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My father was a company commander in an armored division, or what was left of it, somewhere on the eastern front. He had gone off to war at the age of 27, served as an infantryman during the blitzkrieg against France, and in 1941 was transferred to an armored unit in the east when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union. We saw Father rarely, during brief furloughs and on medical leaves after he was wounded, the first time in 1942, then a year later at Kursk, during the largest tank battle of the war. We missed him, but that was the norm for every family I knew. The last time we had seen Father was in late April 1945, when he unexpectedly appeared for a six-hour visit, in filthy camouflage battle dress, his arm still bandaged from an old, oozing wound. He told Mother it was time to get out and head west. There were five of us at home-Mother, then 33; two younger brothers, 6 and 4; a sister about to turn 2; and me.
Mother would have none of it. Did she underestimate the threat or somehow expect the fortunes of war to turn? I never found out. She cited the practical reason that she did not want a repeat of the government-recommended, ultimately abortive evacuation of December 1944. We had spent three days on a crowded refugee train headed for the south. When we reached our destination, a hamlet on the Bavarian high plateau, Mother stood in the bitter wind at the station, took one look and declared that we were going back. The evacuation officials were flabbergasted: Why would anyone want to head east? She never explained why she chose to give up the relative security of that Bavarian hamlet, but I suspect she thought of herself as a city woman who could not cope with life in what she dismissed as a Kuhdorf, a cow town. We went back.
Four months later, with Father again at the front, Mother was still hesitating. Soviet tanks were only a few kilometers from our town. In the early morning hours of May 7, Father made the decision for her, in absentia. A three-axled Wehrmacht truck arrived at our door, barely visible in the blacked-out street. Mother shook us out of bed and hustled us downstairs. We brought two rucksacks and a baby carriage; there had been no time to pack more. Two soldiers bundled us into the truck. It was already crowded with other refugees and their gear -- suitcases, sacks, boxes -- as well as two tin tubs filled with a white substance that we later discovered was powdered milk covering a pile of hand grenades. At the back were several barrels filled with rifle ammunition.
It was still before dawn when we set out. In the chill and damp, the 20-odd strangers on the truck huddled against one another in silence. I asked Mother where we were going. "West," she said. "West." Where had the truck come from? "Father sent it," she said.
Every few kilometers we stopped. Amid much cursing, two soldiers -- boys, really -- who were riding the front fenders of the truck clambered down and set to tightening the wheel lugs. The vehicle, it turned out, had come straight off the assembly line, but because of parts shortages each wheel had only half the lugs necessary to keep it attached. As we rolled along, they worked themselves loose and had to be tightened again and again.