The Boy Who Went to War (20 page)

October and November brought further gains: Athens, Zeebrugge, Metz and Strasbourg were all captured after a fight. The German army attempted to retake Antwerp in December, in the infamous Battle of the Bulge. Although their offensive temporarily halted the Allies, as well as causing large numbers of casualties, the American and British forces would continue their relentless push towards the German border in February 1945.

Wolfram knew none of this at the time; indeed, the war could not have seemed more remote from Oklahoma. Although desperate to start woodcarving again, he was hindered by a lack of tools and equipment. This was remedied when, with the help of friends, he managed to prise off some of the metal slats from his bed, with which he was able to make himself a set of knives and chisels.

He was delighted. At last, after almost three years of interruption, he was doing precisely what he most wanted to do. As Christmas approached, he began sculpting a traditional crib, just like the ones he had been trained to make in Bavaria. It was an exquisite piece of craftsmanship, carved from a thick wooden crate that had previously contained mandarins. Wolfram became known to everyone as ‘the carpenter' and news of his talent soon came to the notice of the camp's senior officer, a man they had nicknamed Captain Melchior.

Wolfram risked punishment for having made his set of knives, but when Melchior saw the crib, he was taken aback by the quality of the carving. Keen to encourage the other prisoners in their skills and hobbies, he decided to stage an exhibition inside the camp. Wolfram's crib was to win first prize in the resulting competition.

When Mr Hebel learned of Wolfram's talent, he asked him to make furniture for his daughter instead of repairing tyres. Wolfram had to be careful not to get caught. He always had a tyre lying next to him so that he could pick it up and pretend to be mending it if an army officer came to inspect them.

At the beginning of December 1944, the men learned that the genial Captain Melchior was to be replaced by a different guard, a Russian Jew, whose behaviour was decidedly eccentric. In the days before Christmas, he confiscated all the cigarettes and sweets that the men had bought at the camp tuck shop. On Christmas Day, he came in, wished the prisoners a Happy Christmas and placed on the dining table everything he had confiscated, telling them it was a little present.

No one ever went short of provisions in Camp Gruber. With prisoners working in the kitchens and having access to the store cupboards, there were constant opportunities to filch tins of food and pots of jam. The civilian workers at Camp Gruber were forever asking the prisoners to steal things for them, knowing that they would lose their jobs if found out but that the Germans would escape punishment.

The prisoners were also paid a little money for their work, which they spent in the camp's tuck shop on books, cigarettes and ice cream. Wolfram had never eaten so much ice cream in all his life. The men were given it almost every day. In winter they used to melt it to create a vanilla-flavoured hot drink.

The prisoners were responsible for washing and ironing their own clothes, a chore that many of them found tiresome, until they worked out how to avoid it altogether. Several of their comrades had been given jobs working alongside civilians in the army's clothes store. Each week, these men would allow their fellow prisoners to come and help themselves to new uniforms. They would then throw away their dirty kit and stencil the letters PW on to the new one.

Wolfram had received no news from his parents in the six months that he had been a prisoner, nor had they heard from him. Indeed, they did not even know that he was still alive, although they had read in the Pforzheim paper that Colonel Bacherer had been captured, along with most of the men who had survived the breakout from the American beachhead.

As winter gave way to spring, the men began to ask themselves how much longer they would be prisoners. Their guards told them that Allied forces were rapidly advancing towards the Rhine, so the war was clearly entering its final stages. As the German army inched ever closer to defeat, Wolfram spent his evenings wondering how his home town of Pforzheim was faring.

The night was as clear as glass. The moon hung low in the sky, a great silver bauble that shimmered in the icy air. Wolfram's mother, Marie Charlotte, was far too busy in the kitchen to take any notice.

The clock in the dining room had just chimed 7 p.m. and supper was about to be served. Family meals had lost all of their conviviality over the previous three years and daily life had become one long waiting game. Marie Charlotte had no idea when the family would be reunited and could not predict what the future held. The US Third Army had crossed the River Saar on the previous morning and was now just ninety miles from Pforzheim. On the Reich's eastern frontier, the Soviet army had captured Poznan. Nazi Germany was fast crumbling and although it was obvious that the end was near, it was less obvious how the victors would treat the vanquished.

Although there was much to worry about, Marie Charlotte did her best to put on a brave face. She still had her husband, Erwin, and her beloved daughter, Gunhild. And on this particular night, she also had a friend in the house. Frau Weber – wife of the Pforzheim attorney, Kurt Weber – was staying, together with her young children. The little ones had already eaten and were safely tucked up in bed. Now, the grown-ups were preparing to dine. In the wood-panelled dining room, the table was set and the potato pie was being kept warm in its dish.

Friday, 23 February 1945, had been more stressful than usual. Allied planes had been passing overhead for much of the afternoon and the air-raid sirens had sounded with monotonous regularity. These had been a feature of life for more than three years but they had grown increasingly menacing over the previous weeks. This particular day had been the worst in a long while. Everyone in Eutingen had spent hours at a time crouched in their cellars waiting for the sound of the all-clear. Marie Charlotte and her husband often chose to ignore the warnings. Aloof in their villa, they felt more or less secure.

