By Ed Staskus

   The new-style lightning war that started in 1939 won the Third Reich most of Europe and substantial parts of Russia. Five years later the Red Army was poised to take revenge on its enemy. When the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front tried to weather the storm and fight out of encirclements, the Russians did what the Germans would have done, fed armor into the attack, maintaining mobility, forcing the issue deep into rear areas, faster than the enemy could respond. Their M4A2 Sherman tanks, built by the United States, could be replaced when destroyed faster than German factories could take a breath and say, “Gute trauer!”

   “The Russians came very quickly,” said Angele Jurgelaityte. “We listened to the radio every day. We could hear booming in the distance, which was their bombs and cannons. The Germans were all over the roads. The Russians were to the north and the east of us. Everybody knew they were coming.”

   The angel-face of her aunt’s family, the family Angele was staying with near Alvitas, Lithuania, didn’t know, but everybody else in the Baltics knew the Red Army was coming back and there was going to be hell to pay. “Everybody was worried and unhappy.” Most Lithuanians sided with the Germans. There were centuries of bitterness smoldering between Vilnius and the Muscovites.

   It was in the summer of 1944 that Soviet forces went on the offensive. The Germans were pushed back on a shifting front. Armored tank columns from both sides advanced on Vilkaviskis, four miles away from where Angele was. If it wasn’t for land mines she could have walked there in an hour. The Russian 33rd Army entered the town a few days later and then secured the rail depot at Marijampole. The Third Panzer Army mounted a counterattack, but after several grim tank battles was finally forced to retreat to Kybartai, rolling back to a last-ditch defensive line defending the Baltics. Neither the Germans nor the Russians listened to a single Lithuanian who said the land wasn’t their land to begin with.

   “It was one day in the afternoon that a lady, a teacher, who was one of my aunt’s friends, with two kids, a small boy and a small girl, came to our farm from Vilnius,” Angele said. The woman and Angele’s aunt, Ona Kreivenas, had studied and graduated together from a teacher’s college. She was in a horse drawn wagon with her children and what chattels and valuables she could pack and carry. She had come from the big city in a rush. She told them there was Russian armor hiding on the nearby farm tracks.

   The next morning Ona, Angele, and the children, Mindaugas, Carmen, Ramute, and the toddler Gema, loaded their wagon with clothes, blankets, and food. They hitched two horses to the wagon and tied a cow to the back. “We took milk with us when we left, for baby Gema, and hoped we would find more when we were gone.” They took whatever they could shoulder. They left their buggy and let the riding horse, the rest of the cows, and all the pigs and chickens loose. Ona’s friend followed behind them.

   “We let all the animals go. What could we do? The Russians would have just stolen all of them.”

   Ona took all her money and what jewelry she possessed with her in a handbag that she could keep close to the vest. She filled a trunk with her sewing machine, china, vases, artifacts, and family heirlooms. They lugged it behind the barn, where the remains of months of potatoes thrown down to feed the pigs were piled up.

   They cleared a space, dug a four-foot deep hole, and buried the trunk. They threw potato scraps back over the overturned ground. When they were done, they left in two wagons, two women, seven children, and a cow on the move, suddenly homeless in their own home.

   “We moved back about fifteen miles.”

   They went southwest towards East Prussia. “We stopped at a big farm. When we got there, there were already hundreds of people in the fields, with their wagons, and their families. The farmer there slaughtered and cut pigs up for us. All the women made food. Everybody was talking about the war, about what to do.”

   There was heavy fighting between German and Soviet troops in the Baltics. As the fighting raged, more than 130,000 Latvians escaped to Sweden and Germany. In total, the country lost almost 20% of its population during the war, either dead or gone. The Great Escape in Estonia started in the summer and continued through the fall. It is estimated 80,000 Estonians fled from the Red Army to anywhere else. Almost a 100,000 Lithuanians joined them, clogging the roads to Poland, Prussia, and Germany.

   Ona crept back to her farm during the week the Panzer divisions were holding their own. The countryside was nearly deserted. She discovered the trunk they had buried underneath the pile of potato scraps behind the barn had been dug up and was gone. “There was just a big hole. The Russians took it. They used metal sticks to poke into the ground. Her sewing machine was gone, all gone, everything gone.”

