She saw Karl, lost in the desert, stretching out a hand, but nobody there to help him. Her eyes were filled with tears at the thought of a naked Renate being thrown into a gas chamber’s gruesome oven, still maintaining her Aryan status. Or was that not what happened? Was she saved just in time? Or, more likely, was she raped and tortured before dying, or could she possibly have survived? These fruitless questions kept filling her mind, though she knew, at heart, there would never be answers.
Francis took a break from his work and joined her in the room. He steadied himself as he approached with a cup in his hand.
‘You’ve been crying.’
She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Yes, I have. Thoughts of how I arrived here in peaceful Finland.’
‘Peaceful indeed, so why the tears, my dear?
She placed her coffee down on a tablemat. She turned towards Francis and clutched his free hand with both of hers.
‘I have been remembering all the loved ones I’ve lost. The ones I’ll never see again. And I am determined I am not going to lose you.’
‘Hilda, I have no wish to lose you either. I could not have been happier marrying you,’ he said, placing his cup and saucer beside hers.
‘Really? You love me with all my nerve-racking experiences, my dual loyalties, my mistakes and my doubts. I keep being afraid you’ll find me out.’
‘We all have flaws. We learn from them develop and mature through such experiences. Yes, you have had a remarkable life, and against all the odds, you have survived. You deserve to be rewarded by this new life, and I feel privileged to be at your side.’
She nodded with a wide smile. ‘Thank you. I think I needed to hear that.’ She turned and closed her eyes to the sun through the window. He gulped down the last dregs of his coffee and joined her. They saw a ginger cat treading carefully across the frosted lawn. She tapped the window gently. It ran away. Not all cats liked her, it seemed. Then she recalled something she had seen during her walk to town the previous day.
‘Francis, I saw some dachshund puppies for sale.’ She let the moment linger.
‘A dachshund?’ he reiterated, sucking his cheeks. ‘Hmm… to complete the family, as it were?’
She looked up at him and saw a twinkle in his eye. They were too old for children. A dachshund puppy would be their substitute.
He smiled and nodded. ‘Yes, I think that’s a very good idea, Hilda. A dachshund…yes… a very good idea, indeed.’
Press cutting of Vera’s escape from Germany in August 1914
The original Forres, Elgin and Nairn Gazette 2nd September 1914. A clear copy is on next page.
Vera Caldwell’s escape from Germany in August 1914. The extract comes from the Forres, Elgin and Nairn Gazette 2.9.14.
Miss Vera Caldwell, daughter of Mr William Caldwell, who was in Germany with a friend when the war broke out, had some exciting experiences. They left Hamburg on Tuesday 4th August by the boat the Vienna and proceeded a good distance down the Elbe when a torpedo boat came up and stopped them nearly opposite Cuxhaven. Their luggage was examined and the captain of the boat was told he could proceed. He got a little bit further down the Elbe, when the torpedo boat dashed up again and told the passengers they must wait there for the night. They did so, and in the morning, the torpedo boat ordered the boat back to Hamburg. The Vienna reached there the following forenoon, and as war had by this time been declared by Britain, the boat was not allowed near a landing stage. They remained all day and night and got ashore by means of a small boat about 4pm on Thursday. The ladies were taken to a friend’s house (Hilda’s home) and the situation was discussed there. They went to the British Consul and were advised to attempt to get home via Denmark. At this time Miss Caldwell remarked, people in Hamburg were paying 4 shillings per pound for butter and a great rush was being made for provisions. A friend motored the ladies to Altoona at about midnight, and tickets were taken for Copenhagen. They left at half past one on Friday 7th August and got to the Keil Bridge at 4pm.
On arriving there all the passengers were ordered out of the compartments and by this time the rain was falling hard. They had to walk across the Keil Bridge in twos with soldiers on either side of them with fixed bayonets. They were told to look neither to the right nor to the left. Miss Caldwell however, noticed several polished guns on the bridge and learned later that they were to defend the bridge from aeroplanes attacks. The party got on the train again, a soldier being in each compartment, and the windows were shut closed and the blinds were drawn. At 9am the following morning, the 5th day of the war between Germany and Britain, they were ordered out of the train and for a fourth time, their baggage was inspected. When Vera and her friend got near Copenhagen, they were advised to re-book to Esbjerg, an important town on the Danish coast, which in normal times sent a boat to Harwich every day. However, they learned the service was disrupted and there might not be a sailing to England for several days or weeks.
They were in luck, however. On Sunday 9th August, when strolling on the dock, they noticed a service-taking place in the Mission Hall. They went in and after a collection had been taken, the minister announced that he had received information to the effect that should any English visitors be in the congregation, a boat was to sail that night for Harwich. The boat did sail at 11pm with 650 passengers instead of its usual 30 or 40, which it could accommodate comfortably. The boat was escorted to Harwich by a British cruiser halfway across the North Sea.
London was reached, without any further exciting incident and after leaving her friend at Wemyss Bay, Miss Vera Caldwell reached Forres in safety.
Postscript
Gerhardt Eicke[1] was hanged on 19th November 1945.
Fergus Harper of the 10th Highland Light Infantry was mentioned in dispatches in 1943 during the Allied invasion of Sicily. He was killed during the assault on Tilburg, Holland, on 28th October 1944.
After five years in Helsinki, Sir Francis became Ambassador to Iran between the years 1950-52. Their final posting was to Warsaw, Poland, where Sir Francis was British Ambassador from 1952-54. Hilda died in 1956 and Sir Francis in 1961.
Hilda wrote a letter to Dr A. S. Caldwell, my late uncle, in 1951 containing some of her German stamps and news from Iran. Over the years somehow page one of the letter went missing from the three-page letter. She wrote:
We are now up in our summer quarters and are very happy here. It is cooler certainly, but July until August 15th (generally) the heat is very great; but it is not dusty up here and it does cool down at night. The mountains are quite near which of course helps. Everyone finds it quite trying. Those living up here go up to town (Tehran) every day to the office but they begin at 8 am and finish at 1.30 so they get the afternoon off unless any special work has to be done. I am having a difficult time trying to…
1
I used the name Gerhardt Eicke as the antagonist throughout the book, as I was unable to identify the true Gestapo individual’s name, the man responsible for instructing Hilda’s espionage in Scotland and the man behind the deportation and death of so many Hamburg Jewish men, women and children. In fact, there were two particular SS men responsible for the majority of Jewish deportations to death camps, including camp Neuengamme near Hamburg. Rudolf Querner was responsible for the deportations between May1941 – June 1943. He was detained after the war in Magdeburg where he cheated his death sentence, by suicide. Between 1943-45 Georg Henning Graf von Bassewitz was the SS officer in charge of policing Hamburg. He died in 1949 as a prisoner of war at Magadan, in Russia.