I am happy to recall so many details about our family and almost feel obliged to write down what these old pictures in my album still tell me.  I am over 75 years old, I was not born into the language I am writing in, and I am not another Vladimir Nabukov.  I hope stylistic shortcomings will be forgiven.  Fortunately my old fashioned computer, a hand-me down from my wife's digital embroidery work, contains a spell checker.  My computer is still quite usable as a Word Processor and I can go on line with an older modem of a speed of 32.333 kb, that's what it announces connecting to Compu-Serve.  My hard drive has a capacity of about 900 Mb, half of that is used so far, I can store much more if I have to.  Writing about this 'Photo Album' uses less than 300 kb.

Looking at these old pictures I can't help but add a few stories here and there  In that case my collection will only serve as background to a few bits of history, I now wish I had taken many more snapshots.

I started this photo album in 1941, I was 14 years old, World War II was in its second year.  Our small town of Blankenburg did not experience any bombing raids.  This small town of 13.000 is located close to the Harz mountains, its highest peak about 400 feet. Many wounded soldiers recovered in local hotels which for the time being had been converted to hospitals.  Obituaries in our local newspaper carried names of friends who had been killed or were missing in action. 

The first two pictures that were not glued into my album will indicate how times had changed in Germany.  We 6 year old boys are standing next to our first grade teacher, the kind and friendly "Herr Knapke".  The year is 1933, a few months ago Hitler came to power.

1937, in our second picture, we have been admitted to 'Gymnasium'.  We are all dressed in our Hitler Youth uniforms.  We did not normally wear those to school but only dressed up for this occasion.  One of our teachers who was a small scale party type wears a swastika emblem on his lapel.

Most boys in my first grade picture of 1933 were quite poor.  Once a few of us walked home poking fun at Hitler and his regime with a song, we had no idea about it's meaning.  Our song repeated itself over and over that Hitler would be blown to pieces by a bomb in his behind-poetry of the gutter.  I am sure my buddies must have heard about this stuff at home, a six year old boy is politically not that interested, we just enjoyed singing it.  Some of my friends parents were perhaps communists but soon all opposition to the "Third Reich" stopped.

When our Gymnasium picture of 1937 was taken we are ten years old.  We had to pass an exam to enter this school of higher learning.  Only three boys from my grade one picture were admitted.  Only 5 to 10 per cent of the general school population were selected to attend 'Gymnasium' and at age 18 followed by "Abitur", a last exam, we could enter a university.  I  think a child of 10 is much too young to be judged as being bright enough to enter an academic career, but this system was relied upon for many years and had served Germany well in many branches of the sciences.

Our parents paid a quarterly fee and buying our school books was an additional expense.  Because of this many of my former friends from grammar school would have been unable to attend.  A father's social standing also helped to have his son admitted but slow learners were weeded out during our first school year.  In case of well to-do parents they were enrolled in a private school.  We were usually 30 students in our class.  In 1943 we had to leave school because of the war, we were only 15 and 16 years old at the time.  There are some snapshots about this a bit later.

'Gymnasium' was to prepare us boys for an academic career.  (A high school for girls was called "Lyceum").  English was our first foreign language followed at age 13 by Latin, Math, Physics and Chemistry (plus German, history, music etc.)  The last two years French was added, a general humanistic background was offered.  Some cheating took place but was not openly tolerated.  I think our load was too heavy to perform well in so many subjects without the help of some 'cribbing'.  School ended at 1 p.m. and we had a fair amount of homework.  Often we listened to lectures to get used to take notes quickly and then we had to write a small essay about the subject as our home work.  This began in our first year in Biology, I can still recall a lecture about 'Anemones' but I had not written down enough details of 'Ottchen's' lecture.  "Ottchen," his real name was Otto, is to our left in the 1937 class picture.  He also had us stand at attention at the beginning and end of the school year, raising or lowering the flag.

Academically he was not as well trained as were most of our other teachers whom we addressed as "Herr Doctor".  Later we even had one "Herr Professor", a very demanding historian who had been teaching in Hannover.  These older conservative teachers impressed us a lot with their knowledge and their outlook about current events.  For their generation it must have been difficult to teach because our daily propaganda often operated on a different level.

Otto on the other hand was conceited and more of a fanatic then most of his colleagues, he was one of the convinced party members.  He also taught music and sports, we listened to classical records in our "Aula," a Latin name for our assembly hall where at the end of our school year the director of our school gave a speech.  'Ottchen' also conducted the choir, we sang the "Hunters" of Carl Maria von Weber's " Freischütz", the first romantic German opera.  In spite of my dislikes of Otto we must have profited somehow.  I still remember the opera and can sing the 'lied' of the "Hunters". 

'Ottchen' liked patriotic songs from World War I and that was boring.  A text about dying for the Fatherland and other heroics, much beyond the imagination of a bunch of 10 or 12 year old kids.  I do not think any one of us had our mind set on this kind of old fashioned 'Kaiser Wilhelm' material.  In our gentle protest we sometimes sang in a sort of double tap, not too loud, it was only possible to do that in the last row of the choir.  That's as close to jazz as we got, in those years it was called "Hot", the French called it "Le Jazz Hot".  We also had one boy who some how owned a record about "Lambeth Walk" but that's as far as our knowledge went.  Any melody could be "hotted", that is slightly changed to almost sound like "Jazz".

We simply went along with 'Otto's' old fashioned musical material as well as some Latin proverbs we learned such as " It's sweet and honorable to die for the Fatherland", (Dulce et decorum est ..)  I still wonder whether it's such a good idea to elevate the old Greek or Latin times to such a degree of admiration.  In our western society we use Roman or Greek columns in front of government buildings, but in hindsight one might think about how easily the German system of justice was converted to become "Aryan Law".  Those in charge had usually received this very same classical education.

Because of a humanistic background I believe we managed to maintain some sense of critical judgment.  As the war went on many of our younger teachers whom we adored had to join the Armed Forces.  They were replaced by older, in part retired teachers.  Rumor had it that some of them at one time had been Freemasons.  Those societies did not exist any longer in Hitler's Germany.  On the surface we did not know much about politics but it is amazing what a young boy with an open mind can figure out for himself.  In a small town it is hard to keep anyone's background discreet.  I remember that my father was handed a folder with some important papers for safe keeping from a neighbor.  This person had been a member of a Masonic Order and did not want to keep these documents at home.  Years later I looked at some of this material.  It did not give me much insight but it was just the excitement of the unknown.  I also learned that some things are best kept quiet.  I had found these papers in my father's writing desk.

Karl Sch., our well respected English teacher, stands in the center of our first grade picture entering Gymnasium.  He brought his violin to school and we sang "Cherry Ripe", "It's a long way to Tipperary" while he accompanied us.  We also drew illustrations to fit English proverbs: "Strike the iron while it's hot" and many more.  There was a poem about "The village blacksmith" and we read about "Three little bears".  He introduced us to our first foreign language in a very pleasant way and brought us a bit closer to a nation none of us had ever visited.  To enrich our English vocabulary we added words into a small notebook and we would randomly be tested the next day.  As my mother had some English during her high school she enjoyed having me repeat my newly acquired words each afternoon, a good test for me.

I don't remember being exposed to anti-British propaganda in school, even after our countries were at war.  "Karlchen" was a widower and lived with his daughter in a small apartment.  His face showed a noticeable twitch with which he became afflicted during World War I where he was buried alive by a grenade explosion.  It seems he had experienced his share of sadness but that did not prevent us cruel animals from provoking him and instant punishment followed.  He twisted our hair above the ears which convinced us to keep quiet the next time.  He was a very kind person and a dedicated teacher.  I once mentioned in class that I thought counting in English was very close to a dialect spoken in Northern Germany.  I learned to speak it a bit while I spent my summer vacations at my grandparents Schmidt in Lüneburg, a town over one thousand years old.  This relationship of languages was quite an eye opener for me and I found English not that hard to learn and enjoyed the way we were taught.

During our English class we some times watched a short film or saw slides about the Tower of London or the meaning of the Crown jewels.  We had a picture in our English book about British Boy Scouts going camping with a caption :  " They clean their pots and pans with sand".  I noticed that those boys from England wore a similar kerchief as we did in the Hitler-Youth but I guess Boy Scouts started wearing it long before we did.  Later on we read some of Sir Cecil Rhodes' writings about Africa but that's all forgotten by now.

Our "Direx", the director of the school, stands on the far right.  He stands on the right in more ways than one and had our highest respect.  Rumor had it that he was posted to our school in small town Blankenburg from the Ministry of Education in Brunswick.  Perhaps  he was not completely trusted as far as the Nazi regime was concerned.  The entire school owes him a lot.  He taught us to be critical about the current ideology, I still marvel at his talents.  To counter bombastic speeches, the norm in those days, he mentioned Nelson's words during the battle of Trafalgar :  "Gentlemen, England expects every man to do his duty!" which is simplicity itself.  He must have succeeded in having us think about our times without hate.  He had a delicate way of lecturing but could not offend the regime.  When we were to be introduced to our first foreign language which was English, he took our class to his house next door.  At the full hour we listened to the Westminster chime of "Big Ben" standing in his hall way.

In our picture of 1937 we all wore a Hitler-Youth uniform but we did not feel pressured.  Everybody seems to look quite happy as ten year old boys in their innocence do.  The kid on the far left was a bit of a class bully and once went beyond the threshold of my patience.  To defend myself I quickly grabbed his head which surprised him.  Holding him tightly under my arm I banged it a few times against the door of our class room.  It rattled the door and made a lot of noise and I knew he must have felt it.  The next day his mother complained to my mother that her son had a headache after my treatment, otherwise in school he never bothered me again.

He was ambitious and many years later he became a Hitler Youth leader.  Walking home after school we stopped at a street corner, just talking about the war (about 1942).  We were debating how things were going because the outcome of many battles did not look too rosy for the German Army.  I might have mentioned that our troops were doomed in the battle of Stalingrad and thought we were engaged in a discussion between school friends, but now my classmate started to warn me about my attitude.  I had a feeling he was capable of going even further, his remarks almost became a threat.  Although we were classmates, our parents knew each other and we received an identical education, one could clearly see the difference in attitude how some people so young could be influenced by propaganda. 

We did not have many convinced "leader types" among us, I don't think more than four or five in our class of 30 boys were that ambitious.  It is ironic that this same " leader ship" group stayed at home when the rest of us, including boys of a class one year younger than ours, had to stop their formal education and report to an Anti-Aircraft battery.  My mother was incensed about such injustice.  In 1943 we were 14, 15 and 16 years old, our guns were located in the middle of a sugar beet field west of the city of Brunswick.  I have some snapshots of this muddy location a bit later.  What our Nazi leader types were supposed to do at home was never explained.  We had to do our duty, stopped going to school and were not civilians any longer.

In our 1937 school picture I am sitting in the center of the first row next to a boy who is not in uniform because he was not old enough to join the Hitler-Youth.  In 1945 when Germany was divided into 'East' and 'West' he was involved guiding groups of people illegally across the border to West Germany, in that process he also made a lot of money.    He was perhaps 17 but for how long he succeeded doing this I don't know; even bribing Russian border guards did not make these operations fool proof.

September 1945 I visited my father who stayed with grandma Schmidt in Lüneburg in West Germany.  I had to illegally cross the border in the Harz mountains.  Russian soldiers had just begun to build guard towers to overlook the recently established border and shoot anyone trying to run across.  All trees between these observation posts had been cut down, the "Iron Curtain" was already in place and in coming years became almost impenetrable.  I managed to run across unhindered and came back using the same route.  Unfortunately I did not take any pictures during this adventure!

My father was released from an American POW camp in September, 1945 but could not come home to East Germany.  He stayed with grandma Schmidt in Lüneburg where I visited him.  There had been many arrests by the Russians and my mother gave me strict orders not to come back with Papa Bank.  He did not feel guilty of any crimes and wanted to see his family.  Because of a well meaning neighbor who had reported my trip to the Russian authorities as we arrived at home I was arrested by the GPU, the Russian secret police.  Their operating procedure was always the same:  To create as much fear as possible, our door bell rang continuously, I went downstairs and was greeted by three persons, a Russian soldier with a rifle and mounted bayonet, a German police officer and a Russian civilian from the secret police.  They searched our apartment turning all drawers upside down and I was then driven away by a black car and dropped off at the local GPU prison.  The accusations were trumped up charges : "Smuggling weapons for the Americans".  So far I had not even seen an American soldier. 

During my lock up I was interrogated many times but released after two weeks.  During this time I saw many teachers and other well known persons from my home town being transported off on trucks guarded by Russian soldiers.  They were locked up in camps further East that later became well known for their horrendous conditions.  Many died during their incarceration and quite a few were unable to work again upon their release.  This cruel action served to intimidate the population.  While I was interrogated I refused to sign any documents although I was once threatened by my Russian GPU officer.  There was a Russian female interpreter present who wrote down everything in Cyrillic which I could not read.

Only one other person was also released, 'Marshall von Grone', an elderly head administrator of the 'House of Hannover', our local royalty.  While we sat around in our Russian prison he taught me a lot about playing cards, there was not much else to do.  My mother's birth certificate helped in my release, she was born in Charkow, Russia (1903).

On my right side in our Gymnasium picture sits "William" Stollecky, his name was not "Wilhelm".  His parents were in New York but he lived with his grandparents across the street from us.  Very modest people who themselves were immigrants from Poland and whose son had emigrated to the United States in the 20's.  In 1939 William's father must have felt that Germany might go to war.  After a short visit he and his wife picked up my friend and I never saw William again.  I only received a postcard from New York with a picture of the World's Fair with its "Space Needle."  He also addressed a letter to our class but I was the only one to receive my own private postcard.  I kept it for a long time and it really meant a lot to me.

I was very impressed by William's parent's huge steamer trunk that was airing out with all their clothes in his grandparents back yard.  I had never before seen such display of clothing in private possession.  I was invited over and said good-by.  William for the first time had met his 4 year old brother Ralph who continuously shouted "No, no!" which sounded more like "Now, now" to me, my English was not yet good enough to understand much more.  To me the entire scene in William's backyard remained in my mind like a picture from a far away country, it's hard for me to put my impressions into words.  I thought the United States could not have been all that bad meeting this fairly well to-do family.  After William and his parents had gone back to the States his two cousins George and Freddy who had also lived in New York moved in with their grandparents.  Perhaps their parents were not as concerned about a possibility of a war as William's parents were or  they might have believed in the future of the new German regime.  Both boys, Freddy 13 and George 15 years old, were born in the States and had gone to school in New York.  They were my first exposure to boys who had lived in another country.  I was 13 at the time and started to view their world from my small town point of view.   

I was impressed by the amount and quality of toys they had brought along.  Baseball bats, boxing gloves and of course they owned an American football we did not know what to do with.  They talked about an infinite variety of ice-cream that one could buy in New York and claimed that soap in the States was of much better quality and a lot larger than our German low grade variety.  There were stories about their roller skating in the city, hanging on to big trucks up and down straight avenues while most of our streets were not even paved!  Both were excellent swimmers and knew how to crawl, this was not as widely taught in Germany at that time.

Of course we boys in their neighborhood assumed they were either bragging a lot or home sick.  Living in a small town in Germany must have been a tremendous change for them.  It was not possible for George to enter Gymnasium because of language difficulties and he started an apprenticeship in precision machining.  He could never convince his boss and 'Master' that one could measure precisely working with an 'inch' system.  In Germany only plumbers and carpenters still use this in their everyday work.  What a culture shock it must have been for those young brothers from the States.

I became interested in electronics, building a crystal set and working with radio tubes and batteries.  What my new found friends from the USA talked about made my head spin: "Where we used to live you can sometimes find old discarded kitchen radios in the trash!".  I could not believe this and I think I was ready to leave and hunt for those treasures right then and there.  They said cheaper radios were not worth fixing.  Many radios in Germany at that time were not even "Superhetrodyne" (5 tube radios, for the knowledgeable few), but simple 'straight' 2 tube receivers.  This suited the Nazi regime.  With those simple radios it was hard to receive 'foreign' stations.  To tune in to the BBC during the war was a crime!  I also don't know that anyone ever discarded a radio. After the war all these antiques had to be fixed.  I repaired many of those myself.

There were other tales about their former lives in the United States, daily occurrences that were so different from our conditions in Germany.  Brothers George and Freddy had hitched onto a truck and roller skated down the streets of New York.  In our neighborhood most streets were covered with gravel.  The quality of our soap was not as good but the war was not yet showing signs of coming shortages.  Freddy and George's grandma often talked to my mother, as neighbors do, and she voiced her concern about America to enter the war again.  "That will soon bring the war to an end".  Of course she remembered the First World War; politicians should listen more carefully to their people.  She was a very plain and simple woman.  Her husband went to a freight yard to collect coal that had fallen off while unloading.  We saw him walking down our street pulling William's "Radio Flyer" wagon, a gift from the United States.  We children were not allowed to play with it, we might wreck his sturdy wagon.  Talk about some humble folk.

After the war I met Freddy only once; bragging one night in the middle of the street, a bit tipsy, that Russian soldiers could not touch him:  "I am an American citizen!".  I hope he made it safely back to his parents in the United States.

Here are some pictures taken on a visit to Hannover in August 1941.  The city still looks beautiful and peaceful with a huge fountain. People were strolling in gardens established a long time ago by members of the House of Hannover.  Not much later all of the inner city was destroyed during air raids.  Manfred N. and I had been ordered to attend a special training course established at Army barracks in this city.  We both belonged to an electronics unit in the Hitler-Youth and were able to fulfill requirements in Morse code, operating transmitters and receivers to be eligible to take part in this advanced training session but when we arrived to register no one had heard of our special course and we were told to go back home.

