War Girls Complete Collection Chapter 287

Chapter 6: Ursula

A

fter two days in the cell, Ursula was finally released. They didn’t give her a reason, they simply stamped her denazification forms and classified her as

not a war criminal

.

They’d probably made inquiries and found out that the prisons where she’d worked had, indeed, been normal prisons where the convicted had been treated well. On her way out of the town hall, she saw the former mayor and chief of police Herr Keller talking to one of the American officers.

At least the fervent Nazi Keller would now receive his just punishment and be tried for the crimes he’d committed. She still had a bone to pick with him and would gladly turn up at his trial.

Ursula walked back to the farm, her steps bouncing with joy at her regained freedom and the prospect of hugging little Evie again.

“Aunt Lydia! I’m back,” she yelled even as she entered the path up to the house. Lydia stood in the backyard, wringing clothes and hanging them on the line. With Ursula gone, Lydia had had to take on the household chores herself instead of working in the fields.

Her aunt dropped the freshly washed white pillowcase and it floated in the air for a few moments, before it slid onto the muddy ground. “Ursula! Whatever happened to you? I was sick with worry.”

“The Amis arrested me.”

“I sent Jörg to Mindelheim to ask about you, but nobody would tell us anything. It was like you never existed.” Lydia moved a strand of her thick, blond hair behind her ears.

“They accused me of having worked for the SS and having committed crimes against humanity.”

“Good gracious. They are idiots. They should go after the real criminals, like our former mayor.” Lydia had never liked Herr Keller, and she detested having him as the nearest neighbor to the farm, only half a mile up the road. He was a man who’d never physically worked in his entire life and didn’t know the first thing about farming.

“I saw him speaking to some of the Ami officers. He’ll get what he deserves. The new administration is meticulous like that.”

Lydia scoffed. “You don’t have the slightest idea. The Amis only prosecute when it’s convenient for them. Keller is best friends with this Major Chambers. They made him mayor again.”

Ursula groaned at the injustices of life. The rich and powerful would always come out unscathed, while the normal people bore the brunt. It had been like this forever. Things hadn’t changed during the war and apparently weren’t about to change now, either.

“Where’s Evie?”

“Sleeping.” Ursula left her aunt standing and rushed into the house, not listening to her aunt’s admonishment: “Don’t wake her!”

She silently stepped in front of the bed Evie shared with her cousin Rosa, a blessed smile appearing on her lips as she watched her daughter sleep. “I’ve missed you so much, sweetie. But Mommy is back now.” She couldn’t resist and reached down to pick up the sleeping baby.

Evie stirred and started crying. As she opened her eyes and recognized her mother, she cried even louder.

“Shush, sweetie. I’m here. All is good. I’m here.” Ursula rocked her daughter, who stopped screaming after a while. She turned around and saw Lydia standing in the doorframe. “Did she do fine?”

“She missed her mama, but she did fine,” Lydia said, a smile appearing on her lips. “I’m glad you’re back. Your mother would have never forgiven me if something happened to you.”

The weeks passed

and the locals grew accustomed to the presence of the American occupiers. Their worst fears hadn’t manifested. Apart from being notoriously grumpy, bordering on hostile, the American soldiers usually behaved well.

Ursula didn’t mind either way, as long as they left her alone, which they mostly did. After her unpleasant encounter with the new administration in Mindelheim, none of the soldiers had ever ventured out to Kleindorf and Lydia’s farm.

Schools hadn’t reopened before summer, but there were rumors the new administration would see to that in the fall – much to the dismay of the school children, who’d enjoyed the absence of schoolwork. Although Lydia’s children couldn’t complain about the absence of hard work. Fields didn’t tend themselves and producing food was the first priority.

Shops still hadn’t reopened either, and Ursula honestly had no idea how people in the big cities like Augsburg or Munich managed to survive. At least the country people all had gardens and could – although forbidden – harvest the fruits of the forests and lakes.

The relative peace didn’t last and one day, an American jeep appeared in front of the farmhouse. Ursula was the only person in the house, except for the three smallest children. A shiver ran down her spine as she stepped outside to greet the GI coming toward her.

“Lydia Meier?” he greeted her.

