CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Afterwards there were those who said that the Burgomaster was pleased when the first flares dropped near Altgarten. Karl Keller, one of the waiters from the Stube, said that he’d left there with a smile on his face after the warning had been delivered to him. But, as one of the civil-defence messengers said, it was his birthday and he had just finished a banquet in his honour, why shouldn’t he be smiling?
An official car was waiting outside Frenzel’s and the Burgomaster was taken at high speed through the empty streets to the Rathaus where a policeman saluted him smartly as he descended the steps to the heavily sandbagged Control Room. Inside, three civil-defence girls were at their desks and two Hitler Jugend cyclists were uniformed and at attention in the anteroom.
‘Red Christmas-tree flares one mile to the south-east: 01.29.’ The girl smiled. ‘That’s probably somewhere in Frau Kersten’s fields.’
‘Mark it in on the map, Fräulein.’
The telephonist said, ‘FLUKO reports red markers near Duisburg 01.30. The same aircraft, probably.’
‘Mark that in too,’ said the Burgomaster calmly. ‘We must know which way the aircraft are approaching.’
The Burgomaster hung up his hat and sat behind his desk. The yellow desk lamp made a rim around his profile. He passed his long white fingers over the three phones, blotter, pad and sharpened pencils as if to reassure himself that all was arranged to his orders. He had never been under air attack before. He was determined to work by the rules. For many months he had studied the instruction books and reports; tonight he would use his store of knowledge. Suddenly he stood up. It was the first Supporter aircraft putting down his stick of HE. Six 500-lb medium-capacity bombs fell in a line about seventy yards apart. Had there been an eighth bomb it would have fallen upon the Rathaus.
‘What are they bombing out there?’ asked the Burgomaster, looking at the wall of his office as though some mystic force might allow him to see through it and thus solve the problem.
‘Frau Kersten’s potatoes,’ said the telephonist. ‘Perhaps they are trying to starve us out.’
The Burgomaster froze her smile with a look. The First World War had left him with the belief that jokes under fire were only one step away from hysteria.
There was a rattle at the door-handle and another Hitler Jugend boy appeared. He was excited and flushed with the exertion of pedalling. ‘The road is on fire, Herr Bürgermeister.’
‘What do you mean, the road?’
‘A thin white flame as tall as a house,’ said the boy.
‘Fräulein Eva, tell the Gasmeister. Junge, give the exact position of the fire. Fräulein Bertha, prop something under that door to hold it open so that there is free access to the Control Room. Tomorrow I want that door-handle mended properly. It’s nearly a week since I asked for it to be done.’
‘Yes, Herr Bürgermeister,’ said the girl.
Tommy Carter’s Joe for King came steadily across Altgarten and released a bomb-load which included the green TIs.
‘And connect me to the waterworks master too.’
The telephonist pushed the key continuously but the phone was unanswered.
The waterworks master had hurried away from the Burgomaster’s birthday party keen to prove that he knew his duty as well as the next man, but he’d forgotten the keys of his office. He walked across to the filter beds and the great water tank. There was nothing for him to do. He found the half-finished cigar in his top pocket and relit it and began a gentle stroll. There were red flashes in the sky. It seemed very close, but he knew such appearances could be deceptive. The sound of aeroplanes grew louder. He often watched them pass over on their way to the Ruhr. Sometimes he had seen them hit and burning in the sky like comets.
The waterworks master was Altgarten’s first victim. When coloured marker bombs came down he began to run but he was swamped by cascading pools of green fire. And then came high explosive and his body was thrown into the air and buried in the churned soil amongst potato roots and splinters of tree.
The raid was no novelty for the Technische-Nothilfe Bataillon. They came out of their huts completely equipped before the first stick of flares had guttered and died. Their heavy trucks, with the wide white identifying band painted round them and the white bicycles strapped to the tailboards, were drawn up in convoy order and the men swung aboard in the darkness as they had done a thousand times before. This was just another air raid for the TENOs, with the subtle distinction that this time they did not have to go to it; it had come to them.
First the car decelerates and moves slowly enough for the driver to see the house numbers. Finally it stops. The men’s voices are low in tone and volume and their rhythms imply orders and assent. Doors slam gently and metal-studded boots click loudly in the night air. The door-knocker rat-a-tats.
All over Europe in 1943, ears had become sensitive to such a sequence of sounds. At eleven forty-five on the night of June 31st old Herr Voss the tailor cocked his head and listened fearfully.
