When I came to Gebesee, it was only about six weeks to the summer holidays. It so happened that the parents of two boys in school had told Dr Prüss that if any boy was not able to go home for his holidays, he was welcome to stay with them. As owners of a farm in Saxony they had plenty of room and a visitor would be company for their children. Dr Prüss immediately thought of me and asked me whether I would like to take up the offer. It sounded a great idea to me since I loved living in the country and also felt that it might be too soon to impose so long a stay on my aunt and uncle in Karlsbad. I hardly hesitated before accepting this kind offer, even though I barely knew the two boys, Adolf and Georg Goedecke.
At the end of the term we did not immediately leave for our holiday destinations. It was the practice that, after breaking up, the pupils of all Lietz schools met for the Summer Games at Schloss Ettersburg, one of the intermediate grade schools. This was a bit like an annual Mini-Olympic Games, except that all competitions were on three levels with schools of the same grade competing against each other. Events were held in athletics, field games and ball games. There were prizes, speeches, side-shows and plenty of food for everyone. It was certainly a wonderful occasion and, even though I was not a member of any team, I was thrilled during every moment of the proceedings.
Parents and relatives of the pupils arrived towards the end of the festivities to attend the final celebrations and to collect their children. Herr and Frau Goedecke picked up the three of us by car and brought us to their farm at Döllnitz, a large village near the town of Halle, about thirty miles from Schloss Ettersburg. There I met other members of the family and my schoolmates’ sister, Hertha, who was several years younger than her brothers.
It was interesting for me to discover how farms are laid out in Germany. In Ireland it was usual on large farms to have the agricultural buildings tucked away discreetly out of sight from the residence. In Döllnitz, the residence overlooked the main farmyard with its stabling and ancillary buildings. All agricultural land was outside the village with adjoining fields comprising a single unit.
The next six weeks proved to be me one of my most memorable school holidays in which I learned a lot about farming. It was my good fortune to find myself on a farm known for its exemplary management and efficiency. It covered roughly 2,500 acres of fertile land, the greater part of which was used for grain crops while the rest was under grass. The farm manager regularly took lunch with us and I heard much of what was happening on the farm. There was normally quite a gathering at table since Frau Goedecke gave domestic science apprentices in-house training and they too ate with the family.
I also learnt a lot about horses during those holidays. To begin with, the boys and I had regular riding lessons from a professional teacher. These included instruction in the basic steps of the Spanish Riding School, and jumps over small fences. I was occasionally allowed to take the reins of the family single-harness dog-cart, a two-wheeled light carriage, and also to drive cart horses bringing in the harvest. The only difficulty I had was when driving the hay-tedder and I had to repeat my commands to the horse which had some difficulty understanding my Anglo-German accent! Of course, all this was a tremendous confidence booster to a thirteen-year-old and I was very grateful to my host for trusting me in these operations.
My schoolmates, Adolf and Georg, were wonderful company; our weeks together were crammed with activities, everything was tremendous fun and I gained many new experiences. Since Hertha was too young to accompany her brothers and me on our daily sprees, I did not see much of her. However, I remember helping her with her “Knitting Nancy” toy and also being at her birthday party, little thinking that many years later she would become my wife.
Quite frequently Herr Goedecke took me with him when he went off in his dog-cart to drive across the farmland, or to do some shooting. I never came away from these drives without having learned something new from him about nature, farming or other matters of general interest.
There seemed to be no end to all the exciting new ventures I engaged in, but all too soon it was time to go back to Gebesee. I must confess that having had such a wonderful time, I hardly missed my parents at all.
I had been back in school for only a few days when Dr Prüss called the school to a special assembly. He announced that the German army had marched into Poland and that Britain and France had issued an ultimatum that they would declare war if these troops were not immediately withdrawn. A day later we were informed that the ultimatum had not been met and that Germany was now at war with all three countries.
This news was heard in stunned silence, but I do not recollect any doomsday conversation afterwards. Maybe it was considered that the war would not last long and that some agreement would be reached. I certainly remember that the teachers seemed to play down the events and made us feel that our life would go on as before.
The fact that I would not be able to get back home in the foreseeable future did not immediately raise any feelings of fear in me. This could have been because I felt so secure and happy in my new school. I had my relatives in Karlsbad and Erika was also not far away. What probably helped me too was my recent holiday in Döllnitz and the feeling at the back of my mind that I had found a family that would offer me love and care if the need ever arose.
My father appointed an ex-colleague of his, Herr Oskar Soukal, to act as guardian for Erika and me and asked him to look after all financial matters. He had moved to Germany before the outbreak of the war and lived with his wife, Grete, in the small town of Mücheln, in central Germany, where he was manager of the Stöbnitz sugar factory. The Soukals were long-time friends of my parents and I always called them uncle and aunt.
At school none of the students had a radio of their own and we did not see any daily newspapers. Since the press was saturated with National-Socialist rhetoric, it looked to me like confirmation of the outlook in the school that these carriers of propaganda had no place with us. Our only information came from radio bulletins, which Dr Prüss read out to us on the state of the war – on some occasions the school met in the assembly hall to hear an announcement by Hitler over the radio. It was actually prescribed by law that one had to listen to all speeches by Hitler.
If it had not been for these news bulletins, I would not have noticed that there was a war on. Food did become rationed, but our diet was legitimately supplemented with vegetables, fruit and honey produced on the school farm so that nobody really felt the pinch. One factor that affected me personally was that all normal contact with Ireland by mail ceased when the war broke out. The only communication possible was via the Red Cross. A special form was used and I was permitted to write a maximum of only twenty-five words once a month. I came to bless the German language with its long, composite words, which sometimes allowed me to fit a whole comprehensible sentence into one or two words.
From the time I arrived at Gebesee I was obliged to become a member of the Jungvolk, the junior section of the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), and I enjoyed the activities very much. One of the teachers, Dr Nahr, who held the rank of “Bannführer”, was in charge of our unit and was therefore “one of us.” Once an outside “Bannführer” came to inspect our unit, but we pelted him with snowballs and he never returned. We were certainly not typical of the average Jungvolk unit in Germany, of which many must have been led by people with strong National-Socialist views. However, I never saw anything objectionable in the basic Jungvolk pursuits of athletics in which we had to work up to specific standards, and I still remember the Morse Code that I mastered so long ago. We did have to memorise some dates concerning the rise of Hitler, but that was only a minor detail and, even if we did practise marching in formation, that was no different from what I had done with the Lifeboys in Carlow.