One Last Summer (2007) (19 page)

I only hope that these prisoners will make things easier. I am so tired of struggling. So very, very tired.

SUNDAY, 30 MAY 1943

Today Wilhelm and Claus returned to the Russian Front after a four-day leave. It wasn’t long enough. I forgot all our differences when I saw him and Wilhelm drive into the courtyard in a staff car. They looked so pale, ill and exhausted that my heart went out to both of them. There were many questions from the land army girls and women whose men are at the Front, but all they would say is that the German army is doing the best it can.

Wilhelm looked so weak that Irena and I wanted to call the doctor, but Claus, who’d been driving, insisted it wasn’t necessary and what they both needed was rest and food. I ran to the kitchens to see what we had, while Irena went upstairs to draw baths.

Neither Claus nor Wilhelm would come near us until they had been deloused. As soon as they had bathed, and Martha had wrapped their uniforms in rubber sheeting to be taken to the laundry to be steam-cleaned, they dressed in the civilian clothes they had left behind and came to eat.

Because of the shortage of fuel and maids, we have closed off even more rooms in the house. I laid the table in Mama’s morning room. If either of them found it strange that we were eating in there they didn’t say anything.

While they were bathing, I asked Marius to kill one of the chickens. We couldn’t spare it, but it was all I could think of giving them. The first of the new potatoes had been lifted and there was a cabbage, so I made sauerkraut. Martha, who has been teaching me to cook, says I am almost as good as her now.

I gave Wilhelm and Claus a bowlful of the ham bone and dried pea soup Martha had made for everyone on the farm. It was dreadfully thin, but Irena and I gave up our bread ration and, by the time they’d eaten that, the chicken and potatoes, which I had fried in the chicken fat, were ready and, together with the sauerkraut, made a fairly presentable meal.

There was one bottle of cherries left from last summer, and we gave it to them with a glass of Papa’s brandy. I couldn’t bear to serve them acorn coffee, so Irena made rose-hip tea. They both declared it to be the best dinner ever. How different from the five- and six-course meals we used to eat in the old days.

Afterwards, all they wanted to do was sleep. Irena went to bed with Wilhelm but I went back out into the fields. Yet another cat has disappeared. This time it is Martha’s favourite. Brunon and I are certain that the Russians are killing and eating them, but I don’t want to say anything, as the guards don’t need any more excuses to treat them badly.

Yesterday, when Martha took Brunon and Marius their lunch in the fields, she saw one of the soldiers beat the youngest Russian prisoner. He looks far too young to be a soldier, yet the guards are always hitting and kicking him. She said blood ran from his head and there was a loud cracking noise that sounded as though the guard had broken the poor boy’s skull.

Yesterday evening, after we ate a supper of herb omelette, black bread and one of the last few bottles of Papa’s wine, we heard the prisoners tramping up the lane. Claus went to the window. He said the Russians were the lowest. Remote and distant, he is so totally unlike the man I thought I was marrying that my heart has turned to stone. Then I saw Claus carrying Erich across the courtyard to stroke the horses and I felt an overwhelming wave of love for my son.

Whatever happens, as long as I have Erich, life is worth living. I will survive and fight for both of us, no matter what. He deserves the very best that I can give him.

SATURDAY, 10 JULY 1943

We heard on the radio this morning that our armies launched an offensive along a 170-mile front at Kursk in Russia five days ago. Now I understand why Claus and Wilhelm were given leave at the end of May, and why Wilhelm was so odd, depressed, and anxious for Irena and his children. I can only presume that both of them are in the thick of the battle.

It has rained ever since they left, and I feel as miserable as the weather. I am sorry now that I pressed Wilhelm to tell me how Paul died. It was after lunch on the last day of their leave. We had ordered the pony cart to take the children for a ride, but, pleading a headache Wilhelm retreated into Papa’s study. Making my excuses to Claus and Irena, I followed and insisted he tell me everything he knew about what had happened to Paul.

Paul’s commanding officer had written to Mama and me. He told us that Paul had died instantly from a head wound. At the time Brunon tried to console me by saying that Paul hadn’t suffered, but I didn’t entirely believe the letter. I remembered something Claus had said at the beginning of the war about commanding officers always comforting the relatives of the men who’d been killed by telling them that they had died quickly and without pain.

