Then they put turf over it so it could not be detected.

Soon after father had returned from his business trip he had to report to "The Volks Sturm" equal to "Dad's Army" here in Great Britain.  He was made to take 400 old men to fight the might of the American Army who had arrived at the outskirts of Leipzig.  I told him not to go, but he was an old soldier, fighting in the First WW, and felt he had to go in the name of the Vaterland.  Of course he lost all men except four out of the 400.  He told us that the barrage was unbelievable.  In all this fiasco nurses walked upright from one wounded man to another and were not hit.  It was a miracle.

Father shouted at them to get down, but they carried on.  On 18 April father came home.  His hair had turned grey in that short time. On the way home he had to avoid tanks and made his way home darting from one cellar of burnt out houses to another.  What should have been a walk of two hours took him two days to get home.

A few days later American tanks passed by "Kelly's Heroes" fashion.  My cousin Ingrid, who stayed with us at the time, and I stepped out on our balcony and waved at the soldiers sitting on top of the tanks.  Father thought we would be shot at, but the soldiers waved back.  A white flag had been put on our house, so Ingrid and I felt save.

I remember April, May and all through the summer we had wonderful warm and sunny sunshine.  Only a few days before the war ended the Alarm was sounded and we went outside to have a look at the sky.  First we could not see anything because of the strong sunlight, but then we saw tiny silvery dots moving overhead.  As the planes flew closer to Leipzig, we lived at the outskirts of town, several were shot down.  We watched as wings and other parts of the planes were ripped off.  We saw the crippled planes fall to the ground and could not spot any parachutes.  This was an unnecessary tragedy.  It should never have happened.  All other planes turned sharply back and dropped their bombs on Espenheim, a nearby Chemical Plant.

On 8 May peace had returned.  My cousin and I sat on our balcony, when an American came by with his jeep, saw us and joined us, climbing up on the balcony.  We had a drink of wine he had brought along celebrating peace.  He said that he had to fight the Japs now.  In all our joy of peace we had not thought of this.