(Sample Chapter)

From Conqueror to Conquered

 As World War II ground to its tragic, bloody end in Europe , disintegrating German forces fought their last desperate battles to stem the Russian tide, but offered only sporadic resistance against the lesser-feared Western forces.  By late April 1945, the American army had reached the outskirts of my hometown—Munich, Germany .  Hundreds of thousands of citizens still living among the city’s bombed-out, burned-out ruins feared and prepared for the worst.  Munich 's defiant Gauleiter, area commander of the collapsing Nazi government, continued to broadcast from his bombproof bunker, ordering every man, woman, and child to defend the city by whatever means possible.  The Allies, on the other hand, demanded unconditional surrender or threatened to bomb what was left of Munich into the ground.  People held their breaths.  A few hard-core fanatics, not yet ready to give up, could cause a last minute slaughter. 

I was nineteen.  Like most people, I was sick of the war, sick of being hungry, sick of scrounging around for the barest necessities, sick of ducking day and night into crowded air raid shelters, trembling, praying, wondering if the next bomb was meant for me.  My life, my dreams, my career–I was a classical dancer–my future, all lay in shambles.  My brother was dead.  So were many of my closest friends.  At times, I truly envied them.  Then again, I wanted to live, to live a life I could only imagine, a life free of fear and beyond mere survival. 

When I looked in the mirror, I despaired.  Staring back at me was a face drained of life and youth, pale and gaunt, with eyes dulled by the horrors they had seen.  My hair, washed with homemade laundry soap, hung in dark, oily, lusterless strands down over my shoulders.  My clothes were faded, frayed, ill-fitting hand-me-downs.  I tried dressing them up with a necklace or broach.  Inside me beat the heart of a young woman who, like a butterfly waiting to break out of its cocoon, wondered if the day would ever come when she could spread her wings. 

I shared my parents’ three-room apartment at the outskirts of Munich , in a nice, newer development with broad streets, flagstone sidewalks, and large areas of green space.  We had been lucky, oh so lucky that our unit was one of few that had escaped major bomb damage.  Some of the other block-long, two and three story apartment buildings had sustained direct hits.  Diagonally across the street from us, an air-mine had blasted away an entire street corner, killing all who had sought safety in the cellar.  The end of our block had burned to the ground during a rain of incendiary bombs that had caused a horrifying, blazing, citywide inferno.  Sheer luck and the heroic acts by residents, who risked their lives to douse the fires, had saved the units in between. 

During one such air raid, my father and a neighbor–both air raid wardens–were patrolling our building when two stick-bombs crashed through the roof.  Without giving it a second thought, the men grabbed and tossed them out the window before they could explode.  Their quick action did save our home, but it could have cost them their lives.  Every time we emerged from the air raid shelter and found all four walls of our apartment intact, we considered it a miracle. 

Our luck held even through one of the last, most terrifying day-raids.  Already before the first sirens wailed, we could hear the distant drone of approaching bombers.  Hundreds, maybe thousands of them soon darkened the sky, causing windows, walls and the ground to vibrate even before the first bombs whistled to the ground and exploded. 

“This is going to be a big one,” my father warned and hustled everybody down into the shelter.  We had barely closed its iron door when bombs screamed down around us, exploding, sucking the air out of our lungs.  I saw the cement floor heave and the mortar crack and fall off the walls.  Choking dust filled the air.  Having survived the first wave of bombers, we listened in frozen panic for the next.  As if someone had held a loaded gun to our heads, death seemed only a click away.  Not even being at the front lines in Russia was as unnerving.  I could no longer hide my terror.  With the first sound of the sirens, all strength drained from my body.  My legs buckled under me, and my hands shook so hard that I could not hold a spoon or cup without spilling its contents.

