Chapter 28 On the Road #2
We managed to find a restaurant that would accept our coupons and cash in return for coffee and soup—even ersatz coffee and potato soup tasted good to us, so hungry were we, but we had little enough of either—and then it was time to find Frau Langbein, Frau Heffinger’s sister, and hope that my faith in her would be justified.
I knew only the name of the village, but that was enough to point us in the right direction.
We were even overtaken by a farm cart along the way, and the farmer kindly took us up behind, so we spent the journey perched on bales of sweet-smelling hay.
The rain had stopped, and a beautiful rainbow came out across the hills. It must surely be an omen.
We asked for Frau Langbein’s house when we reached the village, and again—there it was.
It’s a large, half-timbered, whitewashed affair with a thatched roof, the people living in the front third, the cows in the back, a muck-heap in the stableyard, and window boxes that would be full of red geraniums in summer and were now, yes, full of yellow and purple crocuses!
I knocked at the kitchen door, and there she was.
Wearing a flowered apron, her hair rolled behind her head and her feet in sturdy shoes and woolen stockings, looking practical and sensible and so comfortingly familiar.
So like her sister, whom I’d loved all my life.
I said, my heart beating hard, “Frau Langbein? It’s Marguerite von Sachsen, from Dresden. And my friends.”
Her face—disbelief, happiness, doubt, fear—I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, what she was feeling. She said, “Princess Marguerite?”
“I’m calling myself Daisy now,” I said, suddenly realizing the real risk of this venture—why hadn’t I considered the danger as well as the benefit of coming here? “Daisy Glücksburg. It seems safer, with all the—” I made a vague hand gesture. “All the upheaval.”
“But I thought you were all dead!” Her face became hopeful, then. “Maria? My sister? Did she really—”
“I’m sorry,” I said, as gently as I could. “She died. They all died in the cellar. I’m sorry.” I wished I had better words.
“Oh,” she said, her face falling. “Well, I was told, of course, but— But come in, do.”
She stood aside, but I hesitated, saying, “Our shoes are dirty, I’m afraid.”
“Your friends,” she said, seeming to register them for the first time. “Who are they?”
Again the difficulty. Dr. Becker could hardly be my uncle here, could he?
Not to anyone who knew of my parents. “A friend of my father,” I said, then instantly realized the trouble with that.
She would know that he wasn’t Herr Kolbe, as his Kennkarte said.
How could she not? She must have eaten with him many times in the servants’ hall.
“Dr. Becker,” I finally said. “And his children, Andrea and Gerhardt. We’ve traveled together since Dresden.
” It wasn’t as if she needed to see their Kennkarten, and I could give her our ration coupons; she wouldn’t need to see the actual books.
She made us come inside, then, dried our clothes before the fire, sat us at the scrubbed pine table, and fed us peppermint tea and cakes.
Yes, cakes! They weren’t very sweet, but they tasted heavenly.
Surely there were eggs in them, and milk, too, and there were apricot preserves to put on top.
We had to restrain ourselves from gobbling up the whole plate—at least I did!
Afterward, she gave us a room under the eaves—“I’m sorry it’s only one,” she said, “but my sister-in-law, Elsa, and her daughter are staying with us as well. Perhaps the gentleman would rather sleep on the couch?”
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I said firmly, “if you don’t mind. Dr. Becker must be with his children.”
“Oh, I can’t—” she began.
“And your children?” I asked, in order to deter her from, what?
Offering me her bed? I longed to take off my wet clothes and avail myself of the unutterable privilege of her wringer-washer and bathtub, already promised.
How long since I’d washed my clothes well, or had a real, honest-to-goodness bath with hot water?
Her face clouded. “We lost Klaus at Stalingrad. Hermann is at the Eastern Front as well, but I haven’t heard from him in a long time, and am hoping for word.
Katya, my daughter, is married, of course.
Her husband is an officer with the SS—an older man, a Hauptsturmführer, and very important, and she and the children are living with him in Poland, where he’s stationed.
In the same place as my brother Fritz, in fact, Elsa’s husband.
Frau Biersack, I should say. I wish Katya and the children were here instead, but— Well, I’m glad they’re safe, that’s all. ”
“Your husband, though,” I said. “He’s still here?”
“Oh, yes,” she said, “Max is here. They didn’t take him, because of the farm, you know.
We’re essential, you see, for the war effort.
Milk, cream, butter—even preserves! And Schnapps, of course.
Max still makes his famous apple Schnapps, and very popular it is.
We’re meant to turn all of it in, but, na ja, one must eat to live!
The children look very hungry, no? We’ll have a good dinner for you today, meine Kleinen, as many liver dumplings as you can eat!
But first, Princess Marguerite, you must all bathe and rest.”
“Please,” I said, “I can’t be Princess Marguerite anymore, not even in the village. For one thing, the name doesn’t match my ration book!” I tried to joke, but it wasn’t easy.
