Author: Jake Harder, 2008
It was early March 1945 after one month on the ’Trek’ when we stopped at a small village in East Germany to rest. My mother, my sister and I shared a wagon with my uncle and aunt, their three children, my grandmother and another aunt. We traveled together since my uncle was the only one capable of handling a team of horses.
We were lucky to find lodging in three different households in the same village. On this particular morning my cousin Erich Wiebe came over to play board games with my sister Herta and me. My mother was in the basement doing laundry. The owner was cultivating in the garden with his oxen. He did not want to go out into the fields because he had been shot at by passing fighter planes. The family had given up their living room with a big picture window. This early March morning as we sat and played games, we suddenly heard the noise of an airplane engine get louder and louder. As I looked up I saw a fighter plane coming straight for the room we were in. When the plane was just across the street from us, the wingtip hit that house slightly changing its direction.
The room we were in was not damaged, but when we opened the door to the hallway we saw the rest of the house had collapsed. Part of the plane was in the house, on fire, ammunition was exploding, people were running around trying to put out the fire. After some time we were able to get to the basement to find our mother.
We were thankful that we were all unharmed. The owner, however, who had stayed home to cultivate the garden because the snipers had shot at him in the fields, was killed. The fuselage of the plane had hit the neighbour’s gable of the barn, which was made of bricks that fell on him. The pilot and copilot did not survive the crash.
(My cousin Erich and I were separated shortly after this incident. We met again after 59 years, in Germany in 2004)
JH 2008