 That particular day, we thought the end had come for sure.  The attack had lasted what seemed like an eternity.  When it was finally over and the ‘all clear’ sounded, we were afraid to move, afraid to come up, afraid of what we would find.  Amazingly, our building had survived again.  However, within just a hundred-yard radius, we counted sixteen craters with unexploded bombs in them.  Any one of them could still wipe us out.  Fortunately, they were duds, not time bombs.  After several nerve-racking days, a bomb squad made up of volunteers from prisons and concentration camps, whose dangerous work earned them extra food and privileges, finally disarmed and removed them.  Once more, we had survived.  Now we faced the uncertainty of occupation.  Would there be fighting in the streets?  What would it be like to meet our enemy face to face? 

We did not have to wait long to find out.  Word spread that American tanks were seen rolling through the heart of Munich , about to bridge the Isar River , heading in our direction.  Not knowing what to expect, my mother, a gray-haired, frail but feisty little woman in her late fifties, hurriedly gathered clothing, bedding and what little food we had to take to the cellar.  My father and I filled buckets and pans with water for drinking and for fighting fires.  Our neighbors did the same. 

Next door to us lived Herr and Frau Kloh, with their widowed daughter and little grandson.  Old Kloh had a bad case of asthma.  His wife, thin as a rail, kept house and took care of three-year-old Rolfi, whose mother worked as a bookkeeper somewhere.  Above us lived a childless couple—a short, bald-headed, pedantic bureaucrat and his forever cleaning, scrubbing wife.  Across the hall from them lived the Koenigs.  We saw or knew very little of them.  Herr Koenig had just recently come home on leave and his wife worked in a factory. 

Up and down our street, improvised white flags appeared outside windows.  My father and Herr Kloh had just decided to hang one out, also, when Herr Koenig, in uniform, rifle in hand, came down the stairs.  Highly agitated, he commanded my father and Herr Kloh to barricade front and back doors and arm themselves with whatever they had.  We stared at him in utter disbelief. 

“Are you crazy?” Old Kloh said to him.  “You want us all to get killed?  The war is over.  It’s over!  Get rid of that rifle, for God’s sake.” 

For days, people had been burning Nazi uniforms and flags, Hitler pictures and books and other Nazi memorabilia in enormous bonfires on city streets.  Not Herr Koenig.  A Nazi to the end, he boldly wore a swastika armband. 

“Do your duty or else,” he ordered, pointing the gun barrel at the men. 

My heart stopped.  Then, as if on cue, Frau Kloh, her daughter, my mother and I rushed the crazed man, took his gun away and ripped the armband off his sleeve.  My father, a tall, lean, quiet man, grabbed him by the lapels and shook him, chewing on words that would not come out of his mouth.  When he let go, Herr Koenig backed up the stairs with an expression of contempt. 

“I should have turned you in a long time ago,” he muttered through clenched teeth.  The Klohs got rid of the rifle and armband, but we still worried what Herr Koenig might do next. 

Meanwhile, frantic mothers called their children home.  Others ripped their still wet laundry off the clotheslines to take in the house.  Windows banged shut.  Roller shutters creaked down.  Finally, a tense, dead quiet settled over the neighborhood as everybody waited, worried and kept secret watch. 

For the longest time, nothing happened.  Cautiously, first one, then another, people emerged from their cellars.  A sunny spring day drew them outside where lilac hedges stood in full bloom, and uncut lawns sparkled with yellow and white flowers.  Mother and I joined a group of neighbors in the back yard, venting our anxiety. 

Weary of the war, relieved to see it end, yet fearing what might follow, people’s feelings vacillated between panic and hope.  We had heard rumors that once the fighting had stopped, the Amis–as we called the Americans–acted quite charitably in comparison to the Russians who raped and killed, plundered and burned at random.  This gave us hope.  Yet, this same enemy had bombed our cities to ashes and dust, indiscriminately killed and incinerated a helpless population by the hundreds of thousands—women and children, the old and the sick—and destroyed millenniums of irreplaceable art and history.  What could we expect?  What would happen to us now? 

