;)
Excerpt 2 (page 94)
Every able-bodied male, no matter what age, was now drafted into the Volksturm, the People’s Army, a new branch of the military. Old men, together with fifteen- and sixteen-year-old boys from the Heimatflak, were to defend the home front. Irmgard’s grandfather was called to report for military service in Elbing. He received a shovel and had to dig trenches. Each farmer had to provide a vehicle with a driver to assist in the hasty effort. It appeared that the beginning of the end of the war would take place in East Prussia, the province closest to the Russian border. The populace held its breath and hoped for a miracle.
Irmgard’s teary-eyed grandmother talked of committing suicide if anything happened to her beloved life’s companion, as she referred to her husband. I never saw her without a wet handkerchief twisted between her nervous fingers.
Father spent more and more time playing with the dials on Dieter’s radio. When he found something forbidden, he sent me out of the room and told me to close the door. Mother and he talked a lot, their voices lowered to mere whispers. When I entered the room, they stopped abruptly. I could feel the tension building up all around me. Mother no longer read books, and Father no longer allowed me to play hairdresser with his hair. He got irritated and told me to go play with my doll.
“But she doesn’t have any hair,” I protested.
“I won’t have any either if this continues,” he shot back.
Senta barked so much during the nights that, at times, she even awakened me. I often overheard Father and Erwin talk about being out with her during the night, checking on strange noises and chasing after suspicious shadows. Some times we found empty nests in the chicken house, a cow or two that gave no milk, and briquettes missing from the woodshed.
Father secured the doors to the stable and barn as best he could, with no locks available. Mother, concerned about the thefts, asked, “Will the authorities believe us that we are being stolen blind by the riffraff running around during the night? Will they still expect us to deliver the required quota to them when half of it has been stolen from us? How can we stop this?”
“Thank heaven we have Senta,” Father said.
Pictures of atrocities committed by the Red Army during its short stay on German soil appeared in newspapers and were flashed across newsreels in movie houses. They were meant to instill fear of the Russians and steel the Germans’ resolve not to give up, but to clench their fists and fight to save the Vaterland. Hitler hoped the Red Army would exhaust itself. But a colossus was building up along the East Prussian border. The Russian divisions outnumbered the Germans three to one. The German army could not hold them back for long. Our reprieve was temporary. Veiled and distorted news reached us from the eastern front. The radio only reported military successes and never mentioned defeats. Hospitals overflowed with wounded. Soldiers died by the thousands each day, while our daily life continued. We neither knew nor suspected how little time we had left before everything would cave in on us.