   They slept rough, out of doors, like everybody else. “We slept on blankets on the ground. When it rained, we slept under the wagon and stretched a tarp out to keep the water away.” Every day it got darker. Over the course of September, the length of the day in Lithuania rapidly decreases. By the end of the month the daylight is two hours less than it was at the start of the month.

   Their encampment stretched out for six weeks. They dug latrines and filled barrels with water. They picked apples off trees and blueberries from bushes. They took especial care of their horses. They greased the axles of their wagons, making sure the grease bucket was always full of animal fat and tar, and making sure they had a spare axle. Without one a broken axle would be a disaster, bringing them to a standstill.

   The children played games whenever they had idle time. “We played the ring game,” Angele said. “We all sat in a circle and passed around a pretend ring, like a twig or a pebble. Sometimes we passed it, but other times we didn’t. We just pretended to give it to who was next to us. One of us was it, like in tag, who had to guess who had the ring. If they were right, they got a prize, like a pencil. If they were wrong, they had to sing a song or do a dance in the middle of the circle.”

   When they finally left, they left in the early evening. They had heard over the radio that morning that the Russians had come closer. They spent the day packing and preparing. It was now or never. “Most of us left, although some stayed. Some of the farmers wanted their land back. They didn’t want to leave.” It was all they had. It was all they had ever known. They were loath to give it up. “My aunt had to go, no matter what. The farm didn’t matter. Her husband had already been taken by the Communists. She knew they would take her, too, if they caught her, send her away to Siberia, and her children would be left behind, orphans.”

   It rained that day and the rest of the night. “The road was crowded on both sides. There were thousands of wagons, wagon after wagon, all going one way. There wasn’t a single car or truck, just horses. We knew the Germans were somewhere ahead of us and the Russians somewhere behind us, but we didn’t see any soldiers anywhere, at all.”

   Ona was at the reins of the two-horse team, her seven-year-old daughter Ramute beside her holding the three-year-old Gema, and Carmen, Mindaugas, and Angele walking. Most of the refugees were walking, their wagons jam-packed with possessions and provisions. Their friend from Vilnius with her two small children stayed in line behind them.

   Before the war, Lithuania’s population was almost 3 million. After the war it was closer to 2 million. Some Lithuanians ended up dead. Many were deported. Others ran for their lives. The displaced were forced to make new lives in different countries all around the world, whatever country they could get to, whatever country would take them, whatever country they could sneak into.

   When the second Soviet invasion of the 1940s happened, some Lithuanians tried to flee across the Baltic Sea to the Nordic countries, but only a few were successful. Patrol boats apprehended them, and they ended up hauled off to labor camps. Most fled west, while others went south to Hungary, Romania, and the Balkans.

   “On the way we met my uncle on the road, Uncle Jankauskas and his family.” Her uncle’s wagon fell into line with them. The progression of wagons stretched as far as the eye could see, ahead and behind. They soon crossed into East Prussia. There were no guards. They had all fled. The borderland was a mess.

   “I was so sad leaving Lithuania,” Angele said.

   Russian warplanes strafed and bombed the column of evacuees several times. The Red Air Force was bombing and strafing at will, both German Army and refugee columns alike. Forest and brush on both sides of the road were set on fire. There was smoke in the sky day and night. Wagons and carts slowly wended their way around rain-filled craters.

   “It was all just wagons. They knew we were refugees They dropped bombs and shot their machine guns. I don’t know why they did that. Whenever we heard airplanes, we all ran and jumped into ditches beside the road. I was afraid, but somehow I knew I wouldn’t be hurt by them.”

   What was called the Baltic Gap had grown so menacing to the Reich that Adolf Hitler moved his headquarters from Berchtesgaden to Rastenburg in East Prussia. The German situation on the Eastern Front was desperate. The fighting was hard and bitter. It was a fight to the finish. The hinterland was torn up, abandoned and forlorn.

   “Most of the people on farms had run away. We would go into their houses and find dried fruit, pickles, mushrooms, pork, and wine.” They ransacked barns, pantries, and root cellars. “We took all the food we could find, all of it. It rained most of the time, it was cold, and we walked and walked. Everybody was hungry.”

   The rain and asphalt track were hurtful to their cow. The animal was careful as could be on the poor traction of the wet road, stepping timidly with its rear feet spread wide. It was compensating by walking with an arched back. They finally had to do something. They knew the long miles and pavement weren’t good for it. They thought she might be going lame. Angele’s uncle looked at the cow’s hooves and saw lesions. An ulcer was forming on one hoof.

