Chapter 8 #3
Well, it went on pretty much like that for four more days, until yesterday, when we were relieved with about two-thirds of us having dropped—most, luckily, wounded and sent back through the lines.
You should see those medics work to keep them alive.
One of them, Norm Roberts, was a conscientious objector.
The other fellows gave him a hard time at first, but when the bullets start flying, there’s nobody braver.
I can’t tell you how many wounded men Norm’s dragged to safety, because I didn’t see them all, but I’m guessing he’ll get a medal for it.
What’s surprised me most is how the Germans just keep coming on.
If they’re supposed to be beaten, nobody’s told them.
I heard that anybody who runs or hangs back is shot on the spot.
I guess that puts some steel in your spine, but I’d rather do it for Alan and Gus and the rest of the guys, personally.
I can hear you asking, “Were you scared, son?” Well, yeah, you’re scared, but you’ve got no choice, do you?
They’re shooting at you, so you shoot back.
I can also tell you that, even though you might think you wouldn’t be hungry with your life on the line like that, boy, are you ever!
Those K-Rations, when we got a chance to eat them, tasted better than they had any right to.
And do you ever have to go to the bathroom, too, once the worst is over.
Nobody tells you that during basic training either.
You never saw anything as wrecked as that town, though. I don’t think there was a building left whole in the place. Most of the civilians evacuated before the shooting started, but the ones who stayed mostly bought it in the crossfire.
I don’t imagine I’ll want to do this as a career, but I guess I’m glad I’m here.
Turns out we’ve got the guts for the job, and I believe we’ll do it.
For now, though, we’re all mighty glad to have an old schoolhouse to sleep in, one with an actual roof and even a few toilets, and to be able to write a letter and have some hot meals.
Gus is still dishing them up, even with his arm in a sling. What a guy.
Love to Mom,
Joe
I, too, seemed to become more thoughtful, at least occasionally. How difficult it is to remember how one felt back then.
15 January 1945
We’ve been getting air-raid warnings at last, and traipsing dutifully downstairs and back up again at least four nights in seven, but no air-raids come.
We ask each other, “Do you think it’s another drill, or is there any real danger?
” Nobody knows, but if we’ve gone this long without being bombed, is it really likely to happen now?
The Wehrmacht doesn’t seem to think so, as Father says they’ve moved our entire antiaircraft battery east, where it’s needed more. They should know, shouldn’t they?
We’ve become serious about setting up our air-raid shelter, though.
Really, it’s just the cellar under the kitchens, furnished now with benches and chairs and a table and oil-lamps and candles in case of the electric going out, not to mention metal buckets of sand and water for incendiary bombs, a larger tub of water for soaking blankets in to smother any fires—It was a real wrench to Mother and Frau Schultz to sacrifice perfectly good blankets for the purpose—and a stirrup-pump to spray water on the flames.
They’d have to be some very small flames, though, as the stirrup-pump is no fire hose.
We each have our rucksack, too, with goggles and gas mask, and are drilled weekly by the Air-Raid Warden, Herr Freihart, a pompous little man with pale eyes and a Hitler mustache, who wears his Party badge at all times and clearly enjoys issuing orders to the King and Queen.
Mother and I loathe him, but Father merely looks amused.
There are still some bottles of preserves on the cellar shelves, and Mother has decreed that each night we’re forced down there, we can eat a jar of preserves.
That doesn’t go far when it’s shared among seventeen people, but so starved are we for sugar and fruit that we savor every bite and almost wish for another false alarm.
Sitting down there last night, I thought about the article in The Reich on New Year’s Day. By Goebbels, as usual, and titled “The Führer,” who has remained strangely invisible and unheard from.
“If the world,” G. said, “really knew what he has to tell and to give, and how profoundly his love goes out to the whole of mankind beyond his own nation, then at this hour it would bid farewell to its false gods and render him homage.”
Have you ever read a more absurd thing? Mother said, most sarcastically for her, “If Hitler weren’t such a poor Catholic, the Pope would surely make such a man a saint.” But Father said, “Perhaps Daisy should tell us what she thinks. After all, she’s sixteen now, able to decide for herself.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to be very clever, but I wasn’t sure how. At first, I merely said, “But surely I am influenced also.”
