Wilson Last Train from Kummersdorf

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-32133-9
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

Set in Germany in 1945, this is the story of a boy, Hanno, and a girl, Effi. Hanno is on the run, having just seen his twin brother killed. Effi is streetwise. She has learned the hard way that she must keep her secrets to herself - and she's even less keen to trust Hanno when she finds out he is a policeman's son. But there are far more dangerous people on the road, Russian soldiers, German deserters - and Major Otto, who likes to play games with people before he kills them. This new edition of an exceptional tale of courage, ingenuity, and the remarkable bonds formed during wartime will keep you gripped right up to the very last page.

Last Train from Kummersdorf is Leslie Wilson's first children's book. She has also published three critically acclaimed novels for adults. Having lived in England, German and Hong Kong, she is now settled in Berkshire with her husband and family.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wilson, Leslie

Leseproben

Chapter One

It was the rain that stopped the boy running. It made the night too dark to see anything much. He thought: I’m thirsty.

There should be some water left in his bottle. His hand went to his belt. The bottle wasn’t there. He’d left it behind.

His hand went on past his belt, feeling the old knitted cardigan that was there instead of his scratchy uniform. The raindrops were coming right through to his skin. The trousers he had on were too short for him and his hair was getting soaked.

He wanted to be at home. With Wolfgang and Heide, and Mother. He didn’t want to be standing shivering like this in the rain, in the middle of nowhere.

He could just see that there was a broken tree where he was standing, maybe it had once been a lilac. He put his hand out and felt the smoothness of burned wood. The Russians had already been here, or maybe some bomber had dumped an incendiary as it flew away from Berlin. I’m hungry, he thought to himself, and remembered that he’d had a pack with one square of chocolate left in it, a bit of porridge, a mouthful or so of ersatz coffee, a bit of bread. Only he’d left his pack behind, as well as his water-bottle. He was all alone with nothing to eat and drink, and he’d stolen the clothes he was wearing. From a dead man, a granddad who was too old even for the Home Guard.

You didn’t have time to think when you were in action, but now it was as if somebody else – like a teacher – was making him remember. Wake up, boy! Do you even know your name? Or what the date is?

He thought, My name is Hanno Frisch and I really don’t know what date it is but it’s the end of April, maybe the twentieth, and it’s 1945. I’m in the army – no, I used to be in the army.

He’d spent years looking forward to the army, hadn’t he? When he was younger, Wolfgang and he used to lie in bed at night and imagine themselves in a doorway, gun in hand, holding a position single-handed against a whole squad of the enemy. Maybe Wolfgang would get winged by a bullet but Hanno would knot an improvised bandage round his arm and they’d keep on fighting. Sometimes their mate Emil was part of it, sometimes he’d been taken prisoner and they had to rescue him afterwards. They tried to make it different every time. Sometimes they’d start arguing about who’d killed more enemy soldiers and end up fighting each other, then Mother would come in to tell them off, or she’d just come in because she’d heard them talking. The best times were when they reached the bit where they were the only pair of twins ever to get the Iron Cross together and the Führer decorated them himself and they were on the newsreel.

Hanno wiped his eyes. The rain came down harder. If anyone saw him they’d think it was only the rain making his face wet, but he was still ashamed. He was almost fifteen – and a police captain’s son – he shouldn’t cry whatever happened.

He groped his way forward and came up against some kind of ruined wall beyond the tree. He leaned his head on it. The wanting to be at home came over him again. He couldn’t stop it.

He wanted this to be an April shower after school last year, he wanted Wolfgang to be running for the house door with him. He wanted Mother to come home at the same moment. They’d climb the two flights of stairs to their flat together and she’d be complaining: ‘Two hours I had to queue at the baker’s and the greengrocer’s and it kept pouring down, and where’s that Heide, she’s so scatterbrained, almost seventeen, you’d think she’d have some sense …’ but Wolfgang would make a face and Hanno would give her a kiss and she’d laugh after all and say: ‘I got the bread, though, I kept it dry in here, and look, potatoes and carrots, the rain doesn’t do the vegetables any harm – and did you smell that lilac downstairs, there’s nothing like the scent of wet lilac!’ Her face would light up when she talked about the lilac. Father wouldn’t be there, of course – he’d be at the war – but they were used to that.

