大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Stoke-on-Trent Libraries on behalf of Carola Christiane Tietjen and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My great-grandmother was born in 1873. She died in late August 1944. There was a heatwave and she had been put in the coffin on the table in the living room for the wake. My grandmother had put a huge zinc bath filled with ice under the table. Even if nobody came round, there was somebody in the room! During the night there was a major British bombing raid and the family had taken refuge in the basement, only to find themselves feeling guilty that they'd left great-granny upstairs. She had always been afraid of being alone. They climbed upstairs to haul her one last time into the safety of the shelter. This was about 18th or 19th August.
Another story told by my mother who was 19 in May 1945, days after the capitulation involved a British sergeant in Osterholz-Scharmbeck in Lower Saxony. He came to see the girls working as switchboard operators and shared white bread and jam with them. this was the first they had seen in many years. The first some of these girls knew of the capitulation was when English voices started to speak to them over the telephone lines instead of German.

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