The Wehrmacht and I
The Wehrmacht and I
As the media is currently full of the fact that it is 70 years since this country experienced Hitler’s Blitzkrieg and the Battle of Britain took place, it seemed as good a time as any to write down my memories. In spite of the title of this piece, no, I did not have any direct contact with the Wehrmacht but my best friend and I were ready for them. We may both have only been about six years old but we had plans. First some background.
My father, like most others was deeply affected by the fact that hostilities had broken out. Being a depressive of epic proportions, he imagined it was only a matter of days before Hitler’s Panzer divisions rolled up our road and the Wehrmacht swarmed in raping and pillaging, and worst of all, destroying his tomatoes and chrysanthemums. He was a very troubled man.
Thinking that the resulting home atmosphere was not the best environment for a six year old, I was sent from the London suburbs to live with distant relations in Bournemouth; all complete strangers to me. Naturally I blamed all this on the Nazi military machine. So I arrived, not at their home, but what they laughing called their weekend cottage. Situated in the wilds of Dorset this was an isolated dwelling of unimaginable primitiveness to me; no electricity, only a pump in the centre of the kitchen for water and a privy at the end of the tiny garden. My only exposure to wildlife at that stage in my life was from the pages of Beatrix Potter, but here wildlife was everywhere. Furthermore, everything that moved, had feathers or fur was murdered, cooked, and eaten. A bit of a shock to the system really particularly as rabbits were degutted and parted from their skins while we had breakfast. This has put me off rabbits as sustaining food stuff for life. I did get my own back on the family when I brought into the kitchen a dead rat that I found in the privy. Holding it gingerly by its tale I was quite surprised when they didn’t seem keen on cooking it and even more by the chaos its appearance caused.
Back in Bournemouth, the family’s real home, I was regarded as their contribution to the war effort and paraded at social gatherings as their ‘evacuee’. Apparently my presence prevented the authorities palming off any more children on them and at the same time raising their status in the community.
While all this was going on the Nazi war machine rumbled closer in the shape of the Luftwaffe’s sudden systematic bombing of the south coast. This time my jailors took me and fled to Devon.
Here I had my first opportunity to come closer to the Nazi regime. At a Spitfire fund raising garden Fete, I got my hands on some enemy hardware. A Messerschmitt 109 fighter has been forced down almost intact and was installed as the afternoon’s star attraction. For a small fee children were allowed to sit in its cockpit. When it was my turn, I was disappointed not to see evidence of the pilot’s blood spread about the instrument panel and controls. I felt it would have been a small compensation for the trouble the Nazis had caused me. Yes, I know the disruption to my life had been only minor compared with what so many had suffered, but a six year old doesn’t think like that.
Soon after that I was back home in Surrey. My father’s flowers and vegetables were still intact and in fact everyone was now ‘Digging for Victory’ so his gardening efforts were back in fashion. He had calmed down and a vast reinforced concrete lined shelter had been built in our garden to keep us safe from enemy bombs. I was back on the front line. Reunited with my friend from round the corner, we set about preparing to resist the inevitable invasion. Life was very different now. My mother was a fire spotter, while Father a member of the Home Guard, initially called the L.D.V.( Local Defense Volunteers) When it was her shift, she would sit smoking with the other members of the group in the warden’s post surrounded by buckets of sand a stirrup pumps waiting for Hitler to send some of his incendiary bombs in our direction. Father’s role to me was infinitely more interesting. For a start there was a rifle in our hall cupboard. I was of course not allowed to touch it but at weekends I could watch enviously as he dismantled and cleaned it.
Denied access to this military hardware, my friend and I made or own plans to arm ourselves. On a local golf course one of us found a small revolver corroded far beyond the point it could ever be used. It was a major breakthrough. I acquired a rusty blunt cavalry officer’s dress sword in a series of dubious bartering deals from a school friend. I spend days trying to sharpen it. I used to sleep with this next to my bed, ready to engage the Hun whenever he might appear until Father found out, confiscating and destroying it before I damaged myself or anyone else.
All this was very annoying to those of us planning to repel an invasion but we pressed on grimly with other plans. Unfinished escape tunnels, and proposed communication net works were planned. Our two homes were within sight of each other so this shouldn’t have been difficult. Holes dug as booby traps (quickly filled in again by my irate parent) were begun. We built advance observation posts in inside hedges and made numerous defense plans. We had a moral boost when a radio news item told of a man in France who disabled a German tank with a piece of angle iron. He jammed it into the track and when the Panzer stopped, and its crew came outside to see what was wrong, it provided an opportunity for Resistance fighters shoot them. We did not know at that stage what angle iron was but it did not stop us speculating and looking unsuccessfully for something that might fit the bill.
And still the Wehrmacht didn’t come. Then something happened. Hitler decided unexpectedly to invade Russia. I am sure this had nothing to do with the plans my friend and I made but it successfully ended our campaign to repel his invading army. I am not sure if we were disappointed or relieved. We then turned our attention to other non-pc activities like collecting bird’s eggs and butterflies; the sort of thing that children just don’t do today.
Whether our blood thirsty childish activities had any lasting effect on us I don’t know. But my friend became a romantic poet and much later a successful leading literary figure on the world stage. Something must have started it all off.
Alter Mann casts his eye on the violent nature of man
Alter Mann