Marie Charlotte had continued with the household chores, keeping a nervous eye on the skies above. The drone of planes grew in crescendo as the adults sat down to eat, although there was no sound of bombing and it came as a huge relief that the air-raid sirens did not sound again while they were at the table. They did their best to enjoy the pie but their conversation was periodically drowned out by the noise from the sky.

It was a few minutes after 7.30 p.m. when Erwin, who had finished eating before the others, stepped outside to get a key from his workshop in the garden. This was one of his favourite places on earth; in daytime there was a spectacular view across the wooded river valley towards Pforzheim.

Now, in the pale glow of the moonlight, Erwin cast his eye towards the south-west, expecting to see the town's distant roofs and gables bathed in silvery light. As he gazed across the valley, he was shocked by what he saw. He looked again – as if to double-check – and this time he had to pinch himself, scarcely able to take it in. Then, realising that his eyes were not deceiving him and that he and his family were in imminent danger, he ran breathlessly back towards the house.

‘
Christbaums!
' he gasped as he burst into the dining room. ‘There are
christbaums
all over Pforzheim!'

The cosy intimacy in the house was shattered in an instant.
Christbaums
– Christmas trees – were the magnesium flares used as target markers by Britain's Royal Air Force. Just ten days earlier, those same flares had lit the skies above Dresden – the prelude to a catastrophic bombardment and firestorm that had reduced the city to rubble and some 25,000 of its citizens to corpses. Erwin had a terrible premonition that the same fate was about to be unleashed on Pforzheim. If so, their own village was also likely to be in danger, for the British raids were notorious for their inaccuracy.

As if in confirmation of his fears, the whine of the local air-raid siren suddenly pierced the night air.

‘Frau Weber quickly went to get the children out of bed,' explained Marie Charlotte in a letter that she later wrote to her eldest son. ‘Everyone took what they needed – a coat or bag – and Gunhild got the dogs. We all went into the cellar. And then –' There is a slight pause in the letter, as if she had to collect her thoughts before continuing. ‘And then – all hell was let loose.'

Some four hours earlier, a young sergeant named Doug Hicks had glanced anxiously at the skies above Lincolnshire before climbing into his Lancaster bomber. It was rare to be taking off in daylight but tonight's target was a distant one: it lay close to the Black Forest in the south-west corner of Germany. Hicks and his crew were heading for Pforzheim, a provincial market town in the northern part of Baden. It was a place of such insignificance that most of them had never heard of it.

Even the strategists in the Royal Air Force had hesitated when selecting it as a candidate for bombardment. Some months earlier they had drawn up a list of potential cities to be targeted. Pforzheim fell into the lowest of the five categories.

Now, on 23 February 1945, Operation Yellowfin had finally been given the green light. Pforzheim's watch-making industries were believed to be producing precision weapons and needed to be destroyed. They raid would be carried out by 379 aircraft carrying almost half a million high-explosive bombs.

Among those planes was a Lancaster bomber known by its crew as ‘D for dog'. This was Sergeant Hicks' aircraft and it was his fifth mission with 505 Squadron. He was the rear gunner, charged with protecting the plane from attack from behind. It was a lonely role: for the next eight or nine hours he would be crouched in a tiny plexiglas turret, staring into the clouds for any signs of enemy aircraft. His only contact with the rest of the crew was through the wireless intercom system.

All the ground staff assembled outside the Nissen huts to wave the men goodbye. Hicks had just turned eighteen and had no interest in king and country. He and his fellow airmen saw these bombing raids as a big adventure.

The Lancaster roared down the runway before climbing steadily over the Lincolnshire countryside. It banked slightly as it did so, affording a bird's-eye view of the airfield at North Killingholme and the little villages of Brocklesby, Great Limber and Croxby Top. The runway steadily contracted until it was nothing more than a pencil-thin line; the surrounding fields shrank to smudged green miniatures.

As the squadron headed out across the North Sea, Hicks' thoughts flashed back to his previous mission, just ten days earlier. The same crew had taken part in the bombing of Dresden, unleashing their incendiary bombs with relentless intensity and turning the city into a fireball.

The Dresden raid had been one of the most devastating of the war. From his position at the rear of the aircraft, Hicks had been stunned by the conflagration ignited by their payload. He had also been struck by the scale of the raid and the number of planes involved, hardly believing that so many could fit into such a tiny area of sky. Now, as his Lancaster once again made its way across Belgium, he could only wonder about the new destruction that they were about to unleash.

The trip was uneventful and the planes reached Pforzheim exactly on schedule. There had been no anti-aircraft fire from the ground and no encounters with German fighter aircraft. They were flying at 20,000 feet and although it felt icy cold inside the aircraft, the men were wearing their electrically heated suits, which kept them warm enough.

