Opposite Sides Read Free Page B

masters reminded Hans of his father:
they would have been about the same age. He moved like his father
so it was likely this master had been in the army for some time.
His father had been a soldier, too. Hans only knew his father in
uniform right from the time he could remember.
    When Hans was a little
boy the family lived in Salzburg on Austrian border. He was proud
of his father. When he wore a bright uniform with shining badges
and colourful epaulettes and Hans thought he looked exactly like
one of the tin toy soldiers he kept in a box under the stairs’
cupboard. Then, when he was older, the family left Austria and went
to live on the outskirts of Berlin, not far from his aunt and
uncle. That was when his father went away. That was when the war
began.
    Hans remembered the last
time he had seen Papi. It was almost a year before the war had
ended. Everything was to have been fine and when it was all over,
Papi had promised to take them back home to Austria. But it was not
to be. Only two weeks after that, a telegram boy had rang the
doorbell. That dreaded telegram which no one wants delivered. Mutti
cried. Her world had been shattered. Her children soon knew their
father would never be coming back and that he would never take them
back to Austria. Not ever!
    Hans then thought how
lucky he was that his grandmother had chosen him as the one to go
to England. Papi’s mother had been born in England. It had been a
desire of hers that one of her grandsons would learn to experience
her homeland and grow to love its countryside as much as she had.
Oma had left some of her money in England, which was just as well,
as after the war many people in Germany were to lose all their
savings.
    Even though there had
been a bloody war between his country and this one, the Resmel
family had no hate for their cousins across the sea. One day, he
decided to learn English at school. It was then that Oma told him
that it was her wish for him to go to a school in England. If he
could make friends there and find his English relatives, then he
could help to mend the bridges that had forced them on opposite
sides. The trouble was that Oma had lost touch with her English
family and all she could give her grandson were hazy directions or
names of people long since gone.
    So, with all that going
through his mind, and with eyes fixed firmly in front, Mister
Resmel pushed back his shoulders and was determined to make his
grandmother proud.
    During the morning
recess, twenty boys took the opportunity to surround the new-comer
and learn everything there was about him.
    “ . . . and
where did you say you came from, old boy?” asked a one of the boys.
He was a well-built boy who, Hans noted, had thick, round lips like
a girl.
    “ Salzburg.”
    “ Oh, ho-ho.
Where’s that? Is that why you speak so strangely?”
    There was an air of
contempt in the boy’s expression that Hans did not like. He took an
instant dislike to him.
    “ Ö sterreich ,” he said with conviction. After all, that is where he had
spent much of his early childhood. Oma still lived in the same
house in Salzburg. It was where she and his grandfather had raised
all their children.
    “ What?
Ostrich?”
    “ Österreich . ” Hans repeated.
    “ Where?” The
boy’s eyebrows rose. He shook his head, and with a mocking grin
looked at the senior boy sporting a prefects badge who had just
joined them. “Sorry, never heard of it!”
    Hans felt that the boy
was ridiculing him and he did not like the tone of his voice. Some
of the others around this boy mimicked ‘never heard of it’ and
began laughing loudly together. Hans thought they were laughing at
him. He felt the skin on his face begin to burn as his blood surged
upwards and made his temples throb. Hans clenched his fists and was
ready to lash out when he was stopped by the hand of someone
touching his shoulder.
    “ All right,
old chap. Take things easy. Don’t get fashy or worked up about it.
It is not worth getting into trouble