Chapter Two - New Beginnings

Ernst got up and crossed the floor in two hurried steps and pushed the door open. Looking skyward he motioned to me to join him. I stopped playing. That's when I heard the unmistakable high pitched whining of the air raid siren. The sound of it made my palms sweat. The last raid had been on October 2, and had caused only light damage mostly due to the fact that the Pathfinder aircraft missed thier mark completely. Instead they had targeted Ihringshausen, a suburb, leading the couple hundred bombers to drop thier bombs there. Most of the raids were directed at the Henschel Locomotive Factory which was also manufacturing tanks. I got up and made my way hastily to the door. When we got outside we scanned the night sky for signs of aircraft but could see nothing. Then the distant drone of engines became audible. There was cloud cover and the city was under mandatory blackout. The drone grew louder and closer, and soon we could tell they were directly overhead. I looked at Ernst, waiting on his reaction. He looked uneasy.
"Wellingtons." He said referring to the British heavy bombers that had been paying unwelcome visits all too often lately. "...And lots of them." Concern showed in his voice. I felt a funny twinge in the pit of my stomach. When Ernst was concerned it always worried me. He didn't get excited about much. We stood there for a moment, listening to the sound of the bombers as they pushed onward, and that's when we heard the telltale whine of bombs falling towards their target. The first cluster hit a couple of miles away, close enough to feel the warm air as the shockwaves drifted past us. The explosion shook me deep in my chest, and they lit the blackened city in a white orange glow. One was followed by another, and then another in rapid fire succession. They were seemingly getting closer with each new blast. We could hear debris falling near to us and voices screaming. More bombs, even closer, falling so close together now they couldn't be counted. I looked at Ernst and he looked at me. Recognition crossed our faces at the same time. My blood ran cold as one thought screamed out in my mind. Dear God don't let it be like Hamburg. Six months ago the whole city of Hamburg had been bombed to smithereens in a hellish firestorm, the people instead of the factories being the target. Bombs fell randomly around us, seeming to hem us in from all sides.
"Oh God, no." I heard Ernst say lowly, barely audible over the rumbling, crashing sound of explosions. There was nowhere to run to. It was impossible to know where the next salvo would fall. Suddenly, a bomb fell into a house a few streets over and we were knocked to the ground on our chests. Shards of brick pummeled us, and I hardly had time to yell out Ernst's name before it was drown out in another blast. This one was even closer, and I could feel the heat on my exposed fingers as I covered my head and neck. I turned to where Ernst was laying and saw him looking towards the growing firestorm in horror. Delia, Mama and Theodor were somewhere amongst all the chaos, and we were here under a heap of rubble, powerless to do anything about it. The bombs were falling with regularity now, and back towards the city's center licks of fire could be seen over the buildings, washing them in an orange glow. Before I could say anything to stop him Ernst had jumped up and was running directly towards the raging inferno. I knew his destination was the Martinsplatz. They would have had time to get there by now. He disappeared through a mist of smoke and debris, and I did the only thing I could do. I got up and ran full force after him.

The bombs kept falling, and the light was brilliant and blinding. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again large black blotches obscured my vision. The heat was becoming more intense, and the fires were spreading throughout the city until they met up and joined into one large conflageration. More aircraft droned overhead. This time they had hit thier mark.
One thing was certain. We didn't have much time.
The whole town would be ablaze in a matter of minutes. Tons of incendiary bombs loaded with highly flammable white phosphorous were falling with the density of snowflakes, adding to the inferno. Ernst was at least fifteen feet ahead of me and running fast. I struggled to keep him in sight through the haze of smoke and dust and mele of stampeding people. I felt coldness gripping my stomach like a fist, and I recognized the feeling immediately. I struggled to choke back the panic before it poisoned the rest of my body. To let it win would be a death sentence. My legs were moving as fast as they could carry me. I had to keep them moving. People were running past, trying to escape the carnage. Some were burned badly, others were mangled from debris from the disentigrating buildings. I saw more than one person run past with hair and clothes on fire. A woman ran past carrying a child who was lifeless, pleading for help that no one could give. A man whose face was charred beyond recognition was crawling on his hands and knees, sweeping the cobblestones with his fingers. The heat was intensifying with each step. The numbing coldness moved into my chest and the fist clenched around my stomach once again. I couldn't allow it to reach my brain and paralyze my senses, my level mind...It was the only thing I had left that could save me. To panic would be my end.
