Alpine Hideaway Magic part one
In April of 1945 I deserted the German Army. I had just turned eighteen and had been working on an anti- aircraft crew for about ten months. Myself, and the rest of the boys manning a FLAK gun simply stopped firing into the night sky when we ran out of ammunition. When a runner went off for more ammunition and was killed doing so, we simply got up from the anti-aircraft gun and walked away. We had enough. The war was lost and Germany was shattered. There was nothing left.
We left our positions and walked silently through the night in the direction of home. We reached the river next to my side of town about midnight. I walked through the city which was on fire and smoking heavily. When I got to my street I saw the houses were intact and there were a few window broken but it was eerily quiet. I went down the street and went into the house I shared with my mother and aunt.
My mother was horrified at what I had done. She knew I would be shot for desertion if I was caught now and she knew I could very well be killed by the Americans coming in from the West and North. She told me I was a stupid boy to do what I did. Presently my aunt came up from the cellar and told my mother and myself to come downstairs to shelter from the bombing. I told her the bombers had gone but my aunt was not convinced it was safe so we huddled in the cellar and talked about what to do with me.
My aunt and mother talked for the best part of an hour and finally told me that tonight while it was still dark, to change clothes and head out away from the city and away from the German Army. My mother scribbled a note and I looked at it -- it was in what I would best describe as complete gibberish but she was insistent that I take the note and head for the mountains in the south. She and my aunt scraped some rations they had and bundled them in a ratty old satchel bag and mom took some Reich's Marks from a jar in the kitchen upstairs and told me to head to my grandmother's farm house.
My grandmother Hilde was my father's mother. She had an old farm on the very edge of a village in the shoulders of the Bavarian Alps. I had not seen her since I was very young and the women on my mother's side of the family often spoke of her in strange terms that I could not completely put together. My aunt took on a mischievous grin and exclaimed, "The old witch will eat that young one alive Greta!"
My mother shot her an angry look and responded quickly, "He'll die here Ilse - and us with him too if he doesn't do this! Enough! There is no choice in this."
Mother explained her idea. They would join me at a later time when they could make the walk but for now it was too dangerous for me to be here and for me to be with them. I was to get out of town and stick to back roads and stay out of sight. Look like somebody bombed out of a home and don't let anyone get a good look at you.
Mother kissed me and threw her arms around me to hug me hard. The clothes I was wearing fit worse than the oversized uniform I had taken off which was now burning in the wood stove to remove any trace I had been here. With that my mother pushed me out the door into the night and told me not to stop until the farm, my aunt waiving behind my mother in the doorway as I left. I walked with the bag of provisions in one hand and with my helmet and boots in the other.
When I crossed the stone bridge at the edge of town I threw the helmet and boots weighted down with broken bricks and cobblestones into the canal and that was my goodbye to the German Army. I got off the road and moved into the night away from the light of the burning city which bathed the countryside.
I found a culvert under a farm road about sunrise and crawled in. That was how I spent my first day on the run and it was how I spent my next ten days as well. I hid and slept during the day and then got up and walked to the mountains in the south through the back countryside at night. I was always looking out for German military units and American soldiers. After my first night I saw no more of the German Army but from a distance I saw many American Army columns.
I felt a little like a rabbit staying clear of things with teeth and claws. I walked in my badly fitting clothes and my poorly fitting man's hat with it pulled down slightly to hide my face partially -- like that would do good. I told myself I would look less obvious -- who was I kidding? It was a miracle I wasn't picked up. In a barn near the city of Ulm, I found a place to sleep and found some chickens that I relieved of their eggs before the farmer awoke in the morning. I also found some jarred of canned fruit in his shed that I took with me. I knew I was getting close.
Two nights later, I waded across a very unpleasantly cold stream and into the valley where my Grandmother or my "Oma Hilde" lived. I was still moving through the darkness but when I got within sight of her village I could also see the sun was coming up. I went up some side streets to her house trying to move as quickly and quietly as possible. I came around the back of her farmhouse I went through the barn away from the main street. At the door of her barn leading into her house I knocked on her door.
Oma came to the door and opened it, and peered in a surprised fashion into my face with a look of shock and bewilderment. She then sized up my appearance and hurried me inside and she locked the door.
"Stephan, you look so different!" She exclaimed. She hugged me and took my bag and hat and coat and sat me at the table. She saw that I was wet and cold from the stream I had waded through and she went to a cabinet and produced a bottle of brandy. She put a pot on the stove and proceeded to heat some of the brandy for me while snatching some leaves from a spice cabinet about eye- level in front of her and dropped a pinch into the pan. Soon she handed me a steaming cup of the mixture.
"Here boy, take this. Drink it down -- it will prevent you from becoming ill with all you have been exposed to." I gulped a little bit while I sat shivering on the table bench.
"How did you get to be in such a state?" she asked, leaning forward and peering into my eyes. I explained that I was a deserter and that I and the other boys had run off from our unit. I let her know that there were probably people looking for us and I headed as far south as I could go. I also told her I had been traveling for days to get here and that this morning I waded across the stream outside the village to get to her door.
She shook her head not believing what she had heard. Then I handed her the note with the gibberish on it that my mother had given to me. She read it and frowned and looked like she understood. As I continued to gulp down the hot brew she went to the stove and tossed the note in the fire which made a funny POOF sound. She then put together some soup. Then she moved a large pot to the stove and began to pump water from a kitchen pump to be heated.
"Isn't that a lot of water for the soup Oma?" I asked.
"No," she answered, "this is for your bath. The soup is for this little pot. Keep gulping that mix. I want you to finish the whole of it and then you may have to drink another."
I continued to tell her about the war and what I saw as a member of the military. I told her in a hushed whisper I thought the war was lost as she pulled off my wet clothes.
