HELL

Stefan’s key was in the drawer in our room, exactly where I expected it to be. The torchlight picked it out, nestled among the other bits and pieces, and I wasted no time pocketing it. I grabbed my bag that now had the tin of white paint stuffed into it, and crossed to the bedroom door, pausing to listen to the murmur of voices from downstairs.

Opa hadn’t yet returned from helping with the aftermath of the bombing raid, so Oma and Mama were still in the kitchen, waiting up for him, making it almost impossible for me to sneak out of the house. But then I’d hit on an idea. I could climb through a window, and use Stefan’s key to let myself back in through the front door later.

The landing between the bedrooms was small enough to cross in a few carefully chosen steps and I managed it without even the slightest squeak of floorboards. Within a few seconds I was pushing open Oma and Opa’s bedroom door.

Not wanting to trip over anything, I clicked on the torch and crept across to the window. They always slept with it open, even when it was cold outside.

I peeled back the blackout curtain, and opened the window a little wider so there was just enough of a gap for me to climb down onto the shelter Opa had built to protect his precious car. The construction felt weak as soon as I put my feet on it. It groaned under my weight and I was sure I had to get off quickly or else it would collapse under me.

I went down on all fours and scrambled to the edge, lowering my bag before jumping down onto the grass with a soft thump. Bending my knees as soon as I landed, I rolled onto my shoulder, just how we’d been taught to do when we were training with the Deutsches Jungvolk. Then I was on my feet. I snatched up my bag and jogged across the garden and out into the lane where the darkness was thick and the walls loomed over me. There was only the faintest glow from the fires on Feldstrasse now, and the occasional voice shouting in the distance, but otherwise, it was as if no one else existed.

I swallowed hard and felt the blood thumping in my ears as I hurried along the lane.

‘You ready?’ Lisa was waiting at the mouth of the alley, crouching in the shadow of the house next door to Oma and Opa’s.

‘Wasn’t easy getting out,’ I said. ‘Opa’s still not home. And I don’t know how I’ll get back in without them seeing.’

‘We’ll think of something,’ Lisa said. ‘Come on.’

Running along Escherstrasse, my mind prickled with excitement and apprehension. We were taking a big risk, and if we were caught, we would be in a lot of trouble, but this wasn’t like the last time I came out in the night. This time I was with Lisa, and even though there were only two of us, we were Edelweiss Pirates and we were going to make our mark.

Closer to the end of the street, the sounds from the area around Feldstrasse grew louder. The searchlights were off, the sirens and the eighty-eights were silent and the fiery glow over the rooftops had dulled, but men’s voices travelled on the cool night breeze. There was a smell of burning, too.

‘Let’s go and look.’ Lisa grabbed my sleeve and pulled me with her. ‘I want to see.’

We kept to the darkest shadows wherever we could, skulking along the streets as the voices grew louder and louder, but now there were other sounds too. The crackle and snap of fires, the pop of wood under intense heat, a child crying, a woman wailing.

As we approached the end of a road that met Feldstrasse, the voices became more agitated and I heard someone shout, ‘Over here! There’s one here!’

‘Let’s see what it is,’ Lisa tugged my sleeve again and we hurried along the pavement.

That’s when we saw the first of the bomb damage.

The corner house must have taken a direct hit, because one side of it was completely gone. There were bricks and timber strewn across the road. Some of the wood was still smouldering, red patches glowing in the night. The smell of burning was strong.

Up close, it looked as though something had bitten a chunk out of the house. Only a small part of the roof remained intact, tiles hanging down into the exposed rooms below. There was a bed teetering on the edge of what was left of a bedroom, and the room beneath was filled with rubble, but I could see traces of the owner’s belongings. A lamp sticking out from a pile of broken bricks. An armchair turned on its side. A table leg.

Beside me, Lisa had stopped to stare. ‘Do you think there was anyone in there?’

I looked up at the house. ‘Probably.’

‘Do you think they’re dead?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, tearing my eyes away. ‘Come on, stay low.’

I pulled Lisa’s arm the way she had pulled mine, and we crept towards an overturned cart in the middle of the road. We crouched behind it, out of sight, and peered over.

