Hitler's Home Front: Memoirs of a Hitler Youth - Don A. Gregory, Wilhelm R. Gehlen (2016)

Chapter 12. 1946 Road Trip

By mid-1946, most schools in Germany had reopened and the clearing-up of destroyed cities had begun. There was no rebuilding yet because of the lack of cement and skilled labour. Food was more important than cement, and besides, most of the cement-making facilities had been destroyed during the war or were being dismantled by the Russians for shipment east. At the Yalta Conference, Stalin demanded that Russia be compensated for the ruins the Germans had left behind during their stay and cement factories were high on his list. Churchill and Roosevelt agreed, so as soon as peace was declared, the dismantling of German factories began. Cars and trucks, those that were left, began to disappear until the only vehicles remaining were a few Holzvergasers no one wanted.

Brother Len used Dad’s old bicycle to get around. Gunny borrowed it just after the war, but brought it back later that year after he started his black-market business in scrap copper. Dad got the bike from the local military occupation office and used it to get to work. He had to be at work as a tram driver by 6:00 a.m. and it was four miles to the depot. With the help of a school friend named Robert, who later emigrated to Canada, I was able to build a bicycle out of parts we collected. It was a bit rusty and the tyres were water hoses, but it got me around. Easter 1946 was around the third weekend in April and we got a sixteen-day vacation from school. Brother Len was out of work with his amputated fingers, so we decided to take a bicycle tour of the Fatherland, or at least part of it. So with our parent’s blessing, we loaded our bikes with everything we thought we would need and took off in search of adventure. I can’t imagine today why they let us do that, but we were growing up and had shown them that we were responsible kids. We took two ex-military tent halves, our old quilts and a sheet for a sleeping bag, two mess tins with cups, a very small Spiritus (alcohol) stove, and some black bread and marmalade. Len said that if worse came to worse and we couldn’t find any food, we could always break into a turnip bunker. He didn’t think it would come to that because April is a busy time for farmers and they were very short on labour. He thought that most of them would be glad to feed us in exchange for a day’s work.

The weather was glorious when we set off and headed south. Our intention was to get to the Rhine and cross somewhere if we could find a rebuilt bridge. Neither of us had ever seen high mountains and Len suggested a route through the foothills of the Alps. The first day was pure torture. Having no real tyres on our bikes, every pothole rattled our teeth, and there were lots of potholes to be found in 1946. We did forty miles that day, made it to Cologne and set up camp right by the river. We found no bridge the next day so we pedalled on along the left bank until we came to Linz. There we found a ferry in operation that took us across. The ferry master warned us that we were entering the American zone of occupation and that they had checkpoints searching for war criminals.

‘Do we look like war criminals?’ Len asked.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘but nevertheless, the Amis are very strict when it comes to people crossing from one zone into another.’

‘Well, we’ll take our chances, and we’re only going to Bavaria to visit an old aunt,’ Len lied.

‘With those bikes you won’t even get to Frankfurt,’ a nosy passenger chimed in.

‘We are cycling experts and we have plenty of spare parts,’ Len continued to lie.

This bantering went on until the ferry reached the eastern bank. There were no checkpoints there, but nevertheless we decided to go off the main highway and take a secondary road. Our map was from an old school atlas with very few details, but at least it showed the major cities, highways and mountains, and we knew which way south was. Near Idstein we called at a farm and begged for a bite to eat. The farmer’s wife took pity on us and gave us a sandwich. In those days, thousands of people were roaming the countryside; refugees, drifters, homeless people and ex-Eastern POWs who had no intention of going back to Soviet-occupied Latvia, Lithuania or Poland. Some of them even asked the police for help and often they got an empty cell, a straw mattress, a cup of some kind of coffee and a slice of bread for the night. We considered ourselves lucky, having two bicycles and a few Reichsmarks in our pockets and above all, a place to go home to if things didn’t turn out well. Call it an adventure, but the whole war had been an adventure for us, and Len for one, was sorry to see it end - especially with us on the losing side. Sometimes, in hilly country, we had to dismount and push our bikes along the road. We met lots of refugees with bags and parcels strapped to their backs. I’ll never forget one couple we met south-east of Frankfurt headed east. The man about thirty-five years old and his wife or girlfriend was about thirty. Both were covered in dust and their clothes were filthy, but they were quite cheerful. After greeting them with a ‘Guten Morgen’, we inquired where they were headed.

