Opposite Sides (74 page)

Frau Mohr was still the
plump and homely woman he remembered, although some of her
plumpness had diminished during the last eighteen months. She had
always been one of those women who easily put weight on which had
been quite a problem for her whenever she made some of her filling
dumplings or large chocolate cream cakes she was well-known for. A
cheerful woman who always had a kind word or a helpful pair of
hands whenever such was needed. She put her own concerns aside as
she tried to suggest things that Hans could try.

“
So many
people are missing, Herr Resmel. Have you found the lists,
yet?”

“
Which
lists?” he asked as they ate their first meal together in the
fading daylight.

“
They’re all
over the city. Try some of them. You never know what may turn up.
Also, I suggest you register at one of the posts and fill in the
official forms for lost persons. Everything helps.”

Early next morning, Hans
left the house and began the long task of trying to find his son.
He said nothing to Frau Mohr for almost a week until a further
outburst of despair escaped his lips.

“
I’ve spent
hours, days and days reading hundreds of the long lists put up on
walls of those missing! Hours and hours of my time hoping to find a
Resmel, but nothing. It’s too difficult! I’ll never find him! So
much of the city’s in ruins.”

“
Dreadful.
Dreadful,” Frau Mohr agreed. “All those bombs and fires. Dreadful.”
She shook her head as if to shake the nightmare away. After a
minute or two, she continued. “I never liked Herr Hitler at the
time,” she said. “Didn’t say anything, not even to Gustav. Well,
the papers kept saying he would save us; that he would lead us into
prosperity. And people believed him. Oh dear, what fools we
were!”

“
I’m sorry
that any of it happened.” It was said with a sigh. Hans had seen
what evil things war had done, how it had turned good, reasonable
men into bullies and murderers. He held his head between his hands,
his elbows resting on the edge of Frau Mohr’s dining
table.

“
Have you
tried some of the authorities in the British sector? They may have
come across something.”

“
Not yet. I’m
not sure Siege was even in the city. He could have been taken north
of here.”

“
Oh dear,”
sighed Frau Mohr. “That makes things more difficult. All that
sector’s under Russian control. Very tight security I’ve heard, far
worse than any of the others. The Americans seem to be the easiest
to deal with.”

“
I could try
the British sector, I guess. I’ve already found that moving from
one sector to another’s difficult. The occupation forces want to
keep a tight rein on any movement in the city. My papers don’t
allow me to move easily around the city.”

“
You’ll find
a way. A soldier can always find a way. Coffee?” She wanted him to
feel that someone cared. “I’ve still got some Ersatz. It’s better
than just boiling up tree leaves and things.”

“
No, keep it
for yourself.”

“
Have some of
this.”

Frau Mohr handed him a
thick slice of bread and a thin strip of pink ham. She had managed
to cook a small cake for them both, just sufficient for two days’
supper.

“
I don’t know
how you manage,” he commented.

“
Black
market. Prices are so, so high. After six years of rationing, we’ve
learnt to get by. People in the occupying forces are not permitted
to trade with any of us Berliners. Luckily, I’ve a contact who is
able to get a little fresh food. Works in the Tiergarten growing
vegetables and he has been able to push some in my direction.” She
ate the slice of bread and began carefully cutting the cake, making
sure she would have some left for the following evening. The
conscious act of doing this visibly upset her and she bit her lip
as she tried to put on a brave face. But it did no good and her
inner emotions welled out and spilt over. “I don’t know what’ll
happen during this winter. We had so little coal before. Now we
don’t even get that! I dread to think how many of us will
freeze.
Ach
, Herr
Resmel, everything’s so dreadful! People living in shelters and
cellars. There’s nowhere else. You shouldn’t have come. Really, you
shouldn’t have bothered. I’m so sorry!”

Hans wondered how many
people were struggling in exactly the same way, all over Europe.
There was suffering everywhere and people like him had to take the
blame. When the Reich was strong and the war was going well, very
few complained. Now, it was different and the faces of the people
had become sour or dejected as they struggled to survive. He
wondered what kind of child Siege would be. That’s if he was even
able to find him. Yet he had to find the child and with each
passing day the trail became more difficult to follow.

Hans wrote many letters
to Jan, for by writing them he was able to feel closer to her. He
had only managed to post a few of them and any reply from her took
many weeks in getting to him. Each time she wrote, she told him how
much she was missing him and reminded him of his promise to both
Andrea and herself that he would try and return to England by the
years’ end. By the time winter had set in and the first flakes of
snow had begun to drift down from the low grey sky, Hans was almost
ready to return to England. He had discovered from a man who had
served with the Kriegsmarine that his brother Renard had not
returned from one of his stints at sea. U-248 on which he was
serving had been reported missing in early January 1945, somewhere
in the mid-Atlantic and it was six months before the authorities
were able to confirm its sinking with the loss of all her
forty-seven sailors on board.

Maybe, it’s
just as well
, thought Hans, for he knew
that Renard had been very much involved with all the hype that
surrounded Hitler and his regime, although he was saddened for all
the families who had lost their loved-ones on the boat.

His thoughts turned to
his younger brother and although It was strange he had heard
nothing from his younger brother, he could have gone underground.
He pinned his hopes on finding Axel alive although deep down he had
his concerns as he knew that Nazi sympathisers had scoured the
country routing out those who had shown their disapproval to the
regime or it could be possible that, like so many others who had
avoided the call-ups, that during the last days when the regime
struggled in its final death throws, Axel had been forced to fight.
The entire population was in turmoil and no-one seemed to know what
had happened as the Russian front reached into the streets of
Berlin.