Suddenly our butcher’s thirteen year old son raced up on his bike, hair caked to his sweaty forehead, cheeks flushed and eyes gleaming wide.  “I saw them!  I saw them,” he blurted out with what breath he had left.  “They are coming up the Giesinger Berg,” a long hill winding up from the river’s valley.  “I saw them, sitting atop their tanks.  You won’t believe this.  People by the hundreds line the streets, waving white handkerchiefs.  And what do the Amis do?  They wave back, smiling, throwing candy, chocolate and cigarettes into the crowd.”  He pulled a wrapped, half-eaten candy bar out of his pant pocket.  “See, I got some, too.” 

We listened open-mouthed.  It sounded incredible.  This, I had to see for myself.  Against my mother’s fearful protests, my father and I hauled our bikes up from the basement and the two of us took off with the butcher’s son in the lead.  “You’ll get yourself killed,” my terrified mother cried after us. 

Casting all fears to the wind, hearts pounding with hopeful excitement, we pedaled along deserted, rubble-strewn streets, past abandoned streetcars, buses, and the ghostly facades of bombed-out ruins.  Then we heard the drone of engines, growing louder, growing into a roar.  We turned a corner and saw a wall of people, cheering and waving.  Closing in, we saw a column of tanks laboring slowly up the hill with American soldiers sitting on top, just as the boy had told us, waving back, smiling, tossing treats to the crowd that scrambled to catch them.  My father caught a partially empty pack of cigarettes and lit one on the spot, handling and savoring it like an expensive cigar.  For a good fifteen minutes, we stood amidst the cheering crowd, watching as if watching a holiday parade.  Not a shot was fired.  The procession of smiling faces on their deadly mounts seemed endless.  I wanted to stay, but fearing that my mother would worry herself sick, my father urged us to return home. 

We pedaled back along the same deserted streets, then took a shortcut across a field dotted with craters and strewn with live, unexploded bombs.  I dared not to look right or left, lest panic would keep me from going on.  I just focused on getting across as quickly as possible. 

As we turned into the alley to our apartments, my mother stood waiting by the back door, hands pressed against her heart.  She sobbed when she saw us coming.  Before we could tell her about the friendly Americans, she informed us that the Amis had seized the airwaves and had ordered all citizens of Munich to remain indoors.  Anyone seen on the streets would be arrested or shot. 

During the first two days of occupation, our neighborhood saw no sign of the Amis.  Despite continued warnings of dire consequences, people sneaked out, doing what they had to.  Many had no food, no water, no heat, and no electricity.  Others were desperate to check on family, friends and the sick.  Mail and telephone service no longer existed.  The government with its infrastructure had collapsed.  People were left to their own devices.

Finally, less than a mile from our house, Ami troops moved in and took over a large, deserted Nazi warehouse, the Reichszeugmeisterei.  A few days later they disappeared again, leaving the gates to the complex wide open.  Looting started.  In broad daylight, ignoring all caution, hoards of people stampeded the building, trampling on and over one another in search of food.  Some emerged with buckets full of rice or lentils, sacks of flour, and canned goods; others walked off with bolts of fabric, furniture, rugs, anything they could find.  What they could not eat, they could trade on the black market for a can of milk, a slab of bacon, a chunk of butter, cheese, or whatever.  Appalled at first, my father and I finally joined the frenzied mob. 

Like a trail of ants, people streamed through a labyrinth of hallways and down the stairs to the cellar where they expected the food to be stored.  At the entrance to a narrow passage, they elbowed, punched and trampled each other to the ground to get to the food.  It was an ugly scene.  My father and I turned away, not yet desperate enough. 

As we explored other parts of the building, the already ransacked offices and meeting rooms, we discovered a large storage closet.  In it, we found several rolled-up carpets and odds and ends of furniture, including a leather chair.  All this was government property of a government that was no more, a government my father despised. 

