Norma Rogers Ch. 06

My heart seemed to be in the pit of my stomach as I walked toward the door and pushed it open. I saw immediately that I was right; it was Rudi who was waiting for me. He looked up and, as I approached the table, he stood up. The first thing I noticed was the mostly empty left sleeve of his jacket, the end of the sleeve pinned across the front of the jacket. I started to speak first, to take the advantage from the start, quietly saying, "Well Captain Von Ansel, we meet again, this time at your request. What can I do for you? I am totally mystified as to why you would want to meet Jim or me."

"Please, I would ask that you call me Rudi. I don't need reminding of my rank. I asked for James or you because I trust either of you to at least listen to me, and not betray me to my political masters. What I am going to say to you, or even meeting you here would be enough to have me killed should the Gestapo find out."

"How would they not know we met?"

"I'm not staying in this hotel, and the staff here do not know I am German. I'm registered at the Galway Inn down near the beach, and I walked from there. As far as the staff there knows, I am still in my room. My driver has a sister in Galway, so he dropped me off at the Inn and will pick me up there in the morning. Our car has a standard Irish licence as we don't want anyone to know what we are doing. I am supposed to be looking at secluded bays and coves that we may use to refuel and supply our submarines if we can. We do this on the coast of Labrador, but here there are many more people. As long as nobody is looking for me while we meet, there is very little chance of anyone finding out."

"Why now, Rudi? You seem very different from the man I met two years ago. That night you couldn't wait to join the victory march down the Mall."

He looked at me carefully before replying, "Please, Mrs. Rogers, please sit down so that we can talk quietly. I may have been an idiot, but I'm not a fool. I deduce that the man sitting by the bar is with you, as he has been much too interested in us, and as nobody in the Embassy knows that I am here, that means he is either watching you on behalf of the Irish authorities, or he is watching over you, and I would more believe the second latter than the former. The Irish may be independent, but it is the English they are closest to."

I sat down across from him. "Rudi, You are partly right, the man by the bar is protecting me, the Irish Government knows nothing of this meeting, but my father in law John Rogers would be very upset if I were hurt or anything happen to me. Before I can trust you I must ask, you. why the change of heart? You are a German officer, why should the English trust and believe you? What do you want of us?"

He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out an envelope, and gave it to me. "That is the address of my mother and sister in Bern, Switzerland. What I want is that should anything happen to me, that they be looked after and hidden from the Gestapo."

"Why, how are they in danger?"

"It's a long story?"

"I have time, go ahead."

"Well in a way, you were a part of the reason."

I sat back, amazed as he told me the following tale.

"After our little conversation at the reception hit the press, Reichsmarshall Goering was very displeased that one of his pilots was made to look a fool. I soon found myself on the way to the Russian Front to fly bombers, Heinkel 111s, the same plane that had been literally defeated by your RAF but almost invincible against the Russian Yaks. We had been bombing Stalingrad, bombing ruins, making them into more ruins. Nothing human could possible live through the raids, but nobody told the Russian people that. Their soldiers were contesting every metre of ground and for every step forward we made, we seemed to be taking two back. After this attack we were on our way back to our landing field. We were following a main road packed with refugees, when I heard the nose gun firing. The gunner, a fine graduate of the Hitler Youth was firing into the refugees, old men, women and children; I could not stand it any longer.

I yelled at him to stop, and pulled the nose of the aircraft to the right to get away from the road. I was so involved with this that I didn't see the Yak fighter coming in on our left. His bullets hit the cockpit and the nose gun, two bullets hit my left arm and others made a mess of the gauges. I had a little control of the plane left, so I called my mid gunner who came and put a tourniquet on my arm, and with his help, I was able to make our field and get the plane down on its belly. We were all hurt, the worst being the nose gunner, who was killed by in the attack by the fighter. I was treated at the field hospital; my lower arm was amputated, and I was sent back to Germany on a hospital train packed with wounded soldiers. After a time in hospital, I was sent home on leave to Seefeld to convalesce. While I was in the hospital, I had written to my parents to explain what happened and where I was, and I was very surprised when I didn't hear from them, not even a card.