‘We’re on our way to Arnstadt in Thuringia,’ the man answered.

‘But that’s in the Russian zone,’ Len said, ‘who wants to live there’?

‘We’ve been drifting since the autumn of 1945,’ the man said. ‘Nobody wants us. I haven’t been able to find work and we have nowhere to stay. All I have is a relative in Arnstadt, so we’re making our way east.’

‘Where do you sleep and how do you eat?’ I asked.

‘We stay in hay barns and beg for food or look for soup kitchens,’ the woman, named Grete, answered.

We travelled along with them toward Aschaffenburg and near dusk we spotted a haystack in a field. There was no farm to be seen, so all four of us headed toward the stack. The hay smelled musty and was wet, but the man, his name was Peter, pulled some hay from the bottom of the stack until he found the way to the rick (frame) underneath. There was room under it for all of us and we shared a couple of sandwiches with them. We had no coffee powder - besides, making a fire for hot water in a haystack would be asking for trouble. At 7:00 a.m., we crawled out from the stack and made our way back to the road. We said goodbye to Peter and Grete and wished them well with the Bolsheviks in Arnstadt.

We had been on the road for five days. The Alps, Len’s destination, were still far to the south and we were heading south-east according to our map.

‘What are we going to do if ever we get to the Alps?’ I asked him.

‘Just see the mountains and look around.’

‘Look Len, we only have eleven days left before school starts again, we aren’t even near Bavaria, and this bike riding is killing me. I need a good wash. I’m full of hay seed and I’m hungry.’

Len consulted the map and agreed with me, but he said we would do two more days going south and then turn back. I had something to add to that. ‘We still have twenty Marks; why not go by train? Bike transport is free on trains and we can have a wash in a station washroom.’

‘Okay, we’ll try that,’ Len agreed, to my surprise.

We asked some locals in a village if there was a train station nearby and luckily, there was one only a few miles north, near Hasloch, I think. We bought two tickets for Schweinfurt. Rail travel was cheap then and our bicycles travelled in the baggage car free. We had an hour and twenty minutes to wait, so we looked for the Aborten (public toilet). There was a cast-iron water trough with a tap so we had a good wash, with cold water of course, and dried ourselves with our spare shirts. Food was only available with ration cards and we didn’t have any. Begging was out; railway police watched everyone that came into the canteen area.

‘It’s like the Gestapo all over again,’ Len said, with a nod toward two men dressed in black with railway badges on their caps.

We pushed our bikes to the platform after purchasing our tickets to Schweinfurt. After an hour, the train puffed its way into the station. The baggage car was right behind the coal car and a porter loaded our bikes into it. There were only four cars behind the engine. They were all third class with wooden seats. The passengers were mostly city folk with their bags containing cabbage, greens or clothing. Some, despite the warm spring weather, were wrapped up to their ears in coats and jackets to avoid carrying them. It was hard to even see their faces. It took two and a half hours to get to Schweinfurt. The main railway station there had no roof. The destruction in the city was still visible three years after the heavy raids on the SKF ball-bearing factories. We left the station on our bikes about 3:30 p.m. heading for Bamberg. In a forest near a town called Oberaubach we made camp near a creek, put up our tent halves and ate two sandwiches we had scrounged from a soup kitchen along the road and washed them down with acorn coffee we made using water from the creek. It was an eerie night. We were far off the beaten track and nowhere could we see any lights. Len had a large pocketknife as our only weapon. We felt like the trappers of the American Old West we used to read about. Early the next morning we set off again and, according to our map, we were heading for Bayreuth.

‘That’s where that Wagner guy was from,’ I said to Len.

‘Yeah, but we won’t get a handout from them,’ he answered.

