Christmas Eve-Hamburg 1945-Part Two.

In December 1945, my dad, Harry Leslie Smith, was stationed in Hamburg as part of the RAF's occupation force. He arrived in Hamburg, in May of that year. It was days before Nazi Germany's formal surrender. And, because his unit had made their way through Belgium and Holland during the harsh winter of 1945, he had no love for Germans His attitude towards Germans changed soon enough when he saw how the ordinary vanquished from that war were abused. Soon after arriving, he fell in love with the woman who would become my mother.

It was a different time to now because there was a real hope that tomorrow was going to be better than yesterday. People had earned that optimism because they endured the inferno of the Great Depression and then World War. My dad documented those times in Love Among the Ruins, a portrait of finding love in the wreckage of our civilisation at the conclusion of the Second World War.

My father spent his first peace time Christmas Eve in the company of my mother, grandmother and an elderly couple made refugees by the bombing during the war, who now lived with my grandmother and mum. This is part two of his reminiscence of that Christmas holiday in Hamburg following the war. Remember this is a man, just 22, that has never known a Christmas that didn’t contain, hunger, heartache or world war until that Christmas Eve. It is transformational for him as it was for so many that survived that war. Below is Part Two from his Chapter Silent Night in Love Among the Ruins.

I hesitated at the front door and nervously adjusted my hair. From inside I heard Christmas carols float out from the wireless. Self-conscious and unskilled at family situations, I hoped I wasn’t going to make an ass of myself or reveal my poor upbringing. Just as I was about to ring the bell, Friede swung the door open. She looked confident, happy, and flushed from drink. In the background, I heard her mother talking to Frau Gellerson.

‘Hello, Happy Christmas,’ I said in a voice that sounded as if I was unsure of the correct greeting.

‘Merry Christmas, Harry, come in. You must be cold. Let me take your coat.’ Friede slipped it off my shoulders and placed it onto the standing rack. After I slid off my boots, she took my hand and said, ‘Let’s go and say hi to everyone.’

‘In a moment,’ I said. ‘I want to stay here for a while longer and have you all to myself. You look so wonderful.’ She blushed at the compliment and her eyes sparkled with the sensuality of youth.

Friede was wearing a delicate black wool jumper with a slender skirt and dark nylon stockings that ran seductively up her legs. Around her delicate long neck dangled the necklace I had bought for her birthday. Her lips were coloured with a faint rouge colour, while her raven hair was combed back and had a light, perfumed scent of spring flowers.

‘You look so beautiful,’ I stammered.

Friede blushed and whispered, ‘I did this for you.’

I was about to respond when her mother shouted out: ‘For heaven’s sake, bring him inside, he is not a tradesman come to fix the plumbing.’

Friede ushered me into the kitchen, where her mother was preparing a fish soup for the evening meal. The Christmas tree stood at the right-hand side of the entrance. On its branches, lit candles burned from their holders and cast warm shadows across the room.

‘Harry,’ Maria Edelmann said with a note of accomplishment in her voice, ‘I actually found carp in a market today.’

‘Mutti, you didn’t find the whole fish, just the heads,’ Friede interjected.

‘It was still a miracle, considering that the British with their private restaurants and clubs are gobbling up all the best Christmas foods.’ She wiped her hands on an apron that protected a very becoming evening dress. Maria walked over to me and greeted me with a kiss and said, ‘Instead of carp for dinner, we will have bouillabaisse, which will be just fine.’

‘I’ve brought some things that should help with the festivities.’ I opened up my satchel and produced the wine, the meat pies, the cheeses and the cakes. The women cooed in appreciation at the additions while Herr Gellerson looked at the wine and approved the vintage.

‘Harry, choose a wine quickly,’ Friede exclaimed, ‘because I am slowly dying from this homemade schnapps.’

Herr Gellerson interjected, ‘I could sell it on the black market as petrol and we would all be rich.’

I easily opened the cork to the French sparkling wine, but I recklessly overfilled our glasses and spilled much of it onto the table. After a hasty toast, the Gellersons retreated to their room and Friede’s mother resumed dinner preparations. I disappeared with Friede into her tiny sleeping alcove where we talked and kissed.

