Aunt Hanni

The other angel with no wings was aunt Hanni. She was blessed enough to have landed in the American sector of Germany.. while we were under Communism, speak: under Russian rule. This meant.. more suffering and more hunger.
During the end of WW2 the Big One as Archie Bunker would later call it.. The American conquered our part of Germany.. and Russia concered ( sp ?) Berlin. But all of the Allies wanted a part of Berlin, so they made a deal.
Terrible deal for us, because they traded our part of Germany for a part of Berlin to the Americans.. and the Russians got our part of Germany in trade.. This brings me to talk about what happened when the Americans came into our village.. just a split second before this horrible war was over. 11 german soldier died defending our village.. yes, 11 ! Dad.. still alive then gathered up the 11 bodies and laid them by our huge barn and covered them. Their boots were sticking out from the cover. I once tripped over a boot with a gallon of milk I had fetched from the farm next door. The farmers could not get rid of all that milk, because they were unable to transport it to Halle.. too much shooting and bombimg yet. So dad hastily searched for the families of our fallen soldiers, and found them. The fallen then were buried.. with most of their families present in a massgrave in our little cemetary. Dad did the eulogies of course. About a month before all of this.. I almost fainted when a huge explosion thundered through our village. The crazy guy ( Hitler ) had ordered that every tiny town, village and place had to be defended to the last standing man.
Thus.. the explosion was.. the little bridge, spanning the river Saale, from Brachwitz to Doelau, was blown up. What ! Did they think this would stop the Americans from getting across this little river? Crazy what another terrible waste. This bridge has not been rebuilt to this very day, the day I am writing this. A ferry does the job now, and probably will from then on forever.
I totally got away from talking about aunt Hanni, didn’t I ? But I’ll get to it, give me another chance please, these memories aren’t easy to deal with and they flood my mind fast and furious like ” die Saale ” at floodtime.. or worse !