I was unaware that Herr Schmitt had called my father home until he was by our side.
‘Amelia, Lotte.’ Vati drew us to him, his strong, dependable shoulders a safe haven from the bewildering events that had occurred. I breathed in the pipe smoke that clung to his coat and immediately felt soothed. My mother broke down into convulsive sobs, and my father pulled away to devote his attentions to her with an apologetic kiss to the top of my head.
Heinrich finally held me as I drowned in my own grief and the grief of everyone else in the room. I was sure I would never be able to break to the surface and breathe again.
There was no body to bury, no funeral to prepare, no graveside to visit. There was no way to say goodbye and that weighed heavily on us. Over the next few weeks my mother took to her bed and would not get out. She would not eat and she refused to see even her closest friends. Vati and I were worried about her, looking after her until she was on her feet again, but we were in mourning too. I couldn’t bear to think of Willi alone and so far away from us in a foreign land. He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t deserve to die. He had just turned twenty and his whole life was ahead of him.
Mutti kept photos of us on the sideboard of the sitting room, photos of both boys proud in their uniforms on their first day of service; the final photo of Willi taken the day he left us for the last time. I picked up the photo in its silver frame. The Luftwaffe side cap sat jauntily on his head and his mouth held the hint of a smile. I remembered taking that photo like it was yesterday.
‘Stand still and stop fidgeting,’ I’d said to Willi, taking my job as family photographer very seriously. I could see the mischief in his bright blue eyes.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I’ll die of hunger, standing here all day.’ He shifted again.
‘No, the light’s all wrong now,’ I said in exasperation. His grin widened. ‘Behave, Willi. I want to get the perfect shot.’ I turned his face to the best angle. ‘Now don’t move.’
‘You’re so annoying,’ he said but did what he was told, trying to wipe the grin off his face.
It was a good shot. He exuded confidence in his woollen uniform, the tunic open at the neck, his medals worn over his left breast. The flying cap sat almost over one eyebrow, his blonde hair showing short and neat along the opposite curve of the cap. I clicked away, allowing for variations of light and position, until I was satisfied.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Mutti will be happy with these.’
‘As long as you and Mutti are happy,’ he replied, kissing me on the cheek. He swung his arm across my shoulder, propelling me along. ‘I’m starving. Let’s eat now, before it gets cold.’
The lines of Willi’s face in the last photo were more defined. He was handsome and had grown into manhood. Then his image blurred as tears rolled down my face and my heart clenched in anguish. I kissed the glass and carefully returned the frame to its place of honour on Mutti’s sideboard. He was still too young to die.
Grief over Willi’s death affected Heinrich very differently from me. He knew what it was like on the Eastern Front. He could imagine how my brothers had died. He consoled me well enough, holding me tight as the tears came in private, whispering words of sympathy and strength and, when they didn’t work, kisses and caresses to distract us both and remind us that life was still for living. But I felt Heinrich withdraw into himself. I was sure some of it was his fear of being called up once again. I knew he had no fear of death itself, the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the Fatherland, but he could see how my brothers’ deaths had affected my mother and me, and he worried about what his death would do to me and his own family.
I had always been an optimist but now I, like Heinrich, questioned the point of this war. This was a war fought of necessity, I reminded myself. It was a war of self-preservation for the German nation. There were bound to be stiff sacrifices to give the next generation a stronger, independent, vital Germany. Heinrich began talking about the White Rose episodes of earlier in the year again. The arrests and executions of those young students had affected him deeply but it was treasonous talk. It frightened me to the very core, not just because I was scared that someone would overhear, but because it started to make sense to me, threatening to shake the deeply held teachings of my childhood, those learnt in the schoolroom and the League of German Girls. I had known Heinrich all my life, our grandparents were family friends, and I knew that he held these same beliefs as tightly as I did – it was only grief talking, for both of us.
It was hard to put one foot in front of the other but life had to go on. I forced myself to go to work each day. Where I had found satisfaction in getting my job done and providing efficient assistance to Oberinspektor Drescher, I now found it difficult to focus on the tasks in front of me. There were many occasions, triggered by the slightest association with Willi – and in my job that wasn’t uncommon – when I rushed to the bathroom, overwhelmed and ready to burst into tears. My colleagues were kind. Most had experienced some kind of loss and understood what I was going through. Bettina was my greatest support, keeping me busy and trying to distract me with idle gossip and hilarious stories during our breaks.
I was most surprised, however, by the compassion shown by Oberinspektor Drescher. He asked after my family each day, thoughtfully allowing me to come in late some mornings while I tended to my mother and stay late in the evening to finish off my work, always ensuring I had somebody to either walk me home or if the hour was late, to drive me home. I almost wished he would keep his distance, as his kindness only further confused my feelings.
One evening, I made the oberinspektor some coffee. We were working late and going over some documents I needed to transcribe.
‘Your brother fought on the Eastern Front?’ he asked.
I froze, coffee cup to my lips. I didn’t know if I could speak to him of Willi without my mask of calm and efficiency slipping. Placing my cup on the table, I looked into his eyes. I knew I would see compassion but did not expect the vulnerability I found there. I could trust him.
‘Yes, both my brothers did. We lost Ludwig just over a year ago in Stalingrad and Willi near Kiev.’ My eyes welled with tears, I couldn’t help it. I dashed them away with the heel of my hand, angry that it took only this to show my weakness.
He nodded, briefly squeezing my hand across the desk in sympathy, his touch soft and warm from the coffee cup. Surprised by his touch, I glanced at his face, but only found kindness in his green eyes.
‘Be proud of your brothers. The Eastern Front is a very hard place, with the most difficult conditions imaginable.’
The Führer’s picture looked down on me as if disapproving of my mixed emotions – pride but also desperation. When would the Führer follow through on his promise of winning this war? My brothers’ sacrifices had to mean something.
‘So I’ve heard,’ I whispered, looking into my cup. ‘Have you been there?’
The oberinspektor sighed. ‘Yes. I was based at the airpark in Lemberg in late forty-one, after I finished my diploma. I worked at various airfields in Silesia before that. It was close to the Eastern Front then, I saw too many horrific things and there were some terrible stories. We supported the boys in Stalingrad, ready to pull them out when the Red Army looked like they would overwhelm them. To this day, I can’t understand the Führer’s decision to leave them there at the mercy of the Red Army. We were all devastated by the losses, too many men died that needn’t.’ He stared into space with a far-away look.
I shuddered, unnerved that the oberinspektor had not only mirrored my disquiet with the Führer’s promises but spoken it. The bitterness of this personal description of the battle that Ludwig died in stunned me. The Eastern Front had a brutal reputation and here was another example of how it touched and affected the men who saw action there.