‘I should give you your present now,’ I said, excited like a schoolboy looking for approval.

‘No,’ she said putting her finger to my lips. ‘We will eat first. Just before midnight, we open up our gifts. It is custom. It is silly that you do not know this. What on Earth did you do in England for Christmas?’

I smiled and said, ‘Things are different there. We opened presents in the morning.’ To myself, I thought, if you were lucky to get one.

Friede changed the subject and started to smoke a cigarette.

‘There is a lot of gossip going around these days about Germans being forced into work details around the city.’

‘This is news to me,’ I replied.

‘I think it is true,’ she said with a note of seriousness in her voice. ‘I have heard the British and the new German civilian authorities are going to send German women to work.’

‘Work where?’

‘In any factories that are still functional. There is also talk of German entrepreneurs returning from abroad. They made deals with the British to build their manufacturing empires on cheap labour as punishment to the Germans who stayed with Hitler. Like we had a choice,’ Friede added sarcastically.

‘What type of deal?’

‘Don’t be a dummkopf, the oldest agreement in the world: I scratch your back, you scratch mine. It is bribes, liebchen, old-fashioned cash bribes.’

‘But why are they going to force the women to work in these places?’

‘There is no one left in Germany but women and babies. All of our German men are either dead or in concentration camps in Russia. Anyway, if this happens, we will be treated like the foreign workers were under the Nazis. I don’t think I could survive under those conditions.’

‘I’ve never heard anything about this,’ I said, ‘but I am sure it will have nothing to do with you.’

‘I hope not,’ she said, unconvinced. She curled up a leg behind her and became childlike. ‘I want this holiday, this New Year to be special. During the war, Christmas was very sad with so many causalities at the front and so much destruction around at home. I never felt safe and it never felt particularly joyful.’

‘I will try to make this Christmas a happy time for us,’ I said, convinced I could alter history.

Friede didn’t sound persuaded, and asked: ‘What is going to become of us next year? We get poorer by the day. Mutti is getting older. Look, even her hair has turned grey because she is all alone with no one to look after her. I don’t think she will find another man like Henry to take care of her and protect her at her age.’

‘What about your real father?’ I asked.

Friede sighed. ‘Poor Fritz, he never got to know me. I wonder what he would have thought about me. You know, through my childhood, he did write to me and sometimes he sent me birthday cards. The last letter I got from him was in January. He was working in Berlin at an army truck factory. He said he was an engine fitter.’

‘What else did he say?’ I asked.

‘Oh, you know, the same old Fritz. “Let’s get to know each other better, you are my only daughter.” I wrote him back to say that after ignoring his only daughter for all of those years, I was doing just fine without him.’

‘Did he write back?’

‘No, he was probably killed defending Berlin from the Russians like most of the other old men and boys who were press-ganged into the Volkssturm. Anyway, I haven’t heard anything from him since his last letter to me. But who knows with Fritz, maybe he will show up one day with a fantastic story to tell.’

‘I’m sorry about your father,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t matter, I never knew him. Papa was the only man who was like a real father to me. Poor Papa, he is out of work and too old to help me with anything. So you see, Harry, I have no one to protect me. I am just a German girl among millions with no money or influence.’ She sighed and continued, ‘I will never be able to finish my education and I am useless at anything practical. The world has enough dreamers. So what am I going to do?’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I will always help and things do get better.’

‘How?’ she asked caustically. ‘Germans and Tommies aren’t supposed to fraternise. Sure, you can have a German girlfriend, but a German wife is verboten by Britain. They don’t want us to have a future together. So don’t make promises you can’t keep, Harry.’

I was about to dispute her claim but decided it was pointless to get into an argument over official policy. She was correct; the authorities in charge didn’t want us to develop deep or lasting relations with Germans. The unwritten code promoted by the British military government was: trade with them, steal from them, fuck them, but for God’s sake don’t fall in love with them.

Part Three of Christmas 1945 Drops Tomorrow.

Thank you for reading another post from me at Harry’s Last Stand. Your subscriptions help preserve the working class legacy of Harry Leslie Smith, “The World’s Oldest Rebel.” Take care, John