Manfred thought to make the best of it and decided we should visit his aunt and uncle he hadn't seen in quite some time.  They owned a house in a suburb of Hannover and our exiting technical trip now changed into a pleasant sightseeing adventure.  After an interesting ride by street car, the first one for me, we did not have those in our home town, his aunt and uncle were more than happy to put us up for the night.  To celebrate our visit we had to taste their home made cherry wine which I liked very much but the next morning I had the worst headache and a hangover.  I can still see how I felt looking at my snapshots (pages 1/2/3).  Other than that I admired a city I had never seen before.  As we were waiting for our train at the Hannover train station my friend Manfred explained to me the details of a freight yard.  He was apprenticed to become a book keeper but technically he was quite gifted and later finished a second apprenticeship in radio-electronics and was best in state at his exam.  After the war, living in East Germany, he got married and had one daughter.  He and many of his friends hated the communist regime and started to work for an American intelligence agency.  There always are traitors and his whole group was eventually caught and they were imprisoned.  After many years he was either exchanged or "bought free" by the West German Government.  Through an aunt, my father's sister, I was able to send greetings to his mother which she passed on to him but we never met again.

A class mate of mine, also with a strong interest in electronics, was Kurt Müller who is holding his cat I think it was his birthday.  He explained an electronic circuit diagram to me.  We were only 12 or 13 at that time and he had acquired his knowledge from a neighbor who worked in the radio business.  These technical drawings really got me hooked!  I thought there was nothing more logical than pencil lines on paper, electronic parts drawn as symbols and all this could be interconnected.  Then a radio can be built by anyone and it will work.  I was truly fascinated but I also had my high school commitments to think about.  After a while there were conflicts.  My parents did not understand much about my hobby but they saw that my grades in school had suffered.

When I finally got the old radio from grandfather Bank, the train engineer, I was in my own private world.  I carefully took his old receiver apart and built my own two tube battery operated radio according to plans we obtained from small booklets which gave us  instructions about the inner workings of tubes, tuning capacitors and many other components.  Since pocket money was extremely scarce I used cigar boxes as a chassis.  I built myself a voltmeter but did not even own a soldering iron.  I even built myself a lead battery melting lead and using some kind of a metal frame to cast  the plates.  If melting lead on my mother's gas stove was not dangerous enough, I also had to "form" those plates electrically so my battery had a "plus" and "minus" plate.  I am not trying to explain the process here.  Let me just mention that this operation was taking place under my bed.  An old aquarium served as container for my battery and was filled with sulfuric acid, then I had to electrically charge the lead plates.  I did this over night but the next morning I woke up dizzy from acid fumes and outgassing but my battery worked.  At school we radio fanatics had another adventure to talk about.

Under the ceiling in my room I strung an indoor antenna, a wire ran from opposite walls in zigzag fashion.  To get even better reception I also strung an outdoor antenna.  This was a bit dangerous because I had to climb into a tall tree next door.  The large garden was unoccupied and I could get there by jumping over the fence.  There was a striking difference in reception once I had hooked up this long wire to my two tube radio.  This technical interest always remained and I owe it to Kurt.  We always joked around and called him "Knurt" but I have no idea why we came up with such names.  He was very industrious and smart, a rare combination and usually had much better grades than I.  He spoke with a lisp and it seems he often used names with many SS's in it.  Places where he and his parents had visited such as "SSassnitss" which sounded very funny to us cruel boys. 

His parent's had a modest income, his father worked for the local train company.  He did not have to pay any fees for Kurt's schooling as our parents did.  His mother was a skilled milliner and Kurt wore her indestructible handmade leather caps.  In our class he was the only one wearing such a cap which looked unique to us.  At times his mother worked long hours on her knitting machine she had set up in her kitchen.  She once said to keep going and not to fall asleep she drank too much coffee to finish her workload around Christmas time.  This gave their family some extra income.  They also kept a pig and butchered it at the end of the year.  Their small house was located a bit out of town and Kurt was allowed to ride his bicycle to school.  I was invited to his birthday party which was always a special event because his mother managed to make whipping cream which was almost impossible to obtain during the war. 

Kurt was timid and always very well behaved and much more careful than the rest of us.  Getting older he did not volunteer to join the Armed Forces as an engineering officer candidate as some of us did.  The irony is that he was one of the first to be drafted while we were still busy in our Anti-Aircraft Battery.  Not too long after he was killed somewhere in Poland fixing broken telephone lines.  He was the first of our group to die in the war.

Kurt was an only child and my mother encouraged me to visit his parents after the war.  It was not easy for me to visit the parents of a close friend, lost in the war but now it still makes me feel good that I had listened to her.  Because of chaos and devastation after the war millions of refugees tried to find to find each other, many had lost their homes.  Chaos is hard to describe but it happened that a mother became separated from her child.  Such a tragedy must have happened to the tiny baby Kurt Müller's father had discovered, dehydrated and half dead, as he checked an empty train.  He took the small bundle home with him and Müller's told me they were trying to adopt this child. 

I had just returned from the war, I was only 18 years old but so many of these tragedies make a young person think about the value of life.  Only a few months later my mother and I fled to West Germany and I never met this family again.  The separation of the two Germanys became permanent, each family struggling to try to establish as normal a life as possible but under very difficult conditions.

Most boys in our class tried to enlist for a special service and I was accepted for "Air Force Signals" where I thought I might be able to continue with a technical education in my interest in electronics.  For some unknown reason this Air Force Signals regiment took until July, 1944 to call us up for service in Berlin.  Nothing materialized about my hopes for a continued technical education.  I finally ended up in the infantry as did the entire regiment.  My album ends with pictures from this time.  I will talk about this later.

The boy on the far left next to Kurt is "Cappy" Meyer.  At that time we were 12 years old and no one could imagine that the Meyer family one day would loose all their belongings.  This happened in 1946 when a Russians collectivization program was started and the estate of the Meyer family, a fair size farm, was subdivided into tiny parcels.  Long before the war Meyers were involved in plant research of Soya beans.   One boy's father in our class was a biologist, breeding Soya beans which look like peas.  We called happy and giggling Harold, "Giggle pea", but his real name was Harold Bi'enko.  Soya became an important addition to the world's food supply but at that time we did not know much about its coming importance.  Because of Russia forcing their system upon farms that had been productive many families in East Germany who had to suffer tried to leave for West Germany where they had to start a new life. 

Turning another pages in my album:  A little girl with her mother is holding a bouquet of flowers, they are standing in front of a train, happy to go back home.  They had been transplanted to our town because of the war with France when the German civilian population close to the border was evacuated.  For a while these people stayed with families in our part of the country.  My father at City Hall had the thankless task to relocate those temporary refugees in private quarters in Blankenburg.  Of course no one likes to have to share the privacy of their home with strange families when most apartments were not that spacious to start with but it had to be done somehow.  The war with France did not last long and everyone went back home again and here we see a snapshot of this happy event carrying flowers as a farewell gift.

To live in one apartment with refugees who came from so far away taught the Harz Mountain folk, our family was no exception, how " The other half" lived.  They were all Catholic and living close to the French border their cooking and eating habits were strongly influenced by their neighbor, at times (1919) their district belonged to France.  Our guests also talked in a dialect that for us was almost impossible to understand.  I remember one of my classmates telling me that his father, who was a manager in one of the steel mills, often listened to 'Radio Vatican' which we "Lutherans" could not understand.

To us our guests might as well have come from another world.  In Germany there were very distinct dividing lines when it came to religion and customs.  The South of Germany is predominately Catholic as are the Rhinelanders.  Because of Martin Luther and the reformation in 1500 the rest are mostly Protestant.  The amount of travel taking place to-day was unknown in the years before the war.  My aunts and uncles did visit Bavaria during their vacation as did my grandparents Bank.  They worked for the local train company and received train tickets at much reduced rates.  Inge and I left Germany in 1953 but neither of us had ever seen the river Rhine. 

We also felt that these people living close to the border with France who had a strange dialect had a much higher standard of living.  In that part of the country heavy industry paid much better wages than most workers received in my home town.  The parents of a large family stayed at our apartment.  Their children lived in our neighborhood and came to us to be with their mother and father, all talking in our small kitchen.  In a way it was an enjoyable time although being close together meant living with many a compromise.  Unfortunately one of their girls had head lice and soon after my older sister who was 6 years old was also starting to scratch her head.  My mother had never heard about such animals but so it went, some of it was stressful.  Combined with some chemical treatment my mother bought a 'dust' comb and slowly got rid of those animals.  Here is a picture of a soldier, Horst Smolarek, one of our refugee's sons, I think he died in the war.  His father tried to commit suicide, we only heard about through a letter.

In my cousin Lilo's wedding picture my sister Sigrid is the flower girl, freezing half to death in her pink organza dress.  The little boy lived next door, his mother was dying with TB.  The most important moment for me was to take some pictures with an expensive "Contax" camera.  Photography also became a hobby and stayed with me even today.

My cousin's husband wears an officer's uniform but before the war he worked for the German IRS.  He was wounded in Russia, shot through his chin which took a long time to heal and had my cousin Lilo quite worried.  After he recovered sufficiently he was sent back to the front and not long after she received the message: "Missing in Action", nothing was ever heard from him again.  Lilo had one child from this marriage, after the war she re-married, I think her little girl became a Medical Doctor in East Germany.

My cousin Lilo and her parents are sitting in their living room.  Aunt Else, my father's sister, started a business repairing dolls and did reasonably well because in those years it was hard to buy many new items.  Handy people could make a living doing this kind of work and it also gave them the opportunity to barter, dolls are always in demand.  Tante Else's husband was a train engineer and often explained some technical details to me.  My cousin Lilo sits at her desk as if she is writing a letter to her husband on the Russian front.  His picture is to her left, I hope he received a copy of my snapshot. 

Throughout this album are many pictures of my sister Sigrid who was born 20.Sept.1936, I am 10 years older, and Gisela who was born 31.May,1941 and I am 15 years older than her.  I once tried to do a close-up shot with my cheap box camera.  But because it had a fixed focus set for about 12 feet I could not succeed, but it was worth an experiment.  With my meager pocket money I thought about each exposure, there were only 8 pictures on one film.  Later my father let me use his 6 by 9 cm Agfa folding camera, he thought most of his pictures were blurry.  I looked at it and found that two struts holding the shutter and lens assembly wobbled each time the shutter release was pressed.  I gently hit one rivet with a small hammer until it felt tight enough.  I was so proud of myself, now I could work with an adjustable camera.  To this day I love taking pictures and I also own a small camera collection.  Some pictures in my album I developed myself.

As a young boy I once watched a friend of our family process a film and develop pictures on his kitchen table.  A "bone" of glass sat in a developer tray and the film was pulled back and forth under this glass rod as it was in touch with developer solution.  A red light bulb replaced a kitchen light and to see a picture slowly becoming visible was absolute magic for me.  We now face the problem what to do with so many mass produced snapshots.  The average household has at least 10 photo albums!  This is where digital photography might help, a computer can store thousands of pictures which can also be transferred to a CD.

In the first picture my sister Sigrid stands with her girl friend whose father also worked in an office at City Hall.  In 1945, after the Russians occupied our town, most civil servants were deported, half of them never came back.  They were not removed because they were Nazis, it was a continuation of tactics used for many years under Stalin.

During the summer of 1941 Papa (Fritz) Bank was in charge of a summer party for children of employees from City Hall.  He really enjoyed giving out presents and generally having a good time himself.  This took place once a year at one of the local garden restaurants.  My mother never liked eating Wieners which are a tradition at those events.  For her they were a low quality food but for me this outdoor party was an opportunity to eat as many hot dogs as I liked, important memories! 

Papa Bank also volunteered as guide on hiking tours in the Harz Mountains.  The "Harz Club" erected signs so tourists would not to lose their way.  Some of those signs were elaborately carved and painted all done on a volunteer basis.  As a young boy I took part going on many hikes into the mountains.  A friend of my father from 'the flat land' came to visit us.  He took all of us along in his small car and I got car sick.  I think our driver was not used to driving in the mountains and had his problems shifting gears.  His car jerked back and forth and after a while I had to throw up.  Going down hill the brakes started to smell, our family was glad to be back at home.  During the years before the war very few people owned a car, no one in the Bank family owned one and my father never learned to drive. 

On one paved road leading out of town we boys sat on a sidewalk trying to identify a model or count how many cars had gone by.  Here I could also use my roller skates and did not obstruct the traffic too much, there wasn't any!

This road led to a village and carried its name.  As it entered town it was re-named "Mewes Strasse" after the Mewes family who owned a large seed company.  On the outskirts were large fields covered with flowers, a beautiful sight.  The family had enough money to take care of the stairs leading to the Lutheran church half way up to the castle.  These stairs were built using a soft local sandstone and in time became worn.  Mainly the old folks complained, a person could easily slip on steps that became slanted.  The older Mr. Mewes had a goatee and was a strict business person.  He looked his part and was not known for his kindness in his personal relation ships, my Godfather worked many years for that company as manager and lived in a house owned by Mr. Mewes.

The youngest member of this wealthy Mewes family had some mental problems, Kurt was about my age and at times we played together.  His short temper never became violent and we got along quite well, his mother enjoyed my visits to her son.  My friend Kurt who lived only one street over from ours, on "Mewes Street", we lived on "George Street", had the bright idea we should sell tulips in town.  We filled our little wagon with flower pot soil and Kurt started ripping out some tulips from his parent's front yard which we stuck into the earth in our wagon.  I am sure his family kept a good variety for themselves.  We were now ready to go on our trip into town as salesmen of beautiful tulips, collector varieties perhaps.  Unfortunately people did not pay much attention to us two, we were two unsuccessful 9 year old business partners.  Finally a policeman, who knew where Kurt must have gotten his flowers, told us to go home and that was the end of our business adventure. 

I don't recall if Kurt was punished but the same policeman, who also knew my father well, much later signed a document when Inge and I were trying to get our visa in Canada to go to the United States.  By that time he was long retired, we entered the States in 1965.  For my immigration papers I had to prove I did not have a police record starting at age 16.  I was then still living in Blankenburg and in 1945 it became East Germany.  Apparently that did not bother the immigration folks.  I still have his statement.  It was my aunt Else, the doll repair lady, who also knew this good man and asked him to be of help.  It pays to have had some roots in a small town-QED.  Mr. Rieklewsky, the kind policeman nor my aunt are still alive, I wish they could now read about this.

The Mewes family lost their seed company and their house which had such nice flowers in their garden.  My Godfather's family lived in a house owned by his company but also lost that in 1945, but they did manage to keep their furniture.  His wife was born in Lüneburg, went to school with my mother and our families were close.  He was the person I watched developing pictures on his kitchen table, the circle has now been closed!  Back to my album.

Lore Setzkorn, my mother's kitchen helper pushes my sister Gisela in an ultra elegant baby carriage on a nice summer day.  Lore worked for us as a kind of household apprentice, she even had to pass an exam at the end of her two years of service.  When she started with us her mother wanted to excuse her daughter because she might be a finicky eater.  Working hard and also because of my mother's excellent cooking she always ate everything served at our table and even gained quite a bit of weight.  These girls helping in a household became a part of the families they worked for and usually enjoyed their new environment.

The boy on a picture taken at a birthday party is the one who did not wear a uniform in our class picture of 1937 because he was not yet 10 years old but gifted to jump one class.  He was repeatedly slapped in his face by our Latin teacher because he did not know a row of verbs, so it went-one, two 'laudabam, laudabas, laudabat etc., as those verbs continue.  I thought that was not necessary, it was very cruel, but that's how it went.  This same boy a few years later earned some money guiding refugees through the iron curtain, I don't know what became of him.  The boy whose birthday we celebrated owned a rifle and wanted to shoot squirrels at a nearby park and we went along on his "hunting" trip.  Although he never hit anything I never understood the joy of killing for 'sport'.  His dad was a school teacher.

A very important picture to me is the one of my cigar box radio and my home built voltmeter sitting on top of a cast iron stove in my room which was never heated.  Behind the stove one half of a headset hangs on the wall, all precious items to me.  The radio on the table was built of plywood I must have left over from Christmas projects when I made and painted wooden back plates for calendars or pictures.  They were gifts to my grandparents and other relatives who all lived in town.  I never had much pocket money and made good use of my plywood.  But radios built on cigar boxes worked just as well as the ones on a fancy plywood chassis.  My goal was to understand and not build radios to listen to.  Often my mother commented:  "This radio worked so well, why did you take it all apart again?".  When I hooked up a second loudspeaker from the radio in the living room to the kitchen I was thought of as very talented in our family because my mother could now listen to the radio while doing her house work. 

Under the ceiling in my room I had an indoor antenna and at night in bed I could listen to music with my crystal set which was home built of course.  There were instructions about investigating technical things in "Books for Boys" or the "New Universe" which we swapped among friends of like interests.  Thinking about my hobby I find that I got a reasonable electronic background about basics of radio fairly early in life.

My Grandparents Bank often helped out with 50 Pfennigs to go to a Sunday movie.  I can  remember "The Battle of the Blue Hills", the hero on horse back was Tom Mix.  At the time I was the last male member of the "Bank" family, an important fact which may have been in my favor getting some extra money.  Later as I got a bit older and 'smarter' my friend Helmut  found out how we could sneak into the movie theater during an afternoon performance without paying.  That way we could also watch movies "No one under 14".  His parents were fairly well off but for us it was the thrill not to get caught.  To see those flicks without a ticket was twice as much fun.  He very simply fooled the lady at the ticket window:  "We will wait till the movie has started when the ticket lady and ushers are just sitting there talking with each other."  Then we very quietly went up the stairs to the balcony seats and sat down in the dark and the movie had started, that's all there was to it.  Our main problem was that everybody in town knew who we were if we ever were caught. 

I did not own a soldering iron and all wire connections building a radio were hand twisted or I had to use screws from my erector set.  Once I got an electric motor for my birthday  and used it to build a record player.  The pickup with its needle was hand held and I could play a record another school friend of mine had given me, "Oh Donna Clara".  One could understand the music if I slowed the motor sufficiently by finger friction.  It gave me a good demonstration of acoustics and speed control.  The record player pickup was hand made out of plywood using a jeweler saw but I have forgotten what I used as membrane.  The suggestion of how to build this came from the "Universe for Boys" book.

I was about 15 years old when I was confirmed in the Lutheran church.  I would receive presents and many flowers from relatives and friends of our family for this festive occasion.  Since the start of the war it became ever harder to buy any gifts and it became acceptable to give money.

I thought I was very lucky when I saw an electric soldering iron displayed in a radio shop and I bought it.  This independent act of mine caused quite a stir at home and my parents were very upset.  Although I had bought this tool with money I received for my confirmation I should have asked first.  I wanted to get it right away because many items were soon impossible to get.  My parents also thought it was frivolous for a school boy to be so independent, money had to be saved in a bank!