Ignoring any qualms of conscience he might have had, Papa draped a roll of carpet over my shoulder and hoisted the leather chair upon his.  “That’s good for a couple of pounds of bacon, and maybe a sack of coal,” he estimated.   

By the time we reached the street outside the complex, the load proved too heavy to carry all the way home.  So, Papa decided I should wait there with the goods while he ran home to get a small handcart.  Guarding our loot, I caught sneers from a few passers-by.  “Hypocrites!” I muttered, knowing damned well that they would be in there looting with the rest of us, if they did not have some other illegal source to help fill their bellies.  For us, it was a matter of survival.  I clenched my teeth, stayed and endured, knowing that the chair and rug could be traded for enough food and fuel to tide us over for several weeks.  Our needs were desperate. 

My mother said nothing when we arrived with our booty.  She looked at it joylessly.  We laid the rug over the hardwood floor in my room.  Papa temporarily claimed the leather chair, replacing his hard, wooden one.  When he sat in it for the first time, sinking into its luxurious softness, he acted like a pauper trying out a king’s throne.  His hands glided admiringly over the smooth leather, and from the expression on his face, I knew what he was thinking.  The chair represented status and success, something that had eluded him for most of his life.  A cruel childhood, poor health, and strong and unpopular political leanings–he was a stubborn pacifist–kept him poor and from reaching his potential. 

Seeing him sit there, wallowing in ‘what he could have been,’ racked my heart with sadness and anger.  While he had no control over his upbringing or his health, I often had questioned his political decisions.  Why could he not, like millions of other Germans, have joined the party, paid his dues, and thus been eligible for a decent job to lift his family out of poverty?  Many of our friends shared his political convictions, but they played by the rules of the day and prospered.  Some worked for changes within the system, which enabled them to do much good.  In fact, thanks to them, my father had not landed in a concentration camp.  His stubborn political stand had led to many heated discussions between him and me.  A chair, a stolen leather chair, I thought bitterly, is all he had to show for his principles. 

Among the shabby furniture in our small combination kitchen-living room, the chair looked pompously grotesque. 

Later, out of sheer curiosity, I went back to the complex and roamed through the spacious, empty offices of our now defunct officialdom.  All that was left were large paintings of the Fuehrer, some vandalized, plus an enormous flag that covered an entire wall of one of the large, ravaged meeting rooms.  I stared at it, estimating how many yards of fabric it must have taken to make it, when a thought flashed through my head.  “What a terrific costume this would make!  Fire red, perfect for the stage.”  I could picture it.  I saw the upper part straight and fitted to my body, then flair out from mid-hip into a full, ruffled skirt.  The black swastika could be used for the trim around the ruffles.  On impulse, making sure no one saw me, I ripped the flag off its hangers, bunched it up and under my coat and walked home.  I must have looked twelve-months pregnant with an elephant. 

My mother froze when I showed it to her.  Long seconds passed before she found her voice.  “Have you lost your mind?” she screamed.  “Get rid of that…that…  Get it out of this house!” 

“But Mama...!  Just think what a splendid costume this flag would make for a Spanish number,” I argued.  “Maybe I can dance again...maybe for the Amis.” 

I had been soloist with a dance company from Berlin , traveling with it all over Germany and its occupied territories until 1944, when I had to quit because of illness.  My costumes, ballet shoes, everything has been supplied by the company.  I left with nothing.  But I had seen Russians, Poles, and French perform for their German occupiers, surviving better than most other folk, and thought that I could do that also when the day came that the tables turned.  That day was here.

“You might as well put a loaded gun to our heads,” my mother ranted on, wringing her hands.

“But if I am ever to perform again, I will need costumes.  You do want me to dance again, don’t you?” 

“Somebody who finds this in our home may think that we were some Nazi big-shots, and arrest us, or shoot us on the spot,” Mama worried.

My father, more amused than angry, only shook his head and chuckled.  “All these years we never owned a Hitler flag, not even a little one.  Now you bring home the biggest one ever made.” 