I travelled to Seefeld by train; my father was the Pastor of the Lutheran Church. In fact, I had joined the Hitler Youth as a rebellion against him and the church. When I got to my former home, there was nobody there; the house was empty, the furniture was gone, the doors were wide open and when I walked through the rooms, it looked like animals were living there. From there I went to the church and found Hans Gulders, one of the elders. He didn't recognize me at first, and when he saw my uniform he tried to hide in my father's office. I told him who I was, that I was Rudi the Pastor's son, and I wanted to find my family. He eventually came out of the office.

"Yes, Rudi," he said, "now I remember you, you have changed since you went away to join the Luftwaffe."

When I asked where my father was, he looked down, took hold of my arm and led me out into the cemetery beside the church. He took me to an unmarked grave and said, "He lies here in this spot, one of his favourite places".

"When did he die, and why is there no headstone?" I asked.

He sadly replied, "Because there is no money to pay for a stone and a mason."

I became angry and demanded, "He had more than enough money to buy a headstone. What has happened here?"

Hans again took my arm as he replied, "The Nazi's happened here! Come into the church where we can't be heard, and I will tell you." He took me into my father's office, where we sat down and he began his story, talking through the tears he shed as he spoke.

He told me, "Your father was a true man of the church. He was a true Samaritan, as you well know, helping everybody when they had troubles. One day about six months ago an English pilot parachuted from his burning plane. They had been bombing Munich, and a night fighter caught them. They shot it down, but not until their aircraft was badly damaged and on fire. The rest of the crew had bailed out and he had kept the plane in the air to draw our troops away from the rest of the crew. One of the local farmers, an Austrian patriot, found him hiding in his barn and brought him to your father."

"He hid the pilot here in the church until he was able to contact a smuggler to take him over the border into Switzerland. He was the first of several that your father helped to escape. The inevitable happened and he was betrayed to the Gestapo. The first he knew of it was when they drove into his yard and seized him and your mother and sister. They strung up a rope to the tree in front of the house, put it round his neck and tortured him, pulling on the rope till he was choking, beating him with their sticks to get him to name the smugglers but he would not. Then, still trying to get him to give the smugglers away, they repeatedly raped your mother and sister in front of him. He still wouldn't say anything, your mother kept yelling at him not to talk. Eventually they tired of their games, hanged him from the tree as a warning to others, and drove off leaving your mother and sister lying in the dirt to die."

"I brought your mother and sister to my house and called in the doctor. He treated the two of them as well as he could; physically they were not hurt that badly, but mentally they were really very badly wounded. Your mother has mostly recovered, but your sister's mind was badly affected. We cut your father down when they would let us, and we buried him in the churchyard. When your mother went to the bank to get some money for a headstone, she was told that your father's account had been seized by the Reich through the local Gestapo office. Since then they have stayed with me, and the parishioners have been helping me feed them. Your sister is somewhat better, though she still wakes up with terrible nightmares; your mother has become used to what they did, though she usually comes here daily to your father's graveside. She should be here shortly."

I waited at the church with him until at last I saw my mother slowly walking down the road. What a change there was in her - the vital woman that I had last seen had disappeared. In her place was an old woman shuffling down the road, her head down, staring at the road at her feet. I waited for her by the gate of the churchyard, and as she approached me she finally looked up. At first she just saw the uniform and recoiled, turning away from me as if to go back the way she came, until I spoke softly. "Mutti, I am home and want to pray for Vater with you."