I also bought the last letter scale sitting in a shop window of another store.  Inge and I kept it through all these years.  The other day, March, 2002, I walked across the street, a Garage Sale!, I bought a much better letter scale for $ 3 - what an irony.  I think at the time it was pretty smart of me to have acted on the spot.  How my first letter scale made its way out of East Germany I have no idea.  I think some parcels must have been sent to my parents in Lüneburg.

After the war in 1945 we had no income, my father was in West Germany and I suggested to go to our Bank in Blankenburg to withdrew all our money, over 3000.- Mark.  My mother from then on always carried this in her purse.  What a smart move that turned out to be, the currency in West Germany at that time was still the same as in the East, at least our family did not have a monetary problem for a while.

The next set of pictures were taken with a special 500 W flood light I got for my birthday.  This bulb had a limited life time but I did not have to use a magnesium flash any longer which threw sparks and could burn a whole into our carpet.  My mother can be seen sewing dolls' clothes late at night.  In the background on top of the dining room buffet stands our Russian "Samovar" which later was sent as parcel post to my parents in Lüneburg.  Now my sister Sigrid has our Russian tea maker displayed in her home but they never use it.

My parents are sitting with sister Gisela in the living room.  The youngest addition was born in May 1941, she is about six months old.  In the second picture my sister Sigrid plays at the dining room table.  Every piece of furniture on these pictures was lost, my mother and I left East Germany in March 1946 and I think the stress not to be able to live in her surroundings and a husband not working in his normal job wore very heavily on her.  She died of cancer in 1952, she was 48 years old.

My two sisters who were 9 and 4 years old at the time went with their mother on top of a coal train during the winter of 1945 to cross the border (illegally) to West Germany.  My mother later told me she thought the girls might freeze to death on top of an open freight car.  She then came back to East Germany again on another illegal route because she did not want me to spend Christmas by myself.  A few months later my mother and I "distributed" all our belongings as best we could and in March 1946 we left with one suitcase each and a basket with our linen.  This trip is a story in itself which I will not go into right now.

In front of the "Samovar" is a nickel plated tray with tea glasses but now the tray has a hole in its rim.  During the last few months of the war low flying fighter planes shot through our window, the Samovar fell to the floor and is slightly bent and a bullet hit the tea tray.  It serves as another reminder of the war, otherwise the plate has no real value, we still have it with us in Boulder. 

My grandparents Bank and their daughter Gertrud, who is visiting from Hamburg, are sitting in their living room.  In 1951 Inge and I met my aunt Gertrud, she was the last relative to wish us all the best when we left for Canada in 1953.  I can also see grandpa's modern radio in the background.  It's predecessor, the old antique with exposed tubes on top of a black chassis got me started in my electronic hobby.  Grandfather Bank, the train engineer, was generally supportive of my technical interests.  He had many goodies in his house which were valuable to me and often he let me take home my treasures, I wish I still had some of that stuff now.  Because of his generosity I owned an old oil lamp made of pewter, some hand made horse shoe nails and a "Regulator" wall clock that chimed on the hour.  It had a tinny sound but kept time and I felt proud to have it hanging in my room.  I could have taken home much more "stuff" but often my mother did not realize the value of my treasures.

Grandmother Bank was a very humble and quiet person and always got along well with my mother.  Grandpa dominated all around him and his children gave him respect bordering on fear.  Once he canned peas from his garden but must have overlooked something.  The sealed cans in his kettle exploded while boiling and peas were all over the kitchen, the walls and the ceiling - everything was covered with peas.  Actually I think it was quite dangerous what he had done but of course no one dared criticize "Father" as he was called by his children.  Grandma could not help him because she had broken her hip, this disaster must also worried her a lot.

My mother who came from far away Northern Germany kept her independence.  Relatives on my father's side all lived and worked where they were born except my aunt, "Tante" Gertrud, the youngest Bank child.  She and her police officer husband moved to Hamburg and behind her back was considered to be "something else," too modern, too much the lady from the big city, different.  This is what it was like to live and be brought up in a small town where secrets did not remain hidden for very long, the following anecdote will prove my point.

I must have been around 8 or 9 years old and my friend Herbert from down the street decided it was time to start smoking our first cigarettes, he often bought these for his uncle.  Herbert went to the store and for 10 cents he bought four cigarettes in a pack.  We then hiked a ways out of town where we thought it safe to "light up", far out into the fields.  We started puffing away as we saw grown ups do it.  All of a sudden we heard one of the local trains in the distance and as it came closer we waved at the engineer, puffing away, each with a cigarette in our hand, he even waved back at us.  The engineer and his steam engine going one way and us two happily walking home. 

Our problem living in a small town was that grandfather Bank, himself a train engineer, was told about our act as soon as the little choochoo and its engineer arrived at the depot.  We had barely come home and our adventure was no longer a secret.  My father only said not to do that again, I don't remember being punished because of our attempt trying to learn how to smoke cigarettes.

I know I started to smoke in earnest much too early, later I wished I had never gotten that  awful habit but the war did things worse than that to our generation.  I stopped smoking when I was about 30 years old and am still grateful I managed to do it.  My mother was always worried about my smoking and my health but I never paid much attention and also never understood her concern in this respect.

Our class went on an outing with our German teacher "Bruno", which was not his real name.  We only thought "Bruno" was a name he deserved, we were just smart teenagers.  There was absolutely no reason giving silly names, now this might be thought of as "cool" to make up other names for some of our 'straight' teachers.  He tried to do his best teaching German and History in those turbulent times.  He wore strange looking suits, had an accent and sometimes spit when talking.  I heard he became a pastor after the war which might have been best for him and his students.  We managed to get him to react to our provocation and that was a big minus on our chart judging teachers.  We had to put up with him since there was no other choice.  Even at age 15 we were still hit by him.

As can be seen our class decided to arrive at our class outing carrying walking sticks.  The following year we wore a felt hat and some of our gang even brought a cigar and smoked.  I think in part our behavior was a revolt against the uniformity of the times.  Four of us are lined up for our picture at a birthday party, we are all dressed as we thought a 15/16 year old should look, wearing long, modern looking  winter coats, we wanted to remain in our civilian life forever.  This was quite the opposite of fashion trends today by high schoolers-here or in Germany.

In town most of our parents knew each other fairly well.  I remember how upset my mother was when she met one of my friend's mother on one of those shopping and chatting trips in down town little Blankenburg.  During their small talk my friend's mother complained that her husband would most likely not go back to his old job.  He had worked for one of the small local banks but by now had attained the rank of captain and was serving somewhere on the front.  My mother's angry reply was we should be grateful if those husbands would only come home safe and sound and be glad to go back to their old jobs.  When after the war our town was occupied by the Russian Army most of those families who were close to us became refugees and had to start a new life in the Western part of Germany.  Also this family whose husband might not want to go back to his small office had to leave home.  During the war some people got carried away by a cleverly directed propaganda.

Their son, who was my class mate, wanted to become a garden architect.  His parents did not have a sufficient income and he started as an apprentice in a flower garden.  Since his parents had fled the "East" they had to start all over again with the help of relatives in West Germany.  Later my school friend became a civil servant.

In 1943 it was now apparent that the war would not continue as a "Blitzkrieg" in Poland or France.  Most people did not understand what a terrible war was being fought in Russia.  News reels played along with the general propaganda theme and its background music was called "Vormarschmusik", in English 'music to advance by' even as the tide had turned in favor of Russia and many cities in Germany were systematically destroyed by bombing raids.  In my home town we had been spared any of that so far. 

Our younger teachers had been drafted but otherwise our life at school went on as usual.  We did experience a shortage of coal and our building was not heated during one winter.  Temporarily our class moved to a small room at the train depot.  We also collected any re-usable junk metal and scrap paper.  I remember looking into the dumpster at school for some old magazines which had been printed before the Hitler era, an appearance from a different era. 

My confirmation was a traditional, local festivity.  Our family was not formally religious but my mother did not want to go along with an arrangement by the 'Party', an invented 'heathen' affair to replace confirmation by the Lutheran church.  That's why I was to be confirmed in our church.  I can not recall if our group of 15 year old boys was in a majority but we were more than just a few young men.

The entrance to our house was draped with a wreath and some flowers.  The side walk to the next confirmand was covered with a thin layer of light colored sand and on top of that were thrown cut pieces of some kind of holly (Buchsbaum).  This decoration from house to another house continued all the way to our old Lutheran church which was located half way up on a hill, just below the castle that was still used as residence by members of the "House of Hannover."  I have never heard about this old custom from friends in other parts of Germany.  I think some customs of the Harz mountains remained isolated for a long time.  Not far other customs and dialects could be found.

Our dining room table was covered with many flowers I received.  After the church ceremony relatives were invited for a grand dinner and I think there was also enough wine to liven up the spirits of our guests.  The church was cold and I think I had a slight fever that day because of a sore throat.  I was not in any mood for this merrymaking which must have been very disappointing for my father who always enjoyed a lively party.  Unfortunately I could not continue to take part and had to go to bed.  It was decided that the following year my tonsils had to be removed and that became another gruesome story by itself.  Since we did not have a proper specialist in this field who could perform the operation in our local hospital my father and I went by bus to a nearby town to have it done.  After the operation, which was too ugly to describe here, I almost bled to death and also developed a high fever.  I made it but it certainly was a precarious situation. 

The dark suit I am wearing for the church service was a "hand me down" from grandfather Schmidt in Lüneburg, I did not like it at all.  A tailor had to modify it for my size and I never wore it again.  The war created many shortages which we noticed in our day to day lives.  Even having a ration card it became harder and harder to buy clothes, etc. 

I must have had shoes that were always one size too small because at that age a boy grows so fast.  To this day I have my small toes a bit too close to the rest of the others, they don't look straight.  In part this was due to my father's extreme honesty which dates back to the old Prussian school of civil servants.  He was in charge of our local ration office and  always reluctant to give his family their allocated portions to avoid even an appearance of favoritism.  So much so that between him and my mother an argument developed and she was going to complain to the mayor about her son being unable to get a pair of shoes.  Many of my father's colleagues were by now in the Armed Forces and he felt he had to do a bit more than his duty still being at home.

Only one year later, in 1944, a problem arose in the ration office.  The wife of a well known Nazi administrator wanted to obtain a coupon to buy a pair of shoes.  The applicant had to declare on oath not to own more than two pair at that time.  One of my father's employees knew this to be a false declaration, her cleaning women also worked at the home of this party hack.  Papa Bank now had the duty to report this case to the mayor, who himself was a prominent Nazi but belonged to a different branch of "Brown shirts."  He took great pleasure reporting this case of abuse by the other Nazi's wife to his next superior who then reprimanded this lady.  Infighting of the party hierarchy was a fact of life but may be hard too understand for an outsider. 

The end result was that my father had to defend himself in front of a Nazi party "Court of Honor" which meant he was now judged by cronies of the accused!  A short while later he was declared "not to be deferred as civil servant from duty in the armed forces."  He was 44 years old and was drafted into the Army.  He became a guard of an ammunition train in France.  He never again entered City Hall where he had started as an apprentice in 1914.  This drama also illustrates on how small minded the Nazi regime operated. 

Often my mother's comment was :"Be careful about your plans for the future, this whole system is built on sand."  This warning came at a time during which our generation was to be enthusiastic and we young high school students were to think about our future.  Of course I tried to plan for myself but I also succeeded staying true to some of her advice. 

For many years my mother suffered terribly from gall stones.  She was not operated on because this was considered to be life threatening.  Only after my sisters were born did her painful episodes come to an end.  One of the girls developed a bad case of whooping cough but conventional medicine did not give her any relief, we were desperate.  A neighbor suggested to seek out a doctor of Homeopathy.  Taking three magic white sugary tiny pills at regular intervals apparently did it and she was soon much better.  In Germany medicine and mechanization certainly were not at a stage as we now enjoy our modern life. 

In the mid 30's a man and his horse pulling a wagon came up on our street ringing a bell and yelling as loud as he could :"Ladders, Ladders!"  With all our fruit trees in Blankenburg there must have always been a demand a person could make a living this way.  A beer distributor also went by with a horse drawn wagon ringing a large bell.  We bought a pail full and had to fill this dark beer into bottles.  The brew had to mature for a certain time and was then ready to drink.  If it remained too long in fermentation there were at times explosions!  It also gave a person who drank it a lot of gas.  I will not repeat the name of this beer as it was sometimes called by its customers!  These were certainly different times!

Easter 1942, in the picture on the right, grandmother Schmidt sits next to "Tante Else", my father's sister with her husband, a train engineer, and their daughter Lilo and a friend of the family.  Lilo's husband is fighting in Russia and here all looks so peaceful and quiet.  In the background, picture on the left,  are the ruins of a castle built by marauding bands during the middle ages.  This castle like fortress was hewn out of solid sandstone and now equipped with a garden restaurant has become a tourist attraction.  For a small entrance fee a tour guide gave gruesome details about its former inhabitants.  There was a dark dungeon and torture tools were hanging on a wall for all to see.  We risked our young lives climbing up a sheer rock wall on the back of this fortress and also had to get down the same way.  We only did this to spite the present owner and to avoid paying a small entrance fee.  High above this old place a flag of Prussia could be seen, just black and white.  Closer to town, also on a hill, was the castle of the House of Hannover.  This was located in the district of Brunswick and a flag carrying the lower Saxony horse was flown.

These were important differences well known to all.  Royalty with an English title resided above our town.  He was the "Duke of Cumberland", Ernst-August, married to "Victoria-Louise" the Kaiser's daughter.  Around 1914 this was an unusual event because it united a Prussian princess with the House of Hannover.  After World War II their daughter Friederike became the Queen of Greece.  I think she married a "Paul" from Denmark but soon after the young couple was exiled and lived in Rome.  The people in Greece were not too fond of this arrangement-not a German Queen for Greece!  Her youngest brother was a drummer boy in my group of our local Hitler-Youth.  At the start of the war in September 1939 his Royal Highness the Duke arrived at our train station and gave a hand distributing candies as soldiers were leaving for whatever duty at the front.  I was 13 and can still remember it all, I was helping him.

Here is a picture of my class mate Helmut, another member of our technical hobby group.  His family lived in a large "Villa" because his father was a prominent Nazi, who was a well liked and a talented administrator.  He and his wife came from a small town in the upper Harz Mountains and before Hitler's rise to power he was in charge of a small company.  Helmut's mother once remarked to my mother that: "Those were our happiest years."  While Helmut and I enjoyed our hobbies the ladies had 'Coffee and Cake'.  The higher Nazi leaders often drank heavily and this must have had its effect on their family life.

In later years we high school boys had to do guard duty at the local Public Service Company.  We did not have to do anything dangerous except bringing our bicycles with us and in an emergency notify police and fire fighters during an air raid but so far nothing had ever happened  We were on call one night a week and slept on a simple Army cot in a small room behind display windows which had been painted over.  That's where we tried to enjoy our first bottle of Champaign.  Helmut knew how to "lift" a bottle out of his father's locked wine cellar.  Telling me about it he would use his dad's official title.  "Got to get a bottle from the Governor."  We did not get drunk and behaved well and to test our ability to 'hold our liquor' we went for a short walk in the middle of the night.  Helmut had a hard time getting me to return because I started to philosophize sitting down in a store window.  Tasting Champaign does not really mean that much to me, often it's the ceremony.

We also used his dad's 'hunter tobacco' and his oversized hunter's pipe which we used in great style.  While hiking up hill we got dizzy smoking this strong stuff.  I did not enjoy that at all but my friend and tutor insisted to keep smoking, one has to slowly get used to it!  I did follow his advice but later it took much more will power to shake this awful habit.

Helmut made it back from the war but arrived at home a year or two later than I did.  During his prisoner of war years he worked as an interpreter for an American Major in Paris.  After the war I met his father again.  He was kept in an internment camp for senior Nazis but he never really understood our generation.  Helmut and I stayed there for a ski vacation, our last winter in civilian clothes.  I am wearing my Hitler-Youth uniform, I guess that's all I had to go skiing but there is also my winter coat on another picture.

Pictures from the eastern front are on the next page.  My other cousin Ursula's husband flew bomber missions during the battle of Britain.  Once their plane had to land  for an emergency in England but as farmers approached the pilot managed to take off again and safely fly home.  He told us they always encountered British fighter planes.  They tried to fly diversionary attacks but that did not help.  As soon as the real attack reached the island there were always fighter planes waiting for them.  I think strategic bombing was then given up.  He and his wife, my cousin Ursula, are standing together but he is hiding his walking stick.  He was wounded over Great Britain and walked with a limp but was still in the Air Force.  On the same page my mother, little sister Gisela and I are sitting in our backyard as if there isn't any sorrow in this world, what a contrast.

Later on Ursula's husband was shot down south of Leningrad, that's where the  pictures from the eastern front were taken.  My mother commented immediately on the way the Russians were dressed for their harsh winter compared to German soldiers freezing in their tiny caps while they are loading their wounded into a plane.  In January 1945 I felt what it's like only being dressed in my best Berlin Air Force Sunday coat.  I did not even experience a Russian winter, I was wounded at the Polish border.  Even in that relatively mild winter I almost froze my feet in those unsuitable leather boots that never dried completely.

Summer 1942 shows a happy Papa Bank helping to harvest vegetable at his school friend Paul's place.  He was in charge of the city sewer system where the best fertilizer in town produced the largest raspberries I ever ate.  In his house he never turned his gas stove off, he had all the natural gas he needed from his sewage plant.  I am amazed that my father worked in that field with his tie on.  I photographed my mother and our baby carriage but I also included the pipes of the city sewer system that must have intrigued me. 

Ursula's father Otto, my father's brother, was a train engineer.  He died of TB. after the war.  I spent some enjoyable vacation days at the freight yards where he lived.  At Ursula's confirmation I ate for the first time oxtail soup which I like to this day, but it's very rich.  That's all I wanted to eat on that festive occasion and a lady who cooked for the festivity let me have as much soup as I wanted until I had enough, I do not think I ate much else.  She was so pleased about my compliments.

Uncle Otto took part in the first world war and belonged to a Navy veterans association.  At home he had pictures of old battle ships hanging in his living room but my father never decorated our home that way. 

