Blackberry Pancakes
-Barbara Boldt (a true story)
My father and my oldest brother, both members of the defeated German "Wehrmacht", were still unaccounted for in August 1945, three months after the end of the second World War.
My brother, 13, and I, two years older, had found my mother and my little sister unharmed in Bohemia, were we had all been living separately in evacuation camps.
Now we were home again in West Germany, thanks to the efforts of the American Occupation Army. We were trying to live off our ravaged, war-torn land. During the after-war time food was extremely scarce. We scrounged and cheated, begged and traded valuable heirlooms for scraps of anything edible. Guests for dinner were not welcome, unless they came with provisions. Hospitality was dead.
One evening during that first summer, my young brother and I were preparing blackberry pancakes from a week's ration of flour, sugar and fat, and from the first crop of berries from a well-guarded patch at the end of our large property. I was cooking outside on a little brickstove we had constructed. this was our only facility, since strangers had taken over our house during the last days of the war.
My brother kept a watchful eye out for intruders. His warning shout made me grab the fry-pan and run indoors. Through the peephole in the door we watched the limping, but steady approach of a bearded, ragged individual. His long army coat was muddy, revealing toeless boots and dirty feet.
He knocked, and on opening apprehensively, we found ourselves in the arms of our unrecognizable,
weeping father . . . . . . home from the war.
