As a child in 1945, my mother was a refugee fleeing an invading army. She’d be heartbroken to see the tragic scenes currently unfolding in Ukraine. In 2021, I was invited to write a story about her experiences as part of National Story Telling Week for my youngest son’s Year 4 English class. I hoped that it might show the children that a better world is possible, and I never thought at the time that it would be become so timely. I find it tragic that this is the case.
The Unknown Soldier
(Originally told to Yr4 English Class at Richmond House School, Leeds, UK, Jan 2021)
This story begins a long time ago before any of you were born – before even me, your teachers, or any of your Mums and Dads were born in fact. It’s about a brother and his little sister who lived on a farm with their mother. This farm was surrounded by beautiful countryside of dark forests and lakes that shone like crystal in the morning sun, and the two children loved going off into the dark forests to play or skating on the lakes in winter when they were frozen solid with ice.
On the farm was a cherry orchard where the children loved to play. In spring, the brother would climb up into the trees and pass the cherries down to his sister. But even when the blossoms had fallen and the cherries had long gone, he would still climb up into the trees and keep watch down the lane.
‘Can you see him yet?’ his little sister would ask eagerly from down at the bottom of the tree.
And every day, he shook his head and the two of them would trudge back to the farm with their heads bowed but trying to hope that tomorrow might be different. That tomorrow might be the day that they saw the distant figure of their father returning to them down the lane.
Because, even though she’d been told stories about him, the little girl had never actually met her father. He was a soldier and he’d gone off to fight just before she was born. Because far away from the forests and meadows that she knew, a war had been raging. It had gone on for a long, long time and had involved all the countries of the world.
Her mother told the children that it had been started by an angry, hateful, bitter man called Adolf Hitler. In the years before the war began, this man Hitler and his followers used to march past their farm in noisy processions. They all wore a brown uniform and on their arms had a red armband with a white circle in the middle. At the centre of the circle was a twisted black cross with crooked arms. It was a strange, ugly shape, but as time went on, more and more people had begun to wear it. Hitler had told all the people of the country that whatever problems they had – not enough money, or enough food, or a nice enough house were all the fault of other people, people who were different. But he would solve this problem. He would get rid of these different people and lead the country to glory. Soon, so many people were so eager to believe him that the whole country seemed to be marching behind him.
Just like that twisted shape, all Hitler’s words and promises were nothing more than twisted, ugly lies. But with the people too scared, too weak or just not willing to question the lies they were being told, like a hate filled version of the pied piper, Hitler led them – and the rest of the world – into the disaster of that terrible war.
But now at last, the news had reached the farm that the war was finally over. And so the little girl was happy because she knew that soon her Dad would be home. Her brother told her that their Dad had been a carpenter and loved carving furniture from wood. She didn’t want to think that he had really liked Hitler and certainly hadn’t wanted to go off and fight for him. But Hitler had attracted a big crowd of bullies who scared a lot of people – and when people are scared they can do terrible things.
But Hitler and his bullies were gone now, and so everything would be alright again, she told herself as she stood watching from the orchard.
And finally, the day came that she had longed for. There in the distance she spotted a lone figure. And he was wearing a soldier’s uniform. Her heart leapt. But as he came further down the lane, she saw that he was not alone. There were more soldiers behind him. And further still behind them, she heard the distant rumble of tanks. Above her she heard the drone of engines and looking up, she saw the sky full of planes.
As the soldiers came closer, she saw that they were wearing a different uniform. On it was a red flag with a golden hammer and sickle, and they spoke a strange language that she did not recognise.
Seeing the soldiers, her older brother grabbed her by the arm and ran with her into the safety of the farmhouse, while her mother bolted the door shut and held them both close. These were soldiers from the Soviet Union she warned them, her voice trembling – a savage merciless enemy who would not spare them.
Suddenly the door flew off its hinges and the soldiers burst in, shouting and waving their guns at them to get out of the house.
If you had to suddenly leave your house – what would you take with you? Xbox? Phone? Trainers? The children and their mother grabbed whatever they could fit – and it wasn’t much – onto a small handcart. There was no room for any toys but the girl found one lonely doll and clutched it close to her. Then, with heavy hearts, they left the home that they had loved forever.
As they began to push their cart down the lane, one of the Soviet soldiers suddenly called out to them to stop. Terrified, they turned around fearing for their lives. But to their surprise, the young Soviet soldier threw his rifle to the ground and climbed up into one of the cherry trees. Quickly, he began picking the fruit. Then, dropping from the tree he walked over and, with a smile, gave the girl and her brother each a bag of fat, juicy, ripe cherries.
They waved goodbye to him and, with their mother pushing the cart, they set off with heavy hearts. Along the way they were joined by people from the village who had all been driven out of their homes. Old people hobbling on crutches, hungry children, women clutching crying babies. The further they walked, more people joined them. Hundreds more, then thousands more. A sad, long, ragged procession, of people all driven out of the place they had called home, the place of dark forests and shining lakes. None of them would ever see that homeland again. In the years to come even its very name would be rubbed off the map and forgotten as it became home to someone else.
So this long, sad procession of ragged people stumbled westwards with their heads bowed, hoping to escape the tanks, planes and Soviet soldiers who were always not far behind. And never daring to stop because if they did, they would be caught.
Being hunted by enemy soldiers wasn’t their only worry. They were always hungry and the best their mother could do to feed them was to steal potatoes from fields of abandoned farms.
As they joined the millions of hungry, frightened people fleeing their homes, their mother reassured them that once they crossed into the West they would be safe. But then came terrible news. Soviet tanks had come from the south and cut off the escape route to the West. The only escape route now was to the North – over the sea.
Some people managed to get on board ships, but that was dangerous because there were enemy submarines lurking in the waters that sank them with torpedoes. So that left only one option. To cross the sea on the parts that were still frozen.
This was still dangerous because as they crossed the ice they were bombed by enemy planes but eventually, they reached the capital city of Berlin. Or what was left of it. Because now it lay all in ruins, all its buildings reduced to charred, jagged wreckage jutting up like broken old teeth.
Cold and hungry, the girl and her brother huddled together to keep warm amidst the rubble. And all their mother could give them to fill the gnawing hunger in their bellies was some cold grey soup made from the body of a dead horse and served in an old tin can that she had found lying among the shattered bricks.
Picking their way through the ruins, they did eventually reach safety and when she grew up, the girl found a new home in England where she became my mother. But the land of forests and lakes that she and her brother once called her home is long gone now. You won’t find it on a map anymore. And, like the land they once called home, my mother and her brother have now also passed into memory.
But I’ve written down her story to pass on to her grandchildren and when I wear my poppy each year on 11th Nov, I think of her and the millions of others for whom the end of the war didn’t mean an end to misery and suffering. I also think of that soldier who climbed up into a tree to give a handful of cherries to two frightened children from a country that was supposed to be his enemy. I’ll never know who he was, but I’d like to think that even though he spoke a different language, wore a different uniform, and came from a different country, that unknown soldier remembered that somewhere far away in the Soviet Union he too had a frightened little son and daughter who missed their Dad and just wanted the fighting to stop so that he could come home to them. I wish I could thank him for what he did with his small act of kindness. Maybe by telling you all this story, I can do just that. Because although he may have done nothing more than just climbed a tree to give some cherries to a frightened little girl and her brother, he gave me something too. He gave me hope for the future of us all. And maybe that’s something we all need to hang on to right now.
© Kersten Hall 2023