*

It felt as if there’d always been a war – oh, he knew it had started when Wolfgang and he had been nine. He was too young to remember much what peace was like. They’d grown up with the war. At first the Germans had beaten everyone else – the French, the Poles, the Danes, the Norwegians. When they’d had to declare war on Russia they’d gone forging ahead there, too. It had been the usual thing of victory after victory coming over on the radio news. And then it all started to go wrong. There’d been sad music on the radio instead of fanfares of trumpets, because a whole German army had been wiped out at a place called Stalingrad. The Amis and the Tommies had landed in Normandy. Emil’s father was taken prisoner then. Bit by bit, the enemy had forced the German armies backwards, into their own country.

One day this February he’d found his mother at the kitchen table with her head down among the potato peelings and the knife lying on the floor at her feet.

‘Mother?’ he said. ‘Mother?’

He might as well not have been there; she cried and cried, there was dirt on her wet face from the potato peelings so he tried to clear them away, but she just shrieked, ‘Leave me alone!’

‘Mother?’ he said again, and then he saw the telegram. It said his father had been killed fighting for the Fatherland.

He stood still, he didn’t know how the world would go on if Father wasn’t in it. In spite of everything, he’d felt safer for knowing he had his father.

Then Wolfgang turned up and Hanno showed him the telegram. Wolfgang put his arms round Mother and kissed her face, dirt and all. Now Hanno put his arms round both of them, and Heide came in and saw the telegram and they were all crying together. After that the other police wives started arriving, Frau Schroeder and Frau Knop came in first from upstairs – of course the word was going round the house: ‘Frau Frisch has had a telegram, let’s go and see what’s happened,’ and it was: ‘Ah, dear God, how can it be? When the Captain was only home at Christmas time?’ Hanno caught Wolfgang’s eye. Wolfgang knew what he meant. They went downstairs into the yard and started chopping wood for the stove. They didn’t talk. But they hacked at the wood, making the chips fly, and then Wolfgang dropped his hatchet and grabbed Hanno. They fought, rolling on the ground. As if they were fighting off Father’s death.

Two days after the telegram both of them were drafted into the Home Guard. Mother went white when Becker came round to tell them.

‘They’re too young,’ she said.

‘We’re not,’ said Hanno.

‘You are,’ she said. ‘You’re only fourteen.’

‘Almost fifteen,’ said Wolfgang.

She said, ‘Oh, God, yes, almost fifteen! What have we come to? Herr Becker, they’re supposed to be sixteen for the Home Guard, you know that.’

Becker gave her a teacher’s threatening stare through his steel-rimmed glasses. He said: ‘We don’t have enough sixteen-year-olds in Sternberg. Too many brave lads are already in the Regulars. I’ve got permission to draft boys born in 1931 and earlier. You’re not trying to undermine the war effort, are you, Frau Frisch?’

Undermining the war effort was treason, you could be sent to prison or worse. Mother knew that, the boys knew that.

Unpleasantly, Becker added: ‘You needn’t think, Frau Frisch, that you can move mountains this time.’

Mother didn’t answer. After Becker had gone, the boys asked her what he’d meant. She didn’t answer them, either.

*

The uniforms were faded grey and patched because they’d been cut off wounded soldiers in the dressing stations. There were twenty old men and thirty lads from school. Old Becker lined them up and went on about how lucky they were to have uniforms; they could thank him for that, he said, he had connections. Then he said: ‘This is the proudest day of all your life.’ And started off about the last war, when he’d got the Iron Cross for knocking out an English trench single-handed, and old Rettig the baker wheezed and muttered, ‘The Tommies were all dead before he got there.’ That made everyone snigger because Rettig knew, he’d been in the same regiment, and Becker shouted: ‘What was that? The next man to show disrespect will be shot!’ That shut them up, but it didn’t make anyone respect Becker. He was their Latin teacher as well as their Home Guard captain, they’d always known he was a self-important brute.

Rettig had terrible asthma: it was the flour, he always said, on top of the gas from the last war. He kept wheezing while Becker reminded them what the Ivans were like – ‘You all know what happened at Nemmersdorf,’ Becker ended.

They’d seen the newsreel pictures. The Russians were even worse swine than Becker, they’d killed everyone, but the worst thing was what they’d done to the women and girls before they killed them. Only Rettig muttered something like ‘What do you expect? We all know –’ and then he shut up because Becker was looking at him. Becker barked out, trying to sound like the Führer: ‘We can stop the Russians. Never mind how old or young we are. The Führer has said we can. We must have faith. The German people will be telling our story for hundreds of years. How we made this last stand and saved the German people from the Asiatic hordes.’

It was because of the Russians that Mother and Heide had gone away in March – the police wives all managed to get train tickets to the west, where the British and the Americans were coming. Mother...