I strained my eyes as I searched the smoke in front of me. Ernst was gone amongst the sea of bodies, into an abyss of chaos. I yelled out his name. It was no use. My voice was lost amidst the thousands of others, over the roar of the flames. I felt the coldness grip me with heightened intensity, tightening my chest uncomfortably and tingling into my shoulders. The situation was hopeless. I heard the phrase run through my mind and I pushed it away. I fought for control, pushing it downward again. I pushed my feet faster, my leg muscles burning with exertion. Then, a sudden blast tore through the air around me and as I was knocked backwards I saw buildings around me shatter as the shockwave impacted them. The light blinded me for a few seconds and left my vision milky and opaque. The screams and bombs all became eerily muffled, as if I had covered my ears with my hands. Bricks fell from the sky, landing all around and on top of me like a hellish rain. People ran past, jumping over me. I rolled over onto my chest, feeling the cool cobblestones on my cheek and the heat of the fire radiating over my back. For some reason it reminded me of laying in the cool grass back at Lowenburg Castle. Suddenly I felt the vibration of the cobblestones under me and looked up in time to see a flaming object falling towards me. I covered my head quickly, knowing I had only half a second to react. It hit with such force that I was sure I would be killed. I closed my eyes tight, bracing for the impact. I felt something on the back of my neck and across my face.
Pain. It intensified until it felt like someone slicing my skin into ribbons. I opened my eyes only to see an orange flame directly in front of and on top of me. The heat seared my skin until I felt it split with blisters. It took my breath, and no matter how much I tried to cry out my voice wouldn't come. I pushed my hands against the weight on top of me until they were raw and burned. My mind was racing, screaming for relief as the heat blistered my face. More blasts shook the ground around me and I felt the bricks pelting me again and the large burning hulk on top of me shifting its weight downwards. My lungs were compacted forcefully. I kicked both legs futilely against the thing and clawed at the piled bricks around me. My efforts produced nothing but the fire above me did seem to be burning itself out. The pile of rubble had shifted so that I could see the street in front of me once again. I looked to where I had last seen Ernst and instead I saw one of the most frightening things I had ever seen. I saw something that appeared as if it had come out of the bible. I was reminded of the story of Pharoh's army as it rushed down onto the fleeing Isrealites, stopped only by a monstrous pillar of fire. What I saw in front of me can only be described as that. It whirled like a cyclone, spinning fingers of fire reached out from it's blazing center. People running by too close were swept up in the winds, grasped by the devilish conflagaration and pulled inside. It made a sound like a hundred lions, and as I felt the pull of the winds on my body I was never more happy to have a hunk of rubble holding me in place. What I was seeing was surely a glimpse of what hell looked and felt like. Anyone that was standing anywhere near me was immediately swept away. Hundreds of people rushed the intersection of the streets, looking for a way out, and when they saw the tornado of fire they stopped, piling up on themselves and then were consumed row by row. Even after the flame consumed them they continued to claw and kick, thier screams being silenced by the wind but thier mouths continuing to move, eyes wide open, hair flaming. Slowly the flame would eat the whites of thier eyes until it was as black as the rest of thier bodies. They became faceless dark forms illuminated by a background of flames. Thier flesh sizzled and popped. The smell that wafted away from them was indescribable. I shut my eyes tightly, willing the cold numbness that had gripped me earlier to come back. I wanted it to drug my senses until I could no longer survive in the intensifying heat. It responded immediately, sinking like a block of ice in my stomach and spreading eagerly to my chest. It tightened its icy grip around my heart until it pounded furiously. I refused to open my eyes, not willing to witness any more of the scene that lay in front of me. If I was going to die, I wanted to die in darkness rather than in hell. Dust and smoke choked my throat until I was gasping for air, and as I attempted a deeper breath in I found the weight on top of me limited my intake. My eyes opened automatically at the feeling of suffocation and I noted the vision in my right eye was becoming clouded by a reddish haze. I felt the gnawing pain in my face and neck again and I prayed that I would pass out. When I reached up to feel the damage to my face all I felt was a meaty, slimy scath which was becoming more painful by the minute. I felt myself losing what little control I had at that moment, and I beckoned the cold numbness to creep forward little by little. It tingled into my neck this time.
Desperation was all around me and it was contagious.
Finally it overtook me, and I felt my brain freeze with paralyzing numbness.
I had never been so relieved in my life. It was the strangest feeling in the world to be so terrified and so numb at the same time. I couldn't place it. Perhaps the scene was more than I could take and I had finally gone insane. Whatever it was, I welcomed it with open arms.
Explosions began to shake the ground again, distant and then closer. The blasts reverberated through my chest until I couldn't tell the difference between it and the pounding of my own heart. Strangely I didn't brace for them this time. My body was frozen in a numbing terror. Shards of bricks and wood fell around me, pelting my body like shrapnel.