“By your lessons at school,” Father said.
“You must create a little distance, as I’ve told you, a free space in your mind where ideas can be held up to the light, examined, and weighed against a ruthless reality, which has no partisan leaning.
Independence of mind is one’s most valuable possession. ”
“No,” I said, and I don’t know where this boldness came from. “By you and Mother. That’s the standard I try to use, but that’s influence too, is it not?”
“Ah,” Father said. Gravely, but not angrily, and the tightness in my chest eased a bit. “That’s well observed. Perhaps you will have to widen that space, hmm? And let our words be weighed and measured as well. So—before I tell you my thoughts, what are your own?”
“If we’re talking of love, then,” I said, “I don’t see it.
The Füh—” I broke off and said instead, “Hitler has said we fight for Lebensraum, for our divine right as Germans, but do we have a right to places where others already live? Who’s given us that right?
Is that really something God does? And then to bring those people here to work as slaves?
Miss Franklin used to tell me that all people are equal in God’s eyes and should be equal under the law, but then, she was British.
And she always added, ‘Other than the dear King and Queen, of course.’ I’m fairly sure she was referring to her own, not to you and Mother. ”
Father nodded and looked amused. “A republican, and yet a monarchist. Well, most of us are not particularly consistent.”
“Yes,” I said, “because she also thought Britain was the most civilized country in the world, yet they traded in slaves and Germany did not. Until now, anyway.”
“Difficult,” my father agreed.
“Yes,” I said. “But to answer your question, I don’t think it’s very loving to kill people. Although you killed people, too. But it still doesn’t seem loving.”
“You know,” my mother put in with some alarm, “that you mustn’t say such things anywhere but here.
Not just in the palace. In any room but this.
” Which was my father’s dressing-room, where he’d moved the wireless some years back for reasons I don’t understand.
It’s quite inconvenient, as it means I can’t hear the music programs unless I’m invited.
“Of course,” I told Mother. “I’m not a child.
” How she does irritate me at times. “But if you want to know what I think? If the war were going so well, why all this talk about the Volkssturm, how the people’s army is shoring up the Siegfried Line and is ready to defend Germany to the last breath?
An army of old men and little boys? That doesn’t sound like winning to me.
That sounds like we don’t have enough men left to fight. ”
“Very good,” my father said. “Well reasoned.” What a glow that gave me!
But I hope we don’t have to go down to the cellar again for a while.
The servants are so tired the next day, and I nearly fell asleep last week as Frau Messer droned on again about Roosevelt, his ugly Jewish wife with her big nose, and the pernicious influence of International Jewry, whose puppet he is.
If they want us to believe these things, they must give us more evidence.
I copied it all down faithfully in my exercise book, but at least I know now that Father agrees with my reasoning.
It’s hard, I find, to keep all one’s thoughts to oneself—how I’d like to be able to ask questions for once, or even talk with friends—yet how much danger would I put us in if I did?
Or would I? Would the Gestapo really take me—or Father—away for my “defeatist thinking”?
I can’t believe it, but I keep mum, and I hide this diary under my mattress as well, and take it in my rucksack when we go to the cellar.
It seems too dramatic—what do the authorities care about the thoughts of schoolgirls?
—but Mother says anyone can be made an example of, and royals most of all, so I stay silent.
But I still think she’s an alarmist, always expecting the worst. There, I said it.
The Gestapo, the Russians, the SS … everything fills her with dread.
And yet life goes on much the same. I still go to school each day and have my piano lessons, Mother still goes over the menus with Frau Heffinger and examines the linens with Frau Schultz, the streetcars still run as always, and every Hausfrau queues at the shops with her string bag.
The war is a dreadful nuisance, and I’m truly very sorry for the people who have died, but mostly I just want it to be over, to have new dresses again and not to have to wear the ugly BDM uniform ever again, or practice darning socks and diapering babies, either.
I’d like to eat all the cheese and butter I want and have Frau Heffinger bake a special torte for Sunday dinner.
Everybody else must want the same thing.
If we all feel that way, if the soldiers no longer want to fight, surely Hitler will see that it’s time to stop.
Then the war will be over and everyone can go home and go back to normal, as they did last time. I only hope it happens soon.