Looting took place all over the city.  The Amis did not interfere.  We heard of people wheeling home cheeses as large as truck tires.  Others carried buckets full of wine from cellars flooded with it and where people actually drowned in it.  Farmers, on the other hand, had no way to bring their goods to market.  They drowned in milk.  On foot and on bicycle, city folk–my father and I included–trekked twenty, thirty kilometers through woods to the nearest farm for a pitcher of milk, a couple of eggs, or a bag of potatoes.  At this point, farmers were glad to get rid of food that would spoil otherwise. 

For several days, we saw little to nothing of the Americans.  Suddenly, Amis reoccupied the warehouse and then seized many of the surrounding and still undamaged apartment units to house their troops.  Residents had only minutes to pack a few personal items before being set on the street with no place to go.  They had survived the bombings; now they had lost their home and belongings another way–a tragedy that had everyone in our block trembling.  “Will we be next?”  My family would not have known where to find shelter. 

Before its collapse, the Nazi government had already crowded hundreds of thousands of bombing victims and refugees into every extra square inch of living space.  Now, without anybody in charge, what would people do?  They had to rely on the pity of weary friends and neighbors, move into tunnels, under ruins, or into makeshift shanties.  They had to beg for a spoon to eat with and for rags to sleep on. 

The American occupational forces now took control, enforcing a strict curfew.  Ami guards patrolled our streets.  Intermittent broadcasts from the Ami headquarters informed us what we could and could not do.  All other news was being passed by word of mouth.  One evening, an older neighbor let his dog out before going to bed that night.  He stood in the doorway of his apartment unit when an American MP drove by, spotted him, and hauled him away.  Another neighbor, a mother seeking help for her very ill child, met the same fate.  We could hear her screaming, “Mein Kind…mein Kind.” 

Indeed, tables had turned.  The conquerors had become the conquered. 

In Russia , Poland , and France , I had seen what it was like to be under hostile, foreign rule.  Then, Germans were in control, imposing laws and curfews.  Many times it had crossed my mind that sooner or later these roles would reverse.  One had to be blind not to foresee that the war would end in Germany ’s defeat.  However, I was encouraged to see that once the guns fell silent, life seemed to return to a peaceful routine, often in friendly cooperation between civilians and the occupying forces.  While this inspired hope, I knew all too well that during a war, soldiers, regardless under what flag they serve, are the nuts and bolts of a killing machine, ready to spring into action upon command.  As individuals, I saw them risk their lives to rescue civilians from flaming buildings; as soldiers, obeying a command, I saw them torch entire villages with all that was in it.  Such is the mentality of war, and that was what frightened me.  I had learned about the insanity of war during the six months I had to spend on the Russian front in 1943, to entertain German troops. 

For instance, I asked myself, what would the Americans do if some idiot like Herr Koenig fired his gun and killed some of them?  I had no doubt that they would train their big guns on the area of the sniper and wipe it out with everything and everyone in it.  Thank God, Herr Koenig and his wife had disappeared in the interim, but I worried how many of his kind still lurked around. 

As the numbing terror of relentless bombings during the last months of war slowly relaxed its grip on me, long suppressed thoughts and feelings returned to mind and heart, paining like blood returning to frozen, thawing flesh.  Scenes with faces and voices began to haunt me, faces I would never see again, and voices I would never hear again.  Many a night I woke up bathed in sweat as some of my most terrifying experiences replayed in my dreams in nightmarish reality.  I saw myself standing again amidst the smoldering ruins of the Icho School , gathering body parts of children.  I tried feverishly but in vain to reattach them to the body of the victims as if mending broken dolls.  Another time, I was back in Russia , in the chapel where I had found a mound of mutilated bodies stacked in front of the altar.  I wanted to run, but could not move.  I wanted to scream, but had no voice.  The paralyzing fear I had experienced back then, I relived again and again in my dreams.  One of the worst nightmares haunting me was a charred, blood-oozing figure staggering toward me, repeating, “Au secour, camarad, au secour!”  He was one of the tragic victims of a train wreck near Lyon, France, where the train I was on collided with the wreckage of another, blown up only hours before by the French Underground to free Italian prisoners.  Coaches crammed full with French civilians had stacked up like toys and burst into flames, turning night into day.  In my dreams, as in reality, I felt again this torturous, heartbreaking helplessness.  I had to watch this pulp of a human being expire before my eyes.  “Help!  Help!  Please!  Somebody help!”  My yelling woke me up.  The shadow of these nightmares hung over the rest of the day and stole the glimmer of any happier moment.  