‘Len,’ I pleaded, ‘if we are that badly off, why don’t we just turn toward home now?’

‘We have plenty of time, don’t worry.’

‘What worries me is my stomach, I’m starving and begging at soup kitchens won’t get us much.’

‘Trust me, I’ll find us something,’ he mumbled.

Well, I didn’t have much choice, so I just kept pedalling. I didn’t worry too much though; Len was an expert in finding food. On the road, we found a can of grease in a ditch that came in mighty handy for lubricating our wheels’ bearings and chains. We passed by a lumber camp and a huge Büssing truck loaded with tree trunks was waiting to pull out onto the road. The driver bade us a good morning and asked us where we came from and our destination. We told him we were going to Bayreuth and that it would be nice if he would give us a lift if he was heading that way. He said he wasn’t going to Bayreuth but was on his way to a sawmill near Ochsenkopf (Ox Head), which was a village in the Fichtel Mountains. Len told him that would be okay, as we were on a vacation trip to see an old relative and wouldn’t mind the detour. Glad to have some company, he lifted our bikes and tied them on top of the treetrunks. We climbed into the cab and off we went leaving a cloud of diesel smoke behind us. He stopped at a butcher’s shop in a small village on the way and came out with a pound of Pannas for us. He told us that during the war he drove a supply truck on the Eastern Front and had made his way west when the Oder front collapsed. His home was in Kronach. We got to the sawmill that afternoon and thanked him for the ride and food. As soon as we got on our bikes, it started to rain. It wasn’t a hard rain so we kept going, but after a few miles, we were soaked.

‘What now Len?’

‘Well, I think we’ll go south one more day and then turn for home by a different route.’

I looked at the map and realised, ‘We’re almost in Czechoslovakia, Len.’

‘We’ll turn back before we get there,’ he reassured me.

‘Okay, as long as we get home before the Easter holiday is over, and by the way Len, today is Good Friday and it’ll be Easter in two days. What are we going to do for Sunday?’

‘I’ll find out if there’s a Falcon Club somewhere near here. I’ll ask at the next town we come to. The Falcons will help us,’ Len said confidently. We went another dozen or so kilometres that day and finally rolled into a town called Wunsiedel. There wasn’t much war damage to be seen. At the local police station, we told the officer on duty that we were on a vacation tour and Len showed him his ID card from the Falcon Club. He informed us that we were in the American Zone without a permit, but since we were youngsters, he would let us off. There was no Falcon Club in Wunsiedel, but he directed us to a large refugee camp in an old building where we might get a hot meal, a wash, and a mattress to sleep on.

We told the man in charge of the camp that we had been on the road all day and asked if we could stay the night. He said something under his breath about Rhinelander refugees that we didn’t understand, but a woman came and told us it would be okay if we stayed for the night. There was even warm water and a plate of fried potatoes, bacon, a fried egg and hot cocoa. This was fine dining for a couple of waifs like us.

‘So that’s how they live here in Bavaria’, Len said, ‘I’d like to stay here.’

‘And I want to go home the day after Easter. I need another shirt, my coat is full of grease, and we have pedalled for three days in the rain. I can’t understand this funny Bavarian accent either, so I just want to head home.’

‘All right, this is as far as we go. We’ll just explore the countryside around here over Easter and then head west to Bayreuth.’

‘With a little luck, we’ll be able to catch another ride with a truck driver.’

‘We can take a train, if things don’t work out, okay?’

‘A train ride home suits me just fine.’

We explored the town on that Saturday before Easter and pedalled up and down the old cobblestone roads. There was even a decorated Easter tree in the middle of town by the Rathaus (city hall). A cafe was open selling cakes on ration coupons and serving ersatz coffee. After the bath the night before in the refugee camp, we looked quite respectable among all the homeless folks. A soup kitchen was dishing out food for those without coupons - and the soup wasn’t sauerkraut. The local Bavarians were quite friendly to us outsiders. The Americans had designated the town as a tourist attraction for their soldiers. One of the prominent citizens of the town was at the same time in the dock at Nürnberg, accused of crimes against humanity: Rudolf Hess. Some of the accused in Nuremberg were hanged without, what we thought at the time, evidence of guilt, but there were much more important things for the ordinary German to worry about. The news was in the papers every day but we were sure it was mostly written for foreign readers.