As the plane circled the target and the tail swung through 180 degrees, Hicks caught sight of little fires on the ground below. These were coming from the magnesium parachute flares that had been dropped by pathfinders – the elite squadrons that located the exact target and sent down flares to mark the ground.

The Lancaster circled the town once again, descending to 8,000 feet – so low that the town's larger buildings appeared as looming shadows in the moonlight. Hicks, a Canadian recruit to the Royal Air Force, heard the voice of the master bomber crackle over the radio. The calm voice and pronounced English accent of the pilot were a reassuring. He could almost imagine the pilot describing a polo match as he issued the order to start bombing: ‘Bomb on the red target indicators' – ‘Good show, men' – ‘We are right on target' – ‘Jolly good show'.

 

Wolfram's parents were not the only people to panic when they saw the
christbaums
light up the sky over Pforzheim. Their close friends – who, like their house guests, were also called Weber – lived just a few hundred yards away in the heart of Eutingen village. They too were at dinner when there was a frantic knocking on their front door. It was the tenant who lived in the apartment above them, wearing nothing but his underwear and clutching his trousers. ‘Go as fast as you can into the cellar,' he screamed. ‘There are
christbaums
all over Pforzheim.'

The family rushed to their basement shelter, which had been lined with straw mattresses and stocked with provisions. Soon after, the earth began to tremble and shake with ominous regularity. Although they were three miles away from Pforzheim, the foundations of their apartment block shuddered from the force of the first explosions. Sigrid Weber said goodbye to her life. She was numb with fear.

Other friends of Wolfram's parents would have to endure a more terrifying evening still. Their church friends, the Rodis, lived much closer to the centre of Pforzheim. Although their house lay just outside the phosphorus grid laid out by the British pilots, all of their extended family lived in the heart of town, which now exposed them to the greatest possible danger.

Martha Luise Rodi had turned on her wireless shortly after 7.30 p.m. and had heard the ominous sound of a ticking metronome – the usual prelude to the announcement of an imminent air raid. Then came the news that there were thirty planes to the west of Pforzheim, crossing the Rhine and flying very low.

Martha Luise immediately telephoned her mother and sister who lived in a little apartment in Nagoldstrasse, at the bottom of the hill, warning them to take shelter. Shortly after, at about five minutes to eight, the family heard another announcement, alerting them that the planes were marking the city. The last words that they heard were: ‘Bombs are being dropped.' Then there was silence.

Martha Luise ushered her children into their shelter as soon as they heard that the city was being marked with flares. With her husband away, her eldest son missing in action and one of her daughters, Ev-Marie, on Reich Labour Service, she felt acutely protective towards her remaining three children.

However, many local people reacted to the air raid with weary indifference. The sirens sounded every day and yet the bombs always fell elsewhere. There was a feeling that Pforzheim would be spared. After all, it made no strategic sense to bomb a provincial town on the fringes of the Black Forest.

Among those who ignored the sirens was Hannelore Schottgen. She was returning to Pforzheim after a long stint in the Reich Labour Service and was cycling through the easternmost part of town when she suddenly heard the familiar sound. As she was just fifteen minutes from home, she decided to keep going but was stopped by an air-raid warden and ordered into the nearest public shelter.

Her arrival was met with much grumbling, for the cellar was already overcrowded. On the point of tears, she went back upstairs and begged the man to let her continue on her way.

The warden reluctantly agreed to let her get back on her bike but he did so on condition that she take cover as soon as she saw planes overhead.

As she turned into Kiehnlestrasse, in the centre of town, she was stopped for a second time. A warden ordered her off her bike and into a shelter. ‘Come on, miss,' he said. ‘You can't carry on any more. They've already sent down the Christmas trees.'

Hannelore told him she feared being greeted once again by outright hostility, but he reassured her that the girls in this particular shelter were very friendly. ‘You'll be treated well. Go in quick.'

As she descended into the cellar, she heard the low rumble of the vanguard planes passing overhead, followed by the sound of flak from the local air defences.

She was indeed given a warm welcome by those already in the shelter – eight Reich Labour Service girls and a warden – who were huddled over a wireless listening to the news.

They heard the radio announcer describing the situation as desperate. Suddenly the voice became stronger: ‘Big groups of enemy planes are coming nearer our area.'

The girls glanced at one another and prayed that the aircraft were heading elsewhere.

 

Eight thousand feet above Pforzheim and crouched into the rear turret of his Lancaster, Sergeant Doug Hicks was still listening to the crackling instructions being issued by the master bomber. ‘We are right on target…jolly good show.'

It was as he heard the words ‘jolly good show' that the aircraft lurched violently to the left and started a sickening downward spiral. Sparks and flames began streaming past his turret and his intercom went dead. He assumed they had been hit by flak, for he could see tracer fire arcing up from the ground. In fact, the Lancaster had been hit by an incendiary bomb released from a plane flying directly above them.