin, just outside. The first three weeks I was in this Red Cross camp with a lot of other kids. Me and Henning, (he’s from Gumbinnen), we got a ride in an army truck when I had to leave Max behind at a farm. Max was limping, (left hind leg), but the people are glad to have him and we’ll get him back when the war is over. Henning and me, we helped them with the chores and that, and got some sleep, and they had lots of milk there. We would have stayed longer, but our soldiers came in and told everybody to get ready to leave. The family gave me a coat and food for me and Henning, but they stayed because the daughter was going to have a baby any day, so they stayed. I don’t know where it was exactly. Me and Max, we kept mostly to the back roads near the coast and the woods, like Grandfather said, but there were lots and lots of other people everywhere, as you know, like millions, because they couldn’t move on the road either. People didn’t want to leave their stuff behind. Once they borrowed Max to help pull some stuck wagons out of a crossing. Max really worked hard but he hates it when they hit him. So an officer came and gave him back. Max was really good. He only got very upset in the crush when we tried to cross bridges. One time he got so mad — people were going to shoot him, but I didn’t let them. The army tried to help, but people had so much stuff and there weren’t enough trucks. Henning and me, we didn’t have anything, so we squeezed in, just with my back pack.
“I’m thinking all the time about you and wonder where you are, but I got us in the Red Cross Search List, and they’ll find you. They’re expecting the Russians to get here too. Soon. We can hear the front coming closer, but I’m still planning on heading out to the cousins in Dresden, like you told me to, eventually, when I am able.”
He ends with, “I’m sorry I left when you told me to take the horse. I wish I could help you wherever you are, you and Grandfather. Best wishes and I will see you soon.
“Oh, can we have a p.s.?”
“Sure thing.”
“P.S. You know Alain? The PoW who worked over Peters’ way? I think I saw him in the woods, hiding with some other guy and a woman, all talking French. He looked at me too.
“P.P.S. Some people were going to confiscate Max, but then they didn’t. Other people interfered.
“Yours sincerely,
“Walther.”
“WALTHER?”
“Yes, that’s my name. Hansi, that’s YOUR name for me.”
“Hansi, uh, Walther? If you’re a leftie, how is it you got shot in the LEFT hand?”
“Oh, he just, he just wanted to show me how to do it properly, you know, hold the hand gun?”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“So you can’t sign this then?”
“No, I’m a leftie. Not for a while.”
“Where do you want me to send the letter, Hansi?”
“Um, I’ll think about it.”
“Hansi?”
“Yeah?”
“An awful lot of refugees did make it through, you know. I mean, there’s a chance. A good chance. Lilly and I, we were in this service unit downtown a couple of months ago, in the winter. We were stationed in the big railway terminals that received trains from the East. They would bring in these long box cars crammed with families and their bundles — some had been in there for weeks, and we would hand them sandwiches and soup. A lot of them got away in the last minute. They had come from very far East, some of them, and a lot of them made it through, Hansi. Got out right under the nose of the Russians. It’s possible.”
“Yes, I guess so. You never know. The Red Cross will find them.”
When Hansi has left, Monika sits up.
“I couldn’t help overhearing. What is this you and Lilly were doing downtown? How did you—?”
“Hitler Youth Emergency unit. We aren’t supposed to be here, remember, because all the schools are closed, but they seemed mighty happy to find us. Emma was there too.”
“I know we aren’t supposed to be here. I was in the Alsace with relatives until March, but then my parents brought us back.”
“Monika, I didn’t want to tell Hansi — I mean he seems to have seen what happened to his Mom and Grandfather — but thousands of these refugees did come through, sometimes the Russians were pushed back again for a day or two, and then, the refugees were like sardines in those box cars, some open on top. On the rails for weeks, with nothing to eat. No water, freezing. A nurse in one of the trains said whenever they stopped, they’d open the doors and throw out the dead into the fields, and close the doors again. When we approached the trains with baskets of sandwiches and coffee or soup, they had no cups, no containers, didn’t know how many children were left in the cars. Didn’t speak a word. Total silence from hundreds of people. It was my job to walk along the train with an insulated sling-like bag ‘round my neck, with baby bottles, asking if they had infants in the car. Once I — once a woman said “yes,” and when I offered her a bottle, she handed me a stiff little bundle instead.”
“Oh Anna,” Monika reaches out a hand.
“I fainted,” says Anna, “the one and only time I let down the side. They picked me, the baby and the bottles off the slushy platform. The woman just stared straight ahead. All her hair was white, at first I thought blonde, but no, white.”
“What happened with the baby, do you know?”
“Red Cross always took bodies away in the morning. We kids were in a big hurry to cover the whole long train, get to all the cars before they had to pull out again, couldn’t leave them sitting ducks for air raids.”
“I just wonder where they put all those people? We came through some small towns and villages. They all seem crammed full of refugees and bombed-out families already.”
“No idea either. They ran away from the Russians and were shoved right in the nose of the other guys moving in — everybody on the move. At least they did get on a train, and kept moving west. I’m just glad Hansi’s family wasn’t on one of the ships that got torpedoed in the Baltic Sea—”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Oh. I — Monika, I wish I hadn’t said anything. I’m not sure you want to hear this.”
“Tell me!”
“Some refugees got on this former cruise ship ‘Wilhelm Gustloff’, a lot of people, also some wounded soldiers, and it was torpedoed in January, with some 9000 people aboard. Not a lot got saved.”
“Anna, I have never heard of this. You mean a refugee ship sank with 9000 victims?! How do you know?”
“A woman and her two little girls, from West Prussia, were billeted with us for two months earlier this year. They had waited in a long line in the snow, for days, in the harbour, Gotenhafen, I think, hoping to get on a ship. There were thousands of people ahead of them, and they finally didn’t get on. But when the ship left, they were able to get on a navy vessel, a small one, and they left later in the night and saw the sinking ship and found all the dead people in the water, in 20° below temperatures. But their own frigate did rescue some from lifeboats. There’s a rumour the next day another refugee ship with about three thousand people on board was also sunk. Hardly anyone is said to have survived that one. Anyway, she lost an aunt on the ‘Gustloff’, the woman did.”
“Oh God! What a terrible, terrible fate!”
“Yes, my mother cried all night after the woman told us. Grandfather was a sea captain, had a wonderful ship with the North German Lloyd for many years. But I think she just feels so deeply the pain of others, and the tragedy. But now she doesn’t remember.”
“I see, doesn’t want to talk about it?”
“Doesn’t remember. Forgot the whole thing.”
“In a way, it’s just as well.”
Lotte comes and asks for help in the galley.
“You two planning a wedding or something?”