h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was born in 1937 and lived with mother and my younger sister on the outskirts of Hamburg. Father was off fighting the war in Russia believing he was defending his homeland. Hitler's propaganda machine worked so well, that father and his comrades thought Poland had started the war. In his letters he talks about his duty to defend his home, wife and children. He loved to photograph and sent the exposed glass plates home to mother. I have some of his pictures of strange places he saw during the war. He nearly made it. He was killed in 1944 in Russia.

I remember one night sitting on the kitchen table, mother putting shoes on my feet, getting me ready to be taken into the bunker. We used to sleep in long pants and pullovers, and the other children from our building were brought down to sleep on mother's big bed with us on the ground floor while the adults waited for the siren to sound its warning wail to pick us up to go to the shelter. Once mother lifted the curtain for me to see all the pretty coloured markers in the garden the reconnaissance plane had dropped so the planes that came after would know where to throw their bombs. The minute she lifted the curtain a bit, there was a loud shout echoing in the night, "lights out!" We were lucky, ou block remained intact.

The building across the back yard was burned out and I sat on the ground in the garden with some other kids while the women ran back and forth carrying buckets of water to put out the fire. Once I had to vomit while we raced to the bunker, which ran the length of the back yards of our block, half underground, half above and planted over with beans and peas and flowers. Mother left me to carry my sister and her ever ready suitcase to the bunker and said she'd be back for me. O remember our neighbours running past me and finally being the last one to go too.

I used to stand in line for the only available bread, which was yellow and made of corn. Mother used to say she cooked, fried and stewed so many pumpkins during the war that she never wanted to see another one again.

I spent my first year at school in a home in a small town outside Hamburg. What amazes me is that once I turned six I had to go to school, war or no war, and to school I went! German burocracy functioned no matter what.

When there was no water in the houses, a water truck came regularly and everybody stood nicely in line to fill buckets and pots. Mother used to get old clothes from neighbours, turned them and made new ones for her two daughters.

There was a lot of destruction in our neighbourhood and I shall never forget the bombed out buildings that looked like empty shells, their doorways and windows black holes in the evenings, looking like death.

One interesting fact though, in 1969 I moved to a house near an airport and I had to fight the feeling of danger, of doom, that came over me every time a plane flew low over us. Only then did I realize how strongly the planes in the war had affected me.