“No, that’s my aunt, but she’s working in the field up there behind that hill right now. Can I maybe help?” She hoped he’d say no and leave, to search for her aunt.

“Who are you?”

“Ursula Hermann, I’m Frau Meier’s niece.”

“That’ll do. Here.” He shoved a piece of paper into her hand. “You are to receive a homeless family in your house.”

“What? Why? How?” she stammered, but he’d already turned on his heel and jumped into the jeep that dashed off, leaving a cloud of dust in its trail.

Ursula took the paper, which was printed in both German and English. It announced that tens of thousands of German refugees expelled from their lands in the east were pouring into the American sector. And due to the precarious housing situation, Aunt Lydia was to host a woman with her five children in the farmhouse.

She sighed. Whether she liked it or not, there was no way to oppose the new authority. The Amis ordered and the Germans obeyed. It was that simple. Ursula returned to the farmhouse and took stock of the available rooms. Then she got to work clearing out the servant’s room attached to the main house. Before, it had been used to house the foreign workers assigned to work on Lydia’s farm.

An hour later she had fitted the room with straw mattresses and blankets they’d hidden away in the attic of the barn during the last days of war. She just hoped the refugees would bring their own ration books. The Amis surely couldn’t expect Lydia to feed six extra mouths with the little food they left her. All farmers had been required to sell nearly all of their produce to the administration and could keep only tiny parts for their own usage.

Less than an hour later, the refugees arrived at the farm, looking dreadful. The woman had five children between the ages of seventeen and five with her, but at first glance Ursula assumed she must be the grandmother of the children. Frau Hansen had black-gray hair, a sunken face and hollow eyes.

“Good day, I’m Ursula Hermann, and this is my daughter, Evie,” Ursula introduced herself.

“I’m Frau Hansen, and these are my children.” She rattled off the names and ages of her children, without showing the slightest trace of emotion.

To Ursula, she appeared to be some kind of lifeless machine, if it weren’t for her eyes that showed the abyss of human cruelty.

“I’ll show you your room,” Ursula said and walked to the servant’s quarters. It had its own entrance from the yard, and a small connecting door to the kitchen of the farmhouse. It was only one room, and the only furniture was the mattresses Ursula had put on the ground, but it had a tiny alcove with a washbasin and running water. The outhouse for everyone on the farm was behind the vegetable garden, a ten-yard distance away from the house.

“It’s small, but you can use the kitchen and the living room of the big house as well,” Ursula said.

“It will do,” Frau Hansen said with blank eyes and put down the bag she’d been carrying.

“Is this all your luggage?” Ursula stared at the piece of luggage that seemed to contain the possessions of an entire family of six.

“That, and the clothes we’re wearing.”

Disbelief settled into Ursula’s soul. She couldn’t fathom losing everything she owned, and involuntarily grabbed Evie tighter, who protested with a squeal.

The oldest girl, Matilde, looked at Evie and her eyes grew sad. With a barely audible whisper she said, “Our baby sister was the same age. She didn’t make it.”

Ursula felt as if someone had stabbed a sword through her heart and she backed away from the family of refugees. “I’ll leave you to get settled. Come into the kitchen when you’re ready.”

Matilde proved to be a chatty one. While her mother and her siblings never said a word about the ordeals they’d endured on their flight from Breslau, Matilde needed to talk.

And she talked. A lot. Whenever her mother wasn’t around, she talked to anyone who would listen. And if she didn’t find a compassionate human, she would talk to the hens and the cows.

Ursula would rather not know all the gory details, but she couldn’t avoid hearing the girl’s confessions. It was disturbing. What was happening right now in Poland and Czechoslovakia was worse than anything that had ever happened under the Nazis, at least from what Ursula knew.

“Please stop,” she said one day when Matilde indulged again in retelling the most sickening and repulsive details of the crimes committed against the fleeing Germans.

Matilde looked at her, her eyes exposing her wounded soul, and gave a deep sigh. “My mother said to forget, but how can I forget?” Tears pooled in her brown eyes. “If I talk about it often enough, it eases the pain. I hope the horrible memories will one day leave my body together with my words and let me live in peace again.”