After the war my cousin Ursula and her mother remained in East Germany.  They sent us a picture with a real pressed flower.  We framed it and had it on the wall in our kitchen.  I wrote back and thanked them but after a while they wrote back that it was impossible to make up another one because the paper they used was not available any longer.  Inge and I once sent them a parcel, perhaps we had included items that at that time were against the "rules" of their socialist regime.  It came all the way back to us, untouched.  No wonder the people had enough of that system after such chicanery.

The "East" really went through tough times.  After unification her daughter, who was a medical technician, became unemployed.  They thought some of the old party hacks were still going as strong as ever administering some of their industries.  I did phone Ursula once, 2.2002, and we both still recognised each others voice.  She is now about 80 years old but in good spirits.

The war dragged on and my father built a chicken enclosure in the back yard and when an animal got too old it had to be butchered.  I did this once and chopped its head off with a small ax while I held it tight on the back at its wings.  My hunger made it appear easy but it was nothing to look forward to!

All is peaceful and happy, the grandparents are posing with all relatives.  I think grandma was recovering from a hip bone fracture, that is the reason why somebody supports her in all pictures.  Behind grandpa is his sister Anna, a seamstress who was single.  I have a hand tinted photograph of her, taken around 1900 ( or earlier) which might be a collector item. 

My cousins Lilo, Ursula and I often went to "Tante Anna's" place on Sundays but our entire families had to visit her each Christmas.  Those were special events when she slowly opened the door and the Christmas tree was lit, real candles, and then we children had to recite a poem and we all sang a Christmas song.  I think she was a person of true Christian belief, she also attended church on a regular basis.  On some of my Sunday visits I was allowed to operate her record player which was an antique music box with different melodies on an interchangeable metal disk the size of a record.   The disk had small hooks which passed over wires to create a melody, magical!  My cousin Lilo who lost her husband so soon in Russia now owns this ancient machine.  She also remained in East Germany and was married to a chemical engineer, he died last year and in 2002 I also talked to her on the phone. 

More happy June pictures with cousins Karl-Heinz, Ursula and her husband sitting at our dining room table in 1942.  The punch bow that is sitting on top of our buffet in Blankenburg is now in Boulder in a similar spot.  It also serves us the same way-we never use it-neither did my parents!  Such items were part of a well established home and were only bought to represent an era.

Karl-Heinz (Army uniform) was the only child of aunt Gertrud from Hamburg.  Her husband was a police officer and he always scared me when I met him as a young child.  Karl-Heinz became a POW in Belgium and had to work in a coal mine long after the war was over.  He tried to escape and finally succeeded by jumping off a bridge onto a slow moving coal train.  He made it safely to his parents home but died a few years later of heart failure. 

While I had to work a few days at Philips as a trial period I stayed with my aunt and uncle in Hamburg.  I worked three days without pay but got the job.  This was my start in 1951 working in industry, we were married the same year and we moved to Hamburg.  Two years later in 1953 we emigrated to Canada.  We shared an apartment while we were in Hamburg which was our main reason for leaving Germany.  Both Inge and I were not 'recognised' refugees, had not lived in Hamburg previously and therefore not able to apply for our own apartment, settled!   We have never regretted our decision to leave Germany, both of our parents were not in favor.  In July 1965 we emigrated a second time, to Boulder, Colorado.  I had visited Boulder March/April to look at the Cyclotron the University was operating.  This time the location and better opportunities for the children were a strong reason.  Our family has not regretted this decision.

Our class is on a field trip to the highest 'mountain ' of the Harz.  About one year later we are in uniform.  Each face in this snap shot (2nd picture) presents its own drama or at least a story.  Going counter clockwise from our German teacher sits the "other" Wolfgang who became an architect.  We shared the same bench at public school, starting in 1933, because our names were next in the alphabet -(Bank, Baumgart).  We then entered high school together and we both operated the 'phone exchange in the Anti-Aircraft unit.  During a visit to Germany around 1980 his mother gave me our class pictures.  He and his mother were some of my few friends I ever met again.

The next boy is Rainer Mannhardt who attended our school because his parents from Angola sent him to be educated in Germany and in Blankenburg a home for boys was established.  Rainer gave me a small African ax as a present and it hung an a wall in my bedroom.  The handle was made of a light weight wood and it was beautifully carved, to me it was a piece of magic.

Next to him is ever smiling Emil it was not his not his real name but that is what we called him.  He was truly a genius when it came to chemistry.  He discussed analytical problems with "Gustav," that is Dr.Brenken, our Chemistry teacher (photo not displayed), his cap secured by a clip to the front of his jacket.  To explain the versatility of the English language we were told that to 'secure a hat' a word was coined:  A hat securer!  That's about as far fetched as one can go explaining a none existing item to a 12 year old but on this picture "Gustav" proves us all wrong-he owns a "Hat Securer"!

During July 1942 I attended a sort of summer camp in the South of the Harz mountains.  My father might have arranged this for me to recover from that awful tonsil operation because it was almost impossible to send me on a vacation.  By now most hotels were used to house wounded soldiers, that's how I ended up at this small and supervised rest haven among tall trees in the mountains.  The man in charge was some kind of Nazi functionary.  During my stay I met many boys from Austria.  I think we behaved quite well and made the best of our vacation.  It was also my first experience to meet boys from Austria.

This picture is the city nurse who was a good friend of the family.  My father took care of "social" cases, that is looking after old age pensioners and the destitute.  As a visiting nurse "Schwester Klara" had an arrangement with the city to take care of the needy.  She was not personally paid for her work being from a Protestant order and she led a life of service in the truest sense of the word.  As our family she was well known in town and of course also well liked by her many patients.  She lived a humble life in an older part of town and offered some space for our dining room furniture when my mother and I left East Germany in March 1946.  I never saw any of our furniture or Schwester(Nurse) Klara again.

This picture was given to my father, perhaps by a former colleague who is now posing for the camera.  His rank is no more than a bookkeeper / sergeant in the Army but what a changed person!  I had no direct personal connection with this family nor their children.  I do not even remember how I got these snap shots but the way he posed himself for a portrait was so classical that I had to add it to my collection.  I suppose at age fifteen a boy does not always show the proper respect to his elders or the time and some of my attitude is now documented in this album.

I think for my father's friend the war ended in Jugoslawia as a prisoner of war.  He talked about starvation which ended the lives of many during the years of their incarceration.  That part of Europe has always experienced its share of cruelty, often directed against their own population.

My sisters, six and two years old, are enjoying the backyard, sitting on a blanket with a visitor.  We were visiting our grandparents in Lüneburg.  While we were there a large part of Hamburg was destroyed in one of the largest air raids of the war.  This large city with its 3.5 million people is only 35 miles north of Lüneburg.  During the raid I stayed in the attic of grandma's apartment and saw the "Christmas Trees", stacked lights, that were dropped by pathfinder planes to illuminate the target for  hundreds of bombers who in succession set this old city on fire.  Thousands of the civilian population burnt and suffocated in the ensuing firestorm in the streets.

Women and children fled the city and we boys in Lüneburg went to the train station to help them carry their last belongings when people were desperate to find shelter with relatives in town.  They all were very dirty and looked terrified.  Listening to their stories showed me for the first time during the war how far the destruction and horror had gotten.

Working as porter at the train station during this day I also received my first pack of cigarettes which a kind lady gave me for helping to carry her luggage.  I was still too young to be allowed to smoke openly.  I retreated into my room in the attic and blew smoke against a darkened sky.  For many days black clouds drifted over Lüneburg from this air raid blocking out the sun.

One little boy  with his mother had to leave Hamburg and stayed at his grandma's apartment in Blankenburg, an older lady who lived on the first floor in our house.  Mother and child had to flee the city.  In addition to many wounded soldiers we now had many families in town who were forced out of their homes because of air raids.  But life went on, my mother took my sister Sigrid to her first day at school.  Children playing in a sand box were their high point in life.  We often had many neighborhood kids as our guests.  I think I developed these pictures on our kitchen table.

Blankenburg has become quite serious and important!  The Japanese foreign minister, Mr. Oshima, visited our town.  I think this diplomat came only as a tourist to relax, the mayor in his 'black SS' uniform is standing on the market place, waiting for his guest to arrive.  He was not a civil servant like father (Fritz) Bank but appointed by the Nazi party.  Looking at the camera is my friend Helmut's father, the "brown" Nazi administrator.  We drank his Champaign and smoked his hunter tobacco.  All other uniformed people are officers from the "Waffen" SS.  One SS officer on the right must have lost his arm in the war.  The rest are body guards, watching that no one gets too close to our important visitor.  On the second large picture Mr.Oshima is greeted by the mayor in the old City Hall.  The same bunch stands around in this reception room as in front of old City Hall, everybody trying to look important.  Helmut's father sits closest to the camera.

The small entrance to the City Hall is watched by the most innocent of all people, the honest and reliable Mr. Hartmann, the caretaker of the building.  He does not wear an official uniform.  With his green buttoned up jacket he looks almost like a warden actor in the "Fledermaus" (The Bat) operetta.  I went to public school with his son.  When another little 'Hartmann' boy was born his parents asked the older boy how to name his little brother and he said in an instant : "Wolfgang Bank, I like him very much!"  Well, the baby was named Wolfgang, he kept the name Hartmann.  Behind the 400 year old City Hall lived one family in the darkest living quarters possible.  They were not only very poor but apparently quite dirty and in our town they were known as the "Dreck" Wagners. 

On Saturdays farmers from nearby villages sold vegetable and eggs, sitting in the market place with it's small fountain in front of the old city hall.  Usually the farmers' wives were doing the selling and being physically well endowed the expression was coined: "Market Women."  There were many anecdotes about market day but I would have to go back to my grandparent's days to recall these.  Traffic to and from villages was by horse and wagon and boys with small hand carts cleaned up after the horses; 'horse apples' were always welcome as fertilizer for a garden.

Below two pictures of the Nazi reception committee I somehow obtained another document of the times (third picture above).  This was a very silly event and I made a comment as caption under this picture.  It was supposed to be a funny event - the storming of the city in medieval uniforms by some drinking society from Berlin in July, 1942..  These were fairly well to do business people who thought that everyone would brake out laughing as soon as this staged circus was taken place.  They arrived in costume of the middle ages and one person stands next to a flag pole in this medieval garb.  Also some drummers of the Hitler-Youth had to get into the act.  An ox was barbecued and one could buy a sandwich with a small piece of beef from this animal but the whole affair was terribly overpriced.  Most participants got drunk, the Hitler-Youth drummers displayed their art and as in the Army there was a lot of standing around but not much action.  I find it strange to let such silliness take place during the war, perhaps some "Leaders" thought it would fit in with some of their strange beliefs.

Friend Helmut and I are standing on the balcony where "X" marks the spot.  I have to go back in time about another funny episode that took place on this same balcony.  Perhaps 1933/34, after Hitler had become chancellor, speeches were often made and what better place than to do this from city hall with it's large market place in front where an audience patiently listened.  Quite a few of the old Nazis were known to be also as good at the bottle as with words.  As a six year old I could hardly see anything and was permitted to crawl between the legs of one of the local Storm Troopers who was standing guard to keep back the "masses".  Now I had a front row seat.  After a watching the speaker for a while I yelled to my mother:  "Mom, just like a Punch and Judy show!"  We had those hand puppet theaters at the fairgrounds once a year.  Except on this occasion a half drunk party hack kept bending over the railing of the balcony at city hall, some folks were afraid he might even fall down.  Being able to write about this humorous event proves that I was not locked up at that time.  The friends of the party around me thought it was a good joke.

Grandpa Schmidt died on the 24. March 1941.  It was my father's birthday, he attended the funeral without my mother.  She was expecting Gisela, my youngest sister, who was born in May.  In a picture taken in summer 1942 the little one starts to walk.  On the next page all is peaceful on a family outing (not displayed).  I am standing in front of a castle holding my bicycle, another Helmut and I went on a long trip in the Harz mountains.  My technical innocence could have cost me dearly on this trip because the front axle on my bike tightened up but we made it safely home.  I thought my bike was very slow even going downhill.  With a simple wrench I could have loosened the cone but my father who was an administrator, did not have any tools or experience to fix a bike.  It is hard to learn all this from friends when most of them were also not that much better off.

Christian Hoffman, who lived a five minute walk away from us, invited me over one afternoon.  He is the same person who gave me my first record to test my home built gramophone.  His father owned a car dealership and he knew I was interested in technical things.  We were allowed to rummage through junked cars and I was in heaven.  These cars had lifting arms as turn indicators.  I managed to salvage the little light bulbs and was allowed to take my treasures home.  I had built myself a storage cabinet out of matchboxes not unlike plastic storage containers now in use.  Mine were just smaller and used thumb tacks for a handle.  After a while I must have had 30 or 40 matchboxes glued together and in time all were filled and I knew where I could find things.  To this day I hate to throw away screws and other valuables but home life at times dictates otherwise.

We were in an electronics section in the Hitler-Youth which trained us to handle transmitters and receivers and we learned Morse code.  Of course we would be trained to use our knowledge in the Armed Forces but we enjoyed the technical part very much (page 35))[electronics.jpg, all picts]  .  There was little marching or other quasi military drill involved.  The top row of pictures are boys from the telephone group.  They could not manage to learn Morse code and therefore remained in this group.  In the bottom row operating an Army transmitter-receiver is Kurt Müller who was the first one in our class to die in the war.  I am in the next picture and last is Helmut, who taught me to smoke.  There is also my former friend, the bully from Gymnasium.  He was not interested in our technical training but had to be re-cycled as a 'leader' for our group.  In his previous 'leader' position he was to old to still be active in this younger section.  After the war he was deported by the Russians and I heard he did not return.

Christmas during the war, 1942 (pages 36/37)[christmas1.jpg, christmas2.jpg, all picts] I am still at home, 16 years old and everything looks in perfect order.  I am wearing a brand new dark suite, an item very hard to obtain in those years, it was made in Czechoslovakia.  Now I am aware to what extent the occupied countries had to support Germany.  I was told the following story in 1944 while in the Air Force in Berlin by another soldier in our room.  He had played in the German Youth-Ice Hockey team against a team from Prague.  Members of the Czech. team said that German brute force would never win over their people.  We were all impressed by this statement.  German propaganda would never have mentioned an adverse reaction to our country. 

Watching 'Book-TV' yesterday, (5/19/2002) the author Stephen Kotkin (Armageddon Averted, the Soviet Collapse 1970-2000) talked about a similar, far reaching impression Mr. Gorbachov had -also in the Czech Republic.  He was told that Russia was still regarded as an occupier.  Apparently this statement helped him realize how the Warsaw Pact countries perceived their Russian 'friends'.

Grandma Schmidt, now widowed, holds my sister Sigrid in her lap (not displayed).  My mother plays the piano while I posed for this picture.  Father Bank is still a civilian and sits together with my sister Sigrid, both very quiet and content.  A dresser with three drawers for Sigrid's doll clothing with a nice doll on top stands under our tree.  It was painted, one should call it decorated, by a Spanish friend who lived in the neighborhood.  He worked as cabinet maker across the street but was also a gifted painter.  He and his wife did not have any children and he must have taken a liking to my six year old sister.  12/1942.

A visit of a few days to the upper Harz mountain area where Helmut's grandma owned a tourist home is shown on page 38.  I notice that I am wearing my Hitler Youth uniform in one picture.  Perhaps this was all the warm clothing I had to go skiing.  My gloves had been knitted by grandma Schmidt.  She used home spun wool and they were useless.  Stiff as a board when snow melted and my hands almost froze.  My ski boots were a size too small but who could still buy ski boots?  We enjoyed ourselves but on our way home we ran into a blizzard that made our eyes watery, I was glad when we had finally made it back to a warm living room.

I experimented using a flash and ignited magnesium powder on a tray.  In another shot I compared this to my high wattage photo light bulb.  One picture shows sparks flying all over but luckily I did not burn anything. (page 39)  Friend Helmut and his mother and sister didn't mind taking part in my experiment,

Papa Bank's 25 th. anniversary working at city hall and his birthday are celebrated and both his parents came to congratulate him (page 39).  I remember my mother being both disappointed and mad.  The mayor decided to honor his long term employee with the gift of a picture: A portrait of Adolf Hitler!  It was a large framed print about 2 by 3 feet which was standard issue at the time.  We never hung it on a wall, it ended in an attic room until American Forces arrived in our city when it was illegal to store or keep things from the Nazi era.

My mother told me, when two American Army officers entered our apartment in April, 1945 how interested they were looking at a large map we had mounted on the wall in our living room.  While Papa Bank was still at home he marked all the cities as German troops advanced into Russia, we had never heard most of those strange sounding names before.  He then also added the retreat of the German army in a different color.  I guess this interested those two American officers even more.  They must have been very friendly, my mother said they looked generally in much better physical shape then our own soldiers. 

I was discharged from our POW district in Northern Germany in July 1945.  By that time our town was occupied by units of the British army but they left in September to be replaced by Russian troops.  Russian soldiers were at all times locked up in their barracks and their officers did not have an officer's club as was the custom with the Western forces.  Marching out of town a company had two or three singers in front and after singing an introduction the rest then joined in.  It sounded very nice but it was probably all about glorious times of the Soviet Union and the wonders of communism.  Apart from some drunken, perhaps homesick officers at first we did not notice much change in our lives under the new occupiers.  Discipline of the troops was well maintained but our meager food rations soon became less and less because their army was supposed to live off the land. 

It did not take too long and phase of terror started.  Through the GPU, their secret police, teachers and many good citizen were picked up and deported.  It usually happened in the middle of the night and increased fear among the population.  Six months later, in March 1946, it all ended for us when we left East Germany.  We could not take any of our furniture and started in very cramped quarters at grandma Schmidt's apartment in Lüneburg.    My mother had gone to school in this town where she also married my father.  This move is yet another sad story by itself.

Spring 1943 shows me in my pride and joy (not displayed).  I am wearing a felt hat I got from a friendly lady and a trench coat to make me look five years older, at least that's what I thought at the time.  To look really "civilian" was every boy's aim, perhaps it was our way to rebel being surrounded by uniformity. 

