Parallel Journeys by Eleanor H. Ayer

Author:Eleanor H. Ayer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin Paperbacks

CHAPTER 15

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THE CHRISTMAS EVE AIR ATTACK

We didn’t know it then, but our meeting with the Führer was his last before he launched Germany’s final, all-out attack of the war. We had no idea that the end was so near. We only knew that we were working longer weeks under absolutely miserable conditions. It took superhuman effort for us to stand every day at the foot of a deep ditch, sometimes up to our knees in water, and shovel mud to the next higher level. I no longer worried about my boys’ uniforms being clean. As long as they marched to work, even if they were filthy, I was satisfied.

In early December 1944, the Allies at last broke through parts of the West Wall. Enemy soldiers were now standing on sacred German soil! Just south of where Alfons was stationed, the American Third Army crossed the Saar River, posing a great threat to German troops in that area.

To warn them of the danger they faced and to boost their fighting spirit, Robert Ley, a high-ranking Nazi leader, came to visit some of the Hitler Youth units, among them Alfons’s. Many top officers came with Ley, including Alfons’s Bannf ührer, the leader of all Hitler Youth units in the Wittlich area. So impressed was Ley with the work Alfons’s boys were doing that he got right down in the ditch beside them to help dig. At the end of the day, as the officers were leaving, Alfons’s Bannf ührer pulled him aside.

“You’ll be home by the end of next week,” he said. “We’re starting to pull units out of here. A couple of American tanks broke through the line last night and raised all kinds of hell. Keep that under your hat. No use getting everybody excited, right?”

“Things are coming to a climax fast,” he continued, “and it doesn’t look good. Get Roman Follman to take over for you. Ready or not, you’re on your way back to Wittlich. I need you there.”

“What for?” I asked, astonished.

“Have you ever heard of the Volkssturm?” he replied.

The Volkssturm or People’s Militia was a last-gasp effort to save the Fatherland. The German government ordered all remaining men and boys, ages sixteen to sixty, to register immediately for military service. Girls and women between seventeen and fifty years old were also told to report.

It was a pathetic fighting force. Many of the people who showed up were too old or inexperienced to serve. Had they been able, they would have been fighting already. Most of them had no military training or any idea how to handle the weapons they were given. Some brought their old hunting rifles from home. Uniforms were simply the clothes on their backs—a trench coat here, a derby hat there, some business suits, some ragged flannel shirts. The only sure way to tell a Volkssturm member was by the white or black-and-white band worn on the arm.

Fighting spirit in the Volkssturm was low. Adults were afraid and discouraged. It was clear to most of them that Germany was going down in defeat.

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