Herr Voss was a short plump man of fifty-nine. The crown of his head was bald, but a natural wave gave him curls across the ears and over his collar. He was a talented amateur baritone and as recently as 1940 he had performed at a local concert. His wife had once been a noted Lieder singer. They liked music of all kinds and had a large collection of records ranging from American jazz to Beethoven quartets and of course many choral works. Each evening he dressed in his black velvet jacket and tasselled smoking-hat. His daily housekeeper left them a simple cold meal and after finishing it he smoked his pipe and he and his wife listened to music, often until one or two o’clock in the morning. At present his wife was visiting their only daughter and son-in-law in Freiburg. Although alone in the house he kept to the usual ritual.
Voss turned down the music on the radio. For a moment he stood listening, then he shuffled down the hall in his carpet slippers to open the front door. Even before he got there the knocker sounded again. ‘All right, all right,’ called the old man irritably. ‘Everyone is in such a hurry.’ It was dark outside and he could just make out the silhouette of a steel helmet. ‘It’s the front-room curtain again, is it?’ said old Voss, his voice changing into a soft apology. ‘It’s the cat that moves it.’
‘Voss?’ said the man. And now old Voss looked at him a second time. By the shaded light he could see that it was a Wehrmacht steel helmet the man was wearing, not a Luftschütz pattern.
‘Voss?’ repeated the soldier. His voice was strange.
‘Yes,’ said Herr Voss. He tried to say it doubtfully, so as to retain the option of denying it.
‘This is the house, sir,’ called the soldier in the thick throaty Russian of the Caucasian mountains. Another man came out of the darkness.
‘Get the bundle,’ he said in halting Russian. He was taller and slimmer than the HIWI, with a leather overcoat that was badly damaged on the elbows and lapels. ‘I’m the one who telephoned,’ said the tall one. His voice had the singsong lilt of the Rhineland.
‘Come in,’ said Voss.
They both came into his sitting-room. The Hilfsfreiwilliger—auxiliary volunteer—was loaded under three long sacking bundles. He had them upon his shoulder and they sagged with their own weight.
‘On the floor,’ said the tall one. He was a pale-faced young man with tired eyes and a hooked nose. Like an owl, thought Voss. The man opened his coat to search for cigarettes and revealed the black SS rank patches on his collar. The foreign volunteer was a Feldwebel; his uniform was at least a size too small for him. On his sleeve there was a yellow dragon on a bright blue shield. ‘Galician—14th SS, eh?’ said Voss.
‘How do you know?’ asked Fischer, taking off his coat.
‘I tailor uniforms. I probably know more about Army insignia than you do. And you’re Leibstandarte, eh?’ The old man smiled, noticing the LAH epaulettes and new cuffband on Fischer’s arm. He thought them the trappings of a poseur. Now he looked more closely at Fischer’s Knight’s Cross.
‘We’re posted to Hitler Jugend Division,’ said Fischer angrily. He threw his leather coat over a chair. He hadn’t wanted the old man to know which unit they belonged to, but lying was complicated. Still, there wasn’t much danger that this little crook would dare complain about an SS officer.
The HIWI dumped the bundles on the floor, unsheathed a bayonet and neatly sliced one open. He unrolled it with the toe of his boot.
‘From the National Museum in Kharkov,’ said Fischer.
‘Caucasian?’
‘Kuba,’ nodded the officer. ‘Nearly three hundred years old. It could tell a few stories.’
The HIWI flipped back the corner like a professional carpet dealer. ‘Look at it,’ said Fischer. ‘Notice the warp threads on two different levels. Look at the border.’
‘Kufic,’ said Voss.
‘Exactly,’ said Fischer. ‘You know a thing or two about carpets.’
‘I’ve bought them before.’
‘So I heard,’ said Fischer drily. ‘You’ll be a fool not to buy this one. It’s a museum-piece.’
‘Everyone says they’ve got a museum-piece,’ said Voss, rubbing a corner of the carpet.
‘Yes,’ said Fischer, ‘but not everyone takes it out of a Russkie museum at the point of a gun.’ The HIWI watched them carefully as they spoke, trying to understand Voss’ fast guttural Platt-deutsch, as much like Dutch as German. Suddenly comprehending, the HIWI laughed and revealed a set of bad teeth.
