The City in Flames by Elisabeth von Berrinberg Read Free Book Online

it back and forth. “Hoooh-roock!” someone yelled. Like a sack of flour, the body fell through the air, with arms spread as it plunged into the pit.
    My eyes had become immune to the sight of death, but my stomach revolted against the odor of decomposing flesh. I had to fight back the nausea. I quickly ran to some nearby bushes.
    “I want to go home,” I pleaded with my father.
    “Weitermachen! Weitermachen!” the overseer yelled at the workers. Another truck approached the pit. The whining hum of its hydraulic lift was carried off by a mild breeze, and in the distance we could still hear the truck ridding itself of its cargo.
    Nearly five thousand citizens lost their lives. When the pit was full, it held three thousand and nine of the bodies. Sixty-two of them were our friends and neighbors.
    Back to front

Chapter Eleven
Water: A Precious Commodity
    Our hopes of living in the cabin only temporarily vanished. Now that we lost most of our belongings, we had to face the fact that the cabin would be our home indefinitely. Perhaps for months, maybe even for years to come. What did the future hold for us? Was it death? Perhaps from another air attack? As it turned out, we lived there for more than two years—from February 19, 1945, to just before Christmas in 1947.
    “How many potatoes do we have left?” my mother asked as she prepared to fill a pot from the nearly empty sack.
    “I’m afraid this is it,” my father said, pointing at the sack.
    “Remember? We never got the rest,” I joined in. “The horse wagon was supposed to bring them up here!”
    “That’s right,” my mother recalled, “the fire probably made baked potatoes out of them.”
    At most there was a week’s supply, and potatoes made up most of our diet. It was too early in the season to harvest any fruits or vegetables from our own garden, which had been neglected lately anyway. The city’s traffic, commerce, industry, and economy were at a complete standstill. We never had electricity in the cabin, so we didn’t miss it. But the candles—how many were left? Would they last? But even candles were dispensable. Water, however, was essential.
    Höchberg, the village about three kilometers west of our land, was our only hope. A wooden barrel in the garden that caught rainwater now became our means to haul water from the village up to the hill.
    The village square was crowded. It looked as if the entire population of Höchberg was gathered in front of the fountain. The village’s utility centers suffered, and the spring fountain had to provide water for everybody. The fountain pumps occasionally lost pressure, and then only a trickle of water ran from the spout.
    Every other day we left for the village to fill our barrel. While my sister and I waited in line at the fountain, my mother waited her turn at the grocery store. Whoever was first to accomplish their chore waited by a bench near the edge of the village.
    Climbing the hill from the west was not easy. Bumps and stones in the dirt road made the cart tilt and spill the precious liquid, so that sometimes only half the water remained by the time we reached the cabin.
    “No bath tonight!” my mother would conclude. But this was all right with us. A cold bath gave us no joy. Sometimes, when we made the trip alone, we did not always notice the big stones in the road.
    One time we returned with no water at all. But that time it wasn’t bumps and stones that rid us of our load, but bullets from a machine gun.
    “He wore a red scarf!” my mother exclaimed, running across a field to come to our assistance, a pair of field glasses still dangling around her neck.
    “Who wore a red scarf?” my sister and I asked. Still shaken from the sudden attack, we sat on the edge of the road. Though more amazed than scared by what happened, we waited for our mother to reach us.
    We had been only a short distance from the cabin when a single plane, as usual out of nowhere, attacked us. Our ears, trained to be