Our class is assembled with "Bruno" our German teacher on one of our class outings.  We tried to look adult, some of us wore a hat and others smoked a cigar (displayed previously)!  We were really a harmless bunch and were soon guided into more serious war adventures.

There is also an outing with "Gustav", our Math., Physics and Chemistry teacher.  Dr. Brenken, his real name, was also a genius of sorts.  Here he displays his "Hat Securer"!  Not much of a giant as a teacher but his entire life revolved around Math., Physics and Chemistry.

"Gustav" had to combine two school classes for one of our summer hikes.  "Emil", our Chemistry, genius poses with Gustav's famous cap.  On another snapshot Gustav walks arm in arm with another of his preferred students.  I am certain they are discussing matters of chemistry as he always did.  Gustav, an overly sensitive and gifted person lost his oldest son in the war.  After the war he had a nervous breakdown and died not long after that.

He wanted to display the danger and the effects of neutralizing an acid.  We were 13 at that time and since I sat in the first row he tried his magic on me with a tiny drop of acid placed on the back of my left hand with a thin glass stirrer.  "DO YOU NOTICE ANYTHING?"  Well, I must have caught on fast.  "No, Herr Doctor, not yet."  He kept on talking about Chemistry, forgetting all about the little hole that started to burn into my skin.  After a while he must have become aware of my "stupidity" and as fast as possible tried to neutralize this drop of acid.  It caused a deep scab but this time "I got him."  The event also raised my standing in class enormously.  By the way, I can recite the definition of an acid to this day.  Gustav must have taught us well.

As time approached we had to move to an Anti-Aircraft unit.  Now our teachers tried to cram as much into our curriculum as they could.  In Math. we went into curve functions and differential equations and our French lessons were accelerated to offer us as much as we could absorb.  This was well meant but for me it turned into an overwhelming task and I gave up.  We would not advance into the next class anyway, the war removed us from school so I was at peace with myself.  We were not graded during this 'tour de force' in any case.  One French poem, but only the beginning of it and some French pronunciations are all that's left of this last part of my education.  To be admitted to a university after the war would take our generation two years to catch up on our missing high school education. 

Many of my friends did not go through this phase at all, they never came back.  The boy in the center of the bench first lost his home in Cologne and he and his mother moved to live with his grandparents in my town.  He was a jolly character, a typical 'Rhinelander', always full of jokes and high spirits.  During the war one of his legs was amputated and he later committed suicide.

Three weeks in April of 1943 we had to go to a preparatory camp for the Armed services.  Once more all is happiness and we studied Morse code and all sorts of other things pertaining to making war.  Our Air Force corporals enjoyed this training as much as we boys did.  At least they were not active on the front lines!

Looking out of a window next to me is good old Kurt who was killed within another year.  Behind him is buddy Helmut and on top of our group is Hans Mentgen.  He and his family were refugees from Rumania.  His father was an artist, a painter, and was the only father with such an occupation in our class, I found it very romantic.  Now they led a very simple life in a tiny apartment.  I once asked him about the native population from his former country.  He only said they wore white underpants in the streets and were "Dreckig."  I think the German population in Rumania lived their lives in an enclave, separated by their own schools and churches.

There was an ugly event in this pre-military training camp which I often think about.  Our group consisting of Air Force volunteers was not the only section to be trained in this camp for military service.  There was apparently another section to enlist recruits for the "Waffen SS," that is the fighting SS units.  Those boys had no idea about what they would have to do face.  When we arrived we were issued a sort of uniform and then dismissed to our quarters.  We started to unpack our suitcases when I heard loud commands shouted outside in a field where these kids were chased to run back and forth.  There were all kinds of chicaneries but it did not seem to stop.   I thought what a strange reception. Later I asked why they had been treated so harshly, they said all of them were forced to volunteer for a new unit of the Waffen SS, the "SS-Division Hitler-Youth".  This division was to be formed and all of the boys eventually volunteered because they were made to hate the rest who had not, what a deal!  I did have strange feelings watching this.  That is why I took a picture from the window inside our quarters.  Our group consisted of volunteers for the Air Force and we were completely ignored by the SS instructors who we at first thought belonged to the Army. 

My father is seen in one of his last pictures wearing a suit.  He is talking to a conductor of an Army band playing for wounded soldiers and some tourists.  By now many more wounded soldiers had arrived.  Most hotels were converted to hospitals and for recovery of those victims of the war.  Both conductor and other officers standing behind my father are badly wounded and unfit for service, one of them is holding his walking stick a bit out of sight.  Because the German Armed Forces did not have Penicillin many soldiers at the slightest risk of an infection lost a leg or other limbs to amputation simply to be kept alive.  Soldiers on crutches or with an empty sleeve in their jackets were now a common sight.

None of those sad views could temper our youthful outlook on life, next to the a picture of wounded soldiers we are celebrating our good bye to a civilian life.  We drank more than was good for us but otherwise felt we were on top of the world.  I was 16 years old, the other 'Wolfgang' sitting closest to the camera was only 15.  Not even two years later he worked as a POW in a coal mine East of Moscow.  Helmut Cl. sitting behind him had a heart problem and stayed at home.  He always liked nature and plants and wanted to become a garden architect but after the war became an apprentice in a flower house and after passing some exams in a government school became a civil servant like my father working in an office.  Günther is the boy who lost his leg and later committed suicide.  The other Helmut and I both returned from the war.  I am the bar man close to the Rio Rita sign friend Wolfgang must have painted.  A running letter indicator was an advertisement box we had "lifted" from a window at the public service outfit where we had to do guard duty at night but being honest boys I think we returned it after our party which took place at Helmut's parents house.

The next set of snapshots shows our two high school classes standing in steel helmets in the Anti-Aircraft battery.  Four chimneys in the background are sitting in the "Hermann Göring" factories.  I think it is a steel mill and still in operation.  On page 46 [battery1.jpg and battery2.jpg, all picts] we boys are ready to be taken to the train station by a sergeant from our battery.  Our Mothers are watching us and some tears were shed but not from us boys, we were looking ahead to another adventure.

The swearing in ceremony was our first official act in the Anti-Aircraft unit.  I have no recollection of this event.  Dressed in a uniform which was closer to a copy of our Hitler-Youth garb then the Air Force we are wearing steel helmets.  Some of us were trained in the Hitler Youth as telephone exchange operators and other related work.  Our corporal in charge gave us a simple test and told us to just make ourselves "invisible" while the rest of the boys were instructed in their "Helper" positions to operate "88" guns, Radar and many other technical things which was to help shoot down enemy planes.  We did not receive the same pay as a soldier, we were just "Helpers."  During our training phase, which I did not have to attend, I slept almost day and night.  Our school was now forgotten, September was still warm and sunny, at this rate war could have gone on forever.  All

soldiers have to be inoculated and to get our shots we marched through the steel mill factory to the east of the battery to our hospital.  We walked across a bridge, still in the center of the steel mill, when we saw a sign :  " Do not stop!  Will shoot without warning!" 

We didn't know what to make of it and kept marching on.  We arrived at the hospital and were told to wait.  We walked around a bit and in the distance I saw concentration camp inmates in black and white striped " pajama" work dresses.  This was a ghastly scene  because one of our friend's father had died in such a 'work camp'.  He had died in "Watenstedt" which was close by and was perhaps a similar work camp. 

In 1996, on one of our bike tours in Utah, we met a young couple from Germany.  He was a grad. student at the University of Salt Lake City and this young lady from Germany was visiting him.  Her home was not far from this factory and I told her about my experience during the war.  She said she knew about this camp from her parents.

The person who died in Watenstedt was a school friend of my father.  He was a well-respected builder and contractor in Blankenburg.  I think his company built the army barracks.  He liked to tell political jokes and someone overheard him.  He was denounced,  "picked" up by the SS, and two weeks later his wife received his ashes.  I remember this so well because his wife met both my father and myself as we were going to visit my grandparents.  My father told me to go ahead but later I heard the entire story.  Not being a Nazi administrator my father could not help his former school friend, he himself was very scared.

The other strange news we had to digest was that Russian POW's who had signed on to fight with the German Armed Forces were now our allies.  We knew about the "Vlassov" army, named after a general who surrendered and became an anti-Communist.  Now we saw how we were to defend 'The Fatherland" but we were told not to fraternize and become too friendly with 'our' Russians, how interesting!

As long as the weather held up life was not too bad but in late September when it started to rain, we were located in a sugar beet field, there were constantly mud puddles.  Our walk ways to guns, radar sets and the phone exchange etc. consisted of wooden planks, our shoes would have been forever wet.  My father managed to get us wooden clogs which could be bought without ration coupons.  Now we were dressed like our Russian POW's but those clogs were much more practical than wet leather boots.  We never saw a plane shot down and thought our defensive efforts were pretty useless.  Only long after the war did I learn about the harm we did to American and British crews when their planes flew over our battery by the hundreds destroying German cities.  Especially during the day we could see B17 bomber formations flying East without a single German fighter plane in sight.  My mother often said it is time to stop a war if it is impossible to protect the civilian population.

Once in a while we got tickets for the opera in Brunswick where I saw , "Cavalleria Rusticana" and "Bajazzo," the German title for "Il Pagliachi".  During the performance I almost fainted, not because I was overcome by the drama on stage, but I guess I did not take the time to eat properly before our train left for the city and sitting in the highest balcony level without enough oxygen made it worse.  During the opera I sat behind a pillar and now "Ottchen", our music teacher's lecture came back to me:  "In an opera only the acoustics counts!"  Well, I had my chance to test his theory, at least the opera building was still standing.  One year later the center of Brunswick was almost totally destroyed.

Helmut, always a bit ahead of me in his discoveries of earthly delights, found out about a cafe down town which had live entertainment, an Italian jazz band performed there.  Directly opposite the establishment was an old castle.  A huge complex that now served as an officer training school for the SS.  In spite of the 'decadent' nature of this music which was performed by 'unreliable Italians', this cafe was always filled to capacity by many of these 'elitist' soldiers who thought themselves vastly superior to any other defenders of the 'Reich'.  At the end of 1943 alcoholic drinks were not served, one couldn't even buy a beer but for us these visits were a high point.  We were not even 17 years old but acting very 'adult'.

In spite of our age New Years a sort of punch spiked with some rum was served.  We had to pick it up in our aluminum utensils at our kitchen.  I felt pretty good after I drank my share and walked over to the barracks next to ours to say a friendly hello to our Russian co-defenders although we were not supposed to enter their quarters.  They sang a few Russian songs for me and I was so moved I had tears in my eyes.  These volunteers working for the German side were not too optimistic as to a victorious outcome of the war as far as Germany was concerned.   "Germany-kapuut!"  Although their German was not too good it was sufficient for me to understand what they meant.  The word "Kaput" has now made its way into many languages!  At the end of the war most of those Russian prisoners were deported by Stalin to Siberia where they perished.  The same happened to the soldiers of the "Vlassov" army.  They became prisoners of the American Army and against their will were sent back to Russia.  A book by a Count Tolstoy describes their dramatic end when many officers committed suicide before entering their train going East..

I should mention a strange meeting which happened during our vacation in Jamaica!  Inge and I occupied one half of a beach cottage when two "Ladies" from Montreal became our neighbors of the other half.  Both were a bit on the wild side but they left us in peace.  They asked about our German accent and one of them started to reply that her father had been there and emigrated to Canada where she was born.  She excused her urge to drink because her father is Russian.  What comes next may sound unbelievable, he was one of the prisoners in an Anti-Aircraft battery around Brunswick and went into hiding at the end of the war at one of the farms.  He then must have lied his way into one of the many Displaced Person Camps and made his way to Canada.  In spite of these tall tales we were glad when both "Ladies" were evicted by management.  They had too many Jamaican "boy friends" visiting which was against the house rules of our landlady.  Both "ladies" thought my beer in our refrigerator was for communal consumption.  It still remains an amazing story.

Every two or four weeks we went on leave and that was always anticipated with much joy.  At one of those happy family reunions my father asked me about joining the "Party" that would have been compulsory to enter a university.  I was perhaps a bit too short in my reply and said "I will never join "That Club."  This started a very hefty discussion at our dining room table about my snootiness but our parents did not know how we had changed having been exposed to such a variety of circumstances like our march through the steel mill and our Russian soldiers and what we talked about with some of the older soldiers.  Many had been fighting in Russia and had a different attitude about the war than what could be heard on daily propaganda speeches. 

Our own class mates from the Hitler Youth elite did not have to leave school.  Worse than that, these people had the affront to visit us at Christmas bringing 'gift parcels', they must have been sitting on a very high horse.  We all did our best to receive them in our wooden clogs and remained dressed as dirty as possible, we were never clean and 'presentable.  In a neighboring barrack one of the boys announced their arrival:  "The brown Pest is coming!"  A class mate retold this story, I was in a different 'shed'.  None of this was known to our parents, at least not in detail.  Our cynicism also came from knowing that we would not be able to continue our careers as planned but we did not yet have a job to loose as our parents might, we hadn't even started. 

Our parents did not want to admit that the country was being run into the ground by a war that could not be won any longer.  Those times are now over, I never became a party member nor did I ever go to University! 

Returning to the battery we left home with plenty of time to spare to arrive early in Brunswick not to be late for our Italian Jazz band.  At home no one knew about this, how innocent it all was.  For our Christmas party I directed a 'Hawaiian' choir.  We also had visitors from the "Party" and tried to 'jazz' up our song production as best we could and the applause sounded sweet.  I also announced our other home grown "artists."  We did not suffer any casualties and bombs were usually dropped into the city and were too far away from us. 

During the night I often worked in the telephone exchange.  To kill time we talked with operators girls or young women at some central command, we never saw or met them.  We were all talking on a conference line through our exchanges with all other batteries around the steel mill and the city of Brunswick.

We were notified when enemy planes were detected and first had to wake up the radar crew to warm up the electronics.  Then came the gunners and the rest of the battery.  Not terribly mind boggling work but what ever is in the Armed Forces?  We telephone people did not have to do any special duties in case of an air attack.  We served our shift and then tried to get some sleep but that can be hard in the middle of the night when 24 guns start shooting and pictures come flying off the wall.  We lived in lightly built wooden barracks and our walls seemed paper thin. 

One night as I walked "home " from the exchange many bits of shrapnel from exploding shells, possibly from some other batteries close by, came sizzling down all around me.  That was perhaps as scary as it ever got.  One can hardly see anything walking on those wooden planks, trying not to fall into the muddy field.  There is an eerie whistling sound with a sudden "flop" as these metal pieces hit the moist earth all around.  At that moment one is grateful to wear a steel helmet for protection.

It now seems we stayed longer but the older group of us left the battery after 6 month.  Our next stop was the "Labor Service."  See Page 3.  Originally it was intended to have young citizen perform manual labor for half a year before being drafted into the Armed Forces.  In peace time this meant digging ditches and working on farms and the like but we were in a war and had to enlarge an airport for faster fighter planes which were now in production.  At first a small hill had to be leveled, all was done using shovels and manually pushing lorries on tracks and dumping the earth where there was a dip in the land.  We were cheep labor for the regime.  Our group consisted of the last high school generation which had never done this kind of work but we did all right.  The country got all this done for next to nothing, our wages were minuscule. 

In the 1930's our leaders came from a group of unemployed workers who were happy be paid anything at all and became strict, convinced underlings of the Nazi party.  When our senior leader started to give us the usual recitations of the beginnings of the Hitler regime some of the boys from Cologne started to throw around words of opposition.  After a while it sounded as if they were almost going to interrupt this stupid political indoctrination.  I was surprised about their courage.

There were many reasons for this behavior.  I think most of us had just left Anti-Aircraft batteries and many of those who were protesting were from the Rhine land, they did not have their homes any longer.  By this time entire cities had been destroyed and one felt the country was not taking this silly propaganda as truth for all times to come.  This whole event was interesting to me and I thought also a bit dangerous.  And still, all this protesting did not change a thing and the war went on to it's bitter end.

My father was able to visit us (see page 3) I think this was the last time I saw him dressed as civilian.  Shoveling sand lasted no more than two months and we were dismissed.  By this time my feet must have gotten much wider and larger with all the physical exercise.  My  shoes did not fit any longer and my shirt looks two sizes too small (see page 3).   Marching to the train station my heel had blisters and was infected.  As I arrived at home my foot was swollen and I could not walk, this became serious.  After weeks of wrong medical care, 'keep it moist' I could not get out of bed.  Our city nurse 'Klara', good friend of our family, suggested a different treatment with dry sulfa powder.  I had become depressed but now there was some light at the end of my tunnel.  After a few month of suffering my foot healed and I got ready to join the Air Force.

I had applied and volunteered to become an engineering officer in a communications unit but first had to pass a 3 day test in Hannover.  We all arrived in our best dark suits, a few of us 16 year old applicants were still in a uniform of Anti-Aircraft helpers.  We had expected more of a scholastic test procedure but I had the feeling our testing officers wanted to get it over with, later I saw the same faces again in our unit in Berlin.  It looked as if we had all been accepted.  Friend Helmut was still my trusted companion and we both had to be in Berlin July 1. 1944.

This unit was supposed to represent the "finest" and its name was "Signals Regiment of The Supreme Commander of the Air Force."  Of course it would be impossible to repeat this each time in any correspondence and so it was abbreviated into some harmless looking letters: "Ob.d.L.", all bombast was now hidden in anonymity.  It's the same in Armies all over the world, I don't even want to cite examples.  By the way, Ob.d. L. was a real person, Herrmann Göring himself, supreme commander of the Luftwaffe, we never met him.

Helmut decided to arrive as late as possible on the day ordered, even if it meant close to midnight.  He came up with such sarcastic ideas but was a jovial person.  We had no need to worry, because of delayed trains and other reasons some boys did not even manage to arrive on the first of July.  They had worked in anti-aircraft outfits somewhere in Germany and were not sent on their way in good time. 

My friend and I stopped way outside Berlin.  We had enough ration cards and also some spending money.  We decided to go out and eat and we picked the best restaurant we could find to pass away the time, we knew this would be our last adventure as a civilians.  At our restaurant lunch was served on large round tables.  We were impressed by some of the other guests who were mostly high ranking General Staff officers.  We noticed their  red borders down the side of their uniform pants.  It was almost a peace time atmosphere and we enjoyed ourselves in these surroundings.  Only friend Helmut would have such talent to pick such a place.  We were seventeen years old but we could imagine what our future might look like.  The city of Berlin was in ruins although trains still worked.

