大象传媒

This is a story of WW2, often told by my mother, who was born in 1937.

My grandad did not have to join the Wehrmacht actively, because he was a veteran of the Great War and worked in a factory for cables which produced material for the army. So he prepared a little hut in a forest near Haiger, north of Frankfurt in the county of Hessen, to get his kids (my mother, my uncle and my two aunties) out of danger. I will now explain the situation at this time.

By the end of March 1945, a few weeks before the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces by Generalfeldmarschall Keitel in Berlin Karlshorst, the USAAF bombed 70 per cent of my home town Haiger to bits and pieces - by mistake, to be fair. They wanted to hit the railway between Gießen (which was nearly completely wiped out) and Siegen (80 per cent destruction).

Unfortunately, a strong wind let the bombs drift into the old city, dozens died, even some people from Cologne who had fled the horror of the city air raids and who had lost everything during the British night air raids. During another attack, the Catholic church and a school where hit by 'Luftminen' (air mines) and heavily damaged. Well, at this time US planes did not have laser-guided bombs...

So my grandad actually only had two enemies: the Nazis (he served as a witness for Allied trials after 1945 because he was a Social Democrat) and the Allied bombers, who did not - and could probably not - differentiate between good and evil.

One special example was the so-called 'Eiserne Heinrich' (Iron Heinrich), a single fighter plane that came every evening between 7pm and 8pm and strafed bullets over the fields before ending his sweep. Maybe it was a Thunderbolt P47D-25 or a P38 Lightning, my mama is not sure today. Unfortunately the pilot must have been kind of blind, or full of hatred and wrath, because he shot on literally everything that moved (confirmed by local historians): cows, farmers, kids, everyone. One day a family of four was shot dead in a field while harvesting (in mid summer 1944).

So my grandad's hope was to save his family in the forest, unseen by any Allied pilot. He built a little hut of wood and packed it with as much food and blankets as he could get.

The official bunker was a wet and old cave in the hills over the city (most of the smaller towns had no bomb shelters or bunkers like the bigger cites). When the last bomb raid took place (which indeed must have been artillery fire, my mother mixes things up I should say), my family rushed into the bunker - not into the hut, because the enemy came right of the direction where the hut was. So everyone ran into the shelter while US artillery pounded the town.

Meanwhile, the US Infantry (I do not have information about which units they were) entered our town, facing some heavy resistance by some foolish idiots of the German army. (I don't have any information about these units either, must have been a bunch of tank crew and perhaps a support battalion.) The US Forces fired right into the town, completing the work of destruction, until the Germans retreated to the east (facing probably a more grim fate than they ran away from).

So the US troops came right into Haiger, searching every house for possible resistance, weapons or even members of the 'Werw枚lfe' (the 'Wearwolves', said to be a special resistance squad of SS superfighters - but they never existed). The only thing the Americans found were white blankets hanging off the windowsills.

In one house an American soldier noticed a picture of a beautiful woman. He asked the only person who had not left the house who this girl was (maybe he just pointed to the photograph), but the old man did not want to tell the truth. The civilians at this time had heard about some terrible atrocities committed by the Red Army (unfortunately some of the stories turned out to be no fiction). So the Americans were mistrusted, especially the blacks, which were never seen in Germany before. Finally, the soldier forced it out of the guy, so he said her name was Hilda and she was hiding in the 'Felsenkeller' (basement in the rocks).

The soldier marched with some of his buddies up to the forest, cautiously looking for any signs of resistance, but they found none. He swung the door of the cave open and shouted: 'Hilda, get outta there, the war is over. The Krieg is aus.'

So a lot of people from my hometown poured out of the hole and spread the relieving news: no more bombs, no more bombs!

After a few days, one officer came to my grandad's house, where some of his troops had slept. The officer mentioned the condition of the old cave, and said no-one would have survived if a bomb had hit it. So many people where lucky after all!

The US troops stayed for about two or three years in the area of Haiger, and my grandad became a member of the city council after the 'denazification' of the town. This story was often told by my mother and has become a piece of our family history.

A piece of history which shall never be forgotten as we move towards a unified Europe, at last!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.