The Hands of War by Marione Ingram

Author:Marione Ingram
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-09-17T22:00:00+00:00

A view of Hasselbrook Street after the bombing.

We were stopped again as we approached the main train station. While two helmeted Tommies lifted the lids on the milk canisters, I noticed a tall, rather stout British soldier standing beside a jeep near the station entrance, which was partially blocked by a collapsed section of sheet metal that sloped gracefully to the ground like a sculptured waterfall. His weapon was casually pointed at the ground and he was wearing a smart military shirt and a brown beret with a ribbon trailing from it, reminding me of Uncle Fred in Scottish gear. The soldier seemed to be looking straight at me and smiling as if he knew me. Deciding that he was the one I would thank for my liberation, I jumped off the cart and started toward him, excitedly hopping and skipping in anticipation of greeting and embracing my hero. Before I had gone more than a few yards, however, I saw the muzzle of his weapon rise to the level of my eye, so that I was literally looking down the barrel. Bam! Bam! Bam! I saw fire flash from the gun’s muzzle and thought I heard the whir of bullets passing overhead.

I dropped to the ground and lay flat, listening to Mother’s screams, relieved that they were screams of outrage rather than injury. Then, realizing that she must be running toward me, I scrambled backwards on hands and knees until we collided. Holding hands but crouching low we ran in the opposite direction of the trigger-happy Tommy, toward Cousin Inge’s apartment on Brandsende.

True to its name Brandsende and the streets near it had somehow escaped the wrath of the fire bombings. High explosive bombs had wrecked a building or two, but most had landed several blocks away, so that the neighborhood stood out from its surroundings like an urban island in a sea of ruins. Cousin Inge also looked relatively untouched by the horrors she had lived through. She was tall and slender with soft curves, dark blond curls and a spark of mischief in her light blue eyes that reminded me of Father. She even had recent news of Father. She told us he had been captured by the Red Army and was being held in a makeshift prisoner-of-war compound on the Elbe some two hundred kilometers from Hamburg. We were greatly relieved that he was out of the fighting, which continued despite the death of Hitler and the capitulation of Hamburg and Berlin. We also learned that two days earlier thousands of prisoners from the Neuengamme camp had been drowned near Lubeck, having been forced onto ships which the Royal Air Force obligingly bombed and sank.

Within a month after Germany’s surrender, Father arrived at Frau Pimber’s and I was able to leave her farm forever after almost two years. But burly Frau Pimber didn’t give up Helga without a fight. She chased Father around her kitchen table with a butcher knife, furious at him for wanting to take back the beautiful child that she had taken care of for almost four years.

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