She looked up at me with tears streaming down her cheeks, "Rudi, when you left, you had no time for your father or Berthe and me, you ridiculed our beliefs and all we stood for. All you talked about was Der Fuhrer and how the Third Reich was going to be victorious over the world. Now you are here and crippled, because of that dream. Why should we want to be with you? To take you back into the family? The animals you serve killed your father and treated your sister and I like common whores; no, not like whores, they would have had to pay them. They used us to try to make your father betray his friends, but he was too strong for them. They hanged him like a common criminal, rather than the man of principle that he was, and left us on the ground to die. If not for Hans, that is what we would have done, because that was what we wanted, death rather than the perpetual shame of what those animals did."

I told her I had been hurt trying to prevent my gunner from firing into the refugees, and I had become tired of the cruelty of some I served with and those that I served. While I was in the hospital, I had been given lots of time to think alone. I had been coming home to talk to father to tell him that I now believed that he had been right when he warned me about Hitler, and to find out what he thought I should do.

We walked across to his grave together, prayed silently, each wrapped up in our own thoughts. I felt a tentative hand upon my shoulder. I turned to mother and she looked up at me, then she opened her arms and put them around me. "Rudi, my son, welcome home. Come with Hans and me and see your sister, Berthe."

"Wait," I said as I stepped back into the church and picked up my bag. "Along with my clothes I have some food in here to help with my living here." Then the three of us walked down the road to the house they were living in. Mother told me to wait outside while she and Hans went in and talked to Berthe.

I heard crying and a loud voice saying, "No, I can't face him after what happened." I was about to turn and walk away when I heard my mother say, "Berthe, Rudi is your brother. He has changed. He is no longer the Nazi officer that he was. Please meet him and talk to him. He is part of our family, and even if we are unsure, we can't just turn him away."

A few seconds later she came to the door and motioned me into the house. She quietly told me, "Be gentle with her. She has been through a lot. She still has dreams about what happened, and probably will have them for a long time."

I went into the middle room of the house where Berthe was sitting in a chair, and if I hadn't been told it was she, I would not have recognized my own sister. She was curled into the chair, her arms crossed and pulled right in to her chest. Her clothing was clean, but shapeless, not at all the smartly dressed young woman that she had been. Her hair was unruly, and she looked at me as if she hated me. "Yes!" she shouted at me, "Look at me, see what your Nazi pigs did to Vater, me and Mutti! This is what Hitler's friends are all about, they are animals and if you are with them you are an animal too." Then she burst into tears.

I went into the kitchen with Mother, where she told me that the Gestapo men had made Berthe pregnant, but the Doctor had terminated the pregnancy as he didn't think she was strong enough mentally. I admired his courage, that act alone would have ensured his death if betrayed.I asked about money, whether she had enough to live on. "Not in Germany," she replied, but your grandfather's lawyer came to see me after your father's death. When he sold his textile plant, your grandfather didn't want to leave his money to your father. He knew only too well that his son would give it all to the poor and rely on God to provide for his family. Instead, he split the money that he did not need and opened three accounts in your, mine and Berthe's names in a bank in Bern, but of course we can't get over the border to get it."

I held her tightly and asked, "Mother, if it can be arranged, would you be willing to go to Switzerland with Berthe for your own safety? I know what I have to do; I must try to help end this madness, and I can't do that if you are within the reach of the Gestapo. Please do this so I won't have to worry about your safety if anything should happen to me."

She hugged me back and replied, "If it would help, yes I would, but please promise me you will be careful. I have just got you back and don't want to lose you again."

I had been given a lot of back pay, so my first actions were the actions of a dutiful son. I found a stonemason, arranged for a headstone for father's grave, and gave my mother enough money to buy some decent food. During the rest of my leave, I managed to contact the smugglers who had been protected by my father, and a few days before my leave was to end they took my mother and sister over the mountains into Switzerland. Once I knew they were safe in Bern, I reported back to Luftwaffe headquarters and, because of my injury and the fact that I had been to Ireland before, they sent me back to Dublin as an air attaché. From there it was a simple matter to slip a note into your diplomat's pocket as I brushed past him, and here we are."

