The Boy Who Went to War Read Free

the elections of spring 1932. Nevertheless, in the nationwide ballot that followed in July, he was disquieted to learn that the Nazis had scored an unprecedented 37 per cent of the vote. People were already beginning to say that Hitler was the only man who could save Germany from disaster.
    For the children, the political chicanery in Berlin belonged to another world. Here in Eutingen, the youngsters were healthy and the family had a steady income. Summer was a time for bicycle rides, country walks, and picking plums and cherries. The fears and troubles that lay at the back of everyone’s minds did not yet impinge on the private domain of the Aïcheles.
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    Wolfram was an inquisitive child, even at an early age. On Sunday afternoons, when his father was busy painting in his garden atelier, he would creep to the landing at the very top of the house. This was his own place of enchantment, a little corner where his imagination could run riot. His father had an old wooden secretaire – his personal cabinet of curiosities – that had dozens of keys, handles and secret drawers. Each one contained a relic, a feather or a piece of fur or an unhatched bird’s egg. Erwin kept such things as reminders of all the animals he had nurtured in the family menagerie.
    Here, too, were his freemasonry magazines. When Wolfram had tired of exploring the secret drawers, he would hide himself away with these journals and read stories of adventure from the outside world. There were articles about faraway countries, of the exotic Orient and the Dark Continent, as well as stories of films and artists from around the globe. Wolfram would enter another world, unimaginably distant from rural Swabia, and he was spellbound.
    Alas, his reveries would never last for long. A shout from the hall would send him scuttling downstairs: it was his father, once again calling him to help in his atelier. For the next two hours, Wolfram would sit there, holding one of the dogs that Erwin was painting. It was an irksome task. He and his brother continually complained of it to their mother, but she would brush off their moaning with a joke, saying, ‘I’d sooner he painted dogs than naked women.’
    Wolfram’s father belonged to a generation of Germans with first-hand experience of the brutality of war. Like so many of his contemporaries, he had volunteered for service in the First World War, but he was untauglich – unsuitable – for he had a weak constitution and was turned down by the army. After much persistence he finally got accepted as a war artist, producing vivid sketches of artillery battles, bomb-damaged churches and villages that had been destroyed by war.
    His work carried him to the front line and he was gravely wounded in the slaughter-fields of Picardy in northern France. Hit by shrapnel – his shoulder was shattered into fragments – he slipped into a deep coma. He awoke many days later to find himself in a military hospital in Pomerania, some 800 miles from the battlefront.
    By the time he was fully recovered, Germany was a different country. The war was lost and the victorious allies were determined to impose a harsh penalty on the vanquished. As Erwin made his way back to the house of his parents, he witnessed the first signs of the street violence that was to lead Germany to revolution. Radicals clashed with Nationalists, and Communists fought with soldiers returning from the front.
    Many of these returning servicemen were deeply shocked by the hostility shown them. ‘I shall never forget the scene,’ wrote one, ‘when a comrade without an arm came into the room and threw himself on his bed crying. The red rabble, which had never heard a bullet whistle, had assaulted him and torn off his insignia and medals.’
    Erwin was himself a target for abuse, albeit verbal. Knowing little of the political revolution that had taken place, he arrived in Berlin still wearing the insignia of the