Chapter 8
THE THOUGHTS OF SCHOOLGIRLS
I did go up and lie on my bed after lunch. The sloth of old age, I call it, when even being upright all day is too tiring. I did not, this time, sleep. Too many memories for that, the good and the bad mixed up together.
I opened the drawer in the bedside table and pulled out some of the special items I’d brought.
My packet of letters, the ones Joe’s father had given back to Joe—when was that?
Thirty years ago? Forty? The decades blur together, unless I can pinpoint the age of my daughter or granddaughter at the time, although to be honest, I don’t always remember exactly how old they are, either.
It changes every year, you see, and the years go by as quickly now as they’d gone slowly when I’d been a child waiting for Christmas.
So, yes. The letters—oh, the pang I got, thinking of poor Helga, realizing her beloved Franck’s letters had gone up in smoke.
One shouldn’t have to feel such pain in the final hours of one’s life, but few people died peacefully in those days.
I wondered whether Franck had, in fact, survived.
If he had, if he’d come home to Dresden once the Soviets had spat him out?
How dumbfounded he must have been to have survived when Helga, protected by the strongest walls in Dresden, had not.
He, on the Eastern Front in those last months of war, when Hitler, in his mad fury, decreed that any commander who retreated would be shot, and so many died so needlessly for a cause already lost!
And yet here I was, privileged yet again, with my own bundle of letters in their flimsy wartime envelopes, with Joe’s strong, slanting hand filling the pages, the blue ink faded by now and the paper creased with folding and re-folding.
Letters I hadn’t been able to look at these past many years, but I needed to look at them now.
The letters, and the two exercise books, their covers all but falling off, the cheap paper nearly disintegrating in my hands, that contained my diaries. I’d started writing them, strangely enough, at the same time Joe’s letters had begun. December 1944, when the war had become real to both of us.
My courage nearly failed me as I opened the first envelope, but knowing is always better than not knowing, and understanding is better than all. I’d chosen to return to Dresden after almost eighty years, and there was no forgetting anymore. Now, I needed to remember.
November 15, 1944
Somewhere in Kansas
Dear Dad,
Well, we’re on our way at last. I guess there’s no harm in telling you that we’re headed to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, and you can probably guess where that means we’re going.
Being a Californian, I like heat better than cold, but I’m not sure island-hopping in the Pacific would be much of a beach vacation.
I’ve tried to figure out how to feel about all this—about where we’re going and what we’ll be doing there—but the truth is, nobody has much idea.
Training or not, none of us has ever been in a war before.
Some of the fellows say, over the endless card games—you can’t imagine how many card games a guy will play when there’s nothing else to do—that the war in Europe will be over by the time we finally get there, but I’m not so sure.
Hitler seems too crazy to give up. I suppose we’ll find out.
I know Mom is still upset about me joining up instead of waiting to be drafted, because she keeps telling me so in her letters.
I could joke and say that it’s because I didn’t want to end up in the Navy or the Coast Guard, seeing how seasick I get, but the real reason is that I couldn’t not go, not when so many other guys are over there doing their part.
I don’t know exactly what’s happening in Germany and to the East—you hear the craziest rumors, but nobody seems to know for sure—but I’ve never thought much of the kind of Judaism that retreats into its books and leaves the work of life to others.
I’m too much of an American for that, I guess.
Don’t tell Rabbi Goldstein! This is our fight too, maybe ours most of all.
It seems crazy that our boys are over there fighting again barely twenty years after the last world war, that so many people are dying again to stop Germany, but there you go—it is a world war, and I have to help end it if I can.
This troop train is about as crowded as it could possibly be, and we’re all pretty ripe after three days on it.
I hope Camp Kilmer has some decent showers, but I expect they’ll be the same as before.
A few seconds to get wet, a quick scrub, and a little longer to rinse off.
Who knew that a bath was what I’d miss most?
I’d better not tell anyone. They’d take the mickey out of me for sure.
They already call me “Professor,” based on my one lousy year of college and, I guess, wearing glasses and reading the occasional book. That’s Corporal Professor to you, boys.
Lights out. Love to Mom, and to you. Tell her not to worry. I’ll be manning the radio, not in the thick of things. Not sure how to feel about that, but it wasn’t my choice.
Joe
From my diary—how young I was then! And how wise and mature I fancied myself!
18 December 1944
Big news on the wireless tonight: The Wehrmacht has mounted a new offensive in the West, and the American forward position is overrun.
We’re driving the Allies back in Belgium and Luxembourg, and soon, Dr. Goebbels says, they’ll all be surrounded, then captured, killed, or simply forced back to France.
This, he says, will be the real turning point in the war, because the lowest Aryan soldier is worth ten of an American, given the mongrel races that make up the American forces, and the English are a sickly, effete lot.
The V-2 rockets, too, are eroding morale in England, where they fall out of the clear blue sky and no defense is possible, unlike in Germany, with our antiaircraft crews so skillful now at bringing down the bombers and their crews.
England, at least, will soon be devoid of both aircraft and men.
Father says, though, that the V-2 isn’t such a victory as many think.
We’re sending rockets, he says, because we have no fuel for bombers, and anyway, bombing England is no more likely to bring the English to their knees than their bombing us has done.
The British, he says, will fight on, because they’re convinced they’re fighting for their lives, while the Russians are fighting on their anger and the Germans, at this point, mostly because they have no choice.
He doesn’t count the SS in that, though. They are the true believers, he says.
Mother says that both the Russians and the Germans know their officers will shoot any who turn back, so what’s the difference?
Father answers with, “Yes, but there are so many more Russians that they can lose ten to every one of ours and keep going. Nothing but cannon fodder to Stalin, poor fellows.” As for the Americans, he says they’re tougher than Hitler has ever given them credit for, despite their lack of seriousness.
Mother says he’s too cynical about the spirit of the German people, but he says, “Look around you. Bread that’s half sawdust, no milk and barely any meat, queues for potatoes that turn out to be mostly rotten, and people shivering in their homes for lack of fuel.
We’re sheltered here, because of those supplies Kolbe’s brother is still smuggling in from the countryside on his wagons, but with our cities bombed to rubble and the war clearly able only to be prolonged, not won?
Fighting men are not so patriotic as all that.
Most of them know a lost cause when they’re in the midst of one. ”
Mother says, “It does seem, though, that the bombers won’t come here, if they haven’t already.
Do you think it’s true that Churchill’s aunt loves Dresden too much to bomb it?
Or is it just that we’re unimportant?” And Father says, “Nonsense. Trust me, the decision will be wholly pragmatic. Churchill is not so sentimental.”
I hope Mother is right.
From Joe:
December 25, 1944
Dear Dad,
Some Christmas for these guys, huh? It wasn’t much of a Hanukkah either.
Who knew that being seasick for over a week straight, angling every day for a spot topside where you can vomit in peace, and sleeping in a hammock stacked three-deep would be the easy part?
Not to mention climbing down a cargo net in the dead of night once we arrived, rifles and helmets banging against the sides of the ship, imagining how cold that water will feel if you miss the target, only to fall into a landing craft way too small for the job and having another guy fall on top of you.
Our billet outside of Marseilles, once we’d marched miles through a mighty cold night to get to it, wasn’t exactly the Ritz-Carlton either, unless you prefer your hotels cold, windy, and full of rocks.
One fellow, Alan Menckel, whose family are some big noise in the department-store business, says the French coast is a garden spot in summer, full of beaches and boats and girls, or it was before the war.
It’s not much to write home about in December, I’ll tell you that.
Oh, and remember me griping about those camp showers?
Try sea-water showers instead. This Army business toughens a guy up for sure.