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

were all in the main room when there was a knock on the door. I remember seeing Mama being handed two letters. She opened them quickly with fumbling fingers and then after a long pause where I could see her eyes racing back and forth across the pages, she screamed and dropped them.

“What, Mama? What’s happened?” Theodor asked as he ran over to her.

She sobbed, “Wilhelm’s alive.” She shook her head at all the inquiries that immediately followed and picked up the letters and wordlessly handed them to Theodor. They had been brought by one of the informal couriers who still operated throughout occupied Germany. She left the room, crying. Clara, Johann and Oskar were fortunately playing in one of the bedrooms while Paul was napping, so Theodor and I were able to read the letters in peace. Each was on a single page stamped with “Examined — No. 2 CIC” in English. A few sentences were blacked out with a heavy marker. Our father wrote in very small print and used all the margins in the much longer second letter. The dating of the first showed that it had been written two weeks prior to the second.

Dear Luise,

I hope this letter finds you and the children well. It has not been possible to write before now. I have been through some very difficult times and have suffered enormously, but I am better now. Many of my companions died of starvation and exposure in the American POW camp. There is so much to tell. For now, let it suffice to inform you that I am alive.

Your Wilhelm

Dear Luise,

I now have the time, the energy and the clarity of thought to explain how I came to be where I am. When last you saw me, I was preparing to assist in the defence of Leipzig. Our forces were divided into two groups. My group consisted of the armed city police, civil defence and Volkssturm under the command of Major Wilhelm von Grolman. The other group was regular army, SS and some Hitler Youth under Oberst Hans von Poncet. Grolman felt that the fight was futile and wished to negotiate with the Americans who were on the outskirts of Leipzig. I argued against this, especially as Poncet vowed we would fight to the last man and he was in overall command of the defence of the city. The street by street fighting was ferocious as the Americans cautiously moved into the city on April 19. Grolman and I were in the city hall. Poncet was five kilometres southwest at the Monument to the Battle of the Nations.

Finally, late in the day, the Americans penetrated to the centre of the city. Three times they attacked city hall with their Sherman tanks and three times we pushed them back. But the situation was not good. Bullets were constantly flying through the windows and the building shook badly every time a tank round hit it. The American commander was incredibly able to call Grolman on the telephone. He threatened that if we did not surrender, they would strike us with heavy artillery and then come in to mop up with their dreaded flamethrowers. In the next room deputy mayor Ernst Lisso killed himself as well as his wife and his daughter. Then the mayor, Alfred Freyberg, and his wife and daughter committed suicide too. As did Volkssturm commander Walter Dönicke. Fortunately he did not have his family with him. You cannot imagine the atmosphere there. At that point my aide Erich, do you remember Erich? He begged me to surrender along with Grolman. He said that Poncet was not there and was certainly dead anyway. He said that the enemy wanted us dead and that to be dead was to lose. It was over.

Then I was a prisoner. We spent three days and nights in an open field southwest of the city before being moved to the first camp. We were not given any food or water and the guards beat us. On the march to the camp we were made to stop at a place where the Americans said our soldiers had burned 250 Polish and French slave labourers alive just a day before Leipzig fell. We were forced to look at their bodies and then dig graves for them. Luise, it was horrible to see this. The Americans told us of much worse things even. Things that I do not want to write about.

I don’t know if my description of life in the prisoner-of-war camp for the first two months will pass the censor, so I will not waste space writing much, but I can say that it was a nightmare right from a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

Before the handover of Saxony and Thuringia etc. to the Soviets on July 1 the Americans sorted us into two groups. Some like Erich were simply released and some like me were deemed worthy of continued incarceration and distributed to other camps in the west. I was turned over to the British, which was a stroke of great fortune. My English is very good, and as my grandmother Mary Charlie was British, I get along far better with these people than with the Americans. (And I cannot imagine if the Russians had captured me instead.) The other aspect of my good fortune is that this camp is close to where Auguste lives. I have been classified as Category II and will likely be in the denazification process for a while yet.

You should have access to the safes at our two banks in Leipzig. At least one bank was still standing at the time of surrender. You should go and see what you can retrieve.

I will write again when I have a chance.

Your Wilhelm

“What . . .” I began.

Theodor cut me off, holding his hand up. He was rereading the letters slowly.

Papa was alive. This was wonderful news of course, but my dominant first emotion was confusion. Through the spring and