CHAPTER 11

Berlin Ñ on the run

Berlin, founded in 1230, the capital of Germany and before that of Prussia since 1701, the place we had looked at with reverence and admiration, spread out before us. The most modern city transport system in the world at that time, took us to the new place of our activity, the Military Training Centre called Bornstedter Feld. Our new quarters were much better than the ones we had in Posen. As we were still extremely tired, we had a good feed and went straight to sleep.

In the middle of the night, however, we were again woken up by sirens howling quite near us.

"The Russki," shouted Albert in his sleep. We had trouble waking him up. I felt groggy myself, as I had been roused from the deepest possible sleep.

"An air raid, Albert, come on, wake up!" Slowly he regained consciousness.

"Do we have to go?" still not quite himself. "We can't stay here, the barrack has to be cleared." Gradually, we made our way outside, where a spectacular show presented itself to us. Very close to where we were standing, the beam of a search light was scanning the dark night like a giant finger. There were five other search lights from different places doing the same. Between those search lights we could see what looked like two Christmas trees, one near us, another further away.

"What are these?" I asked a sergeant near the search light. "We have never seen anything like it before. In fact, we have never been in an air raid by night."

"What cushy jobs you must have had. We get an air raid on Berlin almost every night. If we are unlucky, there are two or three a night. These things that look like Christmas trees are the markers, released by one plane for the other enemy planes. There are usually three or four. When the squadrons come, they just unload their bombs inside those markers."

"I wouldn't want to be inside one of those squares." "Nothing you can do about it, just pull your head in, and run for a shelter."

We had still not been assigned our jobs, so we just stood around and watched the spectacle unfold. There appeared two more markers, much further away, for which we were very thankful. Then came the bombers,

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