Ursula couldn’t help but put an arm around the girl, who was barely seventeen and had already experienced more evil than anyone should in a lifetime.

“My brother, Richard. The last we know of him is that he was in Poland…” Ursula stopped talking. The raw pain threatened to overwhelm her. Richard had been on a train back to the front when the partisans blew up a tunnel, but his body or dog tags had never been found. What if he was still alive and trying to reach home? What if he’d experienced the same evils that Matilde was recounting in gory detail? She shuddered. “I’ll show you how to milk the cows,” she said instead.

A routine settled in and despite the cramped quarters Aunt Lydia was quite happy with her new lodgers. Frau Hansen proved to be very efficient around the house and the three older children had taken up working on the fields.

One day

towards the middle of June, American soldiers came to the farm and loaded all the adults including Matilde on their truck.

“Where are you taking us?” Ursula demanded to know.

“You’ll see.” The GI hopped into the driver’s seat and dashed away. The truck stopped at every farm on the way to their destination, loading up more and more women, and the odd man.

Almost two hours later they passed through the town of Türkheim and stopped minutes later in front of a labor camp. Türkheim had been a relatively small satellite site to the Dachau concentration camp.

Ursula’s first steps inside one of the camps were under the raised firearms of American soldiers – which seemed ironic after having been accused of working for the SS in the camps. Although she’d never seen the horrors with her own eyes, she had a pretty good idea about the deplorable conditions. But now she found that the bits her sisters Lotte and Anna had told her, paled in comparison to reality.

“Look what your people have done,” one of the GIs said as he marched the women across the camp.

They stopped in front of the mass grave where skeletons were piled up several yards high. Despite having prepared herself for ghastly sights, Ursula gagged.

Matilde, though, didn’t seem to be the least bit surprised or even appalled. She even smiled and murmured incessantly, “The same. Everywhere it’s the same. They did it here. And now they do it there. What we see now is nothing compared to how it was then. It’s happening again. Now you have to believe me. I wasn’t making things up. It’s true.”

Ursula looked at the young woman in shock. She’d never seen her so vibrant, so… relieved. Matilde seemed to have lost her mind.

The other women, though, all recoiled in different states of shock. Those who fainted were roughly roused again by the GIs guarding the flock of women.

“That’s what you Nazis did. Have a good look,” one of them yelled.

Several women cried, “We had no idea. We didn’t know what was happening. We were trying to keep our families safe and alive. This wasn’t us.”

“So you had no idea about these camps? How could you not have noticed these fences and wonder what was happening behind?” the GI said.

“I have never been to this place before. Maybe the people in Türkheim knew, but we didn’t. I minded my own business, tending to my farm. I didn’t know a thing.”

Ursula could only shake her head. Even her twelve-year-old nephew, Jörg, who worked all day and rarely ever left the farm, had heard the rumors. Everyone had relatives or friends who lived nearby a camp. And everyone had heard the stories of the

poor souls

who worked so hard and got so little food. And everyone had told anecdotes of someone throwing bread across the fence and the prisoners fighting for it, or the guards coming and threatening the civilian who threw the food.

Who, in their right minds, could still pretend not to have known?

Yet, the women pleaded ignorance, but Ursula could only shake her head. Either those women were deaf and blind or they were lying. There was no way anyone could have survived the war without at least suspecting what was happening.

“I guess people only see what they want to see,” she murmured, shame creeping up her spine. At one time she had believed the propaganda, too. Had thought the strict course had served the betterment of Germany. Had believed everyone had to make sacrifices and the Führer knew best.

The women were put in groups and each group was tasked with digging a grave and putting the skeletons inside, while the American soldiers watched. Left and right, women were groaning, complaining, and gagging, except for one.

Matilde feverishly dug her shovel into the hard earth, attacking it as if it were the devil himself. She unleashed her wrath, cleansing her soul from the abominable things she’d witnessed. Once the graves were filled and covered with earth, Matilde stretched her back and beamed at Ursula. “You know, they’re gone! The ghosts that have haunted me for all these months, they are gone. I couldn’t help them, but I could at least lay these people to rest. You can’t imagine how it feels to be free again.”

Ursula could only nod. At least one person would sleep with a happy smile on her face that night.