44.

At first my house looked the same—the angels over the front door still protected us. But, on closer inspection, I saw that the bushes were filled with weeds and had grown into a tangled mess. The manicured lawn of my childhood was brown. Likely dead. The only green was a patch or two of weeds. My father had religiously stood there with a hose, watering it. I went to the door. I could see that it was ajar. The lock was broken. I pushed the door all the way open. The hallway was filled with my father’s business papers; furniture was thrown around. The paintings were gone; the silverware drawer had been turned over on the counter. Empty. It was all like a dream. The back door was open, and so were many of the windows. It was a warm fall day. I expected to see my sister come down the stairs singing “La-la-lor-la.” She did that when she was happy.

I walked around and around in the house, but no one was there. No one had been there for a long time.

I finally stopped at my childhood bedroom, which for some reason had been left untouched. My framed grade school diplomas were still neatly there on the wall. The bed was made with the blanket that had my college medallion on it. I sat on the bed and saw the line of the toes of my old shoes peeking out from under the edge of the blanket. That’s where my mother always kept them. I lay down and closed my eyes. I fell asleep and dreamed that I heard the clitter, clitter noise my father’s push lawn mower made. I could hear the back door slam several times as my sister went in and out with her friends. I opened my eyes and suddenly saw cobwebs stretched across the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. Instead of clitter, clitter, I heard the thud, thud of artillery shells. The wind blew the back door shut.

I sat up on the bed and thought I should cry. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I felt like I was in some absurdist theater production.

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My little town was filled with children and old people and women. All the men my age had gone to the war. I limped, pretending to have been wounded. The Nazi order was crumbling by then, though its leaders called for “Total War” and put everyone in the military. Volkssturmsoldaten they were called. Here, you can see it in this history book of the Third Reich.

He handed the gray book out, and we passed it around.

See, on page 570—the People’s Storm Soldiers. It was funny. As someone with military experience, I was made commander of fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, along with pensioners. I should have told them my main experience was being a coward and a deserter. The guard at my war camp and that Bürgermeister were right—I was a traitor.

My Volkssturmsoldaten unit only had one weapon—an antitank gun with just one shot. We were supposed to defend the whole town with it. The children took this all so seriously. It was like playing army. Me—I’d had enough of playing army.

And look here, on page 573, Hitler shaking the hands of the boy soldiers. Children being sent to war. They weren’t old enough to shave. It was almost over by then. Hitler only had months to go. Why didn’t he quit? I ask you now. Why didn’t he just stop and save what was left?

The Russians were slowly moving in. They brought food along. Mostly potatoes, but it was food, so I got to be friendly with them. I could speak Russian, remember. They made me a detective, gave me a police badge and some credentials. What they really wanted was a spy, and I made up a few stories to keep them happy so I could keep getting food from them.

The Russians were thugs—or maybe they were just victors. When you lose a war, you have to remember that the enemy gets your stuff. Anyway, these Russians were peasants. Indoor flush toilets fascinated them. They’d never seen anything like them. They kept shitting outside, the way they always did. You’d see them squatting in the ditches. The toilets—why, the toilets they used to wash their potatoes in.

The Russians eventually got tired of me. They didn’t like my made-up stories and arrested me one day and locked me in a stadium with a bunch of other ne’er-do-wells. They intended to march us to Siberia or death, whatever came first.

For the second time in the war, a stranger saved me. I was marching with this huge fat man. At night, the guards let us sleep in the grass beside the road. First the fat man gave me his coat to use as a blanket. It was fall and getting cold. He said his fat protected him from the chill night air. Then, one evening, two or three days along the road, he told me that he would die on the march. His health was too frail, he said, so he was willing to risk his life for me. He said he would protect me while I escaped. I left him that extra coat, and he fluffed it up to make it look like I was sleeping beside him. The last sight I had of him came when I climbed up a wall and I could see him in the moonlight with this shape nested beside him like a child or a lover.

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There was a ten p.m. curfew then. Anyone out after that time could be shot. Luckily, I had kept my police badge and just banged on the door of an inn yelling “Polizei! Polizei!” That badge turned out to be very handy. I decided to walk along the autobahn back to Frankfurt, and I used the badge to commandeer food and new clothing. I entered the American Sector with a German sausage under my arm.

“I have news, big news,” I said as I strolled past the MPs carrying my sausage and speaking my best English. “I’ve just come from the Russian Front and it’s all over for the Germans. The war is over.”

Herr Engeler held up his arms like a conductor bringing the music to an end. He bowed his head. His hair fell across his face. A moment later the buzzer sounded announcing the afternoon break.