The rainbow never sets

Coming home for a weekend, we found that Opa looked very worried. He had never been an optimist, but with the battle at Stalingrad lost, he warned: "We can never win that war. It's madness. Mark my words: Napoleon got beaten in Russia, the First World War was lost because of the large front with Russia, and now again. You will see. This is the beginning of the end."

These were prophetic words. We had heard them before that week, but we simply couldn't face the thought of defeat.

*

In January 1943 Mutter had decided that we were old enough to have confirmation classes.

"But how can we go to Stþeszew every week, for six weeks! We just haven't got the time," Günter spoke up for us both.

"I have made arrangements with our Pastor Fetzer, that whenever he is in Posen, and that is usually once a week, he will come to you and give you three boys your classes there."

"So Bernd is in it too?" I asked. "Yes, all three of you, and Easter Sunday will be the day of confirmation." "Will we get some nice presents too?"

"That's not, why you will be confirmed, now get that into your heads." I thought I had better keep my mouth shut, but we agreed to attend confirmation classes at the boarding house.

Pastor Fetzer came to us several times. I think he tried to teach us the Catechism, as set out by the Evangelische Kirche Deutschlands (Evangelical Church of Germany), as our Church was known, an amalgamation of the Reformed tradition and the Lutheran Church early this century.

Unfortunately, his teaching methods were rather strange, and he was not a good communicator. I had learnt more from Mutter in our earlier days. She used to call us together and tell us Bible stories, or read from a picture bible book with coloured pictures, which always interested us. She had taught us prayers, which we took in turn to say at dinner time, but not, if we had visitors, and she made sure that we would always say our prayer at night, before going to sleep.

But Pastor Fetzer? All I can remember from his lessons is, when he told us about angels in heaven who were blowing their trumpets. He mistakenly used the German word pupen, for blowing, which we kids knew as farting. Our unrestrained laughter could be heard throughout the whole boarding house. Pastor Fetzer did not add anything to our faith, but what was there was the strong foundation laid by Mutter.

*

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