She looked confused. “But why not? What have you to be ashamed of? It’s not as if you were Jewish.”
“No,” I said, “of course not, but—”
She flapped a hand. “I’ll never remember, but never mind, you’re perfectly safe with us. A princess, and a Catholic one at that? Of course you’ll be safe. Who would want to harm you?”
I couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t me I was worried about. How could I?
As for Joe? Joe wasn’t the least bit safe or warm.
March 29, 1945
Dear Dad,
Well, I can truly say “Happy Passover” today, because we’ve crossed the Siegfried Line.
Yeah, the four-hundred-mile line of fortifications that was supposed to be an “unbreachable bulwark,” according to Nazi propaganda.
(You know these things when you do the interpreting.) Steel-reinforced concrete pillboxes, trenches, dragon’s teeth obstacles, tank traps …
you name it, he put it there. The idea was pretty simple: put your forces behind it, slow your enemy down, and counterattack.
Apparently Hitler put tens of thousands to work on strengthening the thing earlier this year—mostly slave laborers and boys as young as 14—but that’s nothing to how many worked on building it.
Half a million, if you can believe it, almost all slave laborers.
A thing like that has to fail for there to be any justice in the world, and fail it did.
We’d been advancing fast to that point, the German troops we met being mighty demoralized and scared.
Too many of them are old men and young boys without much training.
At one point, a kid asked me, “Are you Roosevelt’s SS?
” That gave us all a good laugh. Apparently the SS are the crack troops.
We’ve heard that we’ll see them around Nuremberg, where they’ll be making a stand.
Not sure it’s the height of confidence to talk about how your army will get the job done once their backs are against the wall!
“Last stands” are last for a reason, right? Because they’re last.
I won’t tell you any more battle stories—I don’t much want to remember most of it at this point—except to say that we’ve wiped out whole columns of Germans.
We’ve developed a pretty streamlined process: locate the artillery, call in air support to take it out, then hit the troops with our own artillery.
It’s a sickening sight, though, rolling along.
The roads are littered with abandoned vehicles and equipment, and worse, with dead men and horses.
The Germans aren’t even stopping to bury their dead anymore.
Most of our time’s been spent chasing and capturing prisoners.
As soon as we come up to them now, they throw down their arms. Within 24 hours of breaking through the line, we’d taken 2,000 prisoners, and spent our time combing the area looking for any pockets of resistance while our engineers worked to blow up those Siegfried fortifications.
That was a satisfying sight, and I hope some of those slave laborers get to hear about it.
The most gratifying part, though? We got those captured troops of ours to clean up the town hall, and last night the whole unit held a Seder, us Jewish guys doing the best we could from memory.
We didn’t have any of the right foods, of course, but I figure the idea’s the main thing.
Giving thanks for deliverance from oppression—that one resonated well enough.
A freckle-faced kid named Tommy’s the youngest of us—he says he turned 18 right before he joined up, but I’m pretty sure he lied to get in—so he had to ask the Four Questions and wasn’t happy about it.
Think of that, though—a Seder on the German side of the Siegfried Line! I hope Hitler’s having conniptions.
“Next year in Jerusalem”—that’s got to resonate for a lot of Jews right now, too.
Is there anywhere in the world Jews can feel safe after this war?
I’d say “in the U.S.,” and probably in England, too, but is that really true?
Why are you a member of the Concordia Club instead of belonging to a country club closer to home?
I just figured that one out. It’s because they don’t admit Jews, isn’t it?
I’d love to be all the way proud of the U.S.
, and it still seems better to me than anyplace else I’ve heard about, but seeing what’s happened here has kind of woken me up to the things that aren’t perfect about us yet.
The Negro troops are separated out into their own units, for example, unlike all the rest of us.
Look, this unit is full of hill boys from Kentucky, farm boys from Nebraska and Georgia, the Italians and Irish and Puerto Ricans from New York, Chinese and Jews, all mixed up together—yet the Negro guys we’ve seen have mostly been machinists and drivers and cooks, except for the ones in the 761st, the Black Panthers tank battalion.
Those guys have done a bang-up job, so why are they separate? Doesn’t make sense.
Back to the Germans, though. One difference we see is between the cities and the country.
In the cities, people are hostile. They don’t see us as liberators but as conquerors, and do they ever hate us for it.
To be fair, just about every building is damaged or destroyed by bombs—you’ve never seen anything like it, in city after city—and they’re having a hard time getting by, but whose fault is that?
Just in case, we’ve been given strict nonfraternization orders.
We don’t want to give them any excuse. Seems Goebbels has been telling them that Americans are gangsters who are going to kill and loot and rape our way across the country.
All we can do, I guess, is not do those things, and figure they’ll catch on eventually.
It does make you wary of a knife in the back, though!
Things couldn’t be more different in the villages. There, the kids run up to us and ask for chocolate, and I’m afraid the nonfraternization orders go by the wayside a little. Folks in the country are just glad the whole thing’s over.