Love during times of Occupation. Harry Leslie Smith on life in Hamburg 1945.

Love Among the Ruins was Harry Leslie Smith's portrayal of his life as an ordinary occupation soldier in Hamburg following the Second World War. My father before entering Hamburg on May 4, 1945, had a profound hatred for Germany and its people. In Holland and Belgium, he had seen what the Nazis had done to civilian populations, slave labourers and the genocide they had committed against Europe's Jewish population. Time in Hamburg where he observed many civilians suffering extreme privations, softened my father's hate toward ordinary Germans not responsible for the crimes of their leaders. Below is a short selection where Friede, his German lover, takes him on a tour of Hamburg.

I didn’t know where Friede was taking me but I grew concerned by our rapid plunge into the dead flesh of Hamburg. We were approaching the epicentre of the catastrophic 1943 Allied bombing mission, codenamed Gomorrah.

‘Are you sure it’s safe to be here?’ I asked.

‘Yes, come on; let’s get through this street quickly. Besides, you have a gun in case we get into trouble.’

On either side of the road, windowless, lifeless, disintegrating buildings stood ready to crumble into unrecognisable cement. The neighbourhood was bombed into non-existence because of its proximity to the harbour. Only a handful of people survived the firebombing; most were condemned to death by flames, suffocation, or drowning. A conflagration was created by the incendiary bombs. It produced hurricane-strength fire winds that melted people, animals, and inanimate objects as it bellowed across the city, consuming anything and everything combustible. It took 50 thousand lives more than all the dead from Germany’s air war against Britain from 1940-1945.

The road abruptly opened up onto a boulevard. Against the destroyed cityscape, a resolute statue of Charlemagne stood. The effigy looked bemused. Its sculpted arm pointed rigidly towards the destruction. Behind him, something else had survived more or less unharmed through those nights of relentless bombing. It had dodged the uncountable bomb tonnage dumped onto this city from Flying Fortresses during the day and Lancasters doing their bombing at night. It alone remained poised and looked perhaps even nonchalant at its survival. On closer inspection, I could see that parts of the edifice had suffered some bomb damage. However, in comparison to the surrounding wasteland, it appeared unmolested.

Friede pointed and said: ‘That is Saint Michael’s. The “Michel” is Hamburg’s most famous church. The cathedral is over 400 years old and is a testament to Hamburg’s greatness as a maritime city. It witnessed our downfall under the Nazis. But we believe that as long as Michel remains, Hamburg will survive and prosper and its people will rebuild their lives. It is beautiful, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed reluctantly, ‘it is very beautiful.’

I had a strained relationship with churches and those in charge of delivering God’s word to the ignorant. Belief had long ago been beaten out of me by sexless nuns and alcoholic priests. I suspected that the church survived because it was a reliable geographic beacon for the RAF. It helped guide the waves of bombers onward to their targets. The cathedral was like a trumpet to the walls of Jericho. Its survival wasn’t divine intervention, but military practicality.

‘Every Christmas Eve,’ Friede continued, ‘the Michel’s bells rang at midnight. You could hear their chimes from my mother’s home in Fuhlsbüttel, ten kilometres away.’

Friede picked up some bomb debris from the ground. Perhaps it was part of a roof or the side of a building; now it was just a shred of mortar. She played with it in her hand as if weighing the consequence of war and wickedness. After some thought, she dropped the small souvenir of wreckage and said,

‘I just can’t believe in God, at least not God from the Bible.’

‘How could he exist? What creator allows all this cruelty to inhabit the Earth? What type of God allows Germany to go mad and kill the Jews? What God lets Spain and Russia slaughter their innocents in civil and class warfare? Who would make a world and walk away from it as if it were a sandcastle on a beach at high tide?’

Friede wiped dirt from her hand and brushed away some hair that had fallen onto her face.

‘After all of this waste and destruction, what can you believe in, Friede? What can anyone believe in?’ I asked.

She looked at me for a moment and after a brief second of reflection, she said: ‘I think there is something greater than man. It is not human or divine. It is energy. It came when the universe formed from the void of nothingness. It was like the first spark from a flint. The ember gave humanity a conscious life. Our awareness is a gift, but it comes with a price; you only get one turn, one spin at the wheel, and then you are thrown back into the cosmic vapours. There are no second chances. As for eternity, it is unconscious without dreams; the dead are like amoebas floating on the ocean’s waves.’

‘So there is no heaven?’

‘No, you just walk to the end of your road.’

‘What happens then?’

‘Nothing is waiting for you at the finish. We just return to particles, lost memories, lost hopes.’

Friede’s arms were at her sides, and the hem of her skirt rustled in the wind coming off the river.

She stopped and moved away from me, then threw her head back and stared upwards at the church tower that climbed 130 metres up towards the horizon. She was caught in the rapture of that afternoon.

‘If some beauty still exists, life cannot be that bleak. Come on; let’s go before we are late for the train home.’

Friede dashed off ahead and left me frozen in my thoughts.

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