That night we stayed again at the camp but we were up at 7:00 a.m. the next day; after all, it was Easter Sunday and everyone who could walk was going to church and we joined them. About 10:00 a.m., after church, we decided to head south for a few hours. Going east was out of the question; the Russians were only twelve miles away in that direction. The area around the Fichtel Mountains was similar to the countryside near our Eifel Mountains back home; rolling hills and deep forests, with farms in every valley. Somehow, we managed to get ourselves a little lost while exploring some of the trails off the main road. When we heard dogs barking in the distance, we thought we had strayed too close to the Russians. We pushed our bikes through the undergrowth and changed course to the west. We came upon a patch of broken trees that we couldn’t get through, so we had to try to go around the splintered forest. Len found a broken wheel of some sort and declared it to be part of an aircraft, but I wasn’t so sure.

‘There’s no airfield around here, Len,’ I told him, ‘it must be from a lumber wagon or something.’

‘Not with this sort of tyre; this is a plane wheel.’

We searched the area and soon found twisted pieces of corrugated metal that told us this was an aeroplane crash site, which also explained why all the trees were broken the way they were. It was a big Junkers 52 transport plane. We found more pieces in the underbrush, an engine, rudder parts and lots of parts we couldn’t identify. The plane must have crashed without catching fire, as we didn’t see any burned trees in the area. By this time a lot of bushes had grown up, covering the scattered aircraft parts. No one had found the plane because it was in a forest of several hundred square miles and things could easily go unnoticed. Among the fallen trees, we discovered some steel and wooden boxes, but not a single Reichsmark. Neither did we find any bodies or evidence that anyone had died in the crash. We did find lots of official-looking papers from the Wehrmacht however. We decided to liberate as many of these as we could roll up in our tent halves and travel with. We didn’t know what we were going to do with them but they were free and looked important. Len came up with the brilliant idea of selling them to the foreigners who had come to Nürnberg for the war crimes trials. We were only a day from there, he thought, and the stuff might fetch a few Marks.

‘We’ve not even had a close look at that stuff, Len, so how do we know for sure it’s important?’

He could see my point, but he was nevertheless certain that we should keep the papers, and we did. We stayed overnight in that forest among the squirrels and other unknown creatures. The next day was Easter Monday. We finally found a trail that led us out of the forest and we made it back to Bayreuth again by sunset. It had been a very long and tiring thirty-mile trip.

Tuesday found us in Franconia, Switzerland. In a wide valley, we stopped at a farm and asked the farmer if he had any work for us. We were about out of money and would be hungry soon. We needed work for a day or two before continuing our journey. The farmer had work for us to do, loading turnips and straw from the field. It was hard work but we knew we would at least get a good meal or two and maybe a little money as well. The farmer had an old single-cylinder Bulldog Lanz tractor to pull the cart as we loaded it. We worked until Wednesday, got good meals, and slept in a room above the hay in the barn. He even paid us twenty Marks before we left. We thanked the farmer and pedalled off for Bamberg, which was about twelve miles away. From there we caught a train to Frankfurt and got a connection to Cologne. We arrived in Cologne on Friday morning and that put us only about thirty miles from home. I was glad to be home and everyone was glad to see Len and me. School was to start the following Monday and I really didn’t mind going back. We still had the papers we took from the Junkers 52 and we stored them in boxes in the attic. I wish I could find my way back to that plane crash now. In later years, I discovered that these documents were from one of seven planes that left Berlin for Munich in April 1945. Six of the planes made it but the seventh did not and no one bothered looking for it after the war. It was just another plane crash and there were thousands of those all over Germany.

Looking back now, I think that vacation with Len in 1946 was the greatest adventure of my life that didn’t involve being shot at. Even our bikes did a great job in getting us around. We finally burned those tent halves in late 1946 but if I had known then what they would be worth today, I would have collected all I could find.