Page 55 of Hell to Pay
My first thought was,Wait. There were no sirens!Followed instantly byNo electricity to power them.Neither of which was any help to me.
“Quickly,” I shouted. “Back to the church!”
Too late. The whistles and shrieking of the falling bombs were all around us now, and then there was a blast that hurt my ears and a shock wave that knocked me off my feet. Black smoke billowed, and the unearthly music of the bombs filled the air.
I didn’t know which direction I was facing anymore. A geyser of water shot up, and I realized:the river.I crawled that way, panting, my eyes streaming, my face stinging oddly, until I hit something solid.
The wall.I knew it didn’t mean safety, but where would safety be? I clung to the gritty sandstone and turned my face against it like a child.If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.
It was a few minutes, I suppose, until I sensed that the explosions were farther away. The droning hum of the bombers seemed less, but my ears were ringing so much that it was hard to tell. I couldn’t see well anymore, either—my eyes were stinging badly now, my vision blurred, and there was something wet on my cheek. I wiped it and looked at my hand. Blood.
I stayed where I was for minutes more, afraid to move, until I heard footsteps, then a voice asking, “Fräulein, are you all right?”
I pushed myself to sitting. It wasn’t easy; my arms were trembling. “Y-yes,” I said. “I think so.” The wetness was running down my neck now. I was, as always, bleeding too much, and how to stop it?
“We must get you to help,” the person said. It was a young man, I realized through my blurred vision, practically a boy. Wearing a Hitler Youth uniform, and perhaps sixteen? Seventeen? I had an impression, no more. My face was practically pressed into his shoulder as he reached for me, and I saw the insignia on it. AnOberscharführer,a senior squad leader. I flinched and felt frantically for the scarf. It was still there, and I struggled to my feet and, with my arm around my companion’s waist, staggered along with him on unsteady legs. Ahead of me, I saw a sprawl of arms and legs, a redness on the stones of the terrace, and turned my face away, a coward.
We went through a door and down some stairs. The young man was practically carrying me now. Other hands took hold of me then, and a woman said, “Oh, that’s a nasty cut on your forehead, isn’t it? Never mind, we’ll get you sorted out.” She walked me over and sat me on a sort of ledge. I saw others lying on the floor, some of them groaning pitifully, and one of them, nearest me, making a dreadful rasping noise.
Eventually, the rasping breathing stopped, and I knew why but didn’t want to look. Somebody came and quickly stitchedand dressed my wound. Another man told me to tip my head back and removed debris from my eyes with a paper, then put stinging drops in both of them, and that made things a bit better, though my vision still hadn’t cleared. I thought,Where are the others? Are they remembering to be careful? Will I be able to find them again?From the movement around me, I knew I was in a large space, but I didn’t know where. It wasn’t the church, or I’d have recognized something. It was a cellar, but which cellar? And where were the others?
Oh, no. Were they even alive? Had I failed them so soon? I’d crawled to safety, and I’d never even thought about them!
I’d lost my pillowcase, too, which had held our food, but mostly—where were the others?
I stood up, but I wobbled and had to sit down again.
“Water,” one of the supine figures moaned. It was a woman. I couldn’t tell how old, for she had blood on her face. “Water.”
“There’s no water yet,” a hurrying figure told her. “Perhaps later.” I’m ashamed to say that I immediately realized how thirsty I was. I told myself that I’d had a drink of cold, clear water from the cistern just before we’d left, but my mouth was so dry that my lips were stuck together, and my throat burned.
I don’t know how long I stayed there. I just remember the terrible thirst, and wanting to lie down. Eventually, a woman came through and handed me a sandwich in a packet. I took it, but I couldn’t eat. I was too thirsty.
That was when I heard, “Mar— Daisy?”
It was Dr. Becker, and the children were with him.
I dissolved in tears.
Alix said, “Oma. Wow. I wasn’t expecting that twist.”
We’d reached the airport. Sebastian pulled into the parking lot and slotted the car into a space, but we didn’t get out. There was no point. It was just an airport.
Sebastian asked, “Were they all right?”
“Yes,” I said. “They weren’t injured. We were in the cellar of the Albertinium—the sculpture museum. It hadn’t been damaged as badly as the other buildings around, somehow. It was very—very random, the pattern of destruction.”
“Why did they even bomb you again, though?” Ben asked. “If you’d been bombed twice already, and everything was, like, wrecked?”
“Ask Hamburg,” I said. “Ask Berlin. They hadn’t hit the marshaling yards the night before, I heard later, but they wouldn’t have known that. They didn’t destroy them this time either, but they demolished more of the suburbs. The entire central city lay in ruins, but on the outskirts, it wasn’t as bad as in other places. I do believe one reason for all the bombing was to encourage the population to push for surrender, but as I’ve said, that wasn’t feasible. Hitler was ensconced in theFührerbunkerby then, deep below theReichstagbuilding in Berlin, and the rest of the Nazi top leadership was equally well protected. What could ordinary people do?”
“So where did you go?” Ben asked. “Afterwards?”
“We waited for a long time,” I said. “We sat, and we waited, and we heard others tell their stories. A man had watched those around him be sucked into the fire the night before, just plucked up as if by a tornado and pulled into the flames. One woman clung to a lamppost for hours, afraid to move for fear of burning. People’s shoes stuck to the asphalt and melted away, and they couldn’t get out and died where they stood. And so much more. Terrible stories. Once again, I realized, I’d been lucky. Finally, they said it was our turn, and we climbed onto the back of a truck. The badly wounded lay on stretchers on the floor, the rest of us stood and held onto the sides, andwe came here, to the airport. The ride was very rough, full of stops and starts, and there was fire everywhere at first. Nothing around us but fire and ruin. When we got there, they gave us noodle soup, which was good, and tea, which wasn’t—how spoiled I had been!—and there were cots to sleep on. And that was the first day.”
26
WAR BREAD