   “Mindaugas and I found a family that hadn’t run away. We went to their farmhouse and sold the cow to them.” They gave the money to Ona and she hid it on her person with the rest of her money. She had plans for it.

   One cold night when they stopped to rest her uncle said, “Kids, jump up and down to warm yourselves up.” When Angele stopped jumping, he grasped her under the armpits. “He grabbed me. We were jumping up and down and he dropped me by accident.” She broke her wrist. “It hurt bad, but there were no doctors to help me.” When they got to a town with a railroad station, there weren’t any doctors there, either. The smart and the skilled had already left. Everybody else was hoping against hope. Angele’s wrist had to take care of itself.

   After the New Year the German population of East Prussia, most of whom had not yet cut and run, began to evacuate as the Red Army rapidly advanced. Within weeks it turned into helter-skelter flight as more than two million of the two-and-half million men women children of the enclave bolted into the Polish Corridor heading for Germany. The winter weather was bad, the roads were caving in, and the civil authorities were overwhelmed. There was panic and quagmire and many thousands died, some caught in combat, others swept away in the chaos.

   But before that happened, Ona Kreivenas had already sold their wagon and horses and everything they couldn’t carry and managed against the odds to get passage on a train going to Berlin. The Prussian Eastern Railway connected Danzig and Konigsberg to Berlin. A month later, the last week of January 1945, the last train to Berlin ran the rails. There was no traffic on the line after that.

   “The train was completely full. The corridors were full, too.” They stood in a tight group in the corridor. The passenger cars were red and had ten large windows on both sides. They were pressed against one of the windows. Some of the windows were smashed and the passageway was as cold as the outside. “We had a pillow for Gema, who slept on the floor, but we stood that night and the next day.”

   The twin locomotives pulling the long line of passenger cars and baggage cars and a caboose were in camouflage livery. On their front was painted the Hoheitsadler, an eagle, Germany’s traditional symbol of national sovereignty, holding a swastika in its talons. By the time they crossed Poland and entered Germany, the talons and swastika were obscured by coal soot.

   Lehrter Bahnhof was the Berlin terminus, adjacent to Hamburger Bahnhof, built in the late 19^th century just outside of what was then Berlin’s boundary on the Spree River.  It was built in the French neo-Renaissance style, the façade covered in glazed tiles. The station had long been known as a “palace among stations.” But it had been severely damaged by Allied strategic bombing and was near to being a shambles.

   When they finally got off the train in Berlin, tired and stiff from standing, they were met on the platform by Bishop Brizgys. The clergyman was Ona’s husband’s cousin. Vincentas Brizgys had been the assistant to Juozapas Skvireckas, the archbishop of Kaunas. During the summer of 1944 he and the archbishop and more than two hundred other Lithuanian priests fled the country with several retreating German army divisions. Ona had somehow located him by telephone, and he arranged to meet them at the train station. He was wearing a dark suit and a homburg and carrying a basket of hot buns.

   “He gave one to each of us. I was so happy,” Angele said.

   She was 16-years old, somewhere between childhood and adulthood. Seven years later, and a  continent away, she gave birth to me, followed quickly by my brother and sister. In the meantime, hope for the future was the only thing keeping her on her feet.

   The Third Reich’s war economy was on the verge of collapse. The whole country was a sinking ship. There was a shortage of bread sausage cabbage beer, and everything else. When they looked around, the buns the bishop had brought were the only cheer they could see. There wasn’t going to be any traditional roast goose this holiday season.

   Angele looked at the four children and her aunt. She glanced up and down the platform. Their friend from Vilnius and her uncle were long gone, lost in the fog of war. Bishop Brizgys led them out of the station into the city. The Red Army numbering over four million men was massing on the Vistula River and along the East Prussian border. Their superiority was ten to one in infantry and twenty to one in artillery and planes. Berlin and its three million residents were already a wreck, the day and night Allied bombing taking a monstrous toll.

   The early afternoon was a gray haze. There was smoke in the sky. It was darkness at noon. She looked past the rubble in the street. When she looked behind her and ahead, she knew in her bones it was going to be a bare-bones winter on German soil.

   The early afternoon was a gray haze. There was smoke in the sky. It was darkness at noon. She looked past the rubble in the street. When she looked behind her and ahead, she knew in her teenaged bones it was going to be a grown-up bare-bones winter on German soil.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

A New Thriller by Ed Staskus

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