Marking of
Sassnitz on the Baltic - 6 March 1945
Garth and I
had marked the target and were flying away from the harbour, climbing
from a low height, when we were caught by a searchlight, dead astern –
must have flown right over it. Apart from filling the cockpit with
light it also projected our shadow onto a bank of cloud ahead. I tried
jinking but it stuck to us firmly. We sat, trying to will
the Mossie to reach the cloud before the inevitable explosion behind.
The cloud got nearer, our shadow bigger, and we were suddenly engulfed
in a wonderful welcome of white mist, slightly bumpy and the cloud
closed around us. We veered
off to one side, the fierce light went out suddenly and we breathed
again, said something about it and settled down to gain height more
safely.
The years passed – whenever we met
Garth and I recalled these moments – probably less than a minute, but
feeling
much longer. And then, in 1997, my next door neighbour in Chitterne
told me
that she was going to marry an old friend of the family, Hans Feldman,
from
Bavaria and would bring him round the next time he came down to
Wiltshire. This
she did and then, one day a knock at the door, which I opened to Diana
and her
Hans. We took to each other immediately – he was stocky with a ready
smile
which always greeted me on other occasions when, answering the bell, I
opened
the door to find him clasping a couple of cans of lager to his chest as
he said
“William, can I come and have a drink with you, Diana is doing
something and
wants me out of the way?” or whatever, and we would settle down and
exchange
news. He was taking his wife to Bavaria for a holiday and they intended
staying
at his old home.
Hans is always keen to talk about my
experiences in the war and some of his own in the days of 1945 when he
was a
member of the Hitler Youth and forced, with his other school mates to
leave and
go to help the embattled armies which were facing defeat. “You know,
William,
it was horrible. So many young children, girls as well as boys, forced
to leave
their homes and schools to help. I was fifteen and very frightened, but
we had
to obey”.
And then he went on to tell me that
in the later stages he was sent to Poland to a port on the Baltic –
“Sassnitz
it was and there I saw my first Mosquito – Oh, I thought it was a
lovely
aeroplane”. The story unfolded – I realised what it was going to be
when he
said he was in charge of a searchlight, one of a battery near the
harbour
which, one night in late winter had an attack and there were flares in
the sky
and coloured lights falling on the ground and aeroplanes flying very
low. “And
William, one of the Mosquitoes passed right over our heads and I
switched our
lamp on and there it was, flying up the beam towards some white clouds.
The
guns nearby could have hit it easily”. “And why didn’t they fire?” I
asked.
“Because they had run out of ammunition, William, that happened often
at the
end of the war”. I told him who was in the Mosquito – he looked at me
and said
quietly “I’m glad we had no ammunition left”.
Hans and Diana married, went to the
States and a town near Niagara where Hans had lived for the last thirty
years,
having emigrated as soon as possible after the war ended. But after a
couple of
years they came back to Wiltshire and then moved to Torquay. Hans said
he was
much happier in England where he wanted to spend the rest of his life.
I’m glad
– I’ve been over to stay with them a couple of times – the welcome is
always
the same, warm and friendly. I missed him as a neighbour – we got on
well
together. I think we both realised there is a narrow line between life
and
death sometimes, and war and destruction is futile. Friendship is much
better.
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