Hans had walked round to
the street where Aunt Laura and Uncle Karl lived. Only a few houses
were still occupied but most in the street stood as black burnt out
hulks or as one lonely brick wall that gave an indication that a
house had been there at all. The house Hans had remembered spending
his teenage years in was now just a pile of bricks. At least Uncle
Karl did not live to see its destruction for he had died during the
winter of forty-four and the house had been unoccupied since then.
Aunt Laura had gone back to Austria where most of the family still
lived.

Hans spoke to one of the
survivors in the street, and was told that one evening a huge wave
of bombers had appeared overhead and had first dropped incendiaries
to light up their target, followed by a thunderstorm of bombs which
rained down from one end of the street to the other. As there were
a number of factories a few kilometres away, people guessed the
planes were hoping to destroy those but inaccuracies were
commonplace and one entire section of town was flattened. The irony
of it was that the ammunition factory down the road was left
completely unscathed that evening. That is the way war mocks its
participants.

Hans was beginning to
come to the conclusion that his future did most likely lay in
England with Jan and Andrea. There was nothing so far for him to
remain where he was. He was in the middle of brooding over these
thoughts, when there was a buzz from the entrance bell to tell Frau
Mohr that someone needed to speak to her.

Hans had been close to
the downstairs door when the caller had just pressed the bell. Hans
opened the door.

“
Hello. Frau
Mohr is not at home at the moment. Can I be of help?”

A young man, more smartly
dressed than usual, was standing on the step. He had a black
attaché case under his arm and as Hans spoke to him he raised his
newly brushed black cadet cap.

“
It is not
Frau Mohr I have come to see. Can I find Herr Resmel
here?”

“
I am Herr
Resmel,” Hans answered.

“
A delivery
for you. From the Red Cross office for missing people.”

Hans felt a surge of
adrenalin. Even though he was surprised, he didn’t dare allow
himself the privilege of hope. And yet, he desired hope as much as
a dying man in the desert desires water. He signed for the envelope
and thanked the messenger for bringing it.

He held the door ajar
with the toe of his shoe and tore the brown envelope open so that
he was able to extract the paper inside. There were two printed
pages, each one headed by the Red Cross logo and headquarter
address in Zurich.

Siegmund
Erwin Falko Resmel born 20 October, 1942. Mother: Elisabeth Resmel
(nee Kohler) Father: Erwin Resmel POW England. Last known report of
Siegmund Resmel was with his grandmother. The pair were walking
with other refugees who were heading for Schwerin. Mrs Kohler’s
body was found by roadside near Altentreptow. Siegmund Resmel not
found. Possible survivor of air attack. Soviets hold all records
for known survivors in their Berlin headquarters.

It gave some faint hope
in the overwhelming chaos as vast numbers of people were still on
the move in all directions. The child had not been brought to
Berlin and neither did he seem to be in Neubrandenburg. It could be
possible that the Americans or British had some information. A
river of refugees had made their way westwards in the hope of
reaching Schwerin and the western Allies before the town was handed
over to the Soviets but the child could be anywhere and Hans was
coming to the conclusion that the path to finding his son was not
going to be an easy one. He leaned against the door frame as he
considered his options. The first thing to do would be to move away
from his present lodgings and find somewhere that was nearer to the
address he had been given. He knew he hadn’t much time left before
he had promised Jan he would try to get back to England. He must
tell her of this new development and he re-entered the building and
shut the door behind him. He climbed the stairs back up to Frau
Mohr’s flat and immediately sat down at the table and began writing
another letter to Jan. Tomorrow morning, he’d post it on his way
and then apply for a visa to be able to cross the internal border
into the Russian sector.

CHAPTER
25

Hunting

Jan stepped off the train
at the Zoo Hauptbahnhof in the western part of Berlin. Together
with two other nurses, Jan would be stationed at one of the army
hospitals in the city. She had made application to travel to Berlin
with the Auxiliary Nurses and had forwarded a letter from Commander
Brownless recommending her for post-war service within the British
zone. Her term of duty would be brief. She had been given the
necessary papers to enter the divided city but they were only valid
for a three month stay. Security was strict and getting into the
city had been difficult for all personnel had to be flown in
through the narrow corridor which linked the western part of the
country with the inner city.

Once they arrived, the
nurses found that any movement outside the hospital confines was
arduous and restrictive. Jan found she had to wait patiently for
her leave to turn up before she could snatch a few days off and
begin looking for the man she was to marry. The widespread
destruction of the buildings, together with the hopelessness and
resignation on the faces of the people was most upsetting and Jan
wondered whether they would ever be able to find her way around the
ruined city. She thought it would be wise to go to the British Army
Occupation Headquarters and speak with someone there to see whether
they could help. Normally they didn’t make any personal efforts to
locate ordinary people unless the armed forces had some interest in
them, but as Jan had gone to the trouble to obtain special
documents and had arrived on their doorstep and was determined to
stay there until she got answers, she was sent through to the
general’s office. She told the general that the last she had heard
of Hans, he had been in the American sector, staying with a Frau
Mohr. The general listened in silence but as he did so he weighed
up everything he was being told and decided that as she was a very
determined lady, he would phone through to the American
headquarters to see if they could be of assistance.

“
They want to
know if you’ll be going alone or not, nurse.” The general lowered
the phone away from his ear.

“
There’ll be
two of us, general,” she answered immediately. She had already
asked Rosie Dawson to accompany her. Rosie was one of the nurses
who arrived in Berlin with Jan a few weeks earlier.