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

was fortuitous though as the SMAD had just pushed through significant currency and economic reforms. The most noticeable aspect was that the old Reichsmarks were replaced by new Deutschmarks. The same happened in the western zones a few days prior, but the western Deutschmarks were not legal tender in the Soviet zone. Here our new Deutschmarks were simply old Reichsmarks with new stickers applied. Everyone called them Ostmarks to keep the confusion to a minimum. The way this related to Theodor’s graduation was because the accompanying economic reforms resulted in the cessation of Mama’s support payments from the SMAD. It had been a small amount and Mama’s pride was injured every time she accepted this payment (although how that differed from accepting ration cards was unclear to me), but every penny was needed. The fortuitous part was that with Theodor done school, he could begin to work and make up for the lost income. Given how he excelled at school, in another time and another place he would have gone directly to university after graduation, but the thought of a young man in the Soviet zone of occupation attending university was roughly equivalent to a young man having thoughts of climbing the Himalayas or sailing the South Seas. We all just considered it the height of good fortune that he quickly found work. The octopus-like Peschel was able to call in a favour with the owner of a small local electrical repair shop who was willing to take Theodor on as an apprentice.

Happily right from the start Theodor’s wage at the electrical shop fully replaced the SMAD support, so we were able to continue to tread water financially, with the reasonable hope that he would eventually advance and be paid even a little more. Mostly his job consisted of rewiring broken lamps and turning old Volksempfängers into useful radios. I take credit for the latter as I had already done so to our own Volksempfänger and I showed Theodor a shortcut that he was able to impress his boss with.

These modified radios were able to receive BBC, Voice of America, AFN (the U.S. armed forces network, which was excellent for jazz music), Hilversum (in the Netherlands, also good for music) and Radio Luxembourg, among many others. I even tuned into Radio Moscow from time to time in order to try to have a better understanding of what was happening in our occupation zone. I was frustrated, however, that I was not always able to cleanly separate the wheat of truth from the chaff of propaganda. I assumed that the BBC and Voice of America also had some chaff, but their announcers were less bombastic and grandiose than Radio Moscow. I had learned through the Göbbels years to distrust bombast and grandiosity. To be fair, Radio Moscow had some nice classical music, but when Mama was out I often twirled the dial until I could find jazz. One evening I was absolutely transported when for the first time I heard Sidney Bechet play his jazz clarinet. I could not form any sort of mental image of him playing or where he lived; instead the music created a kind of synesthesia for me with the high notes being bright yellows and the deeper ones inky purples, all in a living flowing abstract collage, a swirling river of vivid colour. The contrast to the grey of our lives in Colditz could not be starker.

But I exaggerate a little there. It may have been grey in the town of Colditz itself, but in June it was green in the fields and in the forest. The wildflowers were especially brilliant that spring, perhaps because of all the rain. The ditches were filled with yellow daffodils and bluebells bloomed in such numbers in the forest that some meadows turned entirely purplish blue, with barely a flicker of green showing from underneath. I sat an entire afternoon beside one of these meadows and watched the light change and the birds fly about — robins, sparrows, warblers, chickadees and, yes, the wren.

Chapter Forty-Six

July 1948

One evening at the beginning of July when I was playing with the radio a news broadcast from the BBC caught my attention:

Today aircraft from the RAF, the U.S. Air Force and various Commonwealth air forces have taken an important step towards being able to supply the needs of the people of Berlin who are otherwise cut off from the world by the Soviet blockade. Aircraft are now landing at Gatow and Tempelhof every four minutes. The goal is to every single day fly in 646 tons of flour, 125 tons of cereal, 64 tons of fat, 109 tons of meat and fish, 180 tons of dehydrated potatoes, 180 tons of sugar, 11 tons of coffee, 19 tons of powdered milk, 5 tons of whole milk, 3 tons of fresh yeast, 144 tons of dehydrated vegetables, 38 tons of salt and 10 tons of cheese. In all, 1,534 tons of food are required each day to sustain the over two million people of Berlin. Additionally for heat and power, 3,475 tons of coal, diesel and petrol are also required daily. The scale of this undertaking is historic. Nothing like it has ever been attempted before. An RAF spokesman confirmed for the BBC that they expect to have enough aircraft and logistical support in place to achieve this herculean goal by the end of the summer. In the meantime the people of Berlin look to the air with hope and gratitude.

I knew that Berlin had been divided into four sectors, mirroring in miniature the division of Germany. The Soviets had reached Berlin first in 1945 and it lay deep within their zone of occupation, but when the Americans pulled out of Saxony and Thuringia, they and the British and French were given pieces of Berlin to occupy in exchange. These three Western sectors formed an island in the East. I recalled hearing a snippet on the Voice of America a week