I had to try once more, even if it was futile. I struggled to bring enough blistering hot air into my lungs.
"Ernst!" I could no longer hear the sound of my own voice as I mustered everything left inside me to use it. The heat was searing my skin again. Every breath in became more laborious to prevent the scorching of my insides until controlling it was all I could concentrate on. Each one shorter and more unbearable than the next. This was it. The end was coming. I couldn't last long this way and I began to realize it quickly. I felt my body crying out urgently for oxygen. My vision was becoming gray, just as it did when flying into a high negative G turn just before losing consiousness. I gave in and took one last deep breath. The heat rushed inside, scalding my nostrils and throat and burning my lungs until I passed thankfully into a quiet darkness.

I gasped for air, and when I found that there was no heat or smoke in it, I gasped for more.
"Ernst!" I screamed with everything that I had. I opened my eyes and was blinded by the whiteness around me, white sheets, white walls, white light shining in through plate glass windows. One of my eyes was dark and the other blurred. Was I dead? Was I in heaven? I had no idea. I instictively raked at my blind eye with my hand and felt intense pain searing my face. I cried out as the pain intensified, the feeling of a hundred hot pokers and needles gouging at my cheek. I was trying to force out words again but it only managed to come out as a pathetic moan. My stomach twisted and convulsed until I could feel a fullness moving up into my throat. I heard the scurry of footsteps coming towards me and a few hushed feminine voices coming nearer. A figure veered to my bedside and forcibly turned me onto my left side, just in time for the contents of my stomach to hit the floor with a loud splatter. I breathed deeply and swallowed but the heaviness in my middle persisted and my stomach convulsed again and again until my throat was raw with my efforts. Two nurses were supporting me upright on the bed, and I sat there trembling and panting as all the precious energy was drained from my spent body. I looked at the nurse on my left side with my good eye and she smiled softly at me, but I could tell it was only for the benefit of my spirit. In normal circumstances I would have been embarrassed, but I was too exhausted to expend any energy on my emotions at the moment. She picked my hand up by the wrist and touched my forehead. My head throbbed as if a train were running through it, and for all I knew one had. Only one memory seemed to be present in it. Something that was hazy and vague...The words "I'm sorry" and "Never again" echoing over and over. I had no idea who'd said them or why, but I was sure that they had probably been spoken in the haze of my delirium. Whether by me or someone else I had no idea.
"We wondered if you were ever going to come around." She said quietly. I saw her looking at me expectantly with large, inquisitive blue eyes framed by a soft oval face.
"I'm sorry about the mess." I said hoarsely when I had gathered my composure enough to speak.
"It's alright. Your burns are severe but the doctor says you'll heal just fine in time." She answered as if I had asked what had happened to me. "You were very lucky." She added as if to balance out the bad news. I was lucky. What an ironic choice of words. I closed my eye to bring the darkness of concentration and peice together the last few days. Slowly the events returned...My weekend pass...Boarding the cumbersome old Aunt Ju transport at Berlin-Gatow...Landing in Erfurt...My late arrival in Kassel....The bombing....I felt the blood drain from my face and hands, and a block of ice settle in my stomach. My eye flew open. Dear God, the bombing.
Ernst. Delia. Theodor. Mama.
"How long have I been here?"
"Three days." Came the answer. I closed my eye again. I had to get word to my commanding officer that I was alive.
"Is there any news of my family?" I barely choked out. I was afraid of her answer. I really didn't care how I was doing at the moment, or what she thought of it for that matter. Her eyes darted quickly to the nurse on my other arm. They were both silent. She had avoided my question completely. There was only one reason for her to do that. No, I wouldn't accept their silence. They both knew something and they were going to tell me. "My brother? Dead?." It was a statement more than a question. I hoped that the stern tone in my voice would trigger an answer from one of them.
"Oh no, your brother has been here many times. He is helping the rescue effort right now. Any able bodied men were summoned to help."
The words were like a savior. Dear God, Ernst was alive. I felt relief wash over me. The pain in my face was stifling, radiating to every corner of my body and wrestling my stomach into knots again. It must've shown on my face. "Easy there." The nurse said as she put her hand on my shoulder. "You best lie back down."
"Yeah, easy there." A recognizable male voice answered from behind me. I felt a heavy hand on my other shoulder. I turned to see Ernst's weary but smiling face. He was seemingly uninjured except for a few scratches. Joy and relief flooded through me. "It's good to have you back." I wanted to say the same. Though he was smiling there was something in his eyes that I didn't like. Something that made me feel uneasy. His eyes were the eyes of a man who'd had no sleep in three days, and were strained with worry. He looked anywhere but in my eyes..
