I went to war as a boy and I became a man, one with clean hands. That was an achievement in total war, and because of it I personally found imprisonment unfair. I was not the only one who shared that opinion. Others had to and did accept their fate. Most of them, tired in mind and body, acquiesced to that ‘truism’. They played cards, or tried to relax themselves and others by telling jokes, most of which we had all heard before, but laughed at nevertheless. Only now, the laughter had no echo. This artificial ‘stiff upper lip’ behaviour showed itself amongst the officers by the dissection of their tactical mistakes. “When we, or if we had”, who now knew how they could have won the war. Some were obsessed with food, and titillated their palates and that of others, with imaginary meals, explaining how they were cooked. “Take so many ounces of butter and two eggs”! Perhaps because we only had lentils as a good square meal, every day!
There was another theme which wove itself into our daily conversations, women. And why not? We were all in the prime of our manhood. We all without exception, admired Sister Susi, the nurse from Hamburg. She was young, very petite, had red highlights in her dark blonde hair, was scrubbed and left a sweetness behind her of soap and face-cream, which we followed, one after the other with our noses. She was the epitome of womanhood for us, myself included, and was the nearest to our dreams that we had. We all held a secret love of her to our breast, no amour-fou, but more of a platonic nature. This sweetness in our lives did not last long, for we became unwilling members of a ‘Wandering Club’, as our cross-country wanderings began. Instead of the usual coach-house stops, we went from one prison hospital to another. One of those I remember was the bombed Scala Cinema in the former Employment Exchange, a huge building on the edge of the Oder, in Saltstrasse.
Up to that point, my blood-group tattoo, despite medical examinations, had not been a disadvantage for me. The knowledge of this significant and distinguishing ‘mark of Cain’ had obviously not filtered through on a large scale, but at some time it would. Mine had to be erased, at all costs. This was easier said than done. Some of the other WSS patients tried with burning cigarettes, or continual abrasion with a rough stone. It was even said that it could be done with milk. I did not believe the latter of those solutions. In any case, where on earth could I lay my hands on milk?
The assistant doctor Markwart Michler wanted to help me and arranged an operation. His equipment was rather primitive. The operation itself was to be performed in strict secrecy, away from everyone. He procured a razor-blade as a scalpel and ice as an anaesthetic. At the agreed time, we met in one of the large rooms in the cellar and I prepared myself for the worst, with guards at the door. I bared my arm and it was duly iced. We then had an interruption, with the result that the area around the tattoo was no longer anaesthetised, but “ten minutes pain, or 25 years in Siberia?” And so with the light from a candle, the operation began.
It could not to be compared to the seconds that a foreign body sears into one, such as a bullet, shrapnel or glass, producing the numbness of shock through causation. This was deliberate, so my mind reacted accordingly! It was hell! I ground my teeth, for I had no other choice, or one that I did not contemplate. And it bled! I tried for some minutes to stem the flow by sucking it away. Then, after urinating on a shred of an army shirt, Michler wound it around the wound to sterilise it. At some time later, this was exchanged for a plaster, after it had scabbed. Now my fears were allayed. I was no longer named ‘Cain’. Thus I hoped to evade the hunt for members of my organisation. I escaped with only the faintest of scars, which can still be seen today.
I held the highest rank of all of the wounded in the group. Therefore I had the responsibility of reporting to the doctors and non-resident doctors on numbers present, and other things that interested the Russians. The very first time that I performed this duty, it caused smiles from the German doctors and nurses who were standing behind the Russian team of doctors. I clapped my heels together, which was the custom when in the presence of higher ranks or personages, together with my arm salute in Deutscher Gruss. I very slowly rested on my cap, in doubt. Habit is habit! The Russian team did not bat an eyelid, ignoring the rebellion against the new regime.
In comparison with those conditions to be found in prisoner transports, in cattle-wagons, and under way to the East, we could not complain. We could move around on the banks of the Oder. All day long we lay in the sunshine, watching it shimmer on the water’s surface. We were thankful for small mercies. Others, fallen into deep depression, lay on their bunks the whole day. Others walked to and fro over the few metres of their room, like caged cats looking for a quiet corner where they could be alone in their despair.
One day in the middle of August 1945, this was all very rudely disturbed, as mighty underwater explosions from the Oder sent fountains of water high into the air. The hot summer sun had reduced the level of the river’s water, exposing unexploded shells and other ammunition, as well as weapons from the German soldiers who had thrown them into the river. All had reached exploding point with the increasing heat. The force of the blasts threw to the ground those wounded who were walking the promenade. It caused already weak walls to collapse, and resulted in damage to buildings, and to the furniture in the hospital. The Russians were in pure panic and believed that we were breaking out on a large scale, with the help of explosives. We were just as much in the dark as they. We had no idea what was happening. They ran wild over the hospital yard, screaming as they ran criss-cross in all directions, with cocked machine-pistols. To see their cool command broken to such an extent through a false alarm gave us a lot of pleasure, for there was not much entertainment in our everyday lives. One could nose-dive into deep depression, when busy only with one’s self.
I tried to wile away the time by reading every book that I could lay my hands on, to put some distance between myself and reality, to forget what was going on around me. I had to sort out my feelings and my mind, for some objectivity. Mainly I needed peace, peace after the din, the loud, unpleasant and prolonged noise of battle, and the months of strain. The books in the Employment Exchange were plentiful, in the attic and cellars, and I helped myself. To my joy I even found some in my mother-tongue, which must have found their way from the lending-library, perhaps for the foreign labourers. I read everything that I could find, gladly reading about journeys into foreign lands, plus everything that had been formerly uninteresting, including the poems and works of Schiller.
I perused the world once more, soaking up every minute detail of it, the warmth of the shining sun, bird-song, the fascinating flight of the butterfly. I followed the route of the beetle in the sand, like a small child. I did so despite the stifling worry in my breast about the fate of my family back home. I had to work up some optimism and clarity of mind, and not become a sacrifice to the ‘barbed wire syndrome’.
I sought conversation in every corner of this band of brothers-in-arms, from different units, from older comrades, to help strengthen my courage to face life. They discussed their experiences with me. I found their philosophy of life was all the more surprising, in the short time since the end of the war. Among those were engineer Karl-Heinz Corfield, who had grave leg injuries, and assistant surgeon Markwart Michler, with whom a very deep friendship developed over many years.
The war had already been over for some months and the fanaticism and brutality of the ‘Ivans’ had relaxed. They were even lenient with the prisoners, some showing sympathy for our situation. We even formed an orchestra at that time, with self-made instruments. The qualified musicians among us played from their personal repertoires. We had a magician among us too, who made one of the prisoners disappear from his wooden box. “Where is comrade? The box is empty!” What would happen to them when one of us had failed to turn up at the count, the next day? We laughed our socks off. Afterwards, as they cottoned on to how it was done, they laughed too, at themselves!