At nineteen, I knew more about death and dying than of life and living. 

On a table next to my bed stood a photo of Willi, my stepbrother, an Olympic hopeful, He had walked into my life, tall and proud, when I was already in my teens.  I believed that he was heaven-sent; the answer to my most fervent childhood prayers.  Only a few short years of knowing him, death took him away again.  He had been killed in the battle of Stalingrad . 

Next to his photo, against a stack of tear-stained letters, leaned a picture of Pepi, my first true love.  His last letter read, “This note leaves with the last plane out.  We are trapped.  The Russians will either kill us or take us prisoners.  Good-bye, my Love.  My thoughts are with you to the end.” 

For the longest time, I had no tears left to cry.  What amazed me was that I was still living when I felt so dead inside.

Since a week before the American occupation, I had not seen or heard from any of my friends or co-workers from the factory where I had to work.  Feeling caged, bored, and depressed, I sat for hours by the window, watching armed Ami guards pace up and down the street.  They looked neither right nor left, and bothered no one.  I wondered what went through their minds.  What did they think and feel about us, the enemy–an enemy they had fought ferociously only days before?   Did they hate us still?  My mother, who had spent several years in the United States and spoke English quite well, addressed one of them with a friendly, “How do you do?” but received no response. 

Late one night, while Mama and I were darning socks and Papa was listening to the English radio station, the doorbell rang and someone pounded violently on the outer door of our unit, scaring us out of our seats.  Mama dropped her darning, and the three of us stood frozen to the spot, afraid to breathe, looking questioningly from one to the other: “What should we do?  Should we respond?  See who it is?  And what they want?”  The doorbelling and pounding continued.  Male voices shouted, “Open up!  Raus…kommen du raus…schnell…we shoot…bang-bang-bang.” 

“Amis,” Papa whispered.  He looked through a peephole out into the stairway to see if any of our neighbors had responded.  It was dark and quiet. 

“What could they want?  Unless we do something, they may break down the door or shoot their way in.”  Turning to my mother he whispered, “Maybe you could talk to them in English and ask what they want and try to reason with them.”  Quietly, he opened a window behind closed shutters and my mother called out, “Hello!  Are you looking for someone?” 

“Open up, or we shoot,” the men answered. 

“What do you want?  It’s late.  People are in bed.” 

“We want Nazis…guns.” 

“We are no Nazis. We have no guns.” 

“Open up!  Schnell…schnell….” 

We felt we had no choice but to open the door.  They could throw a grenade or start shooting.  There was nobody that could or would help us.  My father, with my mother breathing down his back, went to the door and unlocked it.  Two Ami soldiers, revolvers in hand, pushed him aside and staggered in, reeking of alcohol.  They started searching our place.  When they saw me, they paused, their eyes scanning me up and down.  Mama, with a stern expression on her face, said something in English to them.  It sounded like she was scolding them. 

“Where did you learn to speak English?” they asked her. 

“I was in America .  Still have two sisters in Philadelphia ,” she replied.  It surprised me how she had found the strength to answer.  I was scared mute.  The Amis, satisfied that our place was secure, tucked their guns away.  Papa pulled out two kitchen chairs and invited them to sit down.  They did.  One of them, a tall, burly looking fellow with curly, sandy colored hair offered Papa a cigarette. 

