(5 of 7)
That was May 8, the last day of the war, though we did not know it yet. We had our own victory that day: after close to 48 hours on the move, we finally reached the American lines, just outside the old spa city of Karlovy Vary, then still called Karlsbad. The first G.I.s we came across were guarding a group of German pows. The Americans casually motioned for Peise and his men to surrender their weapons, though not themselves, and waved us on. Soon we were in the city, where we were put up in a hospital, one family to a bed. Peise surrendered his truck, changed into civilian clothes and announced he was headed home for Swabia, to the southwest; we would be safe with the Americans, he said before he vanished.
Peise was right, but not for long. A day later, the Americans announced that the lines were being redrawn and that Soviet units would occupy the area, including Karlovy Vary, which the U.S. was abandoning. That triggered fresh panic-and it grew when two Soviet officers arrived to look over the hospital. One stopped in front of our bed, tickled my youngest brother under the chin with his riding crop and tried, half joking, half threatening, to get him to say "Heil Hitler." The ward froze. My brother said nothing. The man tried again. My brother remained silent. The officers left, laughing. The following day, after impassioned pleas by some of the refugees, American soldiers loaded about 100 of us on trucks and took us to the village of Jindrichovice, outside the Soviet area and close to what is now the German-Czech border.
If the greatest danger was behind us, the second part of our journey would be longer and ultimately tougher -- and bring out a strength and resourcefulness in my mother she probably did not know she had. In her early 20s she had been something of a daring spirit -- the only young woman in town to own a motorcycle, for example-but marriage and children had settled her down. Now, all alone, not sure where her husband was, whether in fact he was still alive, she came into her own. Worried that another U.S. pullback might leave us in Soviet-occupied territory, she led us on what would turn into an eight-week, 700-km trek to the southwest, into the heart of the U.S.-held zone. Most of the way we walked, my sister on Mother's back, on forest paths and country roads; occasionally, there was the unexpected relief of a ride on a U.S. Army truck, a milkman's cart, a rare train. We slept in barns and haystacks and ate whatever we could scrounge: a handful of potatoes from a farmer, a warm meal from a soup kitchen, a loaf of bread from a G.I.-though Mother had to be persuaded by two demobbed German soldiers that it was all right to accept a gift from a former enemy.