Feldstrasse looked like hell.

At each end of the road, one or two of the houses remained intact, but nothing else had escaped the raid. It was hard to tell that there had even been any houses in the middle of the rows on either side of the street, because all that was left was a massive pile of rubble with metal bars and wooden beams poking out at different angles. It was as if someone had dumped a lot of rubbish here and set fire to it. And where there had once been a road between the homes, there was now a huge crater with lazy tendrils of smoke drifting from its darkness.

At the far end of the street, a green fire engine was unable to get any closer to the houses. Firemen had pulled a hose as far as they could and were spraying water on the flames that flickered in the rubble. Other groups of firemen and civilians were dotted around the street, trying to rescue survivors buried in the wreckage. There were the men from Escherstrasse, clearing the mess by passing it along a human chain, and there were soldiers, army and SS, all scouring the twisted remains.

Close to us, one group had gathered around the debris near the crater. Some of them were on their hands and knees, while others waited behind them, issuing instructions.

‘They must have found something,’ Lisa said. ‘Someone?’

The men at the front began shifting broken beams and bricks, passing them back to others who formed a line and handed it from man to man until it could be thrown safely onto the road. Just the slightest wrong move and everything might collapse.

Nearby, a group of small, bewildered children sat in silence on sandbags watching the men work. A group of women stood with them, some of them holding steaming cups, some of them holding each other, sobbing while rescuers searched the ruins for any sign of more survivors.

Over to the right, a woman who was combing the wreckage stopped and raised her hand. ‘Over here!’ she called.

By the crater, the men rearranged themselves so that a group of them, led by a soldier in SS uniform, broke away and hurried to where the woman stood with her hand held high.

‘Another one,’ Lisa whispered beside me, but as she spoke, I saw that the men on their hands and knees at the crater were not men at all.

‘Look.’ I nudged her. ‘Hitler Youth.’

Now that some of the men had moved, I could see that the people digging out survivors were dressed in the unmistakeable uniform of Hitler Youth. There were two of them lying on their stomachs, half buried in the rubble. It looked almost as if they were swimming among the bricks and beams, their bodies half under, like they were preparing to dive right down. As I watched, one of the boys completely disappeared from sight. His body slipped away until all I could see were his pale legs, smeared with soot and dirt, and then he was gone.

‘He’s fallen in,’ Lisa said.

I put my hands on the edge of the cart and lifted myself up for a better look.

The other boy at the edge of the crater didn’t appear to be alarmed that the ground had swallowed his comrade. He remained where he was, half in, half out, and I could hear the faint sound of his voice calling. Then he was backing away, pushing up onto all fours, and dragging something from the hole in the wreckage.

At first I thought it was his comrade, but as the object slipped out, I realised what it was.

‘A body,’ Lisa whispered.

I wanted to close my eyes but couldn’t. It felt wrong to be looking at such a thing, but some part of me wanted to see. I wanted to know what it looked like to be dead.

The woman was still wearing her dressing gown. She was face down, arms outstretched, because the boy had hold of her by her hands. He pulled her clear of the hole, then stepped aside while the men came forward and lifted her. The boy didn’t spend another moment looking at the body, but went straight back to his job, lying on his stomach by the hole and calling in to his comrade.

Two men carried the body. One took her feet and the other held under her arms as they struggled through the wreckage. The woman’s head lolled back, her hair hanging down, her arms dangling at her sides. The men took her to a place in the shadows at the far side of the road, close to the houses that had not been damaged. There was another group of survivors huddled there, women and children crying, their moans carrying on the ember-filled breeze. The men lay the body down on the pavement and tried to comfort the survivors, but that’s when I saw the other shapes there, lying in a row. I couldn’t tell how many there were, but there must have been at least ten bodies on the pavement.

I stared at the dark shapes and wondered if that was how Papa had looked when he died. I wondered if he had been laid out in a line with other bodies.

‘… Karl?’

‘Hmm?’ I turned to look at Lisa. ‘What?’

‘I said, they’ve found another.’ She nodded in the direction of the crater and I looked over to see the Hitler Youth boy dragging a girl’s body from the rubble.

When the men took her away, the boy went back to work.

‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to see any more.’