He slipped his hand into his pocket and took out a small package, "Just to prove I am in earnest, this is a roll of film, the photographs are of documents that your intelligence contacts will find very interesting. "

After hearing his disturbing tale, I felt almost sorry for him as I slipped the package into my purse, but then I remembered what he had been like the first time we met. I gave him the envelope with his contact instructions telling him to read and memorise it, then destroy it.

Then he spoke again, "Mrs. Rogers, Norma if I may call you that, I can't help but admire you, the way you hold yourself, the work you do, and your obvious pride in your country. Your husband was my friend in school, and I hope that one day after all this is over, he will be again."

"As a former friend, I must warn you to be extremely careful; our resident Gestapo officer was talking to me a few days ago, asking about you. Apparently during the attacks on Russia a GRU office was taken, and when the Gestapo were going through the files there, they found a file with your name on it. They know that, besides your job in the Ambulance Service, you are an officer in the ATS. They are very interested in you and your contacts with military Intelligence. They also detailed how you seem to have the highest contacts and support in Britain and, through your husband's family, to the highest people in government in Ireland. I don't know if you know it, but they also had information that the American officer attached to your Ambulance unit is the son of a long term US Senator who is instrumental in directing the war effort. Be very careful! If the GRU has information like this, then it may be coming from a spy for the Russians, a very high level one."

I was concerned, "Who are the GRU, and why would they be interested in me?"

"They are the Russian Military Intelligence, and it appears that they have some highly placed informers. They probably are hoping that at some time you could be convinced to work for them."

I found this a scary thought. How could they have this information, and what were they going to do with it? I started to get up to leave before saying, "Thank you for this information. I'm not sure that I know what to do with it just yet, but I will be very careful. What did you tell your Gestapo agent about me?"

"The truth, that I had only met you once, under trying circumstances, and that the results of the meeting had been splashed over the front pages of a number of newspapers. He had no further questions after that." He said and gave me a little smile.

I thanked him again, said goodbye, turned and left.

Once in the lobby, I almost collapsed into my father in law's arms. "He told me I'm being watched by someone. I'm scared for the babies; I'm afraid that someone will try to threaten or harm them."

"Let's go back to the farm. We will talk about it there and see what our best course of action will be," said John. "We can't really talk here."

We drove back to the farm and avoided the subject as young John and Donald were in the car with us and we didn't want to alarm them at all. Once back at the farm, I found that my parents had gone to bed already. I couldn't resist the temptation to run up to the bedrooms and make sure that the children were alright. Once I saw their little heads on the pillows, my breath seemed to come out in a rush and I started to shake a little with the shock. When I went back downstairs, Mhairi had made tea and put out some scones and butter.

When we were all sitting at the kitchen table, Mhairi looked at both of us before asking, "Now, will someone please tell me what has Norma so frightened? Girl, you look as if you have seen a ghost, you are so pale. And look, you can hardly hold your cup, your hands are shaking so badly."

John looked at me and nodded, "You had better tell us both what happened."

After a mouthful of tea to steady me, I began. "Well, first, Rudi was a perfect gentleman. He pointed out that he had spotted Donald. He seems to have had a real change of heart after being on the Russian front. He told me the terrible things that had been done to his parents and sister by the Gestapo," and I recounted his story for them so they would know what had happened. "What really frightened me, though, was what he told me at the end. Apparently the Gestapo have questioned him about me, as they had found a Russian Military Intelligence file on me specially noting my connections to you, and to presumably Military Intelligence at a high level. It really scared me to find out that they had a detailed, high level file on me, and my fears for the twins really bothered me. I just don't know what to do! do I trust the man I have talked to, or whoever he reports to, or do I try to contact someone else?"

We talked it over, and were wondering if someone in the Irish government might best approach the British Government at a high level when Mhairi burst out, "Well, why don't you just tell the man you talk to the details of your conversation without the part about the Russians, and we can send a message to Herself (meaning the Queen) asking that you be allowed to talk to someone they absolutely trust? She said to contact her if we needed anything."