Fischer watched Voss’ face as he examined the stitches. ‘See how thick the base is.’
‘How much?’
‘Ten thousand.’
‘Reichsmark?’
‘No, Pfennig,’ said Fischer sarcastically.
Voss ran his fingers across the flowers and birds. Soft reds and greens. The colours shone in the electric light. ‘It’s worth it,’ admitted Voss.
‘Worth twice as much,’ said Fischer. He went to a silver box on the coffee table. ‘I’ll take a cigarette,’ he announced.
‘Please do,’ said Voss. He looked at the other bundles. ‘What are the others?’
‘Modern Shirvans. They won’t interest you, you know too much about carpets.’
The old man smiled at the compliment but the smile was frozen on his face as the first stick of bombs came down. Immediately after that they heard the second bomb-load go. The farthest one was a quarter of a mile behind Frau Kersten’s but the last one was upon the slum housing behind the gas-works. Voss and the two soldiers hurried to the door. Outside the night was as bright as day. Tommy Carter’s green marker flares were hanging in the sky, each cluster spread out towards its base like a Christmas tree. There were other Christmas trees, one over the brewery and another near the church. To the south-east the sky was still glowing red from the Mosquito’s TIs.
‘Markers,’ said Fischer. ‘Those green flares form the corners of a square into which the other planes will drop their bombs.’
It was a common mistake, made because people on the ground didn’t realize the bigmargins of errorwithin which the bombers operated. Actually Tapper Collins was trying to put all of the green Christmas trees on to the same aiming-point.
Fischer had no sooner spoken than a salvo struck the northern side of the town. Amongst the 500-lb bombs there was a 4,000-lb cookie that made the ground rock. The echoes rolled through the narrow streets of the old town and Voss and the two soldiers found themselves full-length on the road without remembering how they got there. Another Lancaster started its bomb-run. Voss saw the two soldiers holding their hands over their ears to protect their eardrums. He did the same. They waited until the next ear-splitting explosions had rocked the earth.
‘Have you got a cellar?’ called Fischer.
‘Yes,’ said Voss.
‘Let’s get into it.’
Voss eyed their Kübelwagen parked at the kerb. He had half hoped that they would decide to hasten away but on the other hand he coveted the carpet. He had never seen one quite so fine. Except in museums.
The window of the next-door house rattled open. ‘Herr Voss, is that you?’
‘Are they bombing us?’ asked Anna-Luisa. The officer laughed.
‘They are, my dear,’ said the old man. ‘You’d better bring the child into my cellar.’
‘Thank you, Herr Voss.’
‘And hurry,’ called Fischer. They scrambled to their feet and hurried indoors. The Lancaster of Sandy Sanderson, Engineer Leader and Squadron dandy, released ten canisters of incendiary bombs exactly at the aiming-point. From each canister tumbled ninety magnesium sticks. For a moment nine hundred incendiary bombs hung together in the gaping bomb-doors like a cluster of iron filings dangling from a magnet. Then the air-stream punched into them and they sprinkled out over the town all the way from Mauerstrasse to Party HQ near the church.
Each 4-lb incendiary struck the ground with a sound like the crack of a whip and a white flash. Then they burned and flared fiercely. The three men watched from the door. One of the incendiaries hit the ground only a yard ahead of the Kübelwagen and the HIWI Feldwebel ran back to kick the bomb along the gutter and then kicked after it the red and white fragments of burning magnesium that it had scattered.
‘Where’s the cellar, Herr Voss?’ said the officer and old Voss produced a heavy ring of keys and unlocked the cellar door, his keys jangling in his nervous fingers. The three men ushered the girl and the little boy down the stone steps. Once they were there the soldiers could see why the old man had been reluctant to allow them to see his air-raid shelter. It was a treasure house. There was a glass-fronted case full of silver and a box full of glassware, all wrapped carefully in newspaper. Squeezed among the antiques and boxes of goodness-knows-what there were four comfortable old chairs, and even a telephone extension. Calling it his air-raid shelter was a convenient rationalization for arranging a room in which the old man could survey his loot in privacy and comfort. Voss lit the oil lamp but the electric lights were bright enough to make it unnecessary.
Anna-Luisa laid the child Hansl upon an armchair. He was sleepy and she arranged a blanket round his head to muffle the noise.
