The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

even the flashlight would be extinguished, and we would sit in the absolute dark and wait. As we waited, we would listen for the sound of aircraft engines. Five times before, we strained to hear something between the siren pulses, but there was nothing, just our own breathing in the masks and the usual small sounds an old house makes in the middle of the night.

But then, on the night of March 27, we heard the distinctive drone of the quadruple Rolls-Royce engines of a Lancaster bomber. First distant and faint, and first just one, then closer and then several blending together into a reverberating hum that penetrated my chest and bones. I froze in place, crouched on the floor, my arms hugging my knees and my eyes squeezed as tightly shut as I could manage. Oskar began to cry, and Theodor became angry with him, shushing him with loud whispers, as if the bombers could hear us in the basement and target us in particular as a result.

Mama appeared to remain calm, however, and, after lifting her mask, in a normal voice said, “It’s okay. The sound is coming from slightly to the north and listen now . . .” She was quiet for a moment and we all strained to hear something different. “Do you hear that? It’s actually beginning to move away. If they had planned to drop bombs on our heads, they would have done so already. They are probably looking for a target. The city is so dark that they might not even realize they are over it. But we’ll stay down here until the sirens stop because there could be more coming. You can take your gas masks off though.”

This was a relief. Those masks were very uncomfortable and wearing them compounded the terror. We waited and we listened. The engine drone steadily became a little quieter and then after a few minutes I heard two or three percussive thumps coming from my left, which I knew to be the north.

“Are those the bombs, Mama?” I asked. They sounded different than I expected — like the whump of sacks of potatoes being dropped on the floor rather than an intense sharp sound, like a giant firecracker, which is what I imagined a bomb would sound like.

“Yes, those are the bombs. Maybe on Eutritzsch or Gohlis? When you see lightning you can calculate how far away it is by counting the seconds until you hear the thunderclap. One kilometre for every three seconds. But down here we can’t even see our fingers!” This was probably an attempt to lighten the mood, but it did not work. As long as the sirens were going off, we sat in a tight silent huddle, fully absorbed in wishing it to end.

It occurs to me now that I did not worry about Papa. We were somewhat safe down there in the basement, but he was exposed out in the streets and at the Ortsgruppe. Mama said that they had a basement shelter too, but his job was to help manage the civil defence and firefighting efforts, so he and his colleagues often needed to go out into the city. I suppose I was still at an age where I considered my parents to be immortal and harm to them was an abstraction that was no more contemplated than the colonization of the dark side of the moon.

The next morning was a Sunday, so there was no school and we were home when Papa finally returned from the Ortsgruppe. The raid had been at two in the morning, so he had dark purple bags under his eyes and his comb-over was fully astray.

“They hit Gohlis,” he said after he had a long sip of coffee, or what I suppose must already have been Muckefuck (I know, this is an unfortunate-sounding word in English), a chicory root-based substitute.

“I thought so,” Mama replied. “How bad was it?”

“Not very bad. There were four or five aircraft and they dropped only a few bombs. They were probably looking for a better, more obvious target, and they were at the limit of their range, so they had to be quick. Maybe they were saving bombs for something on the way back. I haven’t heard. In any case, it caused a large fire in Gohlis, but it’s out now. There are some injured but no fatalities.”

“They’ll come back though. It will get worse, won’t it, Wilhelm?”

My parents seemed to have forgotten that Theodor and I were sitting right there. Normally, whenever their conversation became serious, they would hustle us out of the room. It had begun in what for Mama and Papa was a reasonably friendly tone, but now I could see that Papa was gripping his cup tightly and that his face was hardening. Mama, for her part, stopped setting out Papa’s breakfast and looked at him directly with that unblinking stare we all feared. It was like watching an accident about to happen in slow motion where you cannot do anything to stop it, nor can you stop yourself from looking at it — like the time I watched Uwe ride his bicycle at high speed down the hill to the Elsterfluttbett, a nearby canal, with his eyes closed.

“Maybe. I cannot guarantee that that will not happen. Maybe they’ll come back, but the Luftwaffe is bombing all their airfields. The English are becoming desperate. They think America will come, but just like the Poles who thought the English would come, the English in return are just as wrong. The Americans are soft, and they will not allow their boys to die on the old continent again like they did in 1917 and ’18.” Papa’s voice was even and not loud, but it had a hard edge to it.

“Aren’t American soldiers fighting us in North Africa already?”

Papa’s eyebrows shot up. “It’s just a small group, for show. And last month General Rommel destroyed them in Tunisia. Kasserine Pass.”

“And last month our 6th Army