At the wall...Searching for a way to explain things...
Down at his hands...Blistered by several days of hysterical searching...
At the nurse...Looking so intently that if he concentrated hard enough she would turn into his wife before his eyes.
My mind put the peices of the puzzle together faster than a bullet. I wanted to ask yet I didn't want to hear the answer out loud. If it wasn't spoken then maybe somehow I could convince myself that they weren't really gone. The nurse seemed to sense that she needed to go, and after lowering me back onto the bed she hurried away to another patient.
"Did you bring me here?" I asked Ernst as I leaned back into the soft down pillow behind my head. His back was now turned towards me as he sat on the edge of my bed near my feet. He shook his head back and forth.
"I'm not sure how you got here, but I checked every hospital I came across until I found you. It took me a whole day afterwards, I'd thought you were killed. Thank God you're alright. I was beginning to worry when you weren't waking up." His voice sounded strange, weak and distant, not at all like him.
"I'll be fine...What about you? I figured you were dead."
"I came out without a scratch, I really don't know how. I went in as far as I could before it just got too hot."
The inevitable question reached my mind next, and before I could stop it from coming to my lips it was already too late.
"Where are they, Ernst?" I asked. I could see his shoulders tense underneath his ash blackened uniform. His head dropped a little.
"I looked all over for something decent to eat...There's a soup kitchen that's been set up a short walk from here. I could get you a bowl if they'll let you eat it." He was avoiding the question.
"Ernst..." He turned back to me and when I saw his face I knew.
"You know the answer. Don't make me say it out loud." He said abruptly. "Their gone." The words went through my heart like a knife, twisting painfully.
"They could have gotten out...Maybe they're at another hospital..."
"...They're not." came the solemn answer. His repeated denial that our family might still be alive twisted the knife once more. They could have gotten out, just because we didn't find them didn't mean they were...
"But we got out..." My voice was high pitched and panicked, and it surprised me how much it sounded like someone else's. My mind raced to grasp any thread of hope that might be dangling in front of me, no matter how small. "Ernst...We got out. If we got out then..." Ernst's head dropped into his hands.
"They didn't get out." His voice was pitchy and muffled. I refused to accept this answer.
"How can you know that for sure?!" I blurted out, loud enough to make two nurses standing a good distance away turn thier heads in my direction. He turned suddenly, his blue eyes reddened.
"Because I saw them." He said solemnly. I felt the blood turn to ice water in my veins. "They've got bodies laid out everywhere...There are so many...I've never seen anything like it...They are saying ten thousand people, maybe more." I felt unable to move or say anything. On the verge of howling like a madman and yet strangely numb. "They're dead. All of them, Egon. I saw them and others huddled in the cellar of Engelbrecht's shop. They never had a chance. "
My God, this can't be happening.
But it was happening. This was war, and just the beginning of the carnage. We all knew the war was coming, and what we could expect, but it had all seemed like a distant dream. Now, here it was, big, looming and snarling at our throats. It's hand was around my neck, choking the breath from me, and as I coughed and gasped I felt a hand grasping my shoulder. The room was shrinking around me, and voices were distorted and distant. My head felt clouded and light, and as I began to lose control Ernst was there to steady me, just as he always had.
"I'm sorry." He said, his voice strained with regret. His words snapped me back to reality. I was incredulous. It wasn't his fault our family was dead. "I couldn't save our family and I left you to die." He was fighting emotions he didn't want to reveal. They were suddenly becoming more powerful, threatening to overpower his defenses. "I thought you were right there with me and then I turned around and you were gone. I could have lost you too." He was breaking, and something in me lurched as powerfully as someone had hit me. I couldn't bear to see my brother say another word.
"You didn't though. I made it. We made it." My voice sounded small and unimportant to me, unable to convey what I needed to express. I grasped for more to say, a fix to save him from his unnecessary guilt. It didn't come quickly enough. His shoulders began to shake as I heard him sobbing like I had never heard before.
"I won't be that irresponsible again." He set his body tensely in anger at himself. "Never again."