Wilhelm insisted that in Paul’s case it was true. He was commanding a battery that was firing on the Russian front line, until the enemy blew both guns and men sky-high with howitzer fire. When I asked about Paul’s grave, he said there wasn’t enough left to bury. I don’t think he meant to tell me that, but once he began to talk about Paul he couldn’t stop.

The thought of Paul’s perfect young body being blown to pieces horrifies me. All I have done since Wilhelm told me is picture Paul’s death.

Wilhelm insisted that, as we all have to die, to be killed quickly in battle is not such a bad way. I reminded him that Paul wasn’t even twenty-five. Wilhelm said youth, along with truth, was one of the first casualties of war, and that by being blown up, Paul had escaped a long, drawn-out death in a field hospital.

But I still don’t see why Paul had to die at all. This war seems so senseless, although I felt that I couldn’t tell Wilhelm that, not when he was on his way back to the Front.

And that means keeping even more of my thoughts secret. Claus would be furious if he ever saw this diary or heard me express half the ideas I believe. I know they are unpatriotic, but am I really betraying my country by wanting to keep what is left of my family alive?

Wilhelm went on to say that there was nothing worse than standing by helplessly and watching a comrade die slowly of cold, gangrene and frostbite. He spoke so seriously and sincerely that I am sure he has had to do just that, many times.

He then spoke about the Russian winters and, when I asked, admitted that they are every bit as dreadful as the returning soldiers say they are, and the only reason he and Claus haven’t suffered frostbite is because both of them are attached to command posts.

All I could do once he began to talk was sit and hold his hand. I desperately wanted to comfort him but I couldn’t think of anything to say, and all the time he spoke, Papa’s declaration that ‘no good can come from war’ echoed through my mind.

Wilhelm insisted that we are fighting the entire Soviet population because the SS, Gestapo and even the Wehrmacht units have alienated every man, woman and child in Russia with their inhuman brutality. He told me that when our troops first crossed the border, people rushed out of their homes to finger and kiss the crosses on our tanks because they saw the Wehrmacht as Christian saviours sent to free them from the ungodly world of Communism, but now they spit on the bodies of our dead. He fell silent for a long time after he had spoken, then he said, ‘I have seen behind the curtain of lies, Charlotte. So help me God, I know what is going on, but I dare not tell anyone, not even you, because in this magnificent Third Reich of ours, the truth kills more surely than bullets.’

The silence in Papa’s study was worse than Wilhelm’s words. I couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me. I know I haven’t seen all the brutality of war but after what he told me about the way Paul died, I tried to imagine it. As for knowledge being dangerous, in wartime we all have to be careful what we say. Wilhelm’s reaction to Manfred’s stupid joke taught me that much.

Wilhelm buried his head in his hands. I sat uselessly beside him, not knowing how to offer him comfort. Irena would have known, but she and Claus were still out with the children. When there was a sound on the staircase outside, Wilhelm jumped as though he’d been shot. I went to the door. It was only Minna taking up Mama’s herbal tea. I tried to reassure Wilhelm, but he wouldn’t listen to anything I tried to tell him.

He began to cry, tears that he didn’t even try to wipe away. I hadn’t seen him cry since we were small children. He grabbed my hand and held on to it, crushing my fingers.

‘I have seen things that you and decent, normal people couldn’t begin to imagine, Lotte; horrible, vile things that have destroyed my peace of mind, and poisoned my life, even my love for Irena and the children. Sometimes I think I am living in a mad house. I worry for Irena, Marianna, Karoline, for you and Erich, and for the future of every German child in this glorious country of ours, because we are building a legacy of suffering that they will inherit for our sins. An inheritance of brutality, savagery and hatred that will be aimed at Germany as a country, and the Germans as a race.’

Outside in the courtyard I could hear the children laughing as Claus and Irena returned. Wilhelm took my hand and begged me to look after his wife and daughters. That, no matter what, I would never desert them. I promised, but my promise was not enough for him; he pressed my hand down on Papa’s Bible and made me swear.