It was the 2,000-lb high-explosive bomb from Tommy Carter’s plane that hit the corner of Mönchenstrasse and Postgasse only a block away from Voss’ house. In the cellar it shook the dust from the shelves. Old Voss coughed and the HIWI sneezed and then laughed uproariously. Outside, the dark street was clouded in brick-dust. The bomb had sliced thirty yards from the apartment block like a segment of cake, leaving brightly coloured layers of wallpapered rooms exposed. Sloping up to the second floor there was a mound of rubble with bricks, broken furniture, an upturned bath and slabs of unbroken wall poking out of it. There were freak escapes: a mirror on the wall, pictures unscathed and a parlourmaid found stark naked but quite unharmed in the garden at the rear. She had been asleep on the top floor.
Old Storp, the Blockwart, an overcoat over his pyjamas, came wide-eyed through the dust and darkness to meet the TENO engineers. He had a scrap of paper in his hands and he shouted loudly to make himself heard above the explosions.
‘Eighteen people altogether. All of them sheltering in the cellar.’
The TENO man eyed the tall mound of bricks and rubbish. ‘We’ll never get them out,’ he said briefly. With a terrible finality he chalked 18 on a piece of masonry and turned away.
‘You must,’ shouted the Blockwart. ‘My wife’s in there.’
‘It’s no use,’ shouted the TENO man. A bomb exploded nearby and he crouched down. ‘It’s the water pipe that we must fix.’
The Blockwart started to lift one of the heavy wooden beams aside but finding it unmovable he grabbed at loose bricks. ‘I’m coming, Bertha,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t be frightened, my love.’ He seemed no longer to hear the bombs dropping. He worked feverishly to clear a way to the cellar, but inside it they were all dead.
It was the sound of that same high-explosive bomb that brought Herr Voss back up from his cellar. Its blast distorted the nine-inch spun-iron water pipe that ran past his house and its lead-wool caulking had cracked badly enough for a steady flow of water to run into the Voss cellar. At first the flow was no faster than a kitchen tap but the water pressure opened the gap and did further damage to the caulking so that soon the water had formed a large pool and ran in streams under the easy chairs and wetted the bottoms of the wooden boxes. There was no drain in the cellar and Voss knew that unless the engineers got to the pipe soon it would be completely flooded. He hurried up the steps, anxious about the damage the water might do to his paintings and carpets.
The two soldiers remained in the cellar with Anna-Luisa for ten more minutes. Above them the bombs were shaking the house to its foundations. Hansl awoke and began to cry gently.
‘We’ll go soon,’ said the officer. He got to his feet and began to unwrap some silver and glass that was packed into one of the boxes. He selected three Georgian silver teapots and a cream jug and placed them carefully on the armchair. Although not a word passed between them, the Feldwebel found a sack and put the silver into it. The officer selected an ancient flintlock pistol from the wall and found a red silk Kashan rug wrapped in newspaper on the shelf. He rolled it into the bundle of carpets they had brought with them.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Anna-Luisa. She smiled as she said it, hoping that they were only joking.
‘We are old friends of Herr Voss,’ said the officer. ‘These are things we have bought from him.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Anna-Luisa. She walked across the cellar to the steps and called to Herr Voss, but no answer came.
‘He’s probably dead,’ said the officer.
‘Let’s wait for him,’ suggested Anna-Luisa, standing in his path and holding up her arm to prevent him passing. Fischer drew back his fist and punched her in the face as hard as he could.
She knew he had broken her front teeth even before she felt the pain of the blow. The force of it threw her back against the wooden boxes. She twisted her ankle and an antique decanter fell and smashed on the stone floor. She moaned in pain and holding her face in her hands she rocked to and fro trying to comfort herself. When Hansl began to cry loudly she gradually opened her eyes. The men had gone and so had the sackful of silver and the carpet. She pulled Hansl close to her. ‘It’s all right, baby, everything will be all right.’ Her mouth was swollen and her voice was strange because of her broken teeth, but she went on saying it in order to comfort herself. The water was still gurgling into the cellar, but she no longer cared. No one did.
Upstairs the two soldiers moved briskly through the house. There was a moment’s pause in the gunfire and bombs after the first bombers passed over. It was dark and there was a foul smell of brick-dust and disturbed sewage. They put the bundles into the back of the Kübelwagen and drove away. In the gutter only a few yards from the house was the body of Herr Voss. The soldiers didn’t recognize him. There were other bodies in the street too; they hardly glanced at them. They had seen many dead bodies.