We would have loved to work in electronics, perhaps doing research in Radar but that was only our dream.  We were still in Potsdam, the former residence of Frederick the Great.  By steamer we went up the river Havel and on either side of the river trees were blooming and willows dipped their leaves into the water, it all looked very peaceful but as we got closer to the city we saw the terrible destruction many air raids had inflicted.

The unit we joined may have been elitist but we did not learn much.  Because of our technical training in the Hitler Youth and some extra course work we were almost ready to perform in the field of communication, we worked at a battery shooting with real guns.  Now this outfit started us as recruits.  I guess that is standard procedure in any army, but after a considerable time of this same drilling, technically nothing of interest was added.  We did "Present arms" ad infinitum as if our regiment was to be shown off to Hitler himself.  In any case this went on for almost six months.

We had been in Berlin only three weeks when we were suddenly called out of bed-Alarm! For any serious action we had not been a soldier long enough, we were 'untrained' recruits.  In the eyes of our drill instructors we were still to be regarded as almost unfit to stand up straight!  We quickly got dressed and assembled on our parade grounds waiting for further information.  We noticed that our corporals, drill sergeants and many officers were extremely nervous, we were issued "live" ammunition which is unheard of with a company of recruits not even able to salute properly! 

Much later we found out what had happened.  A group of Army officers had tried to blow up Hitler in his headquarters but the attempt on his life did not succeed.  I think we green soldiers were destined to do some serious shooting.  I have no idea whom we would have to kill or defend but this event might have started a civil war.  During such times history is made.  After much endless standing around we had to return all ammunition and were then again treated like innocent dummies. 

To put our time in perspective:  Three weeks before we joined the Air Force in Berlin a successful landing by Allied forces had taken place (6.June, 1944).  The attempt on Hitler's life happened three weeks after we became 'real' soldiers.  What turmoil!

We were six to a room, all coming from similar educational, middle class backgrounds.  Technically I was perhaps more advanced than the others.  Our Air Force barracks were located far from the city of Berlin and enclosed by pine forests and some lakes.  Sneaking through a fence we could have gone on vacation in our surroundings.  Our single story buildings were well kept and the grounds beautifully landscaped with poplar trees and many hedges.  There was also a movie theater and a mess hall located on a small hill.  It could be compared to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs but our place was not on such an immense scale.

We did not expect that almost one third would be dismissed from our unit within a few months, after a half a year another third was gone.  Soldiers not qualified to continue  entered a so called parachute regiment.  They never jumped out of an airplane and were also never trained to do that.  This was really just one way to convert Air Force personnel into infantry.  Friend Helmut was one of those converts.  We did not correspond after he left Berlin.

I think because of my technical talents and background I managed to remain with the rest of our unit.  We were taught how to lecture and speak in front of 100 of our equals, I enjoyed that very much.  A lot of the other drills were often the usual armed forces' chicaneries.  I also believe that our drillmasters and officers needed for instructing us knew that this was their own last straw to remain in the relative safety of Berlin.

After the failed attempt on Hitler's life we were ordered not salute in a 'hand on cap' manner but to use the outstretched arm, the old Nazi salute.  Another more important item was, that a German officer will from now on also become a politically leading officer.  We had to attend political training classes and I thought we were getting closer to the Russian commissar system.  Most of our group disliked these changes.  We did not know about the brutality with which the regime punished a wide circle of participants in the attempt to remove Hitler from power.  Rommel's enforced suicide was kept quite. BBB

Not many of us liked this pretentious way of indoctrination.  It was ordered and so we sat  in class pretending to digest it all.  Our training doing night marches went on at an accelerated level.  At times we were ordered to run with all our ammunition and weapons we were made to carry along.  Sometimes the order "GAS" was given.  That meant putting on a gas mask which often was more than we could endure.

As once before in my life I became friends with a person from the United States, Ralph Becker, not "Rolf," as it is spelled in German.  His father seemed to have been some executive from Ansco in New York.  Ralph 'rolled' his R's in a typical American way and some words gave away his American accent in his every day language.  He liked to chew gum and was often reprimanded for doing this in class but he never stopped.  His father was a General in the German Air Force, in charge of Allied Air Force prisoners of war.  At one time the SS wanted to take that under its command but Göring must have intervened-for good reason!  Before General Becker visited his son we had to prepare for this event.  Arriving with his staff car and a driver he must have declined an offer of an official reception on part of our commanding officer to have us 'present arms', he only wanted to visit his son. 

We had almost the same educational background but Ralph was smart as well!  He was a stamp collector and also a trader, he traded wholesale.  We did not have much space but a few envelopes filled with stamps can always be hidden some where.  At times we went to some strange locations in Berlin.  I waited outside while he did his transactions with these dealers.  Compared to my modest pocket money he carried with him fairly substantial sums.  He enjoyed buying and selling immensely.

During an air raid I wanted to catch him, he could never be seen in our air raid shelters which were outside, more or less a trench we had to stay in until an 'all clear' command was given.  Especially at night this was very wearing on us as our daily training went on as usual.  I never discovered where my buddy Ralph was, he could not have remained in our quarters, a watchful corporal made sure we had all left, but Ralph was gone.  At the next air raid I managed to stay back as long as I could to find out where my smart friend was hiding and I saw him run down stairs with the rest of us.  Then he pretended at the right moment to untie his shoe laces and suddenly turned a fast corner into our huge garage adjacent to our quarters.

When he heard me coming through the same door he was scared to death.  He recognized me and let me into his other secret:  He sat down in our regimental commander's large car.  Then he told me about his other secret: He turned the short-wave radio on and we listened to "AFN," the 'American Forces Network'.  "The Boys", as he said American soldiers were called in the States, were crossing the river Rhine where he spent some years of his schooling.  A few friends and his family still lived there.  He also explained to me the difference between swing and jazz.  During an inspection he was told to remove his futuristic "swing" drawing from his wardrobe.  He did not hide his true love for America.  While we were listening in the car to some music he explained: "That's Dinah Shore" and other artists I have since forgotten.  Many like us were certainly not convinced Nazis as is sometimes presented on TV.  It's hard to be a fanatic if the cities in one's country go up in flames.  Also the losses at the front mounted daily.  I often thought in the end we would all perish.

Our room of six soldiers had achieved above average results in our unit.  The other five came from southern Germany and I managed to learn one more low German dialect.  One of our group's father was a school principal.  Theo Flick belonged to the wealthy "Flick Concern."  He did not show any mannerism and was easy to get along with.  I later found out that he had not returned from the war.  We were an easy going bunch, 17 years old, and my mother discovered this while she entered our room.  Thinking she would not see me again she visited me in Berlin and put herself at great danger going on this trip.  Towards the end of 1944 train stations became a main target in air raids.  Showing her our quarters she of course greeted us with "Heil Hitler" as did everybody at that time.  It's a pity I can not translate the dialect, but one of my buddies just said:  " You don't have to say that here.  We say good morning."  My mother was truly scared because that was as close as one could go to be reported. 

Other than this incident "Me and my Mom" spent a nice afternoon in one of the high class Berlin cafes that were still open at this late stage of the war.  I did not think I would die because of the war but had my doubts when our unorganized unit was unloaded at the front.  On the other hand I was fatalistic and took one day at a time.

At an important inspection one of our Generals stopped in front of me and ordered me to stand "At ease."  I could not understand his Bavarian or Austrian accent.  My group leader, a young "Lieutenant", repeated the order and that worked.  The General then asked me to comment on my personal situation.  I replied and asked what was to come of the technical side of our training.  "First we have to win this war", I don't think he could have said much else.  This war was won on strictly technical and material terms.  I think I was admired for my openness.

Close to Christmas I finally decided to hand in my resignation.  I tried to get advice from my father; he was now in Verona, Italy, writing down part numbers at a car park for the army.  He could not help me at all, "Stay with what you have started." 

I went to my lowest ranking officer to present my resignation and was almost thrown out of his room.  I was supposedly his best technical cadet and we did not discuss my resignation any further.  The second time I gave him my resignation in writing.  He knew that was that and I let matters rest.

As soon as I told Ralph about it he did not believe it at first.  "If it's that simple I also want to get out."  Actually it meant that we would not end in some elitist "parachute" regiment, speak Air Force Infantry, but we were now really going to fight the last stages of this war in an infantry uniform.  New Years 1945 was still a pleasant event, I met a girl in Berlin but a real party never took place and I never saw her again.  

Back at our barracks a real new Years Party was in full swing and I heard a few volunteers could help working as waiters for our leading officers.  Not wanting to sit in our new, more primitive quarters, we had to vacate our rooms for another generation of young soldiers and now slept in a large storage facility, I walked over to our restaurant-movie theater and claimed to be one of the 'servants'.  It was here one saw how desperate all of our leaders really were.  Quite a few movie stars and actresses were present, some committed suicide as the Russians occupied Berlin.  Not far from our compound, close to many lakes surrounding Berlin many of Germany's entertainers lived in beautiful houses.  We often had to march past this district.  There is no point to mention any names, all are long forgotten, but I did enjoy myself and knew what was coming next.  In January of 1945 Ralph and I were on our way to fight against the Russians, May the 8 th. 1945 the war was over, but what misery and hardship on all sides was to occur in those last moments of a war that meant death to millions, soldiers as well as civilians for the first time.

My photo album ends with a few snapshots about this phase but I think I will end my report when I arrived back at home.  Using a 'normal', civilian time scale:  I left Berlin in January and was back at home in July, 1945.  Not more than a semester at a university but for me those few month left many impressions, I was not even 19 years old.

Our compound in Berlin was never hit during air raids but for Germany the war was going from bad to worse.  One idiot in our company believed in his glorious future, becoming an officer, had sent from home a custom made Sunday uniform.  His father owned a barber shop.  That must have been some proud father and son team to dream this up.  We were thinking of hazing this character but then decided he was beyond help. 

In January 1945 Ralph and I had to go to an army transit camp near Hamburg.  Arriving at the train station in Hamburg we saw what the German Armed Forces had come to.  Many soldiers, a mixture from all branches, were sitting around or sleeping in a badly damaged air raid shelter at the train station.  We discovered many had to go to the same transit camp to become part of a new division to be established.  Not only Air Force personnel but also many sailors who had been stationed in Norway.  We were told about our becoming infantry soldiers but we never received an infantry uniform.  In our case the Air Force eagle on our jacket had to be removed and it was replaced by a similar eagle the army used.  I would still like to meet the person who thought such changes would help to stop a Russian steamroller.  I still wore my blue Air Force coat we were issued in Berlin.  Next I was issued a French rifle with about 20 rounds of ammunition to defend the country.  There was much standing around and waiting. 

While we had some free time Ralph and I tried to visit the parents of one of our former friends from Berlin, they lived in a suburb of Hamburg.  By sheer coincidence he opened the door for us.  The soldiers of our old regiment had been given a few days leave before being sent west to fight Allied Forces that had now crossed the river Rhine.  I heard later that they had many casualties. 

We left Hamburg in freight cars, not knowing the name of our unit nor any of our officers, only a salami and a loaf of bread in our knapsack.  We only heard through a rumor about a small town where we were to be unloaded.  I was standing guard duty on an open flatcar when our train came to a stop, one of many delays on our journey east.  On a track next to ours a fancy, shining clean train with large windows also came to a stop, going in the opposite direction.  It was on its way to Germany, suddenly some girls dressed in an SS uniforms opened a large window of their compartment and handed me a small bottle of Russian vodka.  These office girls, secretaries or switchboard operators probably felt sorry for me, guarding our train with a machine gun, standing in the open on a cold and snowy day.  The label from that bottle came off by itself, I kept it as souvenir about those times.  I lost it and also a medal I got when I was wounded.  Little by little I drank the vodka, it did not do me any harm. 

I found out that this was Himmler's staff train on his way to Germany.  Hitler, who did not even trust his Generals any longer, had put him in charge on the eastern front to save Germany from a final assault by Russian troops.  Himmler had no experience leading an army and only made matters worse.  When I was at the front I found out that Himmler was in charge:  Our group of perhaps ten young soldiers was to march to a line of trenches somewhere ahead of us.  I asked our corporal:  "Where are you taking us?" and another soldier replied:  "Don't ask him anything, he doesn't even speak German."  Since our group was a mixture of soldiers from many different units "they" thought to use one of their own, 'reliable' SS corporals to lead us.  He was either Latvian or Estonian.  Himmler committed suicide in April 1945-in Lüneburg. 

After my happy vodka interlude our train slowly started to carry us further east.  I consumed the heart warming and spirit enhancing booze little by little and another soldier took my place at the machine gun.  I went back into the coziness of the freight car, our temporary home.  We did not have any fear and only wished that this trip should soon end.  Any group of green, inexperienced soldiers hates inactivity.  There was a rumor that our destination of 'Schneidemühl' had been changed to 'Deutsch-Krone', a small town close to the border of Poland, just ahead of us.  The enemy must have advanced much faster than our headquarters imagined. 

We were told: "Everybody out!"  but there were no orders about our next destination.  As we left our freight train we saw another snow covered train waiting to be pulled out, it did not have an engine.  What at first looked like loaded flat cars turned into an almost surrealistic spectacle.  It snowed lightly and once in a while something seemed to move.  These were women and children waiting to be taken away from approaching Russians.  It was the most gruesome sight one can imagine.  Here I was in my blue Air Force coat I wore only a short while ago in Berlin and now I tried to defend those civilians with my French rifle and 20 rounds of ammunition in the company of a group of soldiers from so many branches of the Armed Forces.

Without being told where we were supposed to go, not knowing any of our officers or even the name of our unit, we started to march towards the slight rumble of artillery we heard in the distance.  All our clothing and supplies we carried in our knapsacks which were much too heavy for a long march.  Slowly this entire mass of soldiers rolled on and the ones at the end of this column were long forgotten by our leaders in front.  As night approached a few of us saw a house where we stopped.  We met more soldiers inside making the best of the situation, some were already asleep.  I am certain any Russian patrol could have killed all of us with just a few hand grenades.

Next morning we continued to walk into our unknown fate.  We still did not see or hear anything of the enemy or the rest of our unit.  Only the constant rumble in the background told us that this must be war.  With some snow on the ground and leaderless we meandered on and on.  I don't even know how we found our way, follow the ones ahead I guess.  War is chaos, that's the easiest to learn.

After another day's hike we again came upon some houses, a small village in a forest.  This time we slept in feather beds, a home that its inhabitants must have had vacated not long before our arrival.  We started a fire in their kitchen and I discovered a large container with milk.  There was also a grocery store, interesting to investigate.  Behind the counter I found a drawer full of cocoa powder.  Using a large pot from the kitchen I made hot chocolate, perhaps enough for twenty people, I had misjudged. 

Here we felt the tragedy of this war.  People who had spent their lives in this peaceful part of eastern Germany all of a sudden had to leave their homes.  Some of the former owners were perhaps still waiting on those open flat cars while we were rummaging through their belongings they could not take with them.  We did not see any of their farm animals.  Soon all their former possessions might go up in flames.

That drawer full of cocoa looked too tempting for me to leave behind.  I found a bicycle and strapped the wooden box on my two wheel machine and on we went, pushing our treasure through the snow.  We saw nothing of the enemy, we might have marched right into imprisonment as far as our simple instincts were concerned.  We did not know any better, and on we went into the unknown.

How long we kept on marching like this I can not recall but finally we did get to a large country estate.  Bicycle and cocoa had to be left behind.  This small castle a long time ago  was perhaps built by one of the rich landowners to be a center of their holdings.  Now most rooms were covered with straw where soldiers rested.  We joined what was apparently the unit from our train.  On our arrival we were yelled at by an officer about being late but we might have never gotten there had the Russian caught us. 

In the yard of this estate a field kitchen with a smoking stove pipe was established.  Somebody had slaughtered a cow and in a large kettle soup was boiling.  Some of us thought it may not be smart to eat such freshly butchered meat which has to age some time, there was a ton of grease floating on the top of this brew.  It didn't look to me like a well prepared meal. 

So far I have not even used my rifle.  Our group was the last to arrive and perhaps to punish us we were the first to be sent to the "front".  Many years ago a defensive line with concrete bunkers was built to guard the frontier against Poland but now these small bunkers were sitting in the middle of a pine forest, completely overgrown.  One would never see an enemy attacking.  When we finally got there we were met by some soldiers who had slept in these fortifications. 

The first question was, who in our group knew a machine gun 'type 42'.  Because I was innocent enough to volunteer I had to do guard duty the first night.  I was very tired after our long march but that's how things worked out..  The rest of our group of about ten soldiers went into the bunker and slept.  It is really spooky to be on watch, looking into a pitch black night which is even worse standing in a trench surrounded by trees.  I expected Russians might appear from nowhere and start shooting at me.  I also did feel responsible for the lives of our group although I did not know any one by name.  When my replacement appeared it was my turn to take a rest.  I slept but woke up to a thunderous noise.

Either I had been asleep too deeply or my co-defenders did not tell me to wake up and get out.  Leaving this bunker all by myself Russians were attacking in full force.  I could not see a thing, just rifle fire from all directions.  In a dark forest this can be very scary.  I could not see any of the other soldiers, I was all by myself in this trench.  Before I wanted to run, as my buddies had done, I saw the 'machine-gun type 42' we used during our night watch, it was leaning against the side of the trench.  I placed it on level ground and started shooting.  Perhaps it was my rage having been left behind, perhaps this is how some strange heroes are created.  Shooting for much too long the barrel got too hot and the gun  jammed, I had to stop firing.  After my heroic attempt fighting this war by myself all of a sudden it did get very quiet.  That's exactly what an older corporal asked me as he came running down the trench.  He said we were surrounded, it would be wise not to stay here too long.  I still had my French rifle with me and we then walked along the empty trench where the other men had long left before us two.  We kept going until we met a large group of soldiers with an officer.  He was apparently in charge, of what unit I never found out and all tried to look brave, not knowing what next.