“Danke,” Papa said. 

“You don’t speak English?” 

Papa shook his head, “Nix English.” 

“And you?”  They turned to me. 

I shook my head.  “Very little,” I said.

The other fellow, shorter and stockier, with a crew cut and sky blue eyes, reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a bottle and set it on the table.  “We need glasses, Mom,” he said.  Mama sat two shot glasses in front of them. 

“We need three more, one for you, one for Pops, and one for…hey...what’s your name?”  Blue-eyes looked at me. 

“Mitzi,” I replied, giving my nickname.  “What is yours?”  I asked, looking straight into his eyes, not letting on how scared I was. 

He hesitated then said, “I’m Bob, that’s Harry.”  It was obvious that they did not give their real names. 

They stayed until after one o’clock that night.  My mother showed them albums with old photos she had from her time in the United States .  Papa sat contently in his leather chair, smoking their cigarettes and drinking their whisky, his mind far off somewhere.  I listened intently, recognizing a word here, a phrase there, only to find my school English totally inadequate.  Finally, they left, with a promise to come back. 

What their purpose was to pound on our front door that night remained a mystery.  I had a hunch that my mother’s English had saved us from their original intent.  In their inebriated state, who knows what they had in mind. 

Disobeying orders not to fraternize with Germans, Bob and Harry visited us frequently from that night on, and always with their pockets bulging.  They brought us Spam, sardines and other canned goods, as well as cigarettes for Pops, and coffee...instant coffee...real coffee.  And always, they brought a bottle with them.  We never saw them fully sober, nor ever so drunk that they could not handle themselves. 

The visits by the Americans with their bulging pockets did not go unnoticed by our neighbors.  Gossips sharpened their tongues with vicious speculations, fueled by jealousy, which in turn leaked back to us.  Frau Kloh and the bald-headed pedant from above, who had never liked one another before, suddenly spent hours in the stairway talking, only to fall silent the moment one of us appeared.  I felt the frost in their voices as we exchanged greetings. 

In the days and weeks to come, life gradually took on a new routine.  A few remaining stores reopened for short periods each day, provided they had anything to sell.  Every morning, long lines formed in front of the neighborhood bakery, hours before it opened.  In minutes, the bread was sold out and many, who had waited so long, left empty handed.  Even if we were lucky to get a loaf, I could not eat it.  It tasted moldy.  The baker said that it was made with flour from America .  I preferred our own bread made with flour salvaged from a bombed-out mill.  The force of explosions had saturated it with grit from pulverized brick and stone.  Each bite crunched between the teeth like chewing on sand, but it tasted better. 

Slowly, trams and buses began to run again on sporadic schedules.  Other traffic consisted mostly of US Army vehicles, a few horse drawn wagons, bicyclists, and pedestrians.  Along Nauplia Strasse, a main road leading in and out of the city, a steady stream of dead-weary German solders plodded homeward.  The Amis no longer seemed to bother taking prisoners.  Women with photographs of a missing son or husband besieged the haggard stragglers, “Have you seen him?  Have you seen him?”  Without breaking their labored pace, the men glanced at the photos, shook their heads sadly, and trudged on.  Some compassionate souls set out pitchers with drinking water, a bench or chair for them to rest on, sometimes even a bowl of boiled potatoes, but few stopped, afraid, perhaps, that exhaustion would overtake them and they would not be able to go on.  Their only goal now was to get home to their families. 

Home?  Family?  Tragically, many would find only ruins and death. 

When they were called to war, they were boys—cocky, self-confident, convinced of their invincibility.  Now they seemed old beyond their years.  War had dulled their eyes and wiped the smile off their faces.  Hollow-cheeked, in tattered uniforms, they personified the meaning of defeat.  They were left but shadows of their former selves.  My heart ached for them.  They were my brothers.  During my six months on the Russian front, I had become one of them.