Over the course of the next few days various stories started making thier way to us. With the exception of Hamburg, it was the worst firebombing on the civilian population to date. We were lucky we had the bodies to bury. We learned most who were caught in the firestorm in the city's center were incinerated in the 1500 degree heat. The first wave of high explosive bombs ripped open buildings and exposed thier vulnerable guts to the next wave of destruction...Incindiary bombs loaded with highly flammable liquid white phosphorous. The whole city became a living, breathing monster within fifteen minutes of the first bomb's impact. The monster consumed all oxygen within it's area, and one hundred mile per hour winds were created as it breathed in more. There was no hope of escape for most. The bombs fell too fast for them to react quick enough, and the buildings in the ancient city center were mostly wood. They went up like matchsticks soaked in kerosene. Residents fleeing the area where the fire was the most intense were stripped naked from the howling wind and some sucked back into the fire. The ones that fled into cellars to escape the bombs weren't spared. They may have survived the initial bombing, but the following firestorm robbed them of all oxygen in the tight cellars and they suffocated. I found some comfort in the fact that at least our family died together. Thier features were painfully intact, and they looked as peaceful as an afternoon nap. All except for Theodor, whose tiny body was charred from the waist up. Ernst didn't say a word while we were digging the graves, nor did he as we lowered the bodies into the ground with the help of a few kind strangers.
Our house was one of the ones that was spared major damage as it sat on the outskirts of the town, which was painfully ironic. We stayed there that night and intended to set out for the nearest Luftwaffe airfield at Erfurt first thing in the morning. I stayed in my old room that night, and before I went to bed I stood at the mirror on my dresser and inspected my appearance. It was impossible to see the burn on the back of my neck, but the long burn across my cheek was plainly visible. It was fairly scabbed over in places and the edges were pink and puffy. It would surely leave a scar that would mark me for the rest of my life. My eyes looked hollow, like those of an old man. I felt like I had aged twenty years in the span of just a few days. I picked up the pitcher beside the wash basin and poured some water in. I cupped the water in my hands and doused the side of my face that wasn't burned. Regardless, I felt the burn in my wound as some of the water splashed onto it. I carefully dabbed the moisture away with a linen towel and then made my way over to the bed. It almost felt wrong, everything being in its place, so neat and tidy as if nothing had happened. The soft sheets felt good on my skin, and as I settled into the down mattress it almost felt like all was well again, and Ernst and Delia were in the next room with Theodor, and Mama was in her chair beside the radio listening to news of the war and hoping she didn't hear Ernst's unit mentioned. If I thought on it hard enough I could hear the low sounds of music, and Theodor's muffled fussing through the wall...But instead I was brought back into the stark reality as I realized that the sound I heard through the wall wasn't Theodor. It was Ernst as he cried quietly, and the sound of it wrenched my heart in a way that I had never felt before. In all the years of our youth and adulthood I had never once seen him cry. He'd always stood like a rock in the face of difficult things, pulling everyone else through with his charmed confidence. I layed there, trying to shut out the sound but it continued. It was unbearable and pitiful to hear, and it tore at my ears until I couldn't bear to listen anymore. I swiftly got up and went out the front door to escape it. If there was anything I could do for Ernst right now it was to let him grieve without the intrusion of someone else hearing. The night was cool, and a haze clouded the air as the remnants of buildings still smoldered. The smell of smoke and charred flesh hung heavy in the air. I layed down in the grass on my back and looped my hands behind my head. Above me were the same stars that I had looked up at my whole life, but what was underneath them had certainly changed. Gone was the place I once called home, and in it's place was nothing more than a smoldering ruin. The house that had once held so many fond memories now felt like nothing more than an empty shell. Being inside it was like being nailed into a casket and lowered into the ground. After tonight things were going to be different. It would be a new beginning whether we wanted it or not. I felt a range of emotions in a short span of time, and a new one taking more hold over the grief I had been feeling. Rage. Anger. Bloodlust. Vengeance.
It would be time to fight back, to make the enemy pay for what they had done to my family and to thousands of others like mine. I thought about it over and over until the reality of it all began to sink inward, and before I knew it I was sobbing as much as Ernst. That night I dreamed of Theodor as a grown man, and of Ernst as a grey bearded grandfather as he bounced his grandchildren on his knee. I thought it a rather cruel trick of my subconcsious mind. The next morning in the early light of dawn Ernst shook me awake and I rolled over in the grass. Before we left I went back inside and gathered the bundle of letters Ernst and Heinz had written me over the years and the book on Goethe and tied them up in a bedsheet. Soon it was time for us to go and without saying a word we both set off in the direction of Erfurt, me with my bedsheet bundle thrown over my shoulder, Ernst without a visible posession except for the uniform on his back. As we walked down the dirt path that led us to the main road I looked over my shoulder at our house one last time. It looked lonely and empty. I turned back quickly, catching up with Ernst who was a few steps ahead. Our old life was no more now than what might have been, and our new one hung in the balance of what else this war would throw at us.
Either way, we would be ready for it.