We kept walking among trees while the older corporal told me about his experience in Russia, I trusted his judgment.  Since we were surrounded in this small forest the only way to get out would be to walk into the direction where most of the rifle fire came from.  He suspected that's where the smallest group of Russians would be and the final assault would come from another directions.  No orders were given to our group and the two of us decided to keep walking. 

Finally we did get to an opening, now we had an open field in front of us.  So far we had not seen any Russians but we had to try to meet up with German troops.  In the distance we could see some gun emplacements, we had no idea whether this was "them" or some of "us" which is an eerie feeling.  We might become POW's if fate so wanted it, but we were lucky and had run into our own people.  At this German artillery unit we were told to see their local commanding officer. 

No one here had any idea what was going on inside this small forest from which we had escaped, we became local heroes being able to report on the situation.  When all is confusion nobody could tell us where to attack or where to defend.  At the time I was only too young and inexperienced to realize that in war much action takes place in such uncontrolled ways.

While walking across a field with my savior, the corporal, he told me a bit about himself.  He was apparently discharged from the SS because he either had a nervous breakdown or could no longer stand what his unit was ordered to do, he did not go into any details.    Those concentration camp workers we saw in Brunswick were factory workers in a steel mill, where my school friend's father had died, not far from our anti-air craft battery.  In the middle of this field I was walking with a person who at least talked about occurrences I could only try to imagine. 

We were sent back to meet another infantry unit.  Walking along a dirt road my corporal yelled at me and quickly ordered me into a ditch.  We were under mortar fire but I would not have known what hit me, pure innocence.  Then we carefully got going again to meet the other group.  I must have been very exhausted and crawled into a stable and fell asleep.   Russian troops might have caught me but the noise from a German tank rambling by and loud commands woke me up.  Some unit needed soldiers to mount this tank and attack the enemy.  This was my first sight of such monster vehicles.  There were enough people who climbed on, the rest of us were told to form a group and we marched toward another section of the front.  Not long after we were called by a voice in Russian : "Stoy!" which means "Stop".  Our entire outfit turned quickly and we ran back to where we had come from.  The Russians must have been as surprised as we were, they did not even try to fire on us.  We were supposed to locate Russians, now we knew.

At what time I ate or where I slept I have no recollection, all those days and nights are a slight fog in my memory.  We stopped in a small village and a sergeant asked me to accompany him to walk a few Russian prisoners back to "wherever back" was.  The way the sergeant was dressed looked absolutely out of place, even comical.  It was cold and snow had fallen and he had all available kinds of civilian clothing wrapped around his uniform.  Where he had come across those prisoners I had no idea.  I also had the feeling that his was some kind of pretense to get away from some of the fighting.  The Russian prisoners looked to me well dressed and strong but one of them was wounded.  Two prisoners pulled him on a sled, one could hear a whistling sound while breathing.  Perhaps he was shot through his lungs.  The Russians also had much better winter clothing then ours.  

We kept walking for a while and then my sergeant stopped at a house to warm himself up.  We discovered a civilian couple, living in a cellar, quite unusual when fighting so close went on.  They gave us a glass jar with some goose meat, we were hungry, I can't remember ever eating a warm meal.  There was much more than we would ever eat and I took some of it outside to our waiting Russian prisoners who were at least as hungry as we were.  It was only a small gesture but for me this was at least as much a moment of happiness as for those Russians.  Moments like these are unforgettable and we soon were on our way again.  Finally we arrived at headquarters, the location of which only my senior partner knew about.  Getting in touch with an officer we were told to forget about our prisoners:  "What is H.Q. to do with them?"  We were then sent back to our unit and reported our mission as accomplished.  An officer in charge saw that this sergeant only took as an excuse taking prisoners 'back' to H.Q.  He was scolded for his strange appearance but nothing more came of it. 

I am now walking in another 'fog'.  We became yet another group to defend in trenches.  I thought as we were led through the night this only happens in old movies-ten young soldiers not knowing each became reinforcement walking to an unknown destination.  Without giving us any hints our Estonian SS corporal lead us through an open field.  He is the one who could not speak a word of German leading a bunch without a clue as to what we would have to do next but we soon discovered our new line of defense.  All happened as quietly as possible because Russian troops were not far away.  The next morning all looked and sounded serious.  A young person next to me in this cold and whet trench smoked a cigar with trembling fingers, he explained to me the situation in front of us.  In the distance we saw some Russian soldiers walking around.  We were not to start shooting  unless they started an attack and got much closer.  I only had my 20 rounds of French ammunition.

Before we were sent into these trenches we had been issued battle dresses to pull over our uniforms from Berlin.  The baggy trousers and jackets were made of waterproof material, white on one side and dark green on the other.  Getting too tired we took turns sleeping in the muddy trench.  We never received anything to eat, not one warm meal or anything else. 

One day the Russians did come out of hiding and as they got closer we started to shoot with our rifles.  Whether this really had an effect on their attack I can't tell because things suddenly got quiet again and we thought all was peaches.  Their tanks could still be heard in the distance, but what if those monsters started rolling toward us?  We did not have any weapons to defend ourselves, that part of the battle I never witnessed. 

I have to dig deep into my 'fog':  I was ordered to join a patrol to try to locate our enemy and find out more about our situation.  I had lost all sense of direction as to where we were going.  Once again-just follow the others.  We did not have to walk too far.  Getting up on a small hill we saw a few Russian soldiers on horseback.  We kept very quiet, we were only supposed to report what we observed.  We might once more be surrounded but after this uneventful sighting we were to return. 

On our side of that hill we passed another of our patrols who were also ordered to explore the same place where we had just been.  A young soldier carried a machine gun.  He said it was jammed.  Why he had to lug such a heavy weapon that did not work I didn't ask.  He put it down and we both tried to check it out, perhaps I might get it to fire.  At that moment I fell to the ground thinking he had inadvertently kicked my leg.  Getting up I told him to get lost, blaming him for this accident.  I noticed he looked a bit frightened at me but I had not really yelled at him that loud.  He went one way and I went the other.

I tried to catch up with my group but my leg started to hurt a little.  Getting closer they were all flat on the ground and motioned me to also get down.  By now I was using my rifle as support and my leg had a slight burning sensation.  While this bunch was on the ground I noticed we were all under fire.  I must have been the first one to get hit.  That I might be wounded came to me much later, I could not see where a bullet had entered my battle dress.  Putting my hand into the large pocket of my battle dress I took out an egg-hand grenade and saw it was damaged.  The ignite button was cut off and the grenade had a slight indent.  I did a stupid thing tipping the small capsule which was still in the grenade on the ground.  This is the part that starts the explosion of a hand grenade!

Slowly I made it back to our trench where I reported my accident to an older sergeant.  Both of us couldn't see any damage on my pants where I thought I might have gotten hurt and this wise man asked me to pull my pants down.  Now we saw a large hole in my leg, about the size of an egg but I had not lost much blood.  A hand grenade in the pocket of my battle dress was bent out of shape by the bullet then entered my thigh once more.  It came to rest one inch above my knee.  The ignite cap from the hand grenade had come off and I kept it for a while.  My French ammunition had survived the bullet.  The older, experienced sergeant said such a wound will take me safely back home.  I did not have a clue what he really meant.

Another badly wounded soldier and I were loaded onto a horse drawn cart and taken back in the middle of the night.  We rested on either side of two thermos containers that apparently delivered warm soup to the trenches.  There had never been enough for all of us I guess.  The other wounded soldier was in a lot more pain.  My own thoughts went up into the night sky, I was at peace with myself and the world.  If we would have found our end right then and there I would have been grateful.  We drove through the night resting on this primitive cart, some gun fire in the distance.  Our journey ended at a small village school.  Perhaps fifty or one hundred moaning and groaning wounded soldiers had already been delivered, all waiting to be taken care of.  We thought about transportation so that we would not have to end our lives here.  Nobody was able to walk but I could at least still hobble around a bit.  In the middle of our room sat wash tub filled with punch, our first sedative and for me this bit of alcohol worked very well.  I also tried to help distribute some of this "refreshment" to other wounded soldiers but not everybody was in a shape to enjoy it. 

After an anxious waiting period a bus took us to another location further away from the front line and we were checked about the severity of our injuries.  I can remember only some days as if in another fog.  I was lucky because I was still able to be on my own feet and not in need of a stretcher but by now my leg started to hurt. 

In all this commotion I heard some one call my name:  Ralph Becker from our Berlin unit!  A soldier in front of him was shot through the shoulder and good old Ralph was hit by the same bullet which was now stuck in his hip or even lower in his body.  On the bus he had a hard time sitting down and when we were unloaded I lost sight of him.  My injury was ranked fairly high and was written down on a card fastened around the neck.  I was transported further and further away from the front lines, just as the old sergeant had predicted.

Russian troops were advancing much faster since the German army was not sufficiently equipped and was not able to hold back this steamroller.  For many other wounded soldiers and myself it meant that we were constantly on the move.  At one location, I remember the name: "Kaiserbad Pölzin," we were offered an extra ration of one bottle of gin per room.  Five or six of us were supposed to share it for a nominal fee-it was not free of charge-there had to be order till the last moment!  The other wounded soldiers thought they did not want any and I paid for the bottle myself.  I was not an alcoholic, I thought to use the Gin as barter. 

On we went to the another train station.  I only vaguely remember this trip because I did enjoy my Gin, one sip at a time and slept a lot.  Looking now at a map I realize how precarious our situation was.  We did not go straight east, the same way we went to the front.  Georgi Shukov, a Russian general, was using a pincer movement.  He must have learned from German "Blitzkrieg" maneuvers in France, 1940.  Our train went all the way north to the Baltic Sea where in a school we slept on straw.  Downstairs a completely overworked surgeon was operating.  Without Penicillin those Doctors were forced to amputate if a wound had become infected. 

With crutches I managed to walk downtown and saw the chaos of refugees trying to evade Russian troops.  The civilian population was told to evacuate when it was almost too late, the local Nazi leaders had dished out their propaganda without wanting to recognize reality.  I must have kept much of my youthful innocence and never felt I would somehow end in captivity, I even went for a haircut in this small village! 

The German population who had survived the end of the war in this part of Germany was later forced out of their homes because East of the river Oder this part became Polish territory.  The division of Germany was sealed at a conference in Yalta, millions of Germans did not survive this last act of revenge.  After 1945, the war was long over, about 13 million civilians were forced from their homes in what became Poland.  They arrived as refugees in East and West Germany.  The civilian population all over the world certainly was hit hard as perhaps never before in any other war.  It is also best not to describe conditions in those last days of the war as they existed for wounded soldiers. 

My final journey took me through Stettin, a large city on the river Oder, now part of Poland.  The train station was jam-packed with civilian refugees.  SS officers tried to keep order and walked repeatedly through our train and checked those tags we had as our only official sign of being wounded.  Some soldiers were told to leave, civilians were not allowed to enter this train.

Another small sip of gin helped me go to sleep until our train stopped again at Güstrow, a small town north of Berlin.  I had no idea were we were but the next stop would be Hamburg.  That's where we became soldiers of the infantry, I knew how badly damaged that city was.  I saw Red Cross nurses on the platform who looked at us as if we had freshly escaped from some disaster, I now realize that we had.  The first time refugees did not crowd the train station, it all looked normal and peaceful to me.

We were taken to a huge building, our new home and hospital, the size of a small University.  It was brand new, a teachers seminary but had not yet been used as such.  This was to be our hospital.  Wearing our battle dresses and still dirty we did look as if we had just been saved from disaster.  Before a shower we left all clothing in one corner to be 'de-loused!  I still wore the same underpants with some blood on it.   

Slowly it dawned on me what lay behind me.  A sudden change into this civilized existence was unbelievable, we were well taken care of.  At first we were 10 to a room, sleeping in bunk beds.  No straw this time and we were given blankets.  When many more wounded soldiers arrived we slept in a large lecture room.  We were truly a diverse bunch of soldiers.  I could crawl on my own into an upper bunk.  In the lower bed slept my gambling partner with whom I played "21."  He came from Armenia and had a badly injured knee.  He was one of many Russian soldiers who volunteered to fight with the German army.  All Russian prisoners who were kept in Germany were after their return to Russia deported to Siberia by Stalin.

In our room were some soldiers from the Waffen-SS.  Discussing our times in their presence was difficult.  They did not quite threaten the rest of us, we were a majority, but it was certainly unpleasant.  I often suspect that they reported us back to their superiors.   I am talking about the last few months of the war in 1945.  I think their indoctrination and  belief in the Nazi system was beyond me.  Even now I have to stress that none of us soldiers were aware of any of those monstrosities that we learned about after the war.  I would have never believed that people were exterminated.

As weeks went by and my leg started to heal I was able to walk into town on my own.  My first visit took me to a movie theater with the usual line-up.  I might have felt sorry for myself and asked the owner if I could get in front of the line:  "If you can't stand in line don't come here!"  After this I did not take myself that serious, I received a medal, all in black, for having been injured in this war.  Also a document came with it which I still have.  That easily made up for any rudeness I might encounter in the future-I wore a medal!

When I was able to walk a bit better I started helping with breakfast for our section.  Plum jam on rye bread and I delivered it to rooms of our badly injured.  Our Red Cross nurses worked hard and we got along very well.  They called me 'Ghandy', I must have been as thin as the famous Indian.

As bandages became scarce our wounds were often taken care of with crepe paper, used by florists.  I also helped to take this stinking mess off many open wounds.  Every morning I worked a few steps ahead of the nurse and our surgeon who checked on their patients.  For this work I got a few extra slices of black bread with jam.  Later my handiness was appreciated in another way and might have gotten me out of a dangerous situation.

I still had a bulging spot above the knee.  All this time I was treated as being "Shot through the thigh."  Close together I did have two fair size holes in my leg but it was not known that this bullet also hit a hand grenade and went back down into my leg, I was never X-rayed.  Now it was obvious, something was still in there.  I counted myself into a narcotic dream and in an instant a bullet was removed.  It did look slightly bent and a sliver of metal was missing.  Slowly the top hole in my leg was starting to heal but now I had another cut above my knee.  None of these injuries were stitched  Without Penicillin any infection could become serious.  Because of these drawn out procedures I did not have to go back again and fight in the last stages of  the war.

An older sergeant who was not able to walk asked me to inquire in town if one of the butcher shops would trade his beautiful Norwegian pullover for some 'beef tartar' he had such a craving for.  This kind of Hamburger meat mixed with onions and salt and pepper in Germany is often eaten raw.  The store I went to was filled with customers but I succeeded to see the boss' lady and in a back room of the store, very discreetly, we handled this transaction and I think both parties were happy!  I don't remember how I was paid by the owner of the pullover, perhaps some 'tartar' to eat. 

For us there was not much to do to pass the time.  We did not have a library or any other distractions.  We often played "21" and I was on a nice winning streak.  If I think about it now, too much money was at stake but we could not go out to buy anything and so we gambled.  On the other hand one can also lose a lot of money which I finally did.  As other gamblers before me I gave away my last valuable item, a carved ivory cigarette holder.  I had found this in a feudal residence, lying in a drawer of a mahogany sewing desk.  I offered it to my buddy and he accepted it as payment for my debt.  He was a very tall soldier from one of the Baltic states.  I never went into such predicament again.  I am now a long way from my photo album although not in time.  Less than three months separate these stories from my last pictures in Berlin and how much had taken place.

Although we did not have any books through conversations with soldiers, some where older, others had been influenced because of their work I received information I did not obtain in school.  A young soldier about my age had been an apprentice at "Deutsche Bank."  He tried to explain to me some of the financial workings of war.  He was present at a fair well speech to apprentices by Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, head of the German Bank.  Before Hitler he had stabilized the German currency which went through a devastating inflationary period.  This was at the time the United States was in a period of depression.  In the beginning Schacht supported Hitler but was then unable to stop the party's plans to expand too quickly.  Hjalmar Schacht later resigned and was despised by the regime.  In 1945 he was also one of the accused at the international court in Nuremberg but he was not sentenced nor imprisoned.  After the war I read some of his books.

According to my young lecturer German currency was not convertible and therefore could only be used inland, worth as much as the paper it was printed on.  Hitler had to start this war because otherwise the country would have been bankrupt.  It did not make any sense to my mother that coffee beans had to be destroyed and wheat was burnt but we could not buy either from any country with our currency.  We saw this in one of the German propaganda movies about the United States.  It made even more sense that in 1941 I bought the last soldering iron in a store and the last letter scale.  There was no shortage of leather in the world but we school children started to use "Ersatz" (replacement) material for our school briefcases, which was a kind of pressed and lacquered card board.  This went on even before Germany went to war.  Production for the civilian sector had almost come to a halt while a smart propaganda machine told the population about a final victory.  I can't recall our entire talk but my bank expert did pass on some of his wisdom.

I also talked to a Realtor from Berlin who explained to me some of the inner workings of his trade.  I would have liked to join him in his business and thought it was very interesting.  I had never heard my father talk about stocks or bonds.  During my days at the hospital it was very instructive for me to be able to find information from such diverse fields and people who were my seniors. 

Because of our educational system through a somewhat elitist high school we were completely uninformed about any needs of everyday life.  None of my friends ever had a paper route or a little extra income while we attended Gymnasium.  During the war our relationship to money became a bit more relaxed.  We had to work during our summer vacation or do guard duty at a power company and for the first time we were paid.  At other times we picked cherries or did minor farm work.

Passing time as best we could we knew Russian troops got closer every day.  We heard on the radio how quickly the country was now invaded from all sides.  On Adolf Hitler's birthday we received a piece of cake; that was April 20. 1945.  Then we were told our hospital would close and only the badly wounded would be transported by train.  By this time I was able to walk, not too well, but it meant we were on our own and were released.   We had to try our luck to get closer to the West or become prisoners of war by the Russian Army.

I don't know if it was fatalism but I did not want to run away from those Russian tanks that were rapidly getting closer.  Our large building was empty and the wounded unable to walk had been taken to a freight yard.  Most of the other soldiers had taken off in a hurry, I was all by myself and started to inspect our empty building which now had a different feel to it-not one person around, all was quiet.