I shivered, wondering what he could be so terrified of. I tried to tell him that the men at the Front like him and Claus are the ones who are taking the risks, not the women and children who stay at home. And although towns like Dortmund and Berlin have been bombed, not even the English would think it worthwhile to send a plane to blow up the countryside outside Allenstein.

He smiled at my attempts to calm his fears, warned me to take care of myself and Erich, but then said, ‘You will be all right, Lotte, because you have General von Letteberg to look out for you.’

Troubled by his dark mood I pleaded with him to take care of himself, not just for his own and my sake, but for Irena and his daughters, telling him that I couldn’t bear to lose him the way I had Paul. I even mentioned Mama, and he smiled, saying, ‘Mama, God bless her, is well out of it. There is only you now, Lotte.’ He kissed my forehead, such a gentle kiss. ‘Poor little Lotte who never did have her fair share of balls and parties. One day a child and the next having to carry the load of ten men.’

I reminded him that I have Brunon, Marius, Martha, Minna and all the women and land army girls to help me, but he would not be persuaded.

‘One old man, a few women, a child not out of school, cripples, conscripted land army girls and enslaved Poles and Russians, all who’d rather be somewhere else.’

There was so much bitterness in his voice I felt there was no way that I could help him. But later I made a resolution.

I know my brother and my husband. Both would prefer to die in battle than beg for favours, but rather than see Wilhelm get blown to pieces like Paul, or Claus die a lingering death on the Russian Front and my son grow up without his father, I will write to Papa von Letteberg and pray that my letter will not be opened by the authorities. Papa von Letteberg has already lost one son in Peter. I have lost a brother in Paul. Irena has lost Manfred. Surely we have paid enough? It cannot be unpatriotic of me to want to keep Wilhelm safe? Papa von Letteberg must still think of and remember Peter. If he considers what Claus, his one remaining son, means to Mama von Letteberg, perhaps he will arrange for both Claus and Wilhelm to be posted to Headquarters in Berlin. Somewhere where they will have to work hard – but survive.

THURSDAY, 26 AUGUST 1943

Allenstein is rife with rumours that things are not going well on the Russian Front, but there is nothing in the papers except the usual reproductions of speeches, descriptions of parades and ‘we are winning the war on all fronts’ articles. Are they lies?

Claus and Wilhelm have not returned, but others have come back on leave after being wounded and, although they say very little, they are grim-faced and serious. It does not take a genius to work out that the situation in the East is precarious and East Prussia will be first in the firing line if the Russians push our troops back.

The conversation I had with Wilhelm has been worrying me. What did he mean by ‘behind the curtain of lies’? Are things as dreadful in Russia as he says? Why was Claus so angry when Wilhelm started talking about the way the Russians are being treated by our troops?

Papa von Letteberg telephoned me after I wrote to him asking him to help arrange transfers for Claus and Wilhelm. He insisted that he cannot give preferential treatment to anyone, least of all his own son and members of my family. That it would not be fair on all the soldiers who have no influential friends to speak for them.

I told him I didn’t care about what was fair, only about keeping my brother and my son’s father alive until the end of the war. He didn’t answer me, but Wilhelm and Claus are still stationed on the Russian Front.

The standard of prison labour they are sending to Grunwaldsee has deteriorated. In the beginning the men did at least try to work. Now they have to be beaten to complete even the smallest task.

Mama still watches them from her window and she keeps telling me to feed them. Yesterday two more cats disappeared. I have decided to speak to Brunon about the state of the prisoners. The twelve men they send us can barely accomplish as much in a day between them as dumb Wilfie used to. Is it because they’re lazy, or, as Mama says, because they are starving? One thing is certain: if things go on as they are, we won’t be able to get the harvest in before it spoils, and then the War Office can stamp its feet all it likes. It won’t get its quota.

THURSDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 1943

Yesterday Brunon and I agreed that it was worth trying to feed the Russians in the hope of getting some work out of them. Whatever they are being given in the camp is clearly not enough.

I asked Martha to make a stew from some of the vegetables in the store and two of the hares Brunon had caught in his traps. There are still five fields of carrots and cabbages to be lifted, four of swedes and six of parsnips besides the last of the wheat, corn, hay, barley and potatoes. That’s a lot of work to be done before the frost sets in.