I walked to the deserted kitchen and saw a large pot filled with cream of wheat with a hotel size ladle still resting in my beloved morning soup, it was still warm.  To this day cream of wheat is a favorite of mine.  As a boy my mother often added a touch of butter for me to grow and become a healthy boy!  Cinnamon sprinkled on top and a few crumbs of sugar were added-my heaven!  I was the only person in this large kitchen and I started to eat.  I used a small spoon dipping into this huge ladle and I could eat as much as I wanted!  I kept eating but the ladle was still half full.  It could serve ten persons with one scoop and I had to stop.  Well fed I started to walk into town.  Many desperate refugees were trying to outrun the approaching war machine but I still did not feel a need to escape, my only thoughts were that soon this will be over.  I then walked past the freight yard, wondering if the hospital train had really left, an army spends most of its time waiting, and true enough, here was a train with painted 'Red Cross' markings, still waiting.  I walked along the freight cars when one of the nurses yelled, "Ghandy, jump in, I can use your help, I am all by myself."  She had around 40 amputees in her freight car, resting on straw.  To feed and take care of their wounds is quite a bit of work, they were badly injured soldiers.  The nurse told me to hide in a corner, she was not allowed to let anyone in.  It did not take long and we were moving, I knew how I could help her and our patients.  I had started making plum jam sandwiches and did a night shift for her which must count as my apprenticeship.

We had hoped this train would take us away from a disaster but this was not to be and we were frightened.  Would the Russian advance catch up with us or would we meet British force's first?  We were rolling throughout the night but during the next day our train had to stop.  In front of us an abandoned train with heavy "88" Anti-Aircraft guns, radar set and crew quarters blocked our tracks.  The city of Wismar, on the Baltic Sea, was almost in our sight and we suspected it was in British hands.  American Forces were fighting much further South.  From the East we heard rumbling noises of tanks, but even in this tricky situation I tried to remain calm.  I walked through the train ahead of us, those soldiers must have left in a hurry to get away from advancing Russian tanks to surrender to British forces.  They had not even tried to destroy any of the radar equipment.  It would have been a dream of mine to have worked on this equipment, a field that had such an enormous future.  Without any tools except a large screw driver I started to disable this gigantic electronic marvel poking into display tubes and doing general harm inside.  I destroyed and at the same time admired, that's war!  Guns and other paraphernalia were a common sight for me from my earlier "Ak-AK Helper" days. 

My uniform was not the best, at the hospital we had received a replacement for our dirty battle dresses, but in this train I had the opportunity to acquire an original Air Force jacket.  The war would be over soon and I might as well end it properly dressed.  In a cabinet I found a brand new jacket left there by a corporal and tried it on and removed his insignias.  I did not have to elevate myself to a higher rank.

My technical exploration was interrupted because in the distance I saw a Russian tank slowly moving closer.  While rummaging through the empty train, getting a new uniform and destroying the Radar set another freight train had stopped behind us.  I wondered what those Russian tank would do next.  They might first shoot at the guns of the train ahead but perhaps because of our Red Cross decided to just do one shot at the train behind us.  I could see civilian refugees flying through the air, the freight car almost exploding by the impact of the grenade.  I quickly ran back to our wounded and assured the soldiers that all would be fine, they were scared to death.  Not one would have been able to walk away from a possible disaster.  Those poor souls were completely dependent on my help to even get a drink of water.

Our head surgeon had sent all female nurses into the town ahead of us because the terrible behavior of Russian troops was well known by now.  Slowly a few more tanks looked us over and one of their commanders checked our car filled with our smelly group of amputees.  He was shocked about what he saw and only asked in broken up German: "Any Weapons?".

It's funny, but after the Russian had left some of my wounded officers asked me to dump their revolvers into a nearby ditch, the other soldiers cursing them about their stupidity.  "Red Cross" means-don't carry any weapons.  From another of our freight cars this Russian officer also took along an older Waffen SS soldier and all tanks withdrew.  So far we had been spared anything dramatic and I gave ' my patients' something to drink.  A fighter pilot was badly burnt and bandaged all over his head, he had to be spoon fed.  I made him a raw egg mixed with a bit of red wine. 

I thought I noticed a commotion at the front of the train.  Our head surgeon was trying to talk with an officer who had arrived on a motor bike.  I had never before seen such a  uniform, perhaps he came from a unit of the advancing British army.  I thought I understood some words in English.  To get started our head surgeon even tried talking in French when I humbly injected:" Sir, I think I can understand this officer".  "Then you talk to him!".  After all in the Armed Forces I was a young nobody who had to get permission to speak.  I also felt a bit insecure, I should not have been traveling on this train in the first place. 

After slowly repeating his sentences for me a few times this British officer said:  "Tell your surgeon, by five o'clock this afternoon all your wounded will be picked up by British Army ambulances and you will serve as our interpreter!"

At the promised time 'olive drab' ambulances with large red crosses showed up and the entire train was unloaded and all wounded were taken to the town of Wismar.  I was so busy translating and running all over the place that on my last trip I forgot my little back pack in our freight car.  I had to go with one of the British drivers and never had a chance to return to the train loosing my fountain pen and a bar of chocolate.  Now I was a prisoner of war of the British Army.

What saved us from becoming prisoners of the Russian Army were our nurses who were sent ahead into Wismar.  How they managed to inform the British Army about our badly wounded soldiers in our freight train I never found out. 

Our first shelter was in a German Air Force installation where I met the nurse who had hidden me in her freight car.  Wounded soldiers from the British Army wanted me to translate all their love and admiration for our nurse but my school English was not good enough for love affairs.  Sleeping on the floor in a hallway almost felt like being in a hotel.  For me the war had now come to an end in this small town on the Baltic Sea.  In the meantime a large school building was prepared for us which became the last hospital I stayed in.  I also had an important position as interpreter. 

Soon I was approached by our soldiers who wanted to swap their wristwatch for British cigarettes, about 120 cigarettes per watch.  I received a small commission from both the seller and the buyer.  Those of us who could walk were not confined to this school.  I went into town during one day to just look around but we had to be back in time.  There was a curfew that started at sunset but I don't think anybody wanted to escape.  Some stores in town were open again and I even bought a loaf of bread. 

Late one evening I heard the call "Interpreter".  I thought that's funny, because I had never been out that late, because of the curfew Germans were not allowed on the street after dark.  A British soldier carrying a machine gun was waiting for me, without a guard I could not have been in the streets.  I thought I was to be punished, bartering watches for cigarettes was of course illegal and British troops were not allowed to fraternize.  The soldier with his machine gun who was not much older than I took me to a house next door where British guards were stationed.  Entering a living room we were greeted by loud voices:  "The war is over, welcome to our victory party!"  And what a party it was.  The former German owners of the house had also been invited.  We drank rum out of wine glasses and a good time was had by all.  My personal guard and I hardly managed to walk back.  At our 'hospital everybody was looking for me and they thought I had escaped.  Our head surgeon was responsible for us and I was ordered to see him.  I tried to explain my predicament but did not get beyond the word "Head", the word "surgeon" I could not pronounce in my drunken state.  After my otherwise happy encounter I had to throw up into a sink down the hall way.  It was 8.May, 1945, V-E Day.

The next day the good Doctor looked at my leg and signed me off as "Able to walk".  Where once a bullet had been removed I now carried a black scar.  Otherwise my leg did not seem to be too bad.  When I prepared for our march into a prison camp I found a kind of travel case under a music pavilion, I did not want to take the instrument.  We were dismissed as a group, received a blanket, a loaf of bread and a small sausage.  Another section of my life began to unfold.

A small group of about 15 soldiers we went on our way.  Even without my drunken incident I would not have remained much longer in this hospital.  The city of Wismar was still in the British Zone of occupation but the border for what was to become East Germany was to be changed soon, but we did not know this at the time.  The division of Germany into French, American, British and Russian sectors was decided in Yalta.  The ramifications of having Russian influence so deep in Europe were well understood by Churchill but I will not delve into any details here.  Historians from many countries have done that, common people are usually paying a price for such historic decisions.

Because we went into a POW camp in West Germany we did not witness Russian troops occupying Wismar which became East Germany.  We walked on country roads without any guards, did not encounter bad weather nor were we confronted by former foreign workers who also wanted to get back home.  Marauding gangs at times did as they pleased, one can understand their frustrations.  These were people forced from their country to work for the German war machinery.  Walking past farms we slept in a shed for shelter.  On our second day on the road we met an English officer on horseback, enjoying himself.  Here was an occasion to try out my language skills.  My vocabulary became better the more I could use my school English.  He could see the way we were walking that we were recovering, wounded German soldiers.  I told him that we were on the way to a prison camp and could he perhaps supply us with transportation.  "Well, keep going, straight ahead is Gadebusch.  At the train station see another officer, tell him you talked to me."  We found the place, I introduced myself and soon someone with a truck was ready to drive us.  At hair raising speeds we were taken to our new home, all of us standing upright on his truck - like some sardines but the only group that arrived by truck in a POW camp, our new 'home'.

In Wismar we had slept in a bed and had a roof over our heads.  Now we rested in an open field behind barbed wire among thousands of German soldiers, we did not even have a tent.  We were told that overnight it might get cold and at times a slight fog rolled in.  Food was the barest minimum.  All we received were some dry biscuits and that was it, what a change.  The nights were really the worst part but some in our group owned a section of an army tent and we dug a shallow hole in the ground and tried to survive.  What little we took with us from the hospital was soon eaten.  We heard a rumor that we would soon leave our open field and march further north.  We had to stay a few more days in the open and then a long column of unorganized soldier-humanity made its way along small roads leading north.  The war was now over and a few British soldiers were watching over us.  One small 3 person tank drove in front and another one followed in the rear to make sure nobody got lost.  I don't think anybody tried to escape.  We were told in our next camp we would later be discharged and sent home.

We were separated from our officers and I had the dubious honor to meet a former regimental captain from Berlin.  He was marching in his unit, not too far from us.  He also recognized me but I could not refrain making a few remarks about his beautiful attire.  Compared to my mixture of a uniform he looked as if he had come straight out of an officer's club.  He mentioned that "they" had to leave Berlin and were told to regroup at exactly the location were we were right now.  I think what he meant was that this last group of instructors simply took off to safer grounds.  We were always indoctrinated with speeches by some of our leaders about victory and the immense abilities of our beloved "Führer".

One had to be present at these speeches, sacrificing the last for the country and our "Führer".  It's hard to replay their hypocrisy and we young recruits (cadets) had to endure this nonsense.  This awful propaganda was one of the reasons for me to resign.  As political officers we were supposed to regurgitate the same nonsense  Officially I signed off because I wanted to work in electronics and not become a 'commissar', telling stories I did not believe in.  My captain went one way on his road and I trundled off with the rest of the group.  For myself that part of history was over.

Not all events were as sad as this last encounter as we walked north.  At night we made a small fire, in May-June it can be very cool in the Northern Germany.  At daybreak we had  the sun to warm us up.  We shared a can of corned beef between 6 of us and thinking about it now, it still tastes as good in my memory. 

Soon we came to another field for an overnight rest.  On the other side of the road we saw hundreds of former Russian POW's walking around.  They could stay in farm buildings and by word of mouth I heard that anyone who wanted to get rid of a watch could barter with our former enemies for some bread.  The Russians had plundered a freight train.  We were free to move around but I did not know if it would be safe to enter their compound.

From my days in Wismar I owned a modern looking small triangular alarm clock.   During one of my translating services I had to accompany some civilians into their occupied home to retrieve some of their preserves British soldiers were kind enough to part with.  In one room in the basement those soldiers had a whole table full of watches they had somehow 'collected'.  I had to take just one, it was a bit risky but I thought I escaped worse dangers than that. 

With this treasure in my pocket I approached one of the Russians.  It did not take long and I found an interested party talking to me in broken German.  A Russian soldier had some loaves of bread to offer but I thought not too much about this deal, my "Ivan" must have liked the alarm clock.  From underneath a bed he pulled a wooden crate of Turkish raisins, 28 pounds of the sweet stuff!  I had never seen so many raisins in my life.  As far as nourishment is concerned I thought it's not bad.  He took my watch, I put the crate on my shoulder and walked out of their enclave.  I hope he is still happy with the alarm clock.

The problem was how to keep walking with such a heavy load.  I dumped the raisins into my musician's carrying case.  For a while I carried the load by myself but soon friendly helpers offered a hand.  In the end anyone willing to carry my bag for a certain time received a small handful of raisins.  I managed to maintain this routine until we reached our final destination, one of those typical north German farms where we rested on straw in a large stable.  The animals had been taken away.  The bag with raisins served as my pillow and being close I kept more than one eye on it.

Marching along was not just drudgery and at times we sang.  The German (and Russian) army sang and this passed the time.  We even had a young, upcoming opera singer in our group.  I still think about some of his presentations ranging all the way from "Franz Lehar" to more serious works.  He came from Hamburg and I often wondered what might have become of him.  He also helped carry my bag and received a handful of raisins.  Because of my treasure I always had a lot of friendly volunteers around me.

On this farm we settled into a new routine.  There was a roof over our head and we received a small but regular food ration and did not stay behind barbed wire.  We were told to be patient until we would be dismissed.  There was a rumor we might be sent to work in a coal mine in Belgium which I don't think it was that far fetched.  Perhaps British politics were far reaching to stabilize countries not under Russian influence.  History was still in action..  When German POW's were dismissed from the United States after the end of the war many were then sent to work on farms in England or France.  Although not a POW any longer they did not return to Germany until three years later.

A friend from our hospital in Güstrow had found employment in the POW kitchen and skimmed a bit off the fat for me that floated on top of our soup simmering in a gigantic kettle which was too hard to digest for my undernourished system.  This soup also reminded me of my only warm meal we were ever served at the front.  This was at a castle when Russian guns were not too far away. 

We supplemented our meager rations with anything growing in nature like sting nettles, a weed growing all over Europe.  I boiled it in my ever handy tin can.  An added delicacy were potatoes or anything looking like a root.  We were later relocated to a forest where I was blessed with the sight of a farm house.  I tried to exchange a small container filled with raisins for a few eggs and a tiny piece of bacon, what a surprise!  Our thoughts constantly revolved around food and about when we might go home. 

Then our age group was separated from older soldiers, we moved under trees.  Four of us young guys slept in a hole in the ground we dug out, then we covered our new home with twigs.  In case of rain we stayed reasonably dry.  Long after the rain had stopped it still kept drizzling from leaves and we walked into an opening where the sun was shining.  To pass the time we talked about our future in a civilian life.  The high schoolers among us had no idea about any of the trades. 

"Lothar," my new found companion had served an apprenticeship in a bakery.  His father owned a "Cafe" and my friend in our earth bunker kept telling me about the intricacies of his profession.  I learned a lot about baking, at least in theory.  Talking about preparing these goodies was mouth watering but I found it fascinating.  If only we could have eaten some of those delicacies.  I think Lothar's father was a socialist.  Apparently in the period of high unemployment after the first world war his father had his fill of German officers trying to peddle something at his cafe.  Why these salesmen would have been officers I don't know.  Perhaps it was a post World War I mentality or a propaganda tale of the times.  Perhaps his old man hated soliciting. 

Lothar transferred his father's attitude to our own ex-leaders who by their mannerism did not yet give up the fact that the Second World War was over and unconditionally lost.  As POW's we still had to keep some military discipline but we were no longer yelled at.  At one point Lothar talked back to a given order but he was not punished.  We met again in what then became East Germany.  I wonder if his and his father's convictions served them well.  It is also quite possible that eventually they left the "Peoples Democracy."  Millions did this until the "Wall" was built.  I lost track of him and his family.

To give us a special treat our youth group was taken to the Baltic Sea.  It was not too long a hike and we stayed in tents for one week but the summer was not yet warm enough to swim in the sea.  Ever searching for something to eat I found some mussels in a drainage pipe at a dike.  I boiled the shelled animals in my tin can but did not exactly know what I had eaten, my body did not rebel.  This was another highlight in captivity.  We also hiked along the dike and found life generally acceptable.  We also attended a musical produced by prisoners in the small town of Dömitz, now a well established sea side resort.  Out of an open window in one of the houses I heard an announcement made on the radio.  The world seemed to have gone back to normal.

We heard that soon we would be sent home.  The British military government had it well organized, farm laborers were first in line.  I have never been a 'Farm Laborer', now I registered as one.  It's recorded in my discharge papers.  We were allowed to take one blanket with us and were deloused with DDT at former German Army barracks.  We received with a dispenser one heavy blow down the front of our shirt, another one down our back.  The room and everybody in it was continuously covered with a thick, white cloud of DDT.  This procedure prevented an outbreak of typhoid and diseases that can occur when millions are constantly on the march.  At the end of the war all of Europe was in motion. 

Standing on trucks we started our trip home.  The first overnight stay was in Lüneburg where I managed to notify my Grandmother Schmidt while our truck stopped at an intersection.  She came to our barracks where I thought we might be going to stay the night.  I saw her at the fence and she gave me a sandwich.  She could not send a letter to my mother because the postal service was not yet delivering any mail.  The next day we were on our way again.

In a small village that served as transit camp for displaced persons from Poland we were booed but the former foreign workers did not throw any rocks at us.  We would have been without any protection standing on open trucks.  Further south in Brunswick we saw a lot of damage and many people looked poorly dressed and some said they had very little food.  At the foot of the Harz mountains we were dismissed and that was that.  So far we had always been taken care of but now we were supposed to become civilians. 

Lothar and I hitched a ride on a truck going into the mountains.  We were told the British Army was in the process of leaving Blankenburg, our home town.  The Russians would then take over as occupying forces.  Trying to go home drove us on in spite of the unknown.  In a small village a man with a trailer to transport pigs allowed us to jump in.  It was large enough for two animals which was enough room for us two war heroes.  We still did not know if Russians had entered our town.  There was a rumor but we did not see Russian soldiers.  It was quite exciting looking out of a cattle trailer always prepared for the worst.  A Russian border patrol might stop us.  Another bit of history might be in the making but our fears were unfounded. 

Entering Blankenburg my first impressions were seeing the damage done during the last days of the war.  One of the large tourist hotels was no more and much of the old parts of down town were burnt out ruins.  I walked down to our street which was undamaged.  A young lady who rented a room from us in the last years of the war told my mother:  "That might be your son I just saw walking by."  She was warned ahead of my arrival and the shock was not as intense when mother and son met again.  We talked a lot and she was happy to see me alive and healthy.